Rudolf Frieling – March 3, 1901 Leipzig – January 1, 1986 Stuttgart

Dr. Rudolf Frieling has been one of the most important representatives of the Christian Community since its founding. As a priest, he co-founded the congregations in Leipzig, Vienna, and New York. He made his influence felt through countless lectures and important writings, as well as through the publication of the magazine for the Movement for Religious Renewal. He was a leading teacher at the priest seminary for 50 years. He was part of the Movement’s leadership starting in 1929, before ultimately taking over as Erzoberlenker in 1960 and serving in that central position for 25 years.

Rudolf Frieling was born on March 23, 1901, in Leipzig. His father was a Protestant minister. Starting in 1902, he grew up with his brothers near the Rüdigsdorf Castle estate in Kohren- Sahlis, south of Leipzig, where his father served as a chaplain. There he could experience the wonderful natural surroundings of castle and park, which are linked with such names as Münchhausen, Schwind, Julius Mosen, and Rilke. His childhood was rich with sense-stimulating impressions, a “fantasy world,” as he called it. When he was three, one of his sisters died. The mantric form of the burial liturgy, which his uncle later had to repeat to him, gave him a deep experience of language.

When his father was transferred after seven years and became the resident minister in Chemnitz, the boy experienced this deliberate move from the country to the city as a “death sentence.” City and schools were a constant agony for his extremely sensitive soul. Nevertheless, he completed high school in the spring of 1920 with an outstanding Abitur (final exam).

Three experiences from his school days were especially important to Frieling: During a summer vacation in Warnemünde on the Baltic Sea, he was present when the German fleet departed. The result was a deep and life-long connection with the ocean, ships, and the navy.

Frieling also developed a special relationship with death stemming from the death of a teacher when he was 12, which shocked him deeply, and from a family life shaped by the many funeral services his father was obliged to perform.

The experiences during a vacation in Thüringen near the ruins of a cloister were so strong that Rudolf Frieling wanted to become a monk—and he immediately began to live like a monk and playact small rituals.

It had already become clear to him in high school during the war years that he wanted to study theology, and he started to do so on his own, completely independently. In addition, ever since he had learned about anthroposophy at 17 through a newspaper article by Friedrich Rittelmeyer, he had been reading more and more writings by Rudolf Steiner. Thus, by the time he started studying in Rostock in 1920/21, he had already become deeply engaged with theology and anthroposophy through self-study. It was under these circumstances, struggling to find the truth, that the student who was still a nobody wrote the famous Friedrich Rittelmeyer the letter provided at the end of this article. This letter describes not only Frieling’s inner state, but also that of a large number of founders. (Almost simultaneously with the letter, Rudolf Frieling sent his first essay called “The John Gospel in the Light of Expressionism” to Friedrich Rittelmeyer, as the publisher of the magazine “Christentum und Gegenwart” (Christianity and the Present Time).

At that time, Friedrich Rittelmeyer was living on the Birkwitz castle estate in Silesia recovering from his accident, and he had his wife answer the letter in way that would give the recipient courage and strength to continue his intensive studies.

While Frieling had studied in Rostock at first with Professor Althaus, among others, he was now drawn to Marburg/Lahn for the summer semester in 1921. He wrote a paper that he himself described as “non olet” (literally: doesn’t stink) about “Church Relations in Chemnitz around 1670,” which contained a chapter on Valentin Weigel. He found the material for this in the visitation files of that time that were preserved in the archives in Dresden.

In his first weeks at Marburg, Frieling had met fellow student Martin Borchart, who was also the (anthroposophical) branch leader. Then Johannes Werner Klein came to visit him in his dorm room and encouraged him to go to Stuttgart with him to attend the first theological course by Rudolf Steiner in June. Frieling followed this call. Despite being only 20 years old, he was already well prepared for the course both in terms of theology and anthroposophy. Once they had all arrived in Stuttgart, everyone gathered in a classroom at the Waldorf school for an introductory talk and a meet-and-greet. It is a commonly recalled how standoffish certain participants at first found the somewhat shy and awkward Rudolf Frieling.

From the summer of 1921 on, studies in Leipzig and the steps toward the founding of The Christian Community unfolded in tandem. Rudolf Frieling wrote at that time: “It often weighs heavily on my soul how little prepared I am, but I realize that the times demand we get started soon. I am also under no illusion that the time will ever come when I say: “Now I am completely prepared!” These sentences are characteristic not only of Frieling’s humbleness, but also of the way he energetically stepped forward to work for a known good.

From the winter semester of 1921/22 until 1924, he studied in his birth city of Leipzig while he founded the congregation with Johannes Perthel. He then did his Ph.D. on “The Reformation in Zwickau.”

One of his striking characteristics was his inexhaustible humor. A fat book of anecdotes could be written with hilarious stories and word plays. “I do not belong to the mimosa confession,” he wrote once. The first time he was meant to speak to the Leipzig congregation, it did not take long before he had already “said everything that he knew,” and the experienced Johannes Perthel had to step in and bridge the embarrassing gap. Rudolf Frieling: “We were much too young, after all. It was a children’s crusade.”

After completing his studies and his first activities in Leipzig, Rudolf Frieling worked in Mannheim (November 1924 to October 1926) and then Nürnberg. Members recalled long after the fact how they had learned Greek with him back then in order to be able to take up the St John Gospel in its original language.

In October 1927, he moved to Vienna in order to help build up the congregation until The Christian Community was banned in 1941.

He had married Margarethe Gayda on January 3, 1925, during the Berlin Convention in the Singacademie. From then on, a 45-year intimate common bond played a major role in Rudolf Frieling’s life work.

In April 1929, the office of Lenker (regional coordinator) was conferred on him, and he worked as such during the 30s in Bavaria. In 1938, Emil Bock designated him as his successor in the office of Erzoberlenker (chief coordinator). In August 1949, he became a titular Oberlenker (senior coordinator), and on February 24, 1960, he became Erzoberlenker. He then occupied this position a few years longer than Emil Bock.

While The Christian Community was banned, Rudolf Frieling at first found a position at the Vienna Antiquities and Monuments Office. “The monument that needed protecting was myself.” From November 1941 all the way into December 1945, he was deployed as a medic in Austria, in the region in which Rudolf Steiner had spent his childhood and youth. Later, he was in the vicinity of Berlin, and after the war ended, he was still in Stade as a prisoner until he was released to Marburg/Lahn, where his wife had found refuge with her parents after Vienna was occupied.

An episode reported from the beginning of the ban on The Christian Community shows Rudolf Frieling’s inner strength: A visiting colleague told him about the resigned attitude he had found among his friends during his travels. (The situation then was deadly serious.) Rudolf Frieling, slamming his hand on the table, yelled: “I don’t give a hoot about a Christian community that is blown over by the first wind. We will have to withstand very different storms still.”

After World War II, he worked out of Marburg as a “traveling preacher,” with particular focus on the congregations in the Rhein-Ruhr region, then for quite a while in Upper Bavaria, where large groups of members and friends had fled to many small towns.

In 1949, he moved to the United States, where he founded the first congregation in New York and from there was active for The Christian Community in other cities. This time lasted until 1954, after which he lived and worked in Stuttgart in the Fiechter/Bock house until he had to be entrusted to the Morgenstern House nursing home for the last two years of his grave illness. He died on January 7, 1986, at almost 85.

“An enlightened Christianity has once again become possible [through anthroposophy]. The Christian Community, on its special turf, also seeks to serve this kind of enlightened Christianity.”

A profound student of anthroposophy, Rudolf Frieling sought for enlightenment through the awakening spirit throughout his life. He was an outstanding lecturer and preacher. For almost 50 years, his classes at the priest seminary were among the most impactful student experiences. His theological works are available today in a four-volume set.

As a priest, because of his office on behalf of the priesthood (erzoberlenker), he was responsible for carrying out the sacrament of ordination. Through this, his impact extended in a special way far beyond lectures and writings to his service to the Word.

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Letter to Friedrich Rittelmeyer, Berlin

Most Honorable Minister!

 

Please forgive me, a total stranger, for asking you in writing for a big favor. I realize that I am being rather importunate, to say the least, but I do not do so on a whim. After waiting for a long time, I now see no alternative but to write you.

I am a theologian; it is about Rudolf Steiner.

Perhaps it would be best for me to quickly summarize what I have been doing until now. I became interested in theology in secondary school, particularly the New Testament. After a few years, I ended up out in left field, with Heitmüller1-Bousset2-Jülicher3-(Joh. Weiss). I took this position not because I enjoyed destroying and negating, but because I believed I owed it to my sense of truthfulness, to my scientific conscience; I made many sacrifices of the intellect in the process, some of them quite painful. I was in no way inwardly satisfied. All that was left of Christianity for me was veneration for the prophet Jesus based on the radically sanitized Mark and some logia (sayings attributed to Jesus Christ), but even this basis seemed to me to waver at times under the influence of Wrede and Bruckner. The St John Gospel had a powerful impact on me, but I thought I had to deny it any historical value. Paul struck me as having very little to do with Jesus.

I became aware of anthroposophy through your article on Steiner in the Christian World in the fall of 1917. You wrote once that, of course, there were also those kinds of people who treated Steiner’s teachings as new “Catholic dogma.” Well, what is a person to do? I could not just fish out a couple of crumbs that happened to appeal to my subjective taste and assimilate them into my world view, dismissing other things that struck me as unlikely. What right would I have to do that? After all, I cannot check what the man is saying. I do not know where his infallibility stops, where the border between the objective and the subjective lies with him. Either I doubt his infallibility, in which case everything is pretty worthless for me, because then I do not have the right to fish out this or that, or I simply have to believe. I am comforted by the fact that you, as a theologian, must have grappled with all these thoughts, too. It pains me that I am unable to take a certain stand with unshakable firmness, I am jealous of professors who have the often-naive conviction that their world view is the only right one, and I often consider myself as lacking in character because I sway back and forth between one viewpoint and another. I had thought that, with the help of anthroposophy, I would finally be able to take a specific stand on religion, but the aforementioned considerations seem to have placed even that into question. I do not want to start all over again, though, so I am asking you, if you have time, to perhaps clear some things up for me, because I do not want to turn completely away from anthroposophy yet, as I had placed such great hopes on it. Until I have tried everything, I cannot decide on this new painful amputation.

I read with great interest your further remarks on this subject in “The Christian World” in 1918 and 1919, as well as in “Christianity and the Present.” They also allowed me to get over much that was off-putting in Steiner’s books, which I then began to read. A new world literally opened for me. It was as if I was rediscovering the New Testament. It was so comforting to have the religious feelings of my childhood restored to me, of course endlessly deepened and widened. The idea of Christ began to dawn on me, and with it a better understanding for Paul, for Luther, for the church in general (including the Catholic Church, which, in terms of reverence for Christ, could strike me only as incomprehensible and “unchristian”). It was truly a “pleasure to live,” especially as a theology.

The only way I could provisionally justify this swing to the right to my scientific conscience was with Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy. But then came a major step back. I read various anti-Steiner articles, including some claims that definitely burst my bubble. For example:

  • that Steiner draws from the genealogies in Matthew and Luke the existence of two Jesus children. Even if you get used to this idea, there are still the consequences to deal with: Two virgin births!! Two Marys, two Josephs! I felt like cold water had been dumped over my head, and my faith in Steiner was severely shaken.
  • that Christ escaped before the Passion (suggested in the report of the fleeing young man). I do not know where in Steiner this is written, but perhaps there is some misunderstanding here, because how do you explain the great weight given to the Mystery of Golgotha and the claim that Christ entered into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth at that time, if he was no longer even on Golgotha? Maybe there is an error here on the part of the reporter (Lic. Peters—Hanover, in the Sachsen church newspaper)?
  • Steiner’s view of the gospels also caused me serious discomfort. What he wrote about them in “Christianity as Mystical Fact” was not clear enough for me. Were the synoptic reports, which seem to be so naïve and are so vividly alive, supposed to trace back to Mystery traditions? These thoughts are extremely hard to follow.
  • Steiner’s exegesis on Christmas also struck me as highly dubious.

My whole view of things once again began to vacillate. What I learned from various Steiner disciples was of little help. They often did not seem so clear themselves. In any case, such people have not the vaguest idea of what lies on a theologian’s heart. That holds true for the following questions as well: 1) Does it not come down to self-redemption for Steiner? 2) What happened to Luther’s deep experience of sin and grace? The feeling of separation from God, or, as Rudolf Otto stresses, the mysterium tremendum? 3) Is there a personal relationship to God? I frequently encountered such objections when I came to Steiner’s defense—often not easy; the most difficult thing, at any rate, is the question of what is true? In the end, it comes down to either simply believing Steiner or not.

Do not take me for a hopeless rationalist. On the contrary! But unclarity of thought can be so terribly painful that it can also damage religious life. When, for example, the thought comes to me that everything is merely a suggestion, then that cripples my inner life. The question of what to think of Christ now is no academic doctoral question. I am tired of constantly searching and wondering. I yearn for certainty.

How can I come visit you where you live? I will admit the following: I have heard it claimed many times over the past months that your illness is the result of Steiner exercises, even that you were in a mental institution. As I was exceedingly frightened particularly by the latter claim, I turned to Prof. Merkel in Nürnberg, who was kind enough to tell me that I had been taken in by some tall tales. That made me very happy. Then there was the rumor that you had broken ties with Steiner. Naturally, this all contributed to my complete confusion regarding anthroposophy. Happily, this is not true, either (the break with Steiner).

I am no longer bothered by reincarnation and the peculiar cosmic picture, or by the nature of some Steiner followers. I am only concerned with Christology and what hangs together with that. I am familiar with what you wrote to rebut Johannes Müller and Gogarten. The worst thing for me right now is the business with the two Jesus children, particularly the consequences of this, a terrible scandal; the escape from the passion of Golgotha; the view of the gospels; the issue of self-redemption; sin; and the personal relationship to God (an abyss separates meditation from prayer!)…

I do not get very far with the little bit said in “Christmas,” the “Lord’s Prayer,” and “Christianity as Mystical Fact.”

So, as I said, I would like to join the Steiner movement, but I find it impossible for the aforementioned reasons, at least temporarily. On the other hand, I already have too much to thank anthroposophy for to simply tuck it away on a shelf with a light heart. That would throw me back into uncertainty.

Sending you heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery and I again beg your pardon for my forwardness.

Rud. Frieling

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1 German Protestant theologian

2 German theologian and NT scholar

3 Professor of Church History and NT Exegesis, at the University of Marburg

 

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The Narrow Gate (Mat. 7:13-14)

“Enter through the narrow gate.  Only the road that leads into the abyss is wide and comfortable.  And many are they who travel along it.  But narrow is the gate and full of hardship which leads to the higher life, and it is only a few who find it.” (Mat. 7:13-14)

The wide road that leads to the abyss has many names these days.  All those names have in common that someone makes himself broad at the expense of others.  The well-known ways to do that are: abuse of power, intimidation, money and violence, lies and libel.  The list can easily be continued—there are so many ways to exercise power and put others down.  It could make you depressed.  And that is exactly what happens on a large scale.  In bitterness and disappointment about our hardening society countless people pull back. For self-preservation they flee to their own homes, their own interests, their own truth.  Fight or flight—that is usually our way to make it through difficult circumstances.  Those who do not belong to the powerful feel wronged and pull back into their cocoons and say: My time may cone…

Between the extremes of power and bitterness, of fight and flight, is there a third way?  How can we keep our footing in a world where we are lurched back and forth by extremes?  In such a world, what do the narrow way and the narrow gate look like that Christ wanted to show us?

The tightest gate we know is the eye of the needle.  Through the eye of the needle you can only go with who you are, not with what you have.  The needle—it was the narrowest little gate in the city wall of Jerusalem, through which a pack animal could only go after all the baggage had been taken off.  The narrow way—that is the art of making yourself so small that there is room for the other, as well as so large that there is room for yourself without baggage—no more and no less.  But how do you do that—be yourself and at the same time make room for the other?  When we efface ourselves and serve only the interests of others, in due course we will lose ourselves.  And when our ego is king in its own realm, we only serve our own interests.  It demands the highest form of vigilance and presence of mind at the same time to show yourself the way you are and take the other the way he or she is.  For every encounter and every situation asks something new of us.  It asks for a movement back and forth between myself and the other, between showing myself the way I am and accepting the other as he or she is.  Only when I remain myself in all circumstances and, at the same time, see in every human being my sister or brother, do I walk on the narrow way, through the narrow gate, and do I find myself in God, and God in the other.

That is the objective of our little, precious, vulnerable I:  to become a pillar.  Not a pillar for its own sake.  A pillar only has meaning and only makes sense if, together with others, it carries the roof of the temple.  That is what Christ promised us when He spoke of our objective: “Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my divine Father.  He will no longer leave this temple.” (Rev. 3:12)

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, January 7, 2024

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Kings

Real kings are hard to find in our time.  For whoever calls himself king, or is so called, is at best a pale shadow of it, and at worst a mere caricature.  For how often isn’t the magic of a fairy tale coronation and a fairy tale marriage broken by the sobering reality of human weakness?

We have to look far into the past to find real kings—high initiates who led a people with sure knowledge, and who were able to transform this knowledge into laws carved in stone.  Their wisdom was derived from the stars according to the heavenly law: As above, so below.  The eternal script of the stars, the dictates of the heavenly hierarchies, was the source they drew from to order life on earth.  The symbol of this source of inspiration was of old the golden crown: from a world that rises far above earthly thoughts flowed their inspirations.

The Gospel shows that in his conduct the king followed the inspirations of the angelic world.  It is the angel’s message that causes the three kings to decide to return to their lands by a different way (Mat. 2:12).  How far do our ways seem to be removed from their royal way!  By trial and error, wandering and straying, we have to feel our way to our goal in life.  In our noisy world the voices of the angels are drowned out, have gone silent.  And yet, in every human being a capacity is hiding that can show us the way.  In each of us speaks the voice of conscience.  Even if we don’t want to know what our conscience is saying, it does not leave us in peace until we hear its voice.  That is the Christ voice of our conscience.  And whoever let themselves be led by this voice will sooner or later discover royal gifts, which are lying deeply hidden in us and are waiting to come to light.

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, January 6, 2024

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The Night before Christmas

In the night our consciousness is usually extinguished.  In deep sleep, something takes place in us we are usually not aware of.  Only when we wake up do we notice retrospectively that something did happen to us.  That is the wonder of regeneration.  Literally the word means: re-creation, rebirth.  In our absence, healing forces have restored us.  We are—more or less—rested.  Be this as it may, we are usually in better shape than at the beginning of the night.

In the night before Christmas, every year anew, the healing force of the Savior is active—of Him who does not only regenerate each human being, but even regenerates the whole world.  Even if a person knows nothing of Christmas, even if a person does not want to know about Christmas, in the night before Christmas Christ’s healing light of grace shines on every human being.  But so that at least some individuals do not sleep through this greatest gift that is bestowed on our world, for this reason in the night before Christmas the holy act is performed, which is otherwise always performed in broad daylight.

And though afterwards we sleep for the rest of the night just like the rest of mankind, we take our prayer of the Consecration of the Human Being with us into the night, so that it reaches its destination.  That is the meaning of the midnight service in the night before Christmas: to watch and pray with Him who bears and orders the life of the world.  And every vigilant prayer gives Him strength to bear and to order, even in the chaos of our restless world.

 

Bastiaan Baan, December 25, 2023

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Heaven and Earth will pass away  (Mat. 24:35)

For many of us the altar is not only a familiar spot, but also a place that pulls us with an astonishing power of attraction.  One of our churchgoers once said: I don’t understand what goes on at the altar at all, but my feet bring me there every time again.  What makes the altar a place that irresistibly attracts us?

When you realize that for dozens of years countless people have made countless offerings here, week in week out, you begin to understand why this spot has such a power of attraction.  For as soon as we make our little offering, the offerings of our predecessors are also evoked—from all true Christians, from all who have died, from all who had not yet Christ.  At the altar all sacrificial capacity is bundled, from the visible and the invisible congregation.

A saying from Greek antiquity expresses this in the words: Stronger than an impregnable fortress is an altar.  Of course, one did not mean the stone or wooden altar that sooner or later will decay, but what happens at the altar.  What is it that makes the altar an impregnable fortress armed against all attacks of the adversary powers?

It is our offerings, which are justified before God.  Even though sometimes we have no more to give than our deficient thoughts, our imperfect love, our weak will power—it is irradiated by the offerings of our predecessors, but even more by the Christ sacrifice, which He brings for us to the end of the world.  And also when every altar and every temple, also when heaven and earth have passed away, as an impregnable fortress our offering continues to exist.

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, December 10, 2023

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Where is the New Jerusalem?

These days we all live in two very different worlds, which are more or less separated from each other.  The one thrusts itself upon us; the other is less obvious but no less real.  We always have to make an effort to recognize that other reality.

A noisy world of power, money, and violence, in which the lie reigns, drowns out the soft forces of truth and love, so that it seems as if the lie has not only the loudest word, but also the last word.  The noisier the world around us is, the more silent is that other, hidden world.  But these two exist side by side, each with its own reality.

And we—each of us has the choice of the world we want to live in.  Here applies the rule: Like recognizes like.  The force of attraction of what belongs together enables each one of us to create our own reality, even though we are citizens of two worlds.  Thus there is not only a declining, but also a rising world.  The New Jerusalem is no fata morgana, no dot on the horizon, but a reality that becomes recognizable for everyone who seeks the truth and generates love.

Before the countenance of God that is the only reality that has a justified existence.  An old proverb says: Not noise, but love penetrates to God’s ear.[*]  Because just like for human beings, for God it is also true that like recognizes like.  For those who seek truth and love with all their heart, He lets Himself be found.

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 26, 2023

[*] Non clamor, sed amor sonat in aure Dei.

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“WHO CAN STAND UP TO IT?”  (Rev. 6:17)

November, the month of those who have died.

In these days death is omnipresent—not in the lofty rest that often characterizes death, but in the devastating battle that takes place between embittered peoples: hatred facing hatred, revenge facing revenge.  The whole world watches with powerless rage or with powerless despair.  In such a hopeless fight, taking place before our eyes, how can you still do something to create a counterweight?

These days I have to think of individuals who in similar situations looked annihilation in the eye, and in the depths of despair created a sign of hope.  These individuals usually did not appear before the footlights.  They did their work in silence.  And if they had not left their visible footprints, they would have been long forgotten.  Such a person was Etty Hillesum during the Second World War.  She became known because of the diaries she left behind after her death.  How did she do it—creating a counterweight in a world of death and depravation?  She wrote in her diary:

“This is really our only moral task: cultivating great plains of rest in ourselves—ever more rest, so that one can emanate this rest again to others.”

Our apocalyptic time, when the old certainties are taken away from us, faces us with the question: Who can stand up to it?

This one thing we can do: “Cultivating great plains of rest in ourselves—ever more rest, so that one can emanate this rest again to others.  The more rest there is in human beings, the more rest there will also be in this excited world.” [*]

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 12, 2023

 

*] Etty Hillesum suffered and died in German concentration camps during World War II.  Her diaries were posthumously published: An Interrupted Life, the Diaries 1941-1943.

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