{"id":60597,"date":"2024-10-16T20:18:08","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T18:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=60597"},"modified":"2024-10-17T11:20:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T09:20:57","slug":"otto-erich-hartleben-and-rudolf-steiner-part-1-in-weimar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/otto-erich-hartleben-and-rudolf-steiner-part-1-in-weimar\/","title":{"rendered":"Otto Erich Hartleben and Rudolf Steiner\u2014Part 1: In Weimar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rudolf Steiner met the poet and bon vivant<\/em> Otto Erich Hartleben (1864\u20131905) in Weimar, together with whom, for several years, he would later publish the Magazin f\u00fcr Litteratu<\/em>r [Magazine for Literature]. Hartleben was known for his \u201cwet and wonderful\u201d lifestyle. It\u2019s said that he paid extensive homage to Dionysus and Eros.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hartleben had initially studied law at the request of his grandfather, with whom he had grown up after the early death of his parents, and worked briefly as a court clerk. In 1890, however, he settled in Berlin as a freelance writer. In 1893, he married his long-time lover Selma Hesse, whom he called \u201cMoppchen<\/em>\u201d [Mopsy]. The poet regularly attended the annual Goethe gatherings in Weimar, although he always slept through the actual events. It was only in the evenings that he found himself in the \u201ccircle of journalists, theater people, and writers who gathered at the Hotel Chemnitius on the evenings of the Goethe festivals . . . .\u201d \u201cWhy he was sitting there,\u201d said Rudolf Steiner, \u201cI knew at once: He was in his element, he loved to live it up, in the kind of conversations cultivated there. He stayed there awhile. He wholly couldn\u2019t leave at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The acquaintance between Rudolf Steiner and Otto Erich Hartleben developed by way of Schopenhauer: \u201cMany admiring and dismissive words had already been spoken about the philosopher. Hartleben had been silent for a long time. Then, in the midst of wild conversational revelations, he said, \u2018One is stimulated by him; but yet, he\u2019s not right for life.\u2019 He watched me questioningly with a childish, helpless look. He wanted me to say something because he had heard that I was studying Schopenhauer. And I said, \u2018I must take Schopenhauer for a narrow-minded genius.\u2019 Hartleben\u2019s eyes sparkled; he became restless; he finished his drink and ordered a fresh glass; he\u2019d taken me to heart in that moment; his friendship with me was established. \u2018Narrow-minded genius!\u2019 He liked that.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milieu of Freedom<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It was on one of these evenings that the first of the Serenissimus anecdotes was written (later known through the magazine Jugend<\/em> [Youth]), which were based on the Weimar Grand Duke Karl Alexander\u2014representative of the so-called petty princes, the rulers of dwarf states\u2014and in which his absent-minded and affable demeanor was lampooned. The Grand Duke would turn to the people he had dealings with full of sympathy and interest, but often without being clear about the concrete situations. Rudolf Steiner recounts the \u201coriginal anecdote\u201d in his lecture of October 27, 1918: \u201cSerenissimus visits his country\u2019s penitentiary, and wants to have a convict brought before him . . . . He then asks this convict a series of questions: \u2018How long have you been held here?\u2014I\u2019ve been here for twenty years.\u2014Nice time that, nice time, twenty years, nice time that! What has caused you, my dear fellow, to take up residence here?\u2014I murdered my mother.\u2014Ah so, so! Strange, most remarkable! Indeed, tell me, my dear, how long do you intend to stay here?\u2014I\u2019ve been sentenced to life imprisonment.\u2014Remarkable! Nice time that! Nice time! Well, I don\u2019t want to take up any more of your precious time with questions. My dear warden, this man will have the last ten years of his sentence remitted with mercy.\u2014Well, that was the original anecdote. It was by no means the result of a malicious mood, but rather a humorous take on something that, if necessary, could also be taken in all its ethical values and so forth. I\u2019m convinced that if it had ever happened that the personage to whom this anecdote was often, perhaps wrongly, directed had read it himself, he would have laughed heartily at it.\u201d<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Rudolf Steiner, the mood that lay over the circle around Hartleben \u201cmost certainly belonged to the milieu of the Philosophy of Freedom<\/em>, for the mood of the Philosophy of Freedom<\/em>, at least, lay over the circle that I frequented.\u201d<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u201cEvery evening,\u201d reports the painter Josef Rolletschek, \u201cwe sat in the glass veranda of the Hotel Chemnitius and Hartleben told his first Serenissimo jokes there. Then, he began to philosophize with Steiner, and the same thing was always repeated: The more advanced the hour, the cloudier Otto Erich\u2019s brow became, the more unobjective his discussions, and Steiner calmly and matter-of-factly took the lead.\u201d<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arranging Poems<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Then, one night (as Rudolf Steiner once told Ernst Lehrs on a long car trip), there was a knock at his window. \u201cThe pitiful voice of Otto Erich Hartleben\u201d rang out with a request to let him in: \u201cHartleben entered, his whole body trembling: \u2018Let me stay here, I can\u2019t possibly go home again. When I went into my room earlier, I saw a cockroach on the floor.\u2019 Rudolf Steiner knew that Hartleben had an almost pathological fear of insects and realized that he had no choice but to get dressed again and keep him with him for the night.\u201d Now the friends used the night hours to compile a Goethe Breviary. According to Lehrs, Rudolf Steiner \u201cbrought the volumes of poetry from his two editions of Goethe from his library, along with all the paper he could find in the apartment and the necessary glue. They went through, poem by poem, and when one of them found favor before their eyes, the page in question was taken out and glued onto a sheet of paper.\u201d<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poems were arranged chronologically and given headers that provide information about the respective biographical stages associated with the poems; for example, above \u201cHeidenr\u00f6slein\u201d [Heather Roses]: \u201cFriederike.\u2014Sent to Herder, 1771.\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> This then required a preface in which they \u201cdidn\u2019t exactly treat the philologists lightly.\u201d \u201cThey especially had it in for the philologists. According to the preface, it is thanks to their diligent research that the dates of the individual poems are known, but they would not have thought of organizing such a chronological edition themselves. . . . And then literally: \u2018But what do philologists come up with\u2014nothing.\u2019<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Rudolf Steiner quoted this sentence to us with amusement. It was thereby clear that the various \u2018impertinent remarks\u2019 in the preface were by no means the sole responsibility of Hartleben.\u201d<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Rudolf Steiner’s first stenographic notes on the Goethe-Breviary. NB 327 \u00a9 Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

One\u2019s Own Taste as a Guideline<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the preface itself, however, Hartleben doesn\u2019t mention the participation of a second person: \u201cWhen I joined in the celebrations of the Goethe Society in Weimar this spring,\u201d says Hartleben, \u201cI was\u2014standing at the tender age of thirty\u2014the youngest among those rejoicing; the overwhelming majority of the participants were all gracefully moving toward the turn of their sixtieth year.\u2014This agedness in today\u2019s reverence for Goethe is a rather grave and sad sign: And since I love Johann Wolfgang Goethe with all my heart, I decided to do what I could to keep him alive for my generation. And I came to the conclusion that more than twenty learned Goethe Yearbooks, full of the keenest acumen, could afford a single edition of the poems that would meet the naive desire for enjoyment without pretensions. There was only one guideline for such a book: one\u2019s own taste. I had to create a book\u2014entirely for myself: The more arbitrary and individual, the better and fresher it would be.\u201d<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So did Rudolf Steiner contribute to the book or not? There are now interesting documents in the Rudolf Steiner Archive [Dornach] that support Lehr\u2019s version\u2014even if the two men may not necessarily have been working with scissors and glue that night. Rudolf Steiner\u2019s notebook #324 from 1894 contains many pages of stenographic notes in a kind of two-row table: One row contains the header lines of the Goethe Breviary<\/em>; next to it are the beginnings of the poems. This table was probably the first draft of the book that night, as the printed version still shows some changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And further, Rudolf Steiner also received the typeset manuscript at one time. Hartleben wrote to his wife on July 14, 1894: \u201cMy manuscript is now with Dr. Steiner, who is looking through it, then I will give it to [Eduard von der] Hellen.\u201d<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Presumably, there\u2019s also a sheet from this manuscript review in the Rudolf Steiner Archive (see photo), on which Rudolf Steiner corrected some of the headers again. These corrections were also taken into account in the print, which exhibits a different page numbering compared to this sheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond Death and the Devil<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Goethe Breviary<\/em> was republished in 1901 and expanded to include several poems, mostly from the aged Goethe, and a second preface, which Hartleben had written after a life-threatening health crisis. Apparently, new aspects of Goethe had come to his attention in the meanwhile, which he wanted to integrate into the new selection: \u201cIn our struggle for a unified worldview that could replace the old one of the beyond, death, and the devil, the aging and aged Goethe of the nineteenth century is a mighty ally. He experienced inwardly that, on account of our need and desire, we must pass through the hollow alley of exact natural science, if we want to reach that which we promise ourselves in our hearts and which only can fulfill us, that \u2018view of daylight\u2019\u2014there is no other way to K\u00fcssnacht. And yet we all want to go to K\u00fcssnacht.\u2014Every enrichment of our knowledge of nature\u2014a deeper penetration into the essence of God; every new proof of the psychic through a physical parallel\u2014a further view of the total-ensoulment of matter: This was the only way Goethe could think \u2018materialistically,\u2019 and that there could be human beings whom this path could lead to desolation, to pessimism, he probably never believed with a smile: What more can the human being gain in life \/ Than that God-Nature reveals itself to him\u2014 \/ How it lets the solid melt away to spirit, \/ How it firmly preserves that which is spirit-generated.\u201d<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems as if he had an inkling of what had indeed interested Rudolf Steiner so much in Goethe as the editor of his scientific writings! And so it is touching that\u2014although the friends had completely grown apart in the meantime\u2014Otto Erich Hartleben sent Rudolf Steiner a copy with the dedication: \u201cTo Rudolf Steiner, in grateful memory of Weimar days \/ Otto Erich.\u201d<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this to be read as an indirect acknowledgment of his friend\u2019s significant collaboration in the creation of the Goethe Breviary<\/em>? Otto Erich Hartleben\u2019s brother, retired lieutenant Otto Hartleben (1866\u20131929), who was also a friend of Rudolf Steiner, asked him in a letter dated November 9, 1901: \u201cWhat do you think of Erich\u2019s second preface to the Goethe Breviary<\/em>?\u201d Rudolf Steiner\u2019s answer, as much as it would interest us, has not survived\u2014perhaps, it was only spoken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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

Rudolf Steiner met the poet and bon vivant Otto Erich Hartleben (1864\u20131905) in Weimar, together with whom, for several years, he would later publish the Magazin f\u00fcr Litteratur [Magazine for Literature]. Hartleben was known for his \u201cwet and wonderful\u201d lifestyle. It\u2019s said that he paid extensive homage to Dionysus and Eros. Hartleben had initially studied law at the request of his grandfather, with whom he had grown up after the early death of his parents, and worked briefly as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9190,"featured_media":59236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11473,8846,8789],"tags":[11535,11568,8814],"class_list":["post-60597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-rudolf-steiner","category-history","category-research","tag-ausgabe-29-30-2024-en","tag-english-issue-42-2024","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60597","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=60597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}