The Destiny Groupings Around Rudolf Steiner; Vienna, 1879-1889 / by Emil Bock

Emil Bock presented this lecture to the members of the Anthroposophical Society on September 29, 1953. The lecture was later published in the book Rudolf Steiner by Emil Bock, Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1961. This English version, translated by Traute Page and edited by Hilmar Moore, first appeared in the Spring 1993 issue of the Zeitschrift für Anthroposophie, now defunct. The essay adds some helpful background and context to the video lecture on The Fairy Tale by Goethe “In my end is my beginning . . .” that I posted in August 2025. This lecture video explores The Fairy Tale’s significance for Rudolf Steiner and for our 21st century. 

The Destiny Groupings Around Rudolf Steiner in His Vienna Decade, 1879-1889

by Emil Bock

At the Dawn of the Age of Michael

There is a symbolic significance in the fact that it was the autumn of 1879 when Rudolf Steiner went to Vienna as a young man to begin study at the “Technische Hochschule,” (Technical University). At that same time, on a higher plane a powerful leader of Mankind took his office. A new Michael Age had begun. Suddenly autumn became an archetypal picture and symbolic as never before.

Outside in nature, the transition from late summer to fall took place. Nature became dumb; humanity had to speak. The external world grew quiet; the inner life demanded its rights. That happened in 1879, in utter stillness. Humankind’s high summer ended; its autumn began. But now the person had arrived who enlightens the inner life of thought and can show humanity the way. Destiny symbolizes. T there formed in the life of an eighteen-and-a-half-year-old man a small silhouette of the cosmic event. He left the lovely, quiet countryside and moved into the big city.

The small village of Neudörfl where Rudolf Steiner spent the decisive years of his boyhood is situated between the big city to the north and the hazy blue mountains to the south and southwest. When you turn away from the mountains and look towards the north, the landscape appears like a vast entrance hall to city life. Even Rudolf Steiner’s high school years brought about a first stage of this transition as they took him by train or walk daily to Wiener Neustadt which gave a foretaste of that great city, Vienna. From this town one can still see the mountains quite clearly but Vienna is still too far away to be seen. Though soon to become the industrial center of Austria, Wiener Neustadt at that time was a quiet town still bearing witness to the world of the Middle Ages. How much a part of the town the Cistercian teachers at the school were made a deep impression upon the young high school student. They walked about the streets in their monastic garb as if the Middle Ages had not yet ended.

In June 1879, Rudolf Steiner and his fellow students finished their final examination in Wiener Neustadt. In September he started his first semester at the Technical University in Vienna. The transition was a quiet one, like a human reflection of the universal transition which led humanity into its new age. Where else could there have been a more beautiful, soulful late summer than in Vienna? At this moment Vienna went through a decisive transition stemming from historical necessity. The Vienna of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert had ended. The charming world of Biedermeier was fading. But Vienna had not ceased to be the City of Music. The fact that Johann Strauss and Millöcker were composing their operettas can be considered an enhancement as well as a continuation of Vienna folk music (“Fledermaus” in 1874, “Bettelstudent,” 1881). But quite new sounds could be heard too. Musical Vienna was split in two at that time, even though in an amiable way to begin with. Brahms and Bruckner were composing side by side, and Hugo Wolf started on his road to musical creativity. In 1879 Bruckner finished his heavenly “Quintette for Strings” and during the following year his 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th symphonies and the “Te Deum.”

Sounds were appearing that asked for different ears than before. Not much later Schönberg and his group dared to emerge with new works that must have been in the beginning pure torture for the Viennese soul used to melody. There also appeared around 1870 a strong revolution in the field of architecture somewhat similar to that in Berlin which brought forth the first large apartment buildings. Here is a sign that this was a time of new foundations, and the revolution is not merely the outcome of a victorious war, as was the case in Berlin, but rather something that breaks through simultaneously and everywhere. Quite a few new buildings had been erected at that time in Vienna, buildings somewhat painful to our eye: the Parliament, the City Hall, and the Votivkirche. Dr. Steiner liked to refer to the latter’s architecture as “Kümmelgotik,” that is, caraway seed-gothic. But one was quite proud of the new imposing buildings. During the first few weeks of his study Rudolf Steiner listened to the inaugural speech of the new director of the Technical University, Freiherr Heinrich von Ferstel, the architect and builder of the Votivkirche. The main point of his speech was: we cannot create a new architecture; it is born out of the stream of the times. Anyone with a logical mind should have answered: but you only imitate the old style. The style of the Votivkirche was only a form of late gothic. But people were under the impression that they stood within a progressive creativity born out of the times. Gigantic apartment houses appeared, floor above floor. For instance, Bruckner lived during the decisive period of his work on the 7th floor of one of these buildings. He had to walk up the seven flights, a task not always easy for him. Such giant buildings were erected around the Stock Exchange, although here they showed some moderation. Many well-to-do Jewish merchants had such vast houses in the style of the Stock Exchange.

It was in just such a house in the Kolingasse that Rudolf Steiner took the position of tutor soon after he arrived in Vienna. The Specht family had a lively social life, and Rudolf Steiner soon took an active part in it. There were several musicians among the relatives. Brahms often visited the house. Architecture initiated this sudden, arrogant upheaval that dispelled all charm, but it was only part of the general change. If Vienna had remained the same as it was in the lifetime of Franz Schubert, it could not have played its part in the Autumn of Mankind in Michael’s Age. This way the setting was right for the play that now took place.

Destiny Groupings / Group One

Let us consider the three main groups of human beings that surrounded Rudolf Steiner in his Vienna period. They are marked by the following names: Karl Julius Schröer, Marie Eugenie della Grazie, and Marie Lang. Added to this are two special figures, one at the beginning and the other towards the end of the decade Rudolf Steiner spent in Vienna. Only when put into groups can we measure the richness of color with which destiny painted the human world that pulsated around the student, Rudolf Steiner.

The special figure at the beginning of the period is the collector of herbs, Felix.’ He had whole worlds behind him and brought them into contact with Rudolf Steiner. There is the magic touch of chance happenings in their meeting. Let us picture it. The young Steiner enters the train a few stops before the Vienna station and there sits this ardent-looking passenger with a wide-brimmed hat and a bundle of herbs which he brings to the pharmacies of the city. Each of them must have noticed the special qualities of the other and soon they are amid a discussion which they continue after leaving the train and are walking through the city-and continue further when Felix takes the same train from Trumau to Vienna once a week. Before Rudolf Steiner learned from the professors of the Technical University and the University of Vienna, he learned from the man who carried within him the deep wisdom of the plant kingdom’s life and forces. Through him Rudolf Steiner gained a connection with the wide and still spiritually aware past. A soil was prepared in the young student’s soul that would receive the later seeds of his industrious university learning in a different manner.

And the magic touch of coincidence continues. In some connection with the much admired and loved Felix, Rudolf Steiner met another man in the early days of his Vienna period. This man played an unassuming part in the whirl of city life, almost unnoticed by his surroundings. It is possible that Rudolf Steiner had put a question for which Felix had no answer but advised him to ask of this man, in whom there lived a wisdom foreign to the culture but not based on nature. When this man spoke, it seemed like the speech of a spirit being, conscious of both present and future. Did it not sound like one of the spirits of Michael who had just started to reign over humanity? Rudolf Steiner carefully put a veil around this mysterious figure. He left only a few brief remarks: for instance, that he found this man through Felix, which leaves the question open whether Felix was well-acquainted with the person or not.

In 1906 Rudolf Steiner confided some stages of his life-development to the Alsatian-French writer and poet, Edouard Schure. He stayed as Schuré’s guest at Barr at the bottom of the Odilien mountain. There he also talked about the mysterious figure in Vienna. Schuré must have been quite moved and later put together what he remembered from the conversation in his own words and ideas. It is published in the introduction by Schuré to the French edition of Christianity as Mystical Fact:

The master whom Rudolf Steiner found was one of those powerful personalities who live unknown to the world under the mask of a bourgeois profession to fulfill their mission.  . . .The anonymity is the condition of their power, but their deeds are all the more influential because they awaken, teach, and guide those who will perform deeds in the open . . . .Rudolf Steiner had already pointed out to himself his spiritual task, namely, to reunite religion and science, to bring God into science and nature into religion, and from there to reanimate the arts and life. But how could he tackle this unheard-of and daring task? How could he hope to overcome, or rather to tame and change the adversary, namely present-day materialistic science which appears like a dreadful dragon heavily armored and guarding its treasures. How could he possibly tame this dragon of modern natural science and hitch him to the vehicle of spiritual cognition? And even more difficult, how could he overcome the bull of public opinion? . . .Rudolf Steiner’s master was quite different from himself. He was a thoroughly masculine person, like a lion tamer who instills fear into his animals. He did not spare himself or others. His will was like a cannonball. Once it left the cannon, it went in a straight line to the target, bringing destruction of anything that barred its way. He answered the questions of his pupil somewhat as follows: If you want to conquer the enemy, start by knowing him. You will be victorious over the dragon if you can slip under his skin. You must take the bull by the horns. Only in greatest danger will you be able to find your comrades in arms and your weapons. I have shown to you who you are. Now go and remain your own self.

This rather free description is no doubt close to the historical reality. It appear that a Michael impulse was awakened in Rudolf Steiner’s soul. To get under the skin of the dragon means not to attack the natural sciences and technology from the outside but to master them. This is what Rudolf Steiner did for the rest of his life, as the great pioneer of spiritual investigation. Consider how different the basic attitude towards life was that he must have had at this time as a young student-knowing that no one else knew that a man like his master existed in the city.

Rudolf Steiner took up his studies at the Technical University with great enthusiasm. His courses were mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He also listened to the lectures of Karl Julius Schröer who presented the Fine Arts to the students at this school. Although Rudolf Steiner’s studies were mathematics and natural science, there was from the very beginning a feeling of destiny towards Schröer, thirty-six years his elder. A certain attraction arose between them as in the ancient classical teacher-pupil relationship, and the usual lecturer-listener relationship never existed.

Karl Julius Schröer and Franz Brentano

Schröer belonged to the small group of Protestants in predominantly Catholic Austria. This group differed in political, and other respects, from the rest of the Austrian people. Schröer’s father, Tobias Gottfried, had already died in 1850. They had lived in Pressburg. Schröer’s father had a truly noble mind and was typical of the German Protestant group in Austria. He was a schoolteacher, principal of a high school and author of books on beauty, morality, and jus-tice, under the name of Christian Oser. He could not use his true name as he was constantly subjected to persecution although his character was not at all a stormy one, fond of opposition. Both he and his son were quiet, rather introspective men and they produced works which were the mature result of the Protestant epoch. One would almost like to say: what they created was the mature fruit that Protestant piety could produce outside of church circles and the humanity that this piety could produce had its noblest form here.

Rudolf Steiner in his eagerness to learn could not be satisfied with what the Technical University could offer. Whenever he had a chance, he walked to the University of Vienna to hear lectures there. Two philosophers there attracted him especially: Robert Zimmerman and Franz Brentano. Let us consider the latter. It is helpful to compare Brentano, the Catholic from the Rhein provinces, with the Protestant Austrian Schröer. Brentano came from a pious Catholic family; his uncle was the poet, Clemens Brentano. Franz Brentano’s Catholicism caused him overwhelming inner conflicts. He could not agree to the proclamation of the Pope’s infallibility at the Council of 1870. He resigned his chair as a professor, a Catholic position, and became a Protestant. He also renounced the offer of a chair in Vienna and continued his teaching on a private basis, facing financial insecurity. His life ended in tragedy. In 1896 he lost his eyesight and went to live in Florence. He died in 1917 in Zurich, completely unknown. Rudolf Steiner found a real connection to Brentano only after his death. The book Von Seelen-Rätseln written the year Brentano died is witness to this connection. It contains an article about Brentano.

What effect did the lectures of these two men have on the young Rudolf Steiner? Richard Kralik, another very interesting figure in Vienna writes about Brentano’s lectures in his Autobiography.

I could explain the undoubtedly extraordinary effects only by the magic of his personality. He had traits of a prophet or magician, something ecstatic and mysterious. His black hair surrounded a Christlike countenance . . .

and Rudolf Steiner says in his autobiography,

His thoughts were precise and ponderous at the same time. There was a kind of solemnity in his style of delivery. I listened to what he spoke but was compelled every moment to follow the expression of his eyes, each turn of his head and the gestures of his expressive hands.

“Philosopher’s hands,” Rudolf Steiner called them in the wonderful article on Brentano published in Das Goetheanum. These hands held a manuscript so loosely that it seemed the paper would fly away any minute. That was the way Brentano stood in life, barely touching the surfaces.

Rudolf Steiner never met Brentano personally, but he became ever closer to Schröer. In The Story of My Life, he wrote,

Whenever I entered the small library, which was also Schröer’s workroom, I felt myself in a spiritual atmosphere most beneficial to me.  . . .I warmed up spiritually when I was near him. I was allowed to sit there next to him for hours.

It was of great importance for these first years in Vienna to have a teacher who did not display great thought content but who spoke more from feeling, from the heart, and was interested in anything human, especially listening to the revelations of the folk soul as it still speaks here and there out of the written testimony of ancient times. Schröer’s main subject of discussion was his search for the special testimony in folk poetry, above all in fairy tales, and how it brought him to the discovery of the Oberufer Christmas plays. He made his pupils aware of how much he loved this old wisdom that revealed itself in a more instinctive folklife.

Rudolf Steiner once said how he felt himself in an oasis of idealism when he was with Schröer. But from the very beginning he made clear the difference between Schröer’s and his own world. In The Story of My Life, he wrote, “Schröer was an idealist; the world of ideas was for him the creative principle in nature and in humanity. To me the idea was the shadow of a living spiritual world. I found it difficult to put into words the difference between Schröer’s and my way of thinking.”

The student listened wholeheartedly to the teacher but felt himself confronting ever more just one question. It was clear to him that it is not enough to speak about ideas; they remain shadows of a spiritual reality. To penetrate to this reality asks for a tremendous intensification of soul forces. He, Steiner, knew that he might take this step. Schröer lacked this possibility.

Poets and Writers

There were not only the visits of the student to the teacher, but both visited the poets and writers who lived in and around Vienna. They listened to their poetry, and Steiner participated inwardly in the way Schröer received it. Schröer had published an anthology of German poets in 1875 in which he described the poets without stressing their philosophical thought structure but rather meeting them man to man. The poet’s feeling was given more importance than the content of his thoughts. Rudolf Steiner learned a great deal by partaking in this approach.

Professor Capesius in the Mystery Dramas is a kind of metamorphosis of Professor Schröer. He is not pictured as he appeared in life but with some strong divergences. However, it is he as seen from within. We know how intimate Capesius was with Felix and Felicia Balde, how he listened to her fairy tales. It is very revealing to think how strongly the surroundings of Vienna play into the Mystery Dra-mas. Did Schröer really visit one Felix Balde? It is rather certain that he did visit the house of another figure not far away and long before Steiner knew Felix. It is not a coincidence that Rudolf Steiner mentioned this figure together with Felix in a late lecture, in 1919.

This figure was the schoolmaster Johannes Wurth of Munchendorf, near Felix’s home village. Rudolf Steiner wrote of Wurth,

When I visited the good Felix in his house, I also visited the widow of that schoolmaster who had died some years earlier. I visited the widow because this schoolmaster of south Austria was such a fascinating personality. She was still in possession of his unusual collection of books. There was any and every thing that had ever been written about the German language, mythology, and legends. Until his death, this lonely schoolmaster had had no opportunity to come before the public. After his death, someone published a few of his writings.

This schoolmaster, Johannes Wurth, died in 1870 but he had worked with Schröer. He was well versed in different dialects, in fairy tales, and local legends in anything that had its source in the folk soul. Schröer knew very well where to find these unusual figures who brought to him that he would receive with much enthusiasm and warmth. This is the historical background to those scenes in the Mystery Dramas where Capesius sits in a small room at the Baldes’ in complete absence of mind. Something very similar happened in the life of Schröer in his late years. He became senile, as one says, meaning that he himself already dwelt in a different world while his body remained in this one, still showing all signs of life. The personality of Schröer was so intimately involved in the life of Rudolf Steiner that whoever loves Steiner must love Schröer.

Possibly the most important event for the young Steiner was the way Schröer led him to Goethe. Goethe was the One and All from Schröer, and soon became, so to speak, the third man in their circle. While there were a few other students listening to Schröer’s lectures on “German Literature since Goethe,” there seemed to be only three that mattered: Schröer, Steiner, and Goethe. After some time, the extraordinary thing happened that the pupil knew more about Goethe than the teacher, and the latter began to listen intensely when the pupil talked about Goethe. What Schröer knew about Goethe was the man and the poet. Now came this young mathematician and student of natural science who talked about Goethe the natural scientist. Of course, Schröer knew about the existence of Goethe’s natural scientific writings, but they were not close to him. Soon Rudolf Steiner had to say to himself: here Schröer comes to an end; he only knows about the man and poet Goethe. Here I must come in and discover the scientist and researcher. Schröer saw, him-self, that in this regard his young student was overshadowing him. He made it possible for the 21-year-old student to be the editor of Goethe’s natural scientific writings in the publication of his works by von Kürschner in which he himself edited the dramatic writings.

On June 4, 1882, Schröer wrote to Professor Kürschner:

A senior student majoring in physics, mathematics, and philosophy, who has been listening to my lectures for years, has taken up the study of Goethe’s natural scientific writings. I have asked him to try his hand at a popular article on Newton and Goethe and to send it on to your journal. If this article comes up to expectation, we have the right man to edit the natural scientific writings. I did not tell him about this idea; I don’t know how well he writes. From several discussions, I have the impression that he masters the subject and shows an attitude that seems right to me. His name is Steiner.

[Four paragraphs have been omitted here. – editor.]

It would be very interesting to find out what stand Schröer himself would have taken toward the thought of reincarnation. But it was not his habit to make statements about this sort of philosophical problem. At the bottom of his heart, he must have been quite in accordance with it. We only need to remember the event that Steiner describes in the Karma lectures, of the 31st of January 1889, when the crown prince Rudolf of Austria ended his life in such a tragic way that a tremendous shock swept through all of Austria. Rudolf Steiner visited Schröer who appeared completely bewildered. The event had shocked him so deeply that he was unable to lead a discussion, normally such an enjoyable task. He sat dumbfounded. When they finally began to talk, he uttered “as from the darkest spirit depth” the word “Nero.” In the Karma lectures, Steiner uses this scene as an example of the ability to divine karmic connections without having or using systematic concepts about karma. This moment, however, meant much for the young Rudolf Steiner. It was like the lifting of a curtain.

Destiny Groupings / Group Two

Now we come to the second group of people that were of importance to Rudolf Steiner in his Vienna years. Schröer enjoyed talking to his students about the poetry of the day as it appeared. One day, in 1885 or 1886, he got hold of some poetry written by a fifteen-year-old girl and was very enthusiastic about it. He read it to Rudolf Steiner who was also deeply impressed by the poetic strength behind it. Schröer induced Steiner to write a short article about the poetess and in this manner, Steiner came into personal contact with Marie Eugenie della Grazie who was then twenty-one. There were weekly open houses for poetry and philosophical discussion at her house in the northern suburb of Vienna, Wahring. Soon Professor Schröer, his wife, and Rudolf Steiner were invited to attend an evening. As an introduction, Marie Eugenie della Grazie read from her poem, Robespierre. Schröer was very unhappy. The poetry as well as the discussion that followed breathed pure pessimism. It also became quite apparent how this circle rejected Goethe. Schröer never went back. In the beginning he was even angry with Rudolf Steiner who kept up connections with this pessimistic group. Something spoke to Steiner through its members that was very important in his destiny.

A circle of this second group which met on Saturdays consisted mainly of theologians, Catholic and mainly Cistercian professors. They met in the home of one of these professors, Laurenz Müllner, the teacher and fatherly friend of the young poetess. He was a very precise and very liberal thinking philosopher. Another member of the Cistercian Order who frequented the evenings was the very learned Father Wilhelm Neumann. It was said of him that he knew the whole world and three more villages. While the young poetess was the soul-center of this group, the spiritual center was the theologian, Karl Werner. Steiner never met him. He was famous for his work on Thomas Aquinas, three volumes unsurpassed by any later work on Aquinas. So, it was understood that the main subject of discussion after the reading of poetry revolved around Thomas Aquinas. In the books, Werner took special care for things that lead away from theology and philosophy into cosmology. There is a chapter on the spheres of the planets and their connections to the hierarchies. In this circle of people, a part of Thomas Aquinas was cherished that gives a quite different picture of him than the Church and Neo-Thomism gives. This part has been forgotten again since Werner’s time. It was a very special and quite wonderful atmosphere which met Rudolf Steiner in this circle. The twenty-six-year-old Steiner added much to its discussions, talking about Goethe in whose writings he had plunged himself deeply. For Rudolf Steiner, everything stimulated him constantly to view the thought life of Thomas Aquinas together with Goethe. Of course, the Cistercian professors did not think much of Goethe, whose thinking was not sharply contoured and whose concepts were hazy. They were indeed too well-mannered to say this directly, but it became quite apparent whenever the conversation warmed up.

It meant much for Steiner to be in this group. Here there were Cistercians who were Thomists. This was a real puzzle to Steiner, one he could not solve right away. The great Cistercians of history, for instance the teachers of Chartres in the 12th century, were Platonists, not Aristotelians, while Thomas Aquinas, like other Dominicans, was rooted in Aristotle…. Now here in Vienna, Cistercians appeared as defenders of Thomas Aquinas. Something seemed not quite right; the outer did not correspond to the inner. We can imagine how Steiner discovered much while trying to solve this riddle.

Then on November 9, 1888, Rudolf Steiner delivered a lecture to the Vienna Goethean Society: “Goethe, the Father of a New Aesthetics.” Some of the Cistercian professors were present. After the lecture, the following event took place which, when retold, does not seem to mean much, but which was given considerable importance by Steiner in his later Karma lectures. When he had finished speaking, Professor Neumann came towards him and said: Thomas Aquinas. That meant: You think that you are talking about Goethe, but it is Thomas for whom you speak. What Professor Neumann may have wanted to say was: You seem to comprehend Goethe in a Thomistic or Aristotelian manner. You do not see him as Platonic as Schröer does. In that way we are quite close. But the fact that Professor Neumann uttered the name Thomas Aquinas at that moment had for Steiner a similar importance as the above-mentioned scene when Schröer mentioned Nero after learning of the death of the crown prince. But if one tried to speak about reincarnation in a direct way with Neumann-Steiner did try it once-he seemed no longer present. They were walking down a certain street near the Votivkirche and came to talk about repeated earth lives. Neumann kept on walking but seemed completely lost to the world around him. Finally, he regained his composure and said: “Come up to my room; there is a book I have that speaks about it.” He continued to talk as in a daze, took Steiner up to his room, and offered him a book about an Arabian sect that preserved much of the occult tradition. No, in the circle around Marie Eugenie della Grazie, no one wanted to approach reincarnation in a direct manner. They were much too pessimistic. If you consider the earth as a place of mourn-ing, you do not want to know about reincarnation. Interestingly enough, it was quite the same with Frau von Stein. This was the reason why Goethe never attained a true spiritual understanding with her. When studying literature, we should not be on the lookout only for writers who make positive statements about reincarnation, but interest ourselves in those who for obvious reasons do not want to know about it.

[Several pages have been omitted here. – editor.]

Destiny Groupings / Group Three

And now we come to the third group and its personalities. We have spoken about the atmosphere around Schröer: a Platonic outlook reminiscent of Athens and old Greece. Then, the circle around the poetess della Grazie with an atmosphere more like that of the Middle Ages. And there were of course other quite different atmospheres in Vienna at that time. Strong personalities-writers, poets, socialists, Wagnerians-they all met in the Café Griensteidl. We have reached a time in Rudolf Steiner’s life where his close ties with Vienna were slackening. We have talked about the two incidents shortly before his twenty-eighth birthday, when Schröer uttered the name Nero, and Neumann that of Thomas Aquinas. Now we will add a third incident that happened around this time.

This third incident involves a figure that was prominent in the worldly part of Vienna but also touches upon mystic and occult ground: Oskar Simony, professor of mathematics at the School for Soil Cultivation. He was a huge man, a passionate mountain climber always walking with bare sandalled feet and without a hat, this latter quality being quite unusual at that time. Also, he was always walking about the streets gesticulating and rather disturbed. Simony was a mathematician of the kind that exists no longer; his specialty was the mathematics of the loop or slipknot, a kind of theatrical trickery, a branch that could stem only from the Cabbala. Induced by Simony, Steiner occupied himself with this branch intensely. It is interesting to know the way the two became acquainted. The huge man came up to Steiner, pulled him by the coat buttons and roared, “You are an occultist!” Then he continued, “I would like you to come to my house. I have an important question to ask. It was: Is there Reincarnation? Rudolf Steiner was still searching for final certainty on this himself. He knew the answer deep in his soul but was only beginning to grasp the concepts clearly, and especially through these incidents we are describing.

Simony leads us to the next remarkable personality of this group: Friedrich Eckstein. He was the same age as Steiner but had been director of a factory since the age of twenty. He was the benefactor of Bruckner and Hugo Wolf, indeed the right arm of Bruckner, taking care that his affairs went smoothly. He was a world traveler, had mastered jui-jitsu and taught himself all sorts of difficult tricks. The story went around that he had trained himself to jump off a fast-moving train without getting hurt. He, too, was a highly gifted mathematician and a learned man in many respects. The following description is taken from an article by Fulop-Miller in 1952. We are dealing with a somewhat sensational journalistic style, to be taken with a grain of salt, but nevertheless revealing.

There was in Vienna at this time a man—one should say an institution. His name was Friedrich Eckstein; he was called Mac Eck. In Vienna, where literature, art, music, philosophy, and business were carried on in the coffee houses, it was natural that Mac Eck, wisdom personified, had his table in one of the cafés, too. He wore a goatee, had eyes of oriental shape, and his age was unknown to even his closest friends. All of Vienna’s celebrities liked to join his table: Hugo Wolf, Johann Strauss, Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Anton Bruckner, Rudolf Steiner, Freud, Adler, and Trotsky; they all consulted with him. When Hugo von Hofmannsthal was in doubt about his latest play, Werfel or Rilke about a poem, then they took the pilgrimage to Mac Eck. Architects put their drafts before him, mathematicians their equations, etc. . . . even the imperial master of ceremonies appeared one day to ask a specific point in Spanish etiquette.  . . .Anyone who needed to know the main river of Paraguay with its tributaries, a point in Neo-Thomism, the first romantic poem or the first mention of the toothbrush-they took council with Mac Eck . . .

This is of course a kind of jargon, so let us put beside it the words of a level-headed music critic who wrote a book, Legends of the City of Music, Max Graf.

My friend Friedrich Eckstein, director of a factory by profession, had travelled all over the world, on horseback through the Armenian mountains, down the Mississippi on an old steamboat. He was a learned man, deeply rooted in philosophy and higher mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. He was a mystic and a lover of music, a mixture of culture and the understanding of music such as could only be found in Vienna. This man walked on foot to the first festival in Bayreuth like a true pilgrim, later donating his torn boots to the Wagner Museum. He knew every note of Palestrina’s motets and of Bach’s high masses, as well as every sentence of Leibniz and Kant. He served Anton Bruckner out of enthusiasm and published Bruckner’s first symphonies as well as Hugo Wolf’s first songs at his own expense. When Hugo Wolf had no money, he lived in Eckstein’s place for months . . .

Eckstein certainly was a very special figure as witnessed by all who met him. When he was twenty-five, he dropped in on Helena Blavatsky, who straightaway saw an initiate in him and gave him one of the highest esoteric symbols. He became the leader of the theosophical section in Vienna.

[Some sentences from a later lecture on this Vienna decade by Bock are relevant here: In that time Steiner learned from Eckstein the history of occultism throughout Mankind’s evolution. Eckstein was able to give Rudolf Steiner the key to the occult symbols in Goethe’s work. – editor.]

Through Hugo Wolf, Eckstein met a couple in the year 1887. [. . .] They were Edmund and Marie Lang. [. . .] In the house of this couple there prevailed an extreme open-mindedness, an easy social atmosphere, and yet a tendency towards mysticism. Let us quote a few sentences from Eckstein’s fascinating book The Old Days- Beyond Description, where he says of Marie Lang:

[she was] an extraordinarily charming young person with chestnut brown hair and eyes of the same color, out of which streamed great warmth. The fresh color of her skin, the unusually warm tone of her voice, and silvery-light laughter arrested my attention at once.

A very similar description of her from Steiner exists. He met her only after he had made his first trip to Germany. It was only after his twenty-eighth birthday that the larger world opened itself to him. He visited Berlin and Weimar, where he undertook negotiations concerning his editing a part of Goethe’s natural scientific writings in the Weimar edition of his works. On his return to Vienna, Eckstein took him to the Langs’ house.

After my return to Vienna, I was able to spend many hours with a group of people who were held together by a woman whose mystical-theosophical qualities made a deep impression on all participants. The hours I could spend in the house of Frau Marie Lang were extremely valuable to me.

In Marie Lang, we find a personality well-equipped to fit into the earliest history of what later became Anthroposophy. One day Eckstein brought Rosa Mayreder along and there was a quick response between the two women, like an elemental karmic recognition. Both were born in 1858. Rosa Mayreder had nothing to do with occultism or theosophy. She was more extroverted and of great vitality. Her father, whose name was Obermayer, owned the Winterbeerhouse in Vienna. Here one met real Viennese life-not so much the Bruckner, but more the Johann Strauss variety, which also had a deep, earnest concern for life. Rosa Mayreder was a painter, poet, writer-somewhat famous for her book Critique of Femininity. She wrote the libretto for Wolf’s opera Corregidor. She brought a strong social liberal impulse into the Lang house, and Marie Lang found her own talent along these lines, also. In later years, both women became prominent in the suffrage movement and took to heart the social problems of the time.

Marie Lang remained interested in theosophy for a long time. Whenever Steiner returned to Vienna, he visited his old friends, and Alexander Strakosch reports that he accompanied Steiner to a theosophical meeting as late as 1908 in Vienna at which Marie Lange presided. The fact that she became increasingly involved in the social activities of her friend Rosa Mayreder may have been the reason why she neglected her theosophical interests and did not remain active in the direction Rudolf Steiner was going. With Rosa Mayreder she coedited the first women’s newspaper, Documents of Women, travelled frequently to London for suffrage meetings, founded a settlement where women working in factories could spend their free time, and fought against the so-called teachers’ celibacy because she did not agree that female teachers should not marry.

Dr. Steiner often stressed that he gained important impulses from this circle around Marie Lang. But there was not much time left. It was March 1890, when he met Rosa Mayreder and in the fall of that year he moved to Weimar. His letters from this period witness the stimulation he felt from conversations with Rosa Mayreder just about the time he started to write The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. He was no longer in the atmosphere of ancient Greece nor of the Middle Ages; the present had taken over. The strong impulse for freedom that these two intelligent women represented had its part in the origins of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A quite lively correspondence continued. It meant a great deal to Steiner to keep alive his conversations with these congenial human beings. Rosa Mayreder was not precisely a philosopher but that may have been a real advantage. The striving for cognition needed stimulation and impregnation from many directions.

When we consider the different atmospheres of these three groups, like three different musical keys, we do get an impression of destiny around Rudolf Steiner in his ten years in Vienna, that of Schröer, of della Grazie and the Cistercian professors, of Marie Lang and Rosa Mayreder. Once when Steiner returned to Vienna in 1891, he wanted to have the pleasure of bringing Rosa Mayreder and Marie Eugenie della Grazie together. On December 22, 1891, he wrote to Rosa Mayreder:

I would have loved to see how your positive and joyous attitude to life in general must stand against the desperate attitude of della Grazie, so focused on dying. It would have been a real psychological problem! Della Grazie is in her own special way the opposite pole to the views of our much-revered Marie Lang. I think della Grazie would have meant quite an experience for you.

Regrettably, the meeting never took place. These different circles of which Rudolf Steiner was so much a part could not meet. An abyss separated them.

For Rudolf Steiner as a young student, taking care of the Michael spirit that had just entered humanity involved this: he had to experience the universal complexity of the human beings incarnated in his time. He found cosmic universality and when the walls that hid the mystery of karma began to be transparent, he found himself in this cosmos.

08.02.25