The Art of Avoiding History
by Peter Staudenmaier
Reply to Göran Fant, “The Art of Turning White into Black”
Waldorfcritics.org
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-- Anthroposophy and Ecofascism, by Peter Staudenmaier
-- Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons From the German Experience, by Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier
-- Anthroposophy and its Defenders, by Peter Staudenmaier and Peter Zegers
-- The Janus Face of Anthroposophy, by Peter Zegers and Peter Staudenmaier
Göran Fant says that he is unable to recognize the portrait of anthroposophy that I painted in my article Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.[1] 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 contemporary anthroposophists are often woefully uninformed about the history of their own doctrine. As odd as it may seem to admirers of Steiner, who are inclined to view adherents of anthroposophy as authorities on anthroposophy, many anthroposophists simply do not know very much about Steiner’s teachings or about the development of the movement he founded. Like Fant, they thus find critical descriptions of anthroposophy’s history to be unbelievable, indeed virtually unintelligible. I would like to contribute to a more accurate view by responding to some of Fant’s claims.[2]
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 precepts. 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.[3] Anthroposophy is moreover based on an 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.”[4] Contemporary anthroposophists’ 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. Whatever the charms of this version of esotericism, such methods are irreconcilable with rational evaluation and independent confirmation.[5] 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.”[6] 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.[7]
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. In his own words, “If one national civilization spreads more readily, and has greater spiritual fertility than another, then it is quite right that it should spread.”[8] His theory of the unique cultural mission of the German people was matched by an elitist social doctrine. In his economic writings, Steiner 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.”[9] And his racial theories, needless to say, were rigidly hierarchical and tied to anthroposophy’s 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.”[10] Even sympathetic observers note that Steiner’s anthroposophy aimed to create a “new spiritual elite”.[11]
Racism.
I do not doubt that many anthroposophists today are opposed to racist prejudice. But this admirable orientation does not justify their refusal to confront honestly their doctrine’s thoroughly racist origins. The entire edifice of anthroposophy is built on the comprehensive historical-evolutionary-racial typology Steiner laid out in Cosmic Memory 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 people or 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.
Steiner’s book Cosmic Memory 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.”[12] Nor did Steiner himself ever renounce it; on the contrary, at the end of his life he called Cosmic Memory the “basis of anthroposophist cosmology.”[13] Today the book is still officially recommended for use by Waldorf teachers. Its racial mythology is elaborated in extravagant detail in many other works by Steiner published by anthroposophical presses.[14]
Thus according to both Steiner and his latter-day followers, humanity’s very existence is structured around the stratified scheme of higher and lower races.[15] 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.”[16]
It is also inaccurate and simplistic to say 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 racial theorists 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 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.”[17] Similarly, Arthur de Gobineau’s version of the “Aryan race” comprised Indians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Chinese, and Germans.[18] 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. Enthusiasts of anthroposophy would do well to familiarize themselves with the history of the Aryan myth.[19] Above all, they would do well to examine more closely the considerable continuities between Steiner’s description of the “Aryan race” and those put forward by the leading racists of the nineteenth century and their Nazi inheritors.[20]
In spite of all this evidence and context, 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.[21] Fant has evidently 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 quasi-religious worldview that is most worrisome about contemporary anthroposophists. Historically speaking, moreover, many of Steiner’s followers, including prominent and institutionally central anthroposophists, have been actively involved in fascist politics.[22] 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; Udo Sierck, Normalisierung von Rechts; Gugenberger and Schweidlenka, Die Fäden der Nornen: zur Macht der Mythen in politischen Bewegungen; Franz Wegener, Das atlantidische Weltbild: Nationalsozialismus und Neue Rechte auf der Suche nach der versunkenen Atlantis; Arn Strohmeyer, Von Hyperborea nach Auschwitz; Joscelyn Godwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival; Gugenberger, Petri, and Schweidlenka, Weltverschwörungstheorien: die neue Gefahr von rechts; Eduard Heller and Maegerle, Thule: Vom völkischen Okkultismus bis zur Neuen Rechten; Klaus Bellmund and Kaarel Siniveer, Kulte, Führer, Lichtgestalten: Esoterik als Mittel rechtsradikaler Propaganda; Harald Strohm, Die Gnosis und der Nationalsozialismus; Jutta Ditfurth, Entspannt in die Barbarei: Esoterik, (Öko-)Faschismus und Biozentrismus; Gerhard Kern and Lee Traynor, Die esoterische Verführung; Claudia Barth, Über alles in der Welt – Esoterik und Leitkultur; and Christiansen, Fromm, and Zinser, Brennpunkt Esoterik.[23] It is unacceptable to dismiss the virulent, widespread, and ongoing extreme right variant of anthroposophy as “some Germans from the thirties” and “a handful of ghosts of modern times.”[24]
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 a purely terminological argument; Fant presents no evidence for this nonsensical 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 committed 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 deutschnational or pan-German movement in Austria. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century he wrote dozens of articles for the German nationalist press, which are reprinted in volumes 29, 30, 31 and 32 of his Collected Works (above all Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte and Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur).[25] These pan-German publications are politically unambiguous, and they make a mockery of Fant’s naive assertion that nationalism always “bothered Steiner.”[26] Steiner’s German cultural nationalism, based on a chauvinist conviction of superiority and a sense of national mission as well as simple ethnic prejudice, became frantic 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 unapologetic about his nationalist engagement to the end of his life, recalling his pan-German activism in his 1925 autobiography. 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.
In the period since my original exchange with Fant, anthroposophy’s politics have not, alas, been clarified. The far-right inflection of Steiner’s teachings continues to gain adherents and publicity.[27] The case of Andreas Molau is particularly instructive in this regard. In the 1990s Molau was a prominent publicist on Germany's far-right fringe, and after 2000 became active in the NDP, the major neo-Nazi party in Germany today. Molau also worked as a history teacher at a Waldorf school in the city of Braunschweig for eight years. He was fired (or, by some accounts, resigned) in 2004 when Molau’s official position in the NPD became public.[28] The chief concern for the administration of Molau's Waldorf school was the possible impact of Molau's party work on the school's reputation; as the school's principal told the media at the time: “This is a catastrophe for our image.” Molau’s Waldorf colleagues, meanwhile, claimed to have been unaware of his political involvements.[29] Assuming this claim is true, it raises the obvious question of just how Molau's fellow Waldorf teachers and staff managed not to know about his far-right affiliations for so long. Molau taught history and German (not, for example, math or music) at the same Waldorf school for eight years, and even after the NPD episode erupted into a public scandal, his Waldorf colleagues said they had viewed him as “left-liberal” and “a sympathetic oddball”; they were unanimously surprised to learn of his far-right political activities. But Molau had been a prominent figure on the radical right for a very long time, since the beginning of the 1990s, writing for a range of far-right publications under his real name; for several years he was even culture editor of Junge Freiheit, one of the most notorious of Germany's extreme right wing journals (where among other things he published an article denying the holocaust).[30] Molau’s openly apologetic biography of Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg was published in 1993.[31] Molau was moreover mentioned in readily available sources on the far right, such as the Handbuch deutscher Rechtsextremismus (handbook on German right-wing extremism) published in 1996. Yet none of Molau’s fellow Waldorf faculty, staff, or parents was aware of any of this information whatsoever. The incident speaks volumes about the level of political obliviousness that is apparently endemic at Waldorf schools today.
Even after leaving Waldorf employment, Molau continues to support Waldorf education strongly. In the immediate aftermath of his departure from the Braunschweig Waldorf school, he forcefully re-affirmed his ongoing esteem for Steiner and his own unchanged commitment to Waldorf pedagogy. He has since run in several campaigns as one of the NPD’s better-known politicians, and his election materials consistently highlight his experience as a Waldorf teacher. Within the NPD executive, Molau is responsible for educational policy. In 2005, as an NPD candidate, Molau was invited to speak at a Waldorf school in Berlin, where he quoted from Steiner’s book on the Mission of the Folk Souls, and declared that Waldorf pupils are “the ideal target audience for the NPD, because of Waldorf schools’ natural feeling for living authority and their cultivated inner connection with German culture.” The NPD put out a press release celebrating this Waldorf event as a breakthrough with youth. In 2007, Molau announced his plan to open a Waldorf educational center under NPD auspices. With this new Waldorf project, the neo-Nazi politician hopes to show “the connection between the nationalist NPD ideology and the teachings of the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner.”
Fant presumably still believes that such incidents – repeated over and over again in the world of Waldorf, biodynamics, and anthroposophy – are merely isolated, marginal, insignificant anomalies that tell us nothing important about the ostensibly “apolitical” nature of anthroposophy. This is nothing but a pretense, and serves quite simply to protect and promote the ongoing infiltration of the far right within the anthroposophical milieu. The Molau case was not a fluke. In late 2004, in the wake of the controversy over Molau's Waldorf career, the editor of the anthroposophical journal Info3 reported that “a whole array of private voices” within German anthroposophical circles had spoken up in support of Molau. In November 2004, a leading far-right newspaper, the National-Zeitung, published a very sympathetic interview with Molau conducted by an even more famous right-wing extremist, Gerhard Frey.[32] Here Molau emphasized the conceptual affinities between anthroposophy and the contemporary German far right, while citing Steiner’s book The Philosophy of Freedom and touting the wonders of Waldorf education. Molau also noted the support and solidarity he had received from like-minded associates within the Waldorf movement. Molau’s parting of ways with the Braunschweig Waldorf school, in other words, has scarcely solved the problem.[33] Such incidents will continue to recur until anthroposophists finally face their far-right affiliations head-on.
“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 racial doctrines and its extensive history of collusion with fascist and neo-fascist politics constitute “peripheral phenomena.” Fant’s remarks on my use of sources, on the other hand, are nothing but innuendo; he never once challenges any of my actual citations or quotes. Indeed, his preoccupation with method is somewhat puzzling, since my article is, if anything, methodologically boring and conservative. Anthroposophy and Ecofascism follows the standard procedure of providing historical background, quoting abundantly 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. Fant’s evident discomfort with my research stems from its content, not from its polemical format.[34]
Indeed Fant appears to be troubled by the very phenomenon of historical analysis itself. He cannot understand that non-anthroposophists might assess anthroposophist actions according to criteria different from the anthroposophists’ own preferred standards. He seems quite unaware of how textual evidence functions outside of an esoteric framework – yes, Mr. Fant, historians really do need to choose sources that are “typical and representative,” no matter how uncomfortable this may be for occultists – and he cannot fathom how external observers could possibly reach conclusions that diverge from his own. Fant thus insists that a critical appraisal of anthroposophy, no matter how copiously 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.” It is difficult to see how any non-anthroposophist reader of Steiner’s text could agree with this simpleminded assessment.[35] The book is an openly ethnocentric 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.”[36] 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, with its unsettling references to “the peculiar character of the Semitic people” and so forth, 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.[37] They continue to promote Steiner’s book alongside other Aryan supremacist literature.[38]
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."[39] Steiner denounces 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.[40] 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 anthroposophist Rainer Schnurre’s racist statements. He claims that I have presented “false quotations” from Schnurre, and somehow 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.[41] 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 nonsense 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 axe to grind with Steiner. Fant furthermore appears to believe that anyone who voices concern about the less savory aspects of anthroposophist politics must be a tool of sinister forces. The conspiratorial paranoia so typical of anthroposophy has gotten the better of him in this instance; 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.[42]
Anthroposophy and Nazism.
Fant is convinced that “anthroposophy thinks radically opposite Nazism.” Not only was this view not shared by anthroposophist Nazis, it is not shared by 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.”[43] Wölk’s thesis is borne out in detail by James Webb’s pioneering research on anthroposophy’s relationship to other denizens of the occult-racist underground.[44] 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.[45] 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.[46] 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.[47]
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 anthroposophical 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.”[48] The Ludendorffers were not Nazis, they were rivals to the Nazis.[49] And a disrupted lecture is a far cry from attempted murder.[50]
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 opposite. It lists a range of named individuals who were both active anthroposophists and members of the Nazi party and related Nazi organizations, and describes frequent instances of voluntary collusion with and ardent support for the Nazi regime.[51] 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.”[52]
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 verdict.[53]
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 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.”[54] 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” remains unsupported.