The Art of Avoiding History

Published in the Swedish magazine Folkvett in 2001.

Göran Fant says that he is unable to recognize the portrait of anthroposophy that I painted in my article Anthroposophy and Ecofascism. I am not surprised that he found my portrait hard to swallow, since Fant is convinced that anthroposophy is by definition anti-racist and opposed to nationalist and right-wing politics. I cannot argue with Fant’s personal beliefs, but they are unfortunately incompatible with anthroposophy’s actual historical record. In the course of the several debates that have ensued since my article was first published, I have become increasingly aware that many contemporary anthroposophists are woefully uninformed about the history of their own doctrine. I would like to contribute to a more accurate view by responding to some of Fant’s claims.[1]

Fant says that anthroposophy is anti-authoritarian, anti-elitist, anti-racist, and apolitical. He complains about my article’s supposedly unorthodox "method," and offers an alternative interpretation of the relationship between anthroposophy and Nazism. Let us examine each of these arguments in turn.

Authoritarianism. Fant’s statements about the character of anthroposophy are at odds with Rudolf Steiner’s teachings. In order to continue along the path of spiritual and racial advancement, Steiner taught, individuals must subordinate themselves to "the great leaders of humankind" (die großen Führer der Menschheit). If they fail to obey these "leaders," their souls are condemned to spiritual and racial stagnation.[2] This proposition is the very essence of authority worship. Anthroposophy is moreover based on a forthrightly authoritarian epistemology which explicitly denigrates "criticism" and "judgement" while celebrating "reverent veneration" of ostensible spiritual virtues, and rejects "intellectual effort" in favor of "immediate spiritual perception."[3] Contemporary anthroposophists’ generally uncritical attitude toward Steiner’s writings is further testament to this authoritarian framework. Fant is much too optimistic about the possibilities for "adapting Steiner’s texts to our time"; short of schism or apostasy, anthroposophy simply offers no grounds on which its adherents might coherently revise or refute its inherited doctrines. Furthermore, what Fant calls "the great, inspiring wholeness" of Steiner’s teachings depends entirely on anthroposophist credulity toward Steiner’s methods of occult revelation. These methods are self-evidently fraudulent and irreconcilable with rational evaluation and independent confirmation. In a judicious assessment of the anti-rational and authoritarian implications of the anthroposophic worldview, Sven Ove Hansson writes: "Steiner’s pronouncements are in practice never questioned in the anthroposophical movement, and very little of substance has been added to the doctrine after his death."[4] An authoritarian disposition is unavoidable in a movement that considers itself to be preserving a "secret science" (Geheimwissenschaft), one of Steiner’s original terms for anthroposophy.

Elitism. Anthroposophy’s very nature as an esoteric worldview is predicated on the distinction between initiates and non-initiates, as well as on the notion of a ladder of knowledge which all initiates must climb step by step. These are the characteristic marks of an elitist mindset. Steiner also held that the German cultural elite, as the most spiritually advanced segment of the "Aryan race," had a special mission to redeem the world from materialism. He did not mince words on this topic: "If one national civilization spreads more readily, and has greater spiritual fertility than another, then it is quite right that it should spread."[5] His theory of the unique cultural mission of the German people was matched by an elitist social doctrine. In his economic writings, Steiner constantly emphasized that all decisions must be made by "the most capable"; his "threefold society" was to be run not by the "hand-workers" but by "the spiritual workers, who direct production."[6] And his racial theories, needless to say, were rigidly hierarchical and tied to his elitist conception of spiritual progress: "Nations and races are merely the various stages of development toward pure humanity. A nation or a race stands higher the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type, the more they have worked their way through from the transitory physical to the immortal supernatural. The development of humankind through reincarnation in ever higher national and racial forms is therefore a process of liberation."[7]

Racism. I do not doubt that many anthroposophists today are opposed to racist prejudice. But this admirable orientation does not justify their refusal to honestly confront their doctrine’s thoroughly racist origins. The entire edifice of anthroposophy is built on the comprehensive historical-evolutionary-racial typology Steiner laid out in Aus der Akasha-Chronik and elsewhere. The key to this typology is the root-race doctrine, which divides the human family into five root races (Wurzelrassen, sometimes also named Hauptrassen or Grundrassen, principal or primary races), with two more root races to appear in the distant future. Each root race is further stratified into sub-races (Unterrassen), a term which eventually gave way, in Steiner’s writings, to the more recognizable unit of the nation (Volk). These categories are biological (Steiner calls them "hereditary") as well as spiritual. The racial classifications are not normatively neutral; they are arranged in ascending order of spiritual development, with the fifth root race, the "Aryan race," and within that root race the "Germanic-Nordic" peoples, at the top of the hierarchy. This hierarchy, according to Steiner, is an integral component of the cosmic order.

Aus der Akasha-Chronik remains to the present day the primary source for anthroposophy’s cosmology, with no distancing whatsoever toward its racist elements. The editor’s foreword to the current edition, published in Dornach, doesn’t so much as mention the book’s racist content, much less try to explain or minimize it; and the Anthroposophical Society continues to officially designate the book one of the "fundamental anthroposophist texts."[8] Nor did Steiner himself ever renounce it; on the contrary, at the end of his life he called Aus der Akasha-Chronik the "basis of anthroposophist cosmology."[9] Today the book is still officially recommended for use by Waldorf teachers.

Thus according to both Steiner and his latter-day followers, humanity’s very existence is structured around the stratified scheme of root-races. As the historian Helmut Zander has shown, Steiner’s abstruse racial theories are "built in" to the anthroposophic worldview.[10] Nor is it the case, as Fant would have us believe, that in Steiner’s view these racial divisions "will soon totally disappear." Steiner taught that the "Aryan race" will reign until the year 7893, six thousand years in the future. Occasionally he indicated that the final transcendence of racial categories would happen sooner, in roughly 1500 years — still an extraordinarily long time to wait for anthroposophy to shed its racial obsessions. The Dutch anthroposophist commission on "anthroposophy and the race question," on the other hand, reports that "according to Steiner, the word ‘race’ will no longer have meaning in 5,500 years."[11]

It is also untrue that Steiner gave the Aryan concept "quite another meaning than it later acquired in the Nazi era." From the moment it was invented by European racists in the nineteenth century, the preposterous notion of an "Aryan race" was inextricably bound up in the repugnant ideology of racial superiority. That Steiner himself shared this ideology is obvious from his countless contemptuous references to blacks, Asians, aboriginal peoples, Jews, and other non-"Aryans". Steiner’s version of Aryanism was in fact strikingly similar, even in detail, to that of leading Nazi racial theorists. Steiner divided the Aryan root race into five sub-races: Ancient Indian, Persian, Egyptian-Chaldean, Greco-Roman, and Germanic-Nordic. By comparison, Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg included the Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Germans and Scandinavians in the "Aryan race."[12] Similarly, Arthur de Gobineau’s version of the "Aryan race" comprised Indians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Chinese, and Germans.[13] Richard Wagner held that the principal "Aryan" peoples were the Indians, Persians, Greeks, and Germans, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s conception of "the Aryans" was substantially similar to Steiner’s as well. There is no important sense in which Steiner’s description of the "Aryan race" differed fundamentally from those put forward by the leading racists of the nineteenth century or their Nazi inheritors.

In spite of all this, Fant insists that "Steiner’s texts do not express any racism." The only conclusions the rest of us can draw are that Fant has not read Steiner’s writings, or that he has a remarkably limited understanding of racism. The latter possibility is strongly suggested by Fant’s foolish example of "going out in the streets and slaughtering immigrants" as somehow typical of a racist mindset. He appears to believe that "well-meaning" people cannot be racist. Fant simply has never examined racism as a belief system or body of ideas. That these ideas continue to exert a powerful and pernicious influence in modern societies, without for the most part yielding directly murderous consequences, seems to have escaped his notice. Today’s naïve anthroposophists are the kinder, gentler counterpart to xenophobic thugs: not violent, not overtly discriminatory or prejudiced, indeed seemingly the opposite. That is why their potential role is so baleful: to make ‘soft’ racism and ‘soft’ nationalism socially acceptable in the heart of a materially comfortable but ideologically insecure middle class.

Anthroposophy’s politics. Even if Fant’s claim that "anthroposophy is apolitical" were believable, it would hardly be reassuring; it is precisely this sort of naiveté toward the political implications of an all-encompassing pseudo-religious worldview that is most worrisome about contemporary anthroposophists. In any case, my article did not argue that all anthroposophists are enthusiastic activists of the radical right, but that the consistent connections between anthroposophic beliefs and far-right politics have been unmistakable since the doctrine first emerged a century ago. This persistent connection is a mainstay of current research on the European far right. In addition to the many sources cited in my article, interested readers may consult the following discussions of Steiner’s radical right followers: Jonathan Olsen, Nature and Nationalism; Volkmar Wölk, Natur und Mythos; Peter Kratz, Die Götter des New Age; Reinalter, Petri, and Kaufmann, Das Weltbild des Rechtsextremismus; Bernice Rosenthal, The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture; Jahn and Wehling, Ökologie von rechts; and Udo Sierck, Normalisierung von Rechts. It is unacceptable to dismiss this virulent, widespread, and ongoing extreme right variant of anthroposophy as "some Germans from the thirties" and "a handful of ghosts of modern times."

Fant also tries to turn the recently deceased anthroposophist and right-wing extremist Werner Haverbeck into an enemy of anthroposophy, calling his adulatory biography of Steiner "a severe attack on anthroposophy" and a "total rejection of the anthroposophist movement." This is argument-by-definition; Fant presents no evidence for this claim, but simply asserts that since Haverbeck’s views on anthroposophy differ from his own, Haverbeck must by definition be anti-anthroposophy. More telling still, Fant claims that Haverbeck’s portrait of Steiner as a fanatical German nationalist is "an absurd distortion." Haverbeck’s book Rudolf Steiner — Anwalt für Deutschland is indeed politically and morally appalling, but its depiction of Steiner’s nationalism is entirely accurate, as the briefest familiarity with Steiner’s published writings plainly shows.

During his Vienna years, Steiner was an active member of the extreme nationalist deutschnational or pan-German movement in Austria. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century he wrote dozens of articles for the radical German nationalist press, which are reprinted in volumes 31 and 32 of his Collected Works (Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte and Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur). These repugnant pan-German ravings are politically unambiguous, and they make a mockery of Fant’s naive assertion that nationalism "bothered Steiner." Steiner’s rabid nationalism, which was based on nothing more than chauvinism and ethnic prejudice, became hysterical with the onset of World War One, as his blustery wartime lectures testify (collected in Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen and Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges and elsewhere); and he re-affirmed his German nationalist line in his post-war lectures as well (see, for example, Bewußtseins-Notwendigkeiten für Gegenwart und Zukunft). Steiner remained proud of his nationalist engagement to the end of his life, fondly recalling his pan-German activism in his 1925 autobiography Mein Lebensgang. It may be an uncomfortable fact for progressive anthroposophists to acknowledge, but the far-right Haverbeck had a much more accurate understanding of Steiner on this question than the liberal Fant.

"Staudenmaier’s method". Fant is particularly exercised about what he calls my article’s method, suggesting several times that I misquoted my sources and complaining that I focused on topics he considers to be "peripheral" aspects of anthroposophy. I will gladly let readers draw their own conclusions about whether anthroposophy’s extensive history of collusion with fascist and neo-fascist politics constitutes a "peripheral phenomenon." Fant’s remarks on my use of sources, on the other hand, are pure innuendo; he never once challenges any of my actual citations or quotes. Indeed, his preoccupation with method is quite puzzling, since my article is, if anything, methodologically boring and conservative. Anthroposophy and Ecofascism follows the standard scholarly procedure of providing historical background, quoting copiously from anthroposophist sources, citing some of the critical literature on anthroposophy, and offering my own interpretations of the material while noting alternative interpretations. Readers familiar with these sources will easily recognize that my article, despite its polemical tone, is notably restrained in its argument. I deliberately avoided, for example, making extensive use of historian Anna Bramwell’s prodigious research on anthroposophy’s pro-fascist history, and I completely excluded all occult sources, including those that are damning toward anthroposophy. I also explicitly warned against the sort of guilt by association argument that Fant thinks I have indulged in.

Nevertheless, Fant insists that a critical appraisal of anthroposophy, no matter how carefully substantiated, is automatically suspect. He says, for instance, that my brief summary of Steiner’s lectures on "Volksseelen" is an "astonishingly unserious distortion." According to Fant, these lectures are thoroughly anti-racist and intended to "inspire mutual understanding between the peoples." I doubt that any non-anthroposophist reader of Steiner’s text would agree. The book is, rather, an argument for all peoples to accept the superiority of Steiner’s peculiar version of Christianity, refracted through a ‘Nordic’ lens, and to acknowledge the "future mission of [the] Teutonic Archangel."[14] The theme of chapter three is "Formation of the Races," while the theme of chapter four is "The Evolution of Races." But the heart of the book is chapter six, titled "The Five Root Races of Mankind" (Steiner’s lecture in Oslo from June 12, 1910). Here Steiner reminds his audience of the racial superiority of "the Aryans," helpfully explaining that he means "the peoples of Asia Minor and Europe whom we regard as members of the Caucasian race" (p. 106) before going on to discuss "the Caucasian race" for several more paragraphs (p. 107). For some reason Fant calls this two-page disquisition a "parenthetical passage."

For anyone who has the opportunity to read the text itself, Fant’s clumsy attempts to distract attention from the actual content of Steiner’s book are easy to expose. But whatever sense anthroposophists might make of these murky lectures on "the mission of national souls," contemporary far-right racists do not concur with Fant’s reading. They continue to promote Steiner’s book alongside other Aryan supremacist literature. [15]

Fant’s insinuations about my article’s use of sources are especially fatuous in light of his own careless use of sources. He writes: "Steiner warned already in 1920 about Nazism (GA 199 p. 161)." Here is the quote Fant cites: "This symbol [the swastika] which the Indian or old Egyptian once looked to when he spoke of his sacred Brahman, this symbol is now to be seen on the [Russian] ten thousand ruble note! Those who are making grand politics there know how to influence the human soul. They know what the triumphal procession of the swastika means — this swastika that a large number of people in Europe are already wearing — but they do not want to listen to that which strives to understand, out of the most important symptoms, the secrets of today’s historical development."[16] Steiner is denouncing the use of the swastika by the Bolsheviks; he makes no mention at all of Nazism. That is not surprising, since the Nazi party was only formed a few months before Steiner’s speech, and had at the time a tiny membership; moreover, the distinctive Nazi swastika banners were not designed until two years later.[17] Only in the fertile anthroposophist imagination could this passage count as a "warning against Nazism."

Fant employs similar tactics of avoidance in his discussion of the racist anthroposophist Rainer Schnurre. He claims that I have presented "false quotations" from Schnurre, and deduces that my source for these quotations must have been Jutta Ditfurth. The usual procedure in such cases is to provide accurate quotes from the figure in question so that readers may judge for themselves. But Fant gives us no quotes from Schnurre, only his own fanciful aspersions. Moreover, a brief glance at my article will show that I do not quote or cite Ditfurth’s excellent work anywhere in connection with Schnurre; rather, as clearly noted in my article, I quoted Schnurre’s racist claptrap from Oliver Geden’s fine book Rechte Ökologie. Fant’s attempt to dismiss Geden as a "critic of anthroposophy" is frivolous; Geden is in fact a critic of right-wing ecology, and he can hardly be expected to ignore anthroposophy’s massive contribution to this unfortunate tendency. His book otherwise has no ax to grind with Steiner. Fant appears to believe that anyone who voices concern about the less savory aspects of anthroposophist politics must be a tool of sinister forces. His paranoia has gotten the better of him; the suggestion that leftists like Ditfurth and Bierl are secretly in league with the far-right EAP is laughable. For someone so preoccupied with "method," Fant’s own approach is dubious indeed.

Anthroposophy and Nazism. Fant is convinced that "anthroposophy thinks radically opposite Nazism." This view is not shared by most scholars of the topic. Volkmar Wölk, for example, writes of Steiner’s root-race theory: "It is a short conceptual step from this position to the racial doctrine of the Nazis."[18] Wölk’s thesis is borne out in great detail by James Webb’s pioneering research on anthroposophy’s relationship to other denizens of the occult-racist underground.[19] If Fant finds this sort of scholarship too "critical," he may prefer to consult the work of historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who can hardly be suspected of harboring any bias against Steiner. His respected book The Occult Roots of Nazism provides significant evidence of the mutual influence between early anthroposophists and early Nazis.[20] Similarly, the critical esotericists Eduard Gugenberger and Roman Schweidlenka, who are respectful and admiring of Steiner, point out the "decisive influence" of the root-race doctrine on National Socialism.[21] Allow me to emphasize again: these are not the conclusions of "critics of anthroposophy," but of fair-minded researchers who have carefully examined the historical record. To deny the ideological parallels between anthroposophy and National Socialism, particularly its esoteric and environmentalist variants, can only contribute to ignorance about fascism’s intellectual origins.

I recognize that Fant’s expertise in the cultural history of the German right is limited, and I do not mean to reject his views as merely the product of a lack of familiarity with the relevant scholarship. I think that his perspective is, rather, the product of a specifically anthroposophist avoidance of uncomfortable historical facts. Much of what he has to say on the topic of anthroposophy and Nazism is a caricatured version of the current accepted wisdom in anthroposophist circles. He appears to have relied exclusively on a single source, Uwe Werner’s extended apologia for anthroposophist collaborators with the Third Reich, for all of his concrete assertions. But even Werner’s patently tendentious volume provides unambiguous evidence that directly contradicts Fant’s claims.

Fant writes, for example: "In 1922 the Nazis made an attempt to take [Steiner’s] life." No part of that sentence is true. The incident Fant refers to was hardly an assassination attempt, and the Nazis were not involved in any way. But Fant need not take my word on the matter; he only needs to consult Werner’s book, which describes the incident thus: "On May 15, 1922, followers of Ludendorff planned to disrupt a lecture by Steiner in the Munich hotel Vier Jahreszeiten and provoke a melee. But Munich anthroposophists became aware of the plans beforehand and were able to react. Steiner was able to finish his lecture, and only afterwards was there a physical confrontation, in which the anthroposophists prevailed."[22] The Ludendorffers were not Nazis, they were rivals to the Nazis. And a disrupted lecture is a far cry from attempted murder.

Fant further contends that Werner’s book "shows that the absolute majority of anthroposophists radically opposed Nazism," and that those who believed in "a combination of Nazism and anthroposophy" were "an utterly small number." In fact Werner’s book demonstrates the very opposite. It lists numerous named individuals who were both active anthroposophists and members of the Nazi party, and describes frequent instances of voluntary collusion with and ardent support for the Nazi regime. Fant also claims that anthroposophist leaders who "compromised" with Nazi authorities "were ostracized by their colleagues after the war." Werner’s book refutes this claim as well, noting that the most notorious of these figures continued to be actively involved in anthroposophist institutions, particularly the Waldorf movement, for decades after the war. Indeed Werner states outright that post-war anthroposophists, both internally and publicly, "consciously refused to revive controversies about the behavior of some anthroposophists during the Nazi period."[23]

So much for Fant’s reliance on his fellow anthroposophist Werner. For some reason Fant accuses me of having "read Werner utterly selectively"; judging from his own arguments, Fant appears not to have read the book at all. This troubling lack of attention to historical detail is coupled with an equally troubling lack of concern with the ethical issues involved. Fant thinks it is "too simple" to say that collaboration with the Nazis was wrong. He prefers to view the actions of pro-Nazi anthroposophists as a "survival strategy." If this is the best Fant can say for his forebears, that under Hitler they devoted themselves solely to their own survival and that of their doctrine, then I can add nothing to his damning verdict.

Fant is also skeptical of my argument that a section of the Nazi leadership harbored strong sympathies for anthroposophy. My brief mention of Rudolf Hess seems to have particularly aroused his ire. He writes: "To describe Hess as a ‘practicing anthroposophist’ is of course absurd. The sources show clearly that even if he encouraged biodynamic agriculture, he at the same time strongly rejected its anthroposophical background." Once again, Fant’s own chosen source provides decisive evidence to the contrary. Werner’s book reproduces a 1937 memo from Hess’s associate Lotar Eickhoff (who joined the Anthroposophical Society after the war) which explicitly states Hess’s conviction that biodynamic farming cannot be separated from its anthroposophist foundations: "The Deputy of the Führer [i.e. Hess] is of the opinion that if one wants to preserve one aspect — like biodynamic agriculture — one cannot in any way separate it from its scientific basis and its scientific reinforcements, that is, from the work set down in Rudolf Steiner’s books and the Rudolf Steiner schools."[24] Since Hess’s vigorous efforts on behalf of biodynamic agriculture are not in dispute, Fant’s conclusion that Hess nevertheless "strongly rejected its anthroposophical background" is obviously false.

Rudolf Hess clearly fulfilled the criteria of a practicing anthroposophist, according to any but the narrowest definition. His parents reportedly belonged to the anthroposophist Christian Community.[25] He structured intimate aspects of his personal life, including his diet and health care, around anthroposophist beliefs.[26] He told the British doctor who examined him after his flight to Scotland "that he had for years been interested in Steiner’s anthroposophy."[27] Reports from the German intelligence services described Hess as a "silent patron and follower of the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner."[28] Above all, he consistently used his public position to promote anthroposophist endeavors, as detailed at length in Werner’s book. A remarkable range of scholars have explicitly confirmed Hess’s anthroposophist inclinations.[29]

One final, truly unsettling note is Fant’s egregious attempt to rehabilitate the SS functionary Franz Lippert as a "humanitarian." I can only attribute this whitewash of Lippert’s activities at Dachau to a deeply misguided notion of "good Nazis." Fant quotes several positive reports about Lippert’s conduct in order to absolve him, but fails to mention that the sole source for these reports is Lippert’s family. Since anthroposophists are unable to point to a single figure from their ranks who actually joined the resistance to Hitler’s regime,[30] they are reduced to pleading, a half-century after the liberation of the concentration camps, that at least the anthroposophist Lippert was nice to his prisoners. Scattered individual testimonies may salve the post-war anthroposophist conscience, but they cannot distract attention from the central fact that Lippert’s work was an integral part of the SS’s use of slave labor in promoting biodynamic agriculture.[31]

The official history of Dachau describes Lippert’s biodynamic plantation as a place "where so many thousands of prisoners labored in all weathers, and where a great many of them were shot or drowned in the ditches" — hardly a "humanitarian" enterprise.[32] Another source describes the inmates as "slowly wasting away" on the plantation, and notes their high death rate.[33] Contrary to Fant’s imaginative depiction of him as a selfless protector of Nazism’s victims, Lippert was in fact a fanatic Nazi. Even his anthroposophist friends were taken aback by his fervent devotion to Hitler’s regime.[34] Fant’s grievous misjudgement of Lippert is a case study in anthroposophy’s evasion of its own history.

Much of the rest of Fant’s reply to my article consists of unconfirmable assertions about the nature of Waldorf education and the role of various ethnic groups within contemporary anthroposophy. I do not consider myself competent to judge these claims, but they strike me as both irrelevant and implausible. I must on the other hand agree with Fant that, compared to him, I have a "broad" definition of racism. Fant says that "the word negro was quite neutral" in Steiner’s day. Racial terms are never neutral; when used in racist contexts, such as Steiner’s unspeakable diatribes against blacks and other non-whites, they are terms of abuse and denigration. This is not a matter of "overinterpreting" Steiner’s unequivocal pronouncements, as Fant thinks, but of situating them within their historical and ideological context. While much of Steiner’s writing on racial themes is obscurantist pseudo-spiritual pablum, there is no point in denying that he occasionally reverted to the most vulgar racism.

Astonishingly, Fant also repeats as fact the discredited racist propaganda about "outrages of black soldiers against German women in the Ruhr." Aside from mixing up the Rhine and Ruhr occupations (there were no French colonial troops stationed in the Ruhr), Fant has been hoodwinked by an eighty-year-old misinformation campaign. These rumors of "outrages" were not merely "exaggeratedly described," as Fant would have it, they were an invention of German nationalist demagogues and were just as racist as the stories of similar "outrages" in the American South during the same period.[35] The patently spurious reports were already exposed in 1921 by anti-racist journalists who also opposed the occupation.[36] If it is true, as Fant suggests, that this primitive propaganda was the source for Steiner’s unconscionable statements about French colonial troops, it would scarcely mitigate Steiner’s racism. The most infamous of these propaganda pamphlets begins by decrying "the defilement of the white woman as such" and claims that "young girls have been dragged from the street in order to satisfy the bestial lust of African savages." The pamphlet appeals to "women and men of the white race" to protest this "deepest disgrace that can befall a white woman." It describes the colonial troops as "colored barbarians" with "animalistic instincts," "blacks from the Ivory Coast of Africa whose language no-one can understand, who have barely learned a few scraps of French, savages from darkest Africa . . ."[37] This is the sort of thing that Rudolf Steiner evidently took at face value. It is doubly disconcerting that his followers continue to do so today.

This last misstep on Fant’s part encapsulates our entire exchange. Innocent of any historical perspective on the events he describes, Fant is susceptible to the comforting myths propagated by his fellow anthroposophists. From his gullible point of view, a skeptical approach like mine appears as a frontal assault on anthroposophy as a whole. Yet my article was not an attack on anthroposophy in general, but an inquiry into the sinister side of its political consequences. The very same historical arguments that I have put forward about the relationship between anthroposophy and ecofascism could just as well be advanced from a standpoint sympathetic to Steiner. Anthroposophy can, after all, be viewed as an attempt to bridge occultism and rationalism, the esoteric and the practical, mysticism and humanism. But this attempt failed in interwar Germany because it ignored its own political context, and was consequently drawn into the orbit of mass barbarism. Anthroposophy’s failure, from this perspective, is an object lesson in the perils of spiritualized politics. Its latter-day practitioners would do well to heed this lesson.

For now, however, the lesson remains unlearned. Göran Fant is so taken with "the great, inspiring wholeness" of Steiner’s teachings that he has allowed his critical faculties to be incapacitated. His unwillingness to come to terms with anthroposophy’s racist, nationalist, and pro-fascist legacy is typical of far too many contemporary anthroposophists. Indeed this defensive and evasive attitude seems to be most common among relatively liberal anthroposophists. There are many readily available sources that describe and analyze anthroposophy’s reactionary heritage; progressive anthroposophists have no excuse for continuing to ignore them. Fant’s reply exemplifies not so much the denial of history as the avoidance of history, the refusal to engage with a compromised past in a dignified and honest way. Until anthroposophists overcome this self-exculpatory abdication of moral responsibility, their claims to represent an enlightened and tolerant doctrine will remain insincere.

Footnotes:

[1] Fant raises a number of issues that I cannot address here for reasons of space. A more thorough discussion of some of these issues may be found in Peter Staudenmaier and Peter Zegers, "Anthroposophy and Its Defenders" at http://www.stelling.nl/simpos/anthroposophy_criticism.htm .

[2] "People who listen to the great leaders of humankind, and protect their soul with its eternal essence, reincarnate in an advanced race. But he who ignores the great teacher, who rejects the great leader of humankind, will always reincarnate in the same race [. . .] Thus people have the opportunity either to reject the leader of humankind and become caught up in the being of a single incarnation, or to undergo the transformation into higher races, toward ever higher perfection." (Steiner, Das Hereinwirken geistiger Wesenheiten in den Menschen, GA 102, p. 174) Steiner preached the same message of spiritual submission on more than one occasion: "We know, after all, that each person proceeds further on the course of the earth mission by following the great leaders of humankind, who decree the goals of humankind." (Die Apokalypse des Johannes, GA 104, p. 90)

[3] Steiner, Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? (GA 10) pp. 21 and 46; and Aus der Akasha-Chronik (GA 11) p. 3. The first book is published in English under the title Knowledge of Higher Worlds, the second under the title Cosmic Memory. Here is an excerpt from the former book: "Our civilization tends more toward critique, judgement, and assessment, and less toward devotion, toward reverent veneration. Even our children criticize much more than they devotedly revere. But all criticism, all passing of judgement repels the powers of the soul to attain higher knowledge, just as devotional reverence develops these powers." (GA 10 p. 21)

[4] Hansson, "Is Anthroposophy Science?" Conceptus XXV no. 64 (1991), p. 37. One of the earliest observers of the anthroposophist movement noted already in 1921 that "the followers of Œanthroposophically oriented spiritual science¹ swear by the teachings of their lord and master with blind fanaticism." (Siegfried Kracauer, Aufsätze 1915-1926, Frankfurt 1990, p. 113)

[5] Steiner, The Threefold Commonwealth, New York 1922, p. 183.

[6] ibid. p. xxxii.

[7] Steiner, Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? pp. 209-210. Terms like "higher racial forms" occur throughout Steiner's writings, always linked to higher spiritual forms. This elitist racial scheme has frequently been adopted wholesale by later anthroposophists. A.P Shepherd, for example, writes that humankind is "differentiated into races, at different cultural and moral levels." (Shepherd, A Scientist of the Invisible. An Introduction to the Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner, London 1954, p. 103)

[8] Wolfram Groddeck, Eine Wegleitung durch die Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, Dornach 1979, p. 16.

[9] Steiner, Mein Lebensgang, Dornach 1925, p. 301.

[10] Zander, "Sozialdarwinistische Rassentheorien aus dem okkulten Untergrund des Kaiserreichs" in Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus Ulbricht, Handbuch zur 'Völkischen Bewegung' 1871-1918, Munich 1996, p. 241.

[11] Anthroposophie und die Frage der Rassen, Frankfurt 2000, p. 132. Fant's repeated reliance on this dissembling Dutch document is simply embarrassing; the commission's work is nothing more than a whitewash, an exercise in unabashed hypocrisy. Only someone unacquainted with Steiner's writings could be taken in by its transparent mendacity. The fact that this report has gained the imprimatur of a talented and respected historian like Jörn Rüsen indicates the powerfully disorienting effect of Steiner's charisma on even sober and informed minds. For a thorough review of the Dutch report, see Peter Zegers and Peter Staudenmaier, "The Janus Face of Anthroposophy".

[12] The only difference between Rosenberg's version and Steiner's is the absence of the "Egyptian-Chaldeans." Rosenberg's racial writings also refer to Ahriman and the Fenris Wolf, both prominent figures in Steiner's texts. See Alfred Rosenberg, Race and Race History, New York 1970, especially pp. 42-84.

[13] See Gobineau: Selected Political Writings, New York 1970, pp. 142-3.

[14] Steiner, The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology, London 1970, p. 19. Original edition: Die Mission einzelner Volksseelen im Zusammenhang mit der germanisch-nordischen Mythologie (GA 121).

[15] See Franziska Hundseder, Wotans Jünger: Neuheidnische Gruppen zwischen Esoterik und Rechtsradikalismus, Munich 1998, p. 129.

[16] Steiner, Geisteswissenschaft als Erkenntnis der Grundimpulse sozialer Gestaltung (GA 199), p. 161; speech from August 27, 1920.

[17] See William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, New York 1960, p. 44.

[18] Wölk, "Neue Trends im ökofaschistischen Netzwerk" in Hethey and Katz, In Bester Gesellschaft, Göttingen 1991, p. 121. Additional evidence of the striking parallels between the theosophical root-race doctrine and Hitler's racial views can be found in Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles, "Hitler's Racial Ideology: Content and Occult Sources" in Friedlander and Milton, Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual volume 3, Los Angeles 1986, and Jeffrey Goldstein, "On Racism and Anti-Semitism in Occultism and Nazism" in Livia Rothkirchen, Yad Vashem Studies XIII, Jerusalem 1979.

[19] See James Webb, The Occult Establishment, Chicago 1976, one of the first books to give serious attention to this topic. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke observes of this book: "By focusing on the functional significance of occultism in political irrationalism, Webb rescued the study of Nazi occultism for the history of ideas." (Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, New York 1992, p. 225)

[20] Goodrick-Clarke wrote the entirely approving preface to Rudolf Steiner: Essential Writings. His work on the connections between occultism and fascism has set the standard for responsible inquiry on the subject. In addition to the material on Steiner in The Occult Roots of Nazism, see also the references to Karl Heise, Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch, and Max Seiling, all early anthroposophists, in the same book.

[21] Gugenberger & Schweidlenka, Mutter Erde ­ Magie und Politik, Vienna 1987, p. 105.

[22] Uwe Werner, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Munich 1999, p. 8.

[23] ibid. p. 3. This point is confirmed by the anthroposophist Christoph Lindenberg, who in 1991 observed that "after 1945 there was no public mention of these events. Nowhere within anthroposophist publications can one find a serious voice of self-examination on the part of those who were too deeply involved with National Socialism." (Lindenberg quoted in Arfst Wagner, "Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus" Flensburger Hefte, Sonderheft 8 (1991), p. 74.)

[24] Werner, op. cit. pp. 214-215. Werner also notes that Hess did not sign the written statement, which the Gestapo requested of him, denouncing anthroposophy. (p. 74)

[25] Christine King, The Nazi State and the New Religions, New York 1982, pp. 43 and 232.

[26] See Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Berlin 1969, pp.133-134; Wulf Schwarzwäller, Rudolf Hess, London 1988, pp. 112-115; and Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Hess: A Biography, London 1971, pp. 64-66.

[27] J.R. Rees, The Case of Rudolf Hess, London 1947, p. 35.

[28] Walter Schellenberg, Memoiren, Cologne 1956, p. 160.

[29] A comprehensive list would be too cumbersome for this forum, but interested readers may consult the following cross-section: James Webb, The Harmonious Circle ("Rudolf Hess was a devotee of Rudolf Steiner" p. 186); Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century ("Hess was a follower of Rudolf Steiner" p. 197); Detlev Rose, Die Thule-Gesellschaft ("Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy also influenced him [Hess]" p. 132); Hans Hakl, "Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus" in Goodrick-Clarke, Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus (Hess was "devoted to Rudolf Steiner's ideas" p. 199).

[30] In the words of the anthroposophist Jens Heisterkamp, "the anthroposophist movement did not produce any members of the Resistance." (Heisterkamp's review of Uwe Werner's book in Info3 April 1999)

[31] Indeed Lippert's biodynamic plantation at Dachau was the preeminent component in the SS's far-flung network of farms run along Steinerite lines, which also included Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and many other concentration camps. The labor on all of these biodynamic tracts was performed by camp inmates. For an overview of this striking instance of the convergence of anthroposophy and Nazism, see the recent study by Wolfgang Jacobeit and Christoph Kopke, Die Biologisch-Dynamische Wirtschafstweise im KZ, Berlin 1999, which emphasizes the crucial role of the Dachau plantation.

[32] Paul Berben, Dachau 1933-1945: The Official History, London 1975, p. 87.

[33] Robert Sigel, "Heilkräuterkulturen im KZ: Die Plantage in Dachau", Dachauer Hefte 4, 1988, p. 171.

[34] See the testimony of Fritz Götte in Werner, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, p. 285.

[35] For an overview of the campaign to circulate these stories see Keith Nelson, "The 'Black Horror on the Rhine': Race as a Factor in Post-World War I Diplomacy" Journal of Modern History vol. 42 # 4, pp. 606-627.

[36] See, for example, "The Black Troops on the Rhine" The Nation March 9, 1921, p. 365. For an Afro-German women's perspective see Oguntye, Opitz, and Schultz, Farbe Bekennen, Frankfurt 1992, pp. 49-52.

[37] All quotes from Rheinische Frauenliga, Farbige Franzosen am Rhein: Ein Notschrei deutscher Frauen, Berlin 1920.