Waldorf Critics International

Reply to Peter Normann Waage, Humanism and Polemical Populism

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism has sparked a debate within Scandinavian humanist circles, with some authors like Peter Normann Waage lining up to defend anthroposophy as a harmless variant of humanism.[1] While we are encouraged by this long overdue debate, we are troubled by the degree of historical naiveté it has revealed. Waage’s perspective seems to represent a view that is fairly widespread among educated and well-intentioned people. We hope that we can contribute to a more accurate view of the political implications of anthroposophy by correcting several of the misconceptions exemplified by Waage’s reply. Although Waage has nothing to say about the article’s main topic, the systematic collusion between organized anthroposophy and the so-called “green wing” of German fascism, he does raise several issues that lie at the core of that collusion. Waage would have us believe that Rudolf Steiner was a principled anti-racist, that he opposed private property, rejected militarism and nationalism, and was a staunch adversary of Nazism.  These claims are not simply untrue; they betray a surprising unfamiliarity with Steiner’s published work and a profound misunderstanding of anthroposophy’s political history.

Nationalism

Let us begin, as Waage does, with the question of nationalism.  To the end of his life, Steiner was forthright in acknowledging his early and enthusiastic participation in pan-German agitation. In the autobiography he published shortly before his death, he had this to say about his years in Vienna before the turn of the century: “Now, I took an interested part in the struggle which the Germans in Austria were then carrying on in behalf of their national existence.” (Rudolf Steiner, The Course of My Life, New York 1951, p. 142)[2] Steiner’s autobiography provides ample testimony to his German nationalist convictions. The paragraph following the one quoted above refers to Steiner’s “friends from the national struggle,” and two pages prior he discusses the impact of Julius Langbehn’s infamous book Rembrandt als Erzieher on his thinking.[3] Steiner also notes that he briefly worked as editor of the Deutsche Wochenschrift, one of the leading German nationalist publications of the time.

But Waage need not have searched through Steiner’s autobiography for evidence of his early pan-German engagement, as Steiner’s collected works contain several dozen articles published in the German nationalist press between 1884 and 1890, with titles like “Die deutschnationale Sache in Österreich” (“The Pan-German Cause in Austria”).[4] The hard-line nationalist stance that Steiner adopts in these articles is extremist even by the standards of the 1880s; he attacks the mainstream nationalist parties as “un-German” and rejects any compromise with them.[5] Nor was this a mere youthful aberration; Steiner never disowned or regretted these writings. On the contrary, he emphatically re-affirmed his pan-German views in a series of articles at the turn of the century.[6]

The striking thing about Steiner’s proud avowal of his nationalist activities is how utterly divorced from reality those activities were. There was, of course, no real “struggle for national existence” among Germans in the Habsburg empire – much less in Vienna itself – because there was never any serious threat to German predominance under the monarchy, and certainly not to their national existence. On the contrary, ethnic Germans were the undisputed administrative, economic, and cultural elite throughout the Austrian half of the far-flung multinational empire. Steiner’s involvement in pan-German efforts was based on chauvinism and ethnic prejudice. In light of Steiner’s long-standing attachment to a particularly virulent form of Great German nationalism, it is hardly surprising to see his attitude descend into outright national contempt with the advent of World War One.[7]

Steiner gave dozens of lectures during the war (collected in the two volume Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen) condemning what he termed “British, French, and Russian imperialism,” never for a moment mentioning German imperialism. These lectures portray Germany and Austria as innocent victims of the “West” and the “East” and are filled with indignant rejections of any criticism of German nationalism and militarism. They recycle the hoary myth of Mitteleuropa familiar to students of the German right. Steiner sketched in the details of this myth in his postwar writings; one might consult, for example, the lecture cycle Bewußtseins-Notwendigkeiten für Gegenwart und Zukunft (Dornach, 1967), where Steiner repeats the standard nationalist line about the special spiritual mission of the German people and warns that this unique “German essence” is being “alienated” by “Americanism” on the one side and “Russiandom” on the other (p. 408). Steiner goes on to explain that “fear of the spiritual is the characteristic element of Americanism” (p. 405), while describing the threat from “the East” as “socialism” and “bolshevism” (p. 407). This is a classic instance of the reactionary German paranoia of being trapped between the soulless West and the collectivist East, dressed up as spiritual insight. The same paranoia formed a crucial component of German fascism.

Waage notes that Steiner was a fervent opponent of Wilsonian self-determination, a fact which the article had already pointed out. This position, in itself, by no means indicates a fundamental hostility to nationalism; several of the leading lights of extremist German nationalism, such as Count Reventlow and Adolf Bartels, shared Steiner’s dim view of Wilson’s proposals.[8] More importantly, Waage fails to grasp why Steiner took this stance.  Steiner held that the doctrine of national self-determination “is opposed to the divinely ordered course of evolution.” (Steiner, From Symptom to Reality in Modern History, London 1976, p. 12)[9] He considered this doctrine, in concert with the triumph of “British, French, and Russian imperialism” in World War One, responsible for the dismantling of the Habsburg empire, which Steiner evidently viewed as a great loss for European civilization. Again and again Steiner argued that unlike other “national characters,” which are stuck in particularity, the German national character strives toward universalism, which in his eyes legitimated the German claim to predominance in Central Europe. For Steiner, Germany’s supposed spiritual advancement was the perfect excuse for imperialist expansion: “If one national civilization spreads more readily, and has greater spiritual fertility than another, then it is quite right that it should spread.” (Steiner, The Threefold Commonwealth, New York 1922, p. 183)[10]

Antisemitism

Waage reminds readers of Humanist that Steiner “at the end of the century was involved in ‘the Association Against Anti-Semitism’.” Indeed, Steiner was a friend of Ludwig Jacobowski, an employee of the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus (Society for Protection Against Antisemitism). The association with Jacobowski, however, does not speak well for Steiner’s confused attitude toward antisemitism. In fact, a look at Jacobowski’s writings on Jewish affairsshows that it was a familiar appeal to German nationalism which drew Steiner’s attention. Jacobowski advocated the “complete assimilation” of Jews to what he called the “German spirit,” and his best-known work, Werther der Jude, could be read as “an antisemitic text”  (Ritchie Robertson, The ‘Jewish Question’ in German Literature 1749-1939, Oxford 1999, p. 279). In a much-discussed pamphlet attacking a prominent antisemitic agitator, Hermann Ahlwardt, Jacobowski called Ahlwardt “un-German” (and also accused him of being a Social Democrat); the same pamphlet spoke of “an honorable anti-Semitism” in contrast to Ahlwardt’s variety, and declared in assimilationist-patriotic style that “a young Jewish generation is being prepared which is German and feels German.” (All quotes from Sanford Ragins, Jewish Responses to Anti-Semitism in Germany, 1870-1914, Cincinnati 1980, pp. 43-44)  Jacobowski also referred to some of the anti-Jewish arguments put forth by pan-German antisemites as “important and correct” (Jacobowski quoted in Fred Stern, Ludwig Jacobowski, Darmstadt 1966, p. 159). One of the leading scholars on the topic, Ismar Schorsch, describes Jacobowski’s position thus: “Anti-Semitism is indeed based upon fact and can only be overcome by a drastic ethical reformation of the entire Jewish community.” Schorsch comments: “The response to anti-Semitism of this alienated Jew [Jacobowski] was thus marked by extreme vacillation between criticism of his coreligionists and defiant reaffirmation of Judaism.” (Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870-1914, New York 1972, pp. 47 and 95). Steiner himself emphasized Jacobowski’s exclusive commitment to German culture and believed that his friend had “long since outgrown Jewishness” (Steiner quoted in Moses and Schöne, editors, Juden in der deutschen Literatur, Frankfurt 1986, p. 200).This is hardly a convincing testament to Steiner’s pro-Jewish sympathies.[11]

What Waage doesn’t mention is that throughout his life Steiner consorted with notoriously bitter antisemites and was by his own account on entirely friendly terms with them. The passages in Mein Lebensgang on his relationship with Heinrich von Treitschke, for example, are straightforwardly admiring of this towering figure on the German right, who was the foremost intellectual ally of militant antisemitism (Treitschke coined the Nazi slogan “The Jews are our misfortune”). Steiner never so much as mentions Treitschke’s infamous stance on the “Jewish question.”[12] The same is true of Steiner’s appraisals of other figures, whether positive or negative, including Haeckel and Karl Lueger, among others. In fact it is abundantly clear from Steiner’s own writings on the subject that he had an extremely rudimentary understanding of antisemitism and that he was himself beholden to a wide variety of antisemitic stereotypes, which he frequently broadcast to his followers.[13] On more than one occasion he expressed the wish “that Jewry as a people would simply cease to exist” (Steiner, Geschichte der Menschheit, Dornach 1968, p. 189 and elsewhere). This wish was consistent with Steiner’s categorical rejection of the Jewish people’s right to existence: “Jewry as such has long since outlived its time; it has no more justification within the modern life of peoples, and the fact that it continues to exist is a mistake of world history whose consequences are unavoidable. We do not mean the forms of the Jewish religion alone, but above all the spirit of Jewry, the Jewish way of thinking.” (Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur, GA 32, p. 152) It would seem that Waage’s portrait of Steiner as a consistent opponent of nationalism and antisemitism is at odds with the facts.

Racism

Waage believes that Steiner “cannot justly be called a racist” and that anthroposophy’s peculiar philosophy of root-races constitutes “a sound anti-racist view.” To support these claims Waage tells us that “already in 1909” Steiner “stopped using” the terms “root race” and “Aryan.” Waage’s chronology is confused. 1909 is the year that Steiner published the collection Aus der Akasha-Chronik, his most thorough presentation of the root race doctrine in all its fantastic detail. This book, available in English under the title Cosmic Memory, remains to the present day a primary source for anthroposophy’s worldview, 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 it, contextualize it, or minimize it; and the Anthroposophical Society continues to officially designate the book one of the “fundamental anthroposophist texts” (Wolfram Groddeck, Eine Wegleitung durch die Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, Dornach 1979, p. 16). Nor did Steiner himself ever renounce it; on the contrary, in 1925 he called Aus der Akasha-Chronik the “basis of anthroposophist cosmology” (Mein Lebensgang, original ed., p. 301). Today the book is still officially recommended for use by Waldorf teachers.

In 1910 – that is, after Waage claims Steiner had “stopped using” the terminology of root races and Aryans – Steiner gave the lectures in Oslo which served as the opening device for Anthroposophy and Ecofascism. The Norway lecture cycle on “national souls” was revised and edited by Steiner in 1918 and published in book form that same year. The term “root race” is used throughout this book. The fifth chapter, Steiner’s lecture in Oslo from June 12, 1910, is titled “The Five Root Races of Mankind”, and refers to the racial superiority of “the Aryans” (Steiner, The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology, London 1970, p. 106).[14] But Waage would no doubt complain that we have taken Steiner’s unequivocal words “out of context” if we did not go on to mention that the book also contains these curious sentences: “Since all men in their different incarnations pass through the various races the claim that the European is superior to the black and yellow races has no real validity. In such cases the truth is sometimes veiled, but you see that with the help of Spiritual Science we do after all light upon remarkable truths.” (ibid. p. 76)

Aside from the vexing question of just what that ominous reference to “veiled truth” is supposed to mean – do black and yellow skins “veil” an inner truth? – this passage can only be interpreted as anti-racist if one accepts the anthroposophist version of “Spiritual Science,” and the sentence makes no sense at all unless one believes in reincarnation. Moreover, any anti-racist interpretation of this passage is immediately contradicted by the context which Waage thinks Anthroposophy and Ecofascism systematically obscured. On the page directly before the above quote, Steiner prints a diagram showing Africa on the bottom, Asia in the middle, and Europe on top, and on the same page he explains that the “Negro race” is tied to humanity’s childhood, “the yellow and brown races” to adolescence, and Europeans to adulthood and maturity. Steiner then insists that this racially stratified hierarchy “is simply a universal law” and indeed a product of inescapable destiny: “The forces which determine man’s racial character follow this cosmic pattern. The American Indians died out, not because of European persecutions, but because they were destined to succumb to those forces which hastened their extinction.” (ibid. p. 76 — the very same page as the quote which to Waage represents “a sound anti-racist view.”)

Even setting aside Waage’s incomprehension of this particular text, he has simply misunderstood Steiner’s racial theory overall. For reasons he never explains, Waage believes that Steiner’s theory of reincarnation makes race peripheral. He is quite mistaken. In reality, Steiner taught that each individual soul must in the course of its spiritual evolution climb up the ladder of racial progress, from “lower races” to “higher races.” This racist nonsense is noxious enough, but Steiner exacerbated it by pointing out very explicitly which groups belonged to the “lower racial forms” and the “backward races” (Jews, Chinese, and blacks, for example) and which groups belonged to the “higher racial forms” and the “advanced races” (above all Germans, Nordic peoples, and “the great Aryan Root Race”). Steiner repeats these repugnant notions throughout his work.[15] According to anthroposophy, a soul that is unfortunate enough to incarnate in a “backward race” has only itself to blame. Very little effort is required to locate dozens of such passages within Steiner’s published writings.[16]

Thus we can see that Waage’s claim that Steiner definitively rejected the ideology of root races and Aryan supremacy is inaccurate, and that Steiner’s occasional trite phrases about the spiritual insignificance of race are disingenuous.[17] But have his anthroposophist followers managed to free themselves from their master’s xenophobic prejudices?[18] The article already offered numerous examples of the continuing virulence of racist thinking within contemporary anthroposophy, but let us examine one further instance which highlights Waage’s indefensible claims. One of Steiner’s early devout followers was Ernst Uehli, a teacher at the original Waldorf school and an officer of the Anthroposophical Society. In anthroposophist circles Uehli is regarded as an outstanding anti-fascist; Uwe Werner makes special mention of him as having been “extremely critical” of National Socialism (Werner, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Munich 1999, 97).

In reality Uehli propounded an ugly version of anthroposophical racism, Aryan supremacism and antisemitism with a marked penchant for blood-and-soil ideology. In 1926 he published a book on “Nordic-Germanic Mythology” and dedicated it to the recently deceased Steiner, who is quoted and referred to constantly throughout the book. Uehli uses the terms “root races” and “Aryan” repeatedly (Ernst Uehli, Nordisch-Germanische Mythologie als Mysteriengeschichte, Stuttgart 1965, 134-144). Why would a close follower of Steiner continue to promote ideas that the master had supposedly renounced? But Uehli doesn’t content himself with simply repeating the anthroposophist orthodoxy on root races and Aryan superiority; he constructs a grand historical-evolutionary-racial narrative in which the two rival forces, separated throughout the millennia by their fundamentally different racial makeup, are “the Semitic and the Aryan peoples” (ibid. 144). Whereas “the early Germans were a people of nature” and thus pure and strong, “the Jews succumbed to Ahriman” (ibid. 147; “Ahriman” is the anthroposophist term for demonic forces that promote materialism). Alongside the world-historical struggle between the nature-loving Aryans and the materialistic and diabolical Jews, Uehli notes that there are still a few “primitive peoples that are dying out” as a result of cosmic necessity, since they are nothing more than the “decadent remnants” of an earlier root race (ibid. 135).[19]

One might think that latter-day anthroposophists would be sensible enough to quietly ignore such repellent racist nonsense from their not so distant past. But in the year 2000 Uehli’s works were still part of the officially recommended curriculum for Waldorf teachers in both Germany and the United States. This fact sparked yet another public scandal around anthroposophist racism when a book of Uehli’s about Atlantis, evidently even more offensive than the one we’ve quoted, was brought to public attention in the spring of 2000. The German youth ministry responded by putting the book on its index of racist literature. If even German government bureaucrats have no trouble recognizing anthroposophy’s racist content, why does Waage stubbornly deny it? Anthroposophy’s ongoing racist legacy has led to public investigations in the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and Belgium as well. Limits of space prevent us from elaborating on this crucial topic, but interested readers can consult the outstanding treatment of the German case by Peter Bierl in his Wurzelrassen, Erzengel und Volksgeister. Die Anthroposophie Rudolf Steiners und die Waldorfpädagogik (Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg 1999; 2nd ed. 2005).

Capitalism

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Waage’s reply is his emphatic contention that Steiner “was an opponent of the right to private property.” Indeed Waage is adamant that the article’s depiction of Steiner’s pro-capitalist views is “sloppy at best, untruthful at worst.” Curiously, Waage offers no supporting quotes from Steiner and cites no other literature to back up his interpretation, and some of his own paraphrases of Steiner’s views actually contradict his interpretation.[20] Steiner’s voluminous writings on economic subjects are often vague and occasionally opaque, and his position shifted multiple times; here as elsewhere, contradictions are the one consistent element. It is nonetheless possible to decipher his attitude toward private property. What Steiner opposed was the misuse of private property, not the institution itself.[21] He favored a peculiar mixture of private ownership and social conscience, whereby both individual capitalists and small groups of especially “talented” executives would manage private capital as a sort of trust for the ostensible good of the whole community (readers familiar with the disjointed economic doctrines of classical fascism will notice the parallels to the ideology of the Volksgemeinschaft or people’s community). Steiner insisted that the notion of abolishing capitalism was simply impossible and would mean abolishing social life as such; for him, “capitalism is a necessary component of modern life.”[22] The anthroposophist Walter Kugler, who works for the Rudolf Steiner Nachlaßverwaltung in Dornach (the administrators of Steiner’s published and unpublished works), describes Steiner’s position thus: “Each entrepreneur, that is each individual who wants to make use of his talents to satisfy the needs of others, will obtain capital for as long as he is able to make productive use of his talents.” (Kugler, Rudolf Steiner und die Anthroposophie, Cologne 1978, p. 165) Steiner himself wrote: “The entire ownership of capital must be arranged so that the especially talented individual or the especially talented group of individuals comes to possess capital in a way which arises solely from their own personal initiative.” (ibid.)

A central tenet of the Dreigliederung or ‘social threefolding’ doctrine, which Steiner emphasized again and again, was that the economic sphere must never be organized or managed democratically.[23] Accordingly, Steiner polemicized against socialism (not just its marxist variants) and explicitly rejected the socialization of property (not just nationalization).[24] He also opposed labor unions. Within a full-fledged “threefold commonwealth” Steiner foresaw a spiritual meritocracy in which the “most capable” would be given effective control over economic resources, and he vehemently rejected the notion of tempering this arrangement through any kind of community oversight. He derided the idea of “transferring the means of production from private ownership into communal property,” as well as of socializing “the management of concentrated masses of capital,” and insisted that “the management of the means of production must be left in the hands of the individual.” (Steiner in ibid. 199, 200) Steiner was insistent on this point: “No-one can be allowed to return to economic forms in which the individual is tied to or limited by the community. We must strive instead for the very opposite.” (ibid. p. 201) In one work alone, the 1919 book Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage, he expressly and forcefully dismissed “communal property” more than a dozen times; nearly every chapter contains at least one denunciation of “common ownership.”

Steiner’s interest in economic affairs arose as a reaction to the wave of working-class revolt that swept across Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War One. During this period numerous grassroots demands for socializing the factories were put forward in city after city. Steiner ridiculed all such proposals – “as if one could really socialize the various factories.” (ibid. p. 209) His own counterproposals were meant precisely to thwart this economic democratization from below.[25] In Steiner’s utopia, the economy was not to be run by the “hand-workers,” but rather by “the spiritual workers, who direct production.” (Threefold Commonwealth, p. xxxii; this is the original authorized English translation of Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage.)[26] And just how are these privileged spiritual workers to be chosen? “The spiritual organization will rest on a healthy basis of individual initiative, exercised in free competition amongst the private individuals suited to spiritual work.” (ibid. p. 158) Within this framework, “the spiritual life should be set free, and given control of the employment of capital” – indeed, an “absolutely free use of capital” (ibid. pp. 117, 126). “Private property,” for Steiner, “is an outcome of the social creativeness which is associated with individual human ability.” (ibid. p. 126) Shared ownership, in contrast, is an obstruction to this all-important creative unfolding of individual talent: “The individual cannot make his abilities effective in business, if he is tied down in his work and decisions to the will of the community.” (Steiner, Rudolf Steiner: Essential Readings, ed. Richard Seddon, Wellingborough 1988, p. 106) Given these thoroughly capitalist assumptions, Steiner’s conclusion comes as no surprise: “Really practical thought, therefore, will not look to find the cure for social ills in a reshaping of economic life that would substitute communal for private management of the means of production. The endeavor should rather be to forestall the ills that can arise through management by individual initiative and personal worth, without impairing this management itself.” (ibid.)

Moreover, when Steiner’s economic ideas were put into practice in the early 1920s by the Threefold Commonwealth League (Bund für Dreigliederung des Sozialen Organismus) in southwest Germany, it was very clear that he opposed a democratic organization of the affiliated factories – the Waldorf tobacco factory being the best known. The anthroposophist Hans Kühn wrote: “Democratization of the factories was something he [Steiner] opposed on principle. The manager had to be able to make his own arrangements without interference.” (Hans Kühn, Dreigliederungszeit. Rudolf Steiners Kampf für die Gesellschaftsordnung der Zukunft, Dornach, 1978 p. 52). Since leading anthroposophists had no trouble grasping this point, it is difficult to understand how Waage could mistake Steiner for an opponent of private ownership and capitalism. Steiner’s scheme was nothing more than an ‘enlightened’ version of private property under the benevolent control of a spiritual aristocracy. As such it forms the perfect economic counterpart to his mixture of radical individualism and elitism. It would be hard to explain the appeal of Steiner’s economic doctrines to aristocrats and industrialists – and these, after all, are the ones who responded most favorably to his proposals – if those doctrines had contained anything that threatened the profits of the powerful.[27]

Nazism

Waage seems to have misunderstood Anthroposophy and Ecofascism as a version of the guilt by association argument: if some anthroposophists were Nazis and some Nazis were anthroposophists, this simpleminded reasoning goes, then the two groups must be identical. At the very least it should have been clear that the article dealt with one specific wing of the Nazi movement, the ecofascist tendency, a grouping which was controversial within the party as a whole. Waage’s failure to recognize this crucial distinction marks the very beginning of his reply, where he invents a “quotation” that never appeared in the article. Nowhere does the article assert “that Steiner was a Nazi,” much less that “anthroposophy is Nazism,” as Waage pretends.[28] He goes on to make several untenable claims about anthroposophy’s relationship to National Socialism: that there were no significant ideological parallels between the two worldviews, that the Nazis tried to kill Steiner in 1922 because he was a principled opponent of their political outlook, and that anthroposophist collaborators with the Third Reich were repudiated by organized anthroposophy after World War Two. Let us examine each of these claims in turn.

1. Ideological parallels. In addition to casting doubt on the article’s comparison of Steiner’s anti-French diatribes to Mein Kampf (we urge readers who share Waage’s skepticism on this point to read Hitler’s passages on France as Germany’s “mortal enemy” alongside Steiner’s passages on the same theme), Waage says that the description of similarities between the anthroposophist and the Nazi racial mythologies is “obviously unreasonable.”[29] This view is not shared by scholars of the topic. In the words of anti-fascist researcher Volkmar Wölk, “It is a short conceptual step from this position [Steiner’s root-race theory] to the racial doctrine of the Nazis.”[30] If Waage finds such politically conscious scholarship too critical, he may want to consult instead the work of historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who wrote the entirely approving preface to Rudolf Steiner: Essential Writings and can hardly be suspected of harboring any bias against Steiner. Goodrick-Clarke’s respected work The Occult Roots of Nazism, one of the few books by a responsible scholar on a topic which is otherwise a playground for conspiracy theorists and amateur occultists, is a thorough analysis of “ariosophy,” another turn of the century Viennese offshoot of theosophy which took the Aryan myth even further than Steiner did and which had a direct influence on Hitler.

Goodrick-Clarke notes that in the late nineteenth century Steiner was involved in the Vienna theosophist circles which were the source of “the particular kind of theosophy which the Ariosophists adopted to their völkisch ideas.” (Occult Roots of Nazism, Wellingborough 1985, p. 29) He also emphasizes that “the very structure of theosophical thought lent itself to völkisch adoption.” (ibid. p. 31) In 1908, midway through Steiner’s tenure as the head of German theosophy, a German theosophist named Harald Grävell published a significant article in the major Viennese ariosophist journal. There Grävell “outlined a thoroughly theosophical conception of race and a programme for the restoration of Aryan authority in the world. His quoted occult sources were texts by Annie Besant, Blavatsky’s successor as leader of the international Theosophical Society at London, and Rudolf Steiner, the Secretary General of its German branch in Berlin.” (ibid. p. 101) In particular Grävell cited Steiner’s 1907 text Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Saft, “which reflected the theosophical interest in racist ideas.” (ibid. p. 242; Steiner’s text is available in English under the title “The Occult Significance of Blood.”) Goodrick-Clarke also shows that the ariosophists were influenced by nineteenth century Romanticism, Haeckel and Monism, just as Steiner was.

Does all this prove that Rudolf Steiner was personally responsible for shaping Hitler’s perverse worldview? Of course not, and the article made no such argument. What Goodrick-Clarke’s painstaking research does show is that the borders between anthroposophy proper and other versions of race mysticism and occult nationalism were exceedingly porous. Many of the far-right esotericist groupings of the interwar period drew on the root race doctrine which Steiner had done so much to promote, and this obscure body of ideas had an undeniable impact on Nazi thought. This point is borne out by numerous other scholars. James Webb writes: “there is absolutely no doubt that Hitler believed in a theory of occult evolution of a Theosophical type.” (Webb, The Occult Establishment, Chicago 1976, p. 313) Webb also documents, in detail, several important areas of overlap – race theory, Atlantis, Aryans, among others – between anthroposophy and theosophy on the one hand and the belief systems of the Nazi leadership, particularly Hitler, Himmler, and Rosenberg, on the other.[31]

If such scholarship is still too “biased” for Waage, he might prefer to consult the work of Eduard Gugenberger and Roman Schweidlenka, who have many nice things to say about Steiner and in general present him as an honorable exception to the otherwise dismal political record of esotericist thinkers (see Gugenberger & Schweidlenka, Mutter Erde – Magie und Politik, Vienna 1987, pp. 135-145). But even these sympathetic commentators emphasize that “Steiner posited a strictly hierarchical evolutionary chain” based on the root race model, with “Germanic-Nordic” peoples at the top (ibid. p. 144). They go on to remark that in Steiner’s anthroposophy, his “own race and own culture appear as the currently highest stage of humanity’s spiritual development” (ibid. p. 145). Gugenberger and Schweidlenka themselves point out the obvious racism and justification of social injustice which anthroposophy thereby propagates under the guise of spiritual enlightenment. It is hence only to be expected that contemporary neo-Nazis draw substantially on Steiner’s teachings.[32]

Ignoring all of this evidence, Waage nonetheless categorically denies the ideological parallels between anthroposophy and National Socialism, particularly its esoteric and environmentalist variants. To reassure readers of Humanist that we have not cited historical sources selectively, we urge those curious about this philosophical affinity to check our interpretation against the standard historiography on the Nazi worldview and its ideological origins. Even those works which mention Steiner merely in passing, as one among many contributors to right-wing authoritarian demagoguery, will serve to correct Waage’s impression that Steiner was simply “a rational humanist.”[33]

2. The 1922 incident. Waage writes that “Steiner himself was the victim of an attempted assassination by the Nazi movement in 1922” as proof that Steiner was a conscientious opponent of Nazism. Before reviewing this very revealing 1922 event, we must remark on the peculiar logic invoked here. If Waage thinks that the identity of a public figure’s assassin tells us something definitive about the victim’s identity, then he must conclude that Trotsky was not a Bolshevik and Rabin was not a Jew. Perhaps Waage also believes that Nazi leaders Ernst Röhm and Gregor Strasser were really anti-Nazi, since Hitler had them killed in 1934. But in fact this point is moot, because Waage gets the relevant details of the 1922 incident wrong in the first place. What actually happened in Munich in May, 1922, was that a group of right-wing thugs disrupted a large public lecture by Steiner and apparently tried to physically assault him after he had finished speaking, but were beaten back by Steiner’s supporters. To call this lecture-hall brawl an “attempted assassination” is unsubstantiated hyperbole, as there is no evidence that Steiner’s attackers intended to kill him.[34] Nor was there any direct involvement by “the Nazi movement”; anthroposophist sources indicate instead that Steiner’s would-be assailants belonged to a rival far-right outfit.[35] These facts are easily available in standard anthroposophist descriptions of the incident.[36] Waage’s overwrought version of the event is also flatly contradicted by anthroposophical eyewitness accounts.[37]

Although anthroposophists frequently try to recast Steiner as an anti-Hitler martyr by pointing to the 1922 incident, the facts of the event do not support this interpretation. The confrontation took place at the Vier Jahreszeiten hotel, where Steiner chose to give his Munich speech. From 1919 onward this hotel was a notorious gathering point for Munich’s ultranationalist far right; it housed the headquarters of the Thule Society, one of the most militant völkisch groups, and was indeed owned by Thule members.[38] Some contemporary anthroposophists even claim that Steiner’s attackers belonged to the Thule Society.[39] But no matter who was in fact responsible for the aborted disruption of Steiner’s lecture, his own choice of venue is difficult to explain if one views Steiner simply as an anti-nationalist who abjured far right politics. Furthermore, several prominent Thule Society members had direct ties to Steiner and anthroposophy, including Rudolf Hess, anthroposophy’s chief ally during the Third Reich.[40]

How are we to make sense of this convoluted situation? As we have already indicated, in the interwar period the organizational outlines of the reactionary nationalist-occult spectrum were thoroughly porous, with competing groups displaying a substantial overlap in membership and ideology. Anthroposophy was a part of this spectrum, as were several of the direct precursors to the Nazis. Goodrick-Clarke offers an illuminating example of this crossover: In 1923, immediately after moving to Germany, the Russian antisemitic conspiracy theorist and occultist Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch “became an enthusiastic Anthroposophist” (Occult Roots of Nazism, p. 170). By the end of the decade Schwartz-Bostunitsch had turned on anthroposophy, seeing it as yet another cog in the international occult conspiracy; he later became an officer in the SS.[41]

Such examples are anything but isolated, as the literature on German esoteric politics shows. The constant intermingling of right-wing and esoteric groups is a major theme of Webb’s Occult Establishment, and the book includes a thoughtful exploration of both the overlaps and the mutual hostilities between Steiner and his followers and the militant völkisch forces. Webb concludes that “Steiner was not really alien to völkisch thought,” and shows that “the völkisch reaction [against Steiner] was an admission that both camps were operating on the same level. And a proportion of the völkisch rage came from the realization that here [in anthroposophy] was another vision of the universe which claimed to be ‘spiritual’.” (p. 290) The outbreak of hostilities between völkisch groups and anthroposophy was not due to fundamental differences between the two currents, but on the contrary to their marked ideological proximity – indeed it was precisely these basic ideological affinities which made them rivals in the first place.[42] Thus the lessons to be drawn from the 1922 incident point toward, not away from, the thesis of mutual influence by early Nazis and anthroposophists.

In addition to misrepresenting and misunderstanding the 1922 incident, Waage makes two further points about Steiner and the Nazis which he thinks are proof of Steiner’s anti-Nazi credentials: Steiner’s 1920 criticism of the misuse of the swastika, and Hitler’s 1921 criticism of Steiner’s harmful spiritual influence. Both of these claims rest on a basic incomprehension of the historical context. Waage quotes a brief remark by Steiner, made “already in 1920,” about “the beastliness that goes on in Germany under the swastika banners.” Waage gives an erroneous date for this quote; Steiner actually said these words on 10 September 1923 (see Rhythmen im Kosmos und in Menschenwesen. Wie kommt man zum Schauen der geistigen Welt? GA 350, p. 276), although he did make another revealing remark about the Swastika in 1920.[43] But mixed-up citations aside, it is unlikely that any comment on the use of the swastika in 1920 was directed against the Nazi party as such. That party was not officially formed until April, 1920, and remained minuscule and largely unknown for some time. Moreover, the Nazis did not adopt the swastika emblem until the summer of 1920, and the distinctive swastika banners were not designed until two years later (William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, New York 1960, 43-44).

In fact, when we checked the citation Waage gives, we found this: “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.” (Steiner, Geisteswissenschaft als Erkenntnis der Grundimpulse sozialer Gestaltung GA 199, p. 161; speech 27.08.1920) On the basis of Waage’s own citation, Steiner opposed the ostensible use of the swastika by the Bolsheviks; he makes no mention at all of the Nazis.

Still, is it not possible that Steiner was expressing a general hostility to the racist thinking associated even then with the swastika? That is similarly unlikely. Consider another of Steiner’s critical comments on the misuse of the swastika as a political symbol, this one from a lecture in Dornach in 1924: “The Asian cannot understand concepts like the European has; instead the Asians wants images. These abstractions, these concepts which the European has, the Asian does not want those, they hurt his brain, he does not want them. And a symbol like, for example, the swastika, this symbol – it was an ancient sun symbol – was present all throughout Asia. The old Asians still remember this. Certain Bolshevik politicians were clever enough, just like the German Völkischen, to use this ancient swastika as their symbol. This makes a much bigger impression on Asians than all of Marxism does. Marxism consists of concepts for thinking; that doesn’t make an impression on these people. But such a symbol, that makes an impression on these people.” (Steiner, Geschichte der Menschheit, p. 261)[44] It would be obtuse to describe a passage like this as an admonition against racist politics.

What of Hitler’s early criticism of Steiner? Waage quotes a 1921 article by Hitler which, in Waage’s rendering, accuses Steiner of “ruining people’s normal spiritual basis.” To take this brief remark as a considered rejection of Steiner’s philosophy is to misunderstand both the quotation and its broader context. Waage’s truncated quote gives the impression that the passage is a general denunciation of the deleterious effects of Steiner’s spiritual doctrines. In fact Hitler’s article from March 15, 1921 – the only recorded reference to Steiner in Hitler’s writings during Steiner’s lifetime – is directed not against Steiner, but against the German foreign minister Walter Simons. (See Adolf Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924, Stuttgart 1980, 348-353) Hitler mentions Steiner merely as a “friend” of Simons, evidently convinced that Simons was somehow influenced by Steiner.[45] As one might expect from a practiced demagogue, Hitler’s criticism of the foreign minister, and by extension of Steiner, bears little relationship to either figure’s actual politics.[46] Indeed anthroposophists at the time leveled the same charges at Simons as Hitler did.[47]  Steiner himself, for that matter, unequivocally condemned Simons in extremely strong terms for the very same actions as Hitler did.[48]  While Hitler’s rhetorical jibe shows contempt for Steiner, it tells us nothing about the conceptual continuities and discontinuities between their respective belief systems.

Hitler was generally impatient with would-be spiritual reformers like Steiner because he thought they distracted attention from the real struggle in the political realm. This scarcely indicates a fundamental philosophical hostility toward Steiner’s teachings; indeed Hitler frequently made similar criticisms of loyal Nazi party members. Consider distinguished historian George Mosse’s discussion of an analogous case, that of Steiner’s fellow cosmic spiritualist Artur Dinter: “Even as early as Mein Kampf Hitler severely criticised Volkish ‘religious reformers.’ Considering Hitler’s own view of nature mysticism and the ‘secret science,’ this might seem contradictory. However, his reasons for such criticism are illuminating. The Volkish leaders in general were in his eyes ‘sectarians’ who must be crushed by the true ‘movement,’ but specifically these reformers weakened the fight against the common enemy: Jewry. They scattered the forces that were needed to wage this battle. Basically, Hitler’s criticism of such men as Dinter was that they failed to focus their ideology on the Jews. This leads once more to our thesis that Hitler transformed the German revolution, of which many Volkish adherents dreamt, into an anti-Jewish revolution, and thereby concretized and objectified an ideology that had been too vague for the purposes of a mass movement. The spiritualist and theosophical ideas were thus relegated to the background and their adherents silenced or ignored.” (Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, New York 1964, pp. 306-307)[49] The historical record simply does not support Waage’s interpretation of the passing insults traded between Steiner and Hitler, and Waage’s interpretation is utterly incompatible with Steiner’s own quite explicit statements. When understood in their historical context, the sometimes nasty exchanges between Steiner and völkisch leaders, far from exonerating Steiner, actually provide further evidence of the extent to which he contributed to that “vague ideology” which Hitler later put into practice.

3. Repudiation of anthroposophist collaborators. Waage informs us that “the leader of the Steiner schools in Germany who held the schools open until 1941 with the approval of the regime, was after the war expelled from all Steiner schools.” Waage does not name this person, but the context makes clear that he must mean either René Maikowski or Elisabeth Klein, who led the negotiations with Nazi education officials to keep the Waldorf schools operating as long as possible. The notion that Klein or Maikowski were expelled from the Waldorf movement after the war is preposterous. Maikowski was the central figure in re-establishing the Hannover Waldorf school after the war, and Klein taught at the school from 1950 until 1965.[50] Both were very active in the broader Waldorf movement after 1945, publishing in its journals, helping establish new schools, and training other teachers. Both received emphatic support from anthroposophy’s headquarters in Dornach.

Waage would have his readers believe that open Nazi collaborators were unwelcome within organized anthroposophy after the war. The very opposite was the case. Günther Wachsmuth continued without interruption to occupy the highest office in international anthroposophy, despite his expressed admiration for the Nazis. Nor is there any record of measures against Erhard Bartsch, chief promoter of biodynamic agriculture, SS collaborator and Hitler fan. Many former Nazis went on to renowned anthroposophical careers after 1945, including Friedrich Benesch, Ernst Harmstorf, Heimo Rau, Gotthold Hegele, Werner Voigt, and Udo Renzenbrink. Even Uwe Werner, with his access to internal documents and his evident eagerness to include every last exculpatory detail imaginable, concedes that anthroposophists undertook no collective soul-searching after 1945: “Curiously, the anthroposophists did not discuss or describe in detail their behavior during the Nazi period directly after the year 1945.” (Werner, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, p. 2) Indeed he emphasizes that after the war anthroposophists “more or less consciously refused to revive controversies about the behavior of some anthroposophists during the Nazi period.” (ibid.) Werner does not note a single exception to this policy. He explicitly states that the only postwar recriminations of any kind “were certain barely expressed reservations about individuals.” (ibid. p. 364)

Far from pursuing a general reckoning with the Nazis in their midst, postwar anthroposophists got back to business as usual and stifled any discussion of the more sordid aspects of their past. To this day the vast majority of anthroposophists completely deny their extensive record of collusion with the Nazis. Nor is this record, as Waage suggests, a matter of a few wayward figures like Maikowski or Klein.[51] Werner’s work alone – quite against its author’s intentions – provides copious evidence of just how widespread this collusion was; in the course of the book he lists a range of named individuals who were both active anthroposophists and Nazi party members. He also inadvertently shows that the extent of the organizational and personnel overlap between the Anthroposophical Society and the Nazi party was significant enough to concern the anti-esoteric faction of the Nazis, and reveals that the anthroposophist leadership was willing to go to great lengths to protect the party members in its ranks (see, e.g., Werner p. 72). Obviously not a few anthroposophists wanted to remain Nazis in good standing. Moreover, anthroposophist loyalty to their Nazi comrades continued after the defeat of the Third Reich. Walter Darré’s lawyer at Nuremberg was the anthroposophist Hans Merkel; he remained a close confidante of the notorious racial theorist and former minister in Hitler’s cabinet until the end of Darré’s life. Merkel was also the attorney for Nazi war criminal Otto Ohlendorf. And after Ohlendorf was hanged for the murder of 90,000 Jews, the anthroposophist pastor Haverbeck presided at his funeral. Neither repentant nor rueful, postwar anthroposophists were at least consistent in their political allegiances.

Alas, mistakes such as these are not the worst of Waage’s errors. He appears to be entirely unfamiliar with even well-known aspects of the history of the anthroposophical movement during the Third Reich. Waage writes that “there was allegedly supposed to be a bio-dynamic garden” at the Dachau concentration camp. Allegedly? Supposed to be? We hope that Waage is not one of those anthroposophists who believes that there were ‘allegedly supposed to be’ gas chambers at Auschwitz. The biodynamic garden at Dachau was hardly “alleged,” it was very real, and it was overseen by an anthroposophist, Franz Lippert. It is discussed extensively in a very wide array of both anthroposophical and scholarly sources.[52] Indeed it is described at length in one of the sources Waage himself touts.[53] Waage’s complete ignorance of all of this easily accessible information is nothing short of astonishing. Waage has somehow managed to convince himself that Anthroposophy and Ecofascism presented a “simple” version of the history of anthroposophical entwinement with Nazism; this misunderstanding of the article appears to be based on Waage’s own starkly simplistic and startlingly uninformed conception of history. In reality, the history recounted in the article is highly complex and contradictory, and anthroposophists and their defenders would do well to recognize at long last the complexities and contradictions in their own past.

Anthroposophy Today

Waage devotes much of his reply to Anthroposophy and Ecofascism to issues that the article did not address, such as the benevolent activities of Waldorf schools in various countries around the globe. While it is difficult to see what these matters have to do with the relationship between anthroposophy and ecofascism, Waage seems to think they count as refutations of the article. He says that its “perfidious accusations” against anthroposophy are harmful to “teachers, pupils and parents” of Waldorf schools. We don’t understand how questioning the ideology of an ideologically oriented school can be harmful to anyone; surely it would be more harmful to leave the ideology unquestioned.[54] We hope that the lesson Waage learned at his Waldorf school is not that anthroposophists are always right and their critics always wrong. Our own experience, at any rate, is rather different. [55]

Waage also makes much of the recent report by Dutch anthroposophists which purports to exonerate Steiner of the charge of racism. Incredibly, he takes this report as an example of anthroposophists grappling candidly with their compromised past. Waage himself admits that Steiner said a number of “absurdly grotesque and outrageous” things about blacks, Asians, native people, etc., but discounts these utterances because they were supposedly “marginal” to Steiner’s core beliefs. Waage does not seem to have reflected on the fundamental divergence between his own position, which is ethically incoherent, and the position staked out in the Dutch report, which is empirically incoherent. It would be one thing if the Dutch commission had concluded that, on balance, anthroposophy is not necessarily a racist doctrine. But this is not the conclusion the Dutch commission came to. Instead their report, as Waage himself notes, determined that “no race theory or racist views can be attributed to Steiner.” We repeat: in the commission’s opinion, which Waage appears to endorse, Rudolf Steiner held no racist views whatsoever, and his writings do not contain any race theory.[56]

Let us note, first, that this is a bold departure from previous anthroposophist apologetics, which imagined that Steiner’s racism was forgivable because it was a “product of its time” – an interesting argument in itself, since it can be used to justify so many twentieth century atrocities.[57] Until now, the anthroposophist attitude toward Steiner’s racism was: ignore it and it will go away. But with the Dutch report this stance of silent complicity has given way to one of pure and absolute denial. Rudolf Steiner, we are now told, never uttered a racist word in his life. We are dismayed that humanists would join in such a specious pretense. To claim that Steiner held no racist views is simply a sign of dishonesty, ignorance, or bad faith. A person who is free of racist views cannot possibly say things like “the Negro race does not belong in Europe,” “transplanting black people to Europe is horrible,” “the white race is the spiritually creative race,” and “concepts hurt the Asian’s brain,” and cannot conceivably call aboriginal peoples “degenerate,” “decadent,” and “stunted”. These statements admit of no non-racist interpretation. Steiner made each of these statements, and expressed similar sentiments over and over again, from a position of professed moral authority. To absolve such a practice is incompatible with humanist values.

But even this dismal instance of willful ignorance is surpassed by the belief that Steiner’s written works contain no racial theory. To appreciate just how intellectually threadbare this posture is, let us briefly recapitulate: Steiner was the chief public spokesperson for one of the largest branches of theosophy for a full decade. One of the primary original contributions theosophy made to the occult canon was the doctrine of root races. Steiner adopted the root race doctrine wholesale into anthroposophy. That comprehensive doctrine 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). 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 sub-race,” at the top of the hierarchy. This hierarchy, in turn, is an integral component of the cosmic order. These ideas are explicitly laid out in great detail and with emphatic repetition in numerous books, pamphlets, articles and lectures written and published by Rudolf Steiner. Yet somehow, Waage assures us, they do not constitute a race theory.

To anyone who has tried to engage anthroposophists and their defenders in dialogue and critique, such dubious apologetics are all too recognizable. There is a growing group of voices that have raised challenging questions about anthroposophy’s political heritage, and these voices have for the most part not been met with an honest response. When faced with logic and fact, anthroposophy and its defenders have nowhere to turn but denial of what everyone else knows to be true. When confronted with public scrutiny and scholarly inquiry, anthroposophy and its defenders have no reply but derision and evasion. These are the familiar habits of sectarians and cultists, and they threaten to turn every attempt at critical debate into a travesty of reason. To participate in such a travesty is a form of self-deception and self-debasement unworthy of any humanist. Our hope is that a sober assessment of the historical entwinement of anthroposophy and ecofascism will challenge anthroposophists and their defenders to ask themselves if the belief system they admire can be extricated from this poisonous legacy. If it cannot, we hope they will have the courage to leave anthroposophy behind.

References

Dear Highland Hall College of Teachers,

I am in receipt of your letter dated June 24, 2005 (I assume you meant 2004). Your indictment of me begins with the statement “The College of Highland Hall Waldorf School has decided that the school cannot re-enroll [my daughter] for the 2004-2005 school year. This decision was made not because of [my daughter]’s behavior, but because of your behavior toward the class teacher and the school as a whole. The College sees that the class needs a space to heal after the past difficult year.”

First, let me make it clear that I am proud of my behavior and of my integrity. Many parents and former parents have written and called me to thank me for my part in exposing the class teacher and for taking the heat from the school. One former parent expressed that only now that the teacher is no longer at Highland Hall, her child has felt the necessary closure required for healing. But before we go any further, could I please inquire what my behavior was toward [my daughter]’s class teacher that you found offensive? I always treated her respect, conducted myself properly in my meetings with her, never raised my voice even when frustrated and angry. I even helped her carry boxes from her car while discussing my concerns with her about her inappropriate conversations with my daughter. My behavior toward her was absolutely respectful. Meanwhile, behind my back, the same class teacher specifically told my daughter to keep secrets from me, told [my daughter] that she wanted to adopt her and according to [my daughter]’s mother, conspired with her mother to have the Department of Child Services investigate me on false charges regarding my daughter and my other children. When the same teacher found out that my daughter was confiding in me, she continually gave my daughter dirty looks across the room and whispered comments to her in private that my daughter found frightening. She subjected my daughter and the entire class to several inappropriate stories, homework assignments and finally sang a horrible song to them – the common themes in each instance being forced male dominance over women and human dismemberment. Yet somehow MY behavior is in question here?  [my daughter]’s teacher was exhibiting disturbing behavior and she proved this to the entire community. My behavior, my obligation was to do whatever was necessary to point this out and to keep others (the Evaluation Committee and our administrators) from covering it up before more harm came to my daughter and other children – nothing more. How can any of you suggest that, by revealing this woman’s behavior, my behavior is somehow suspect.

Your letter further states “You have repeatedly sent blind emails to community members making negative statements about the former class teacher, the Evaluation Committee, and members of the administration, in direct conflict with our communication protocol.”

I pointed out the truth. The truth reflected negatively on the class teacher, the Evaluation Committee and the members of the administration – this is their fault, not mine. They are responsible for what happened. With regard to blind emails, I communicated in blind emails for the reason that not everyone I emailed to has given me permission to share their email address so I could not make those addresses public. You assume too much thinking that by including the recipient’s email addresses you would have had any better opportunity to do your damage control. I had to send my emails out in waves. Replying to the recipients of my original email would only have assured Highland Hall of reaching everyone on one wave of email so the fact that they were blind copied made no difference whatsoever in Highland Halls ability to respond. Emails that were issued by other parents contained email addresses but were forwarded to me and I could have forwarded them to others – the fact that they contained addresses was no indication of who eventually saw them. Indeed some people I email to are almost certain to forward my emails to others. I can’t even tell you who received them. The emails went everywhere and that’s the nature of email. People understand this and still I received messages from only four people asking to be taken off the email list during this entire process. Considering the number of emails that were sent, that’s amazing. None of the other parents, to my knowledge, have been reprimanded for participating in this email campaign – and many of the emails by other parents were more “negative” than mine.

Let’s be clear about the communication protocol. It is a directive by the school – not a contract between the school and parents that requires parents to suspend their first amendment freedoms. In fact, parents are absolutely entitled to communicate concerns with other parents, other teachers, relatives, prospective parents, God, their dog, in whatever way they choose – whether in person, by phone, by email or by telepathy. Highland Hall has no right to (or expectation that they can) suspend basic human communication. I never agreed to this protocol, nor do I agree to the tenets contained within it. While perhaps not originally intended as such, it is being used to isolate parents so that parents who have a complaint are frustrated or otherwise coerced into silence. Many parents could have the same complaint about a teacher but if they are to follow this protocol each thinks they are the only ones complaining. This is wrong, unhealthy and immoral. The communication protocol is a way for Highland Hall to control information and is another obvious and shameful action on the part of the school. Other parents who strictly adhered to the communications protocol to voice their concerns and complaints have also received notice that their child may not be re-enrolled. Let’s be honest, the College just wants to weed out the complainers – it has nothing to do with following the communication protocol, it is about Highland Hall’s need to control people.

You further declare “Your recent blind copy email, inviting people to a website where you have made a number of negative comments about Highland Hall and specific individuals in the community, is an example of your behavior.”

Yes, it is an example of my behavior that I am proud of. My efforts to open a place for free dialog among the Highland Hall community are much more honest and noble than what anyone at Highland Hall has done. Highland Hall has had a web site for years and despite repeated requests has never offered a forum for open communications among parents. If Highland Hall would allow this on their own site, my efforts may have been unnecessary. Indeed, any such forum offered by Highland Hall would be sure to suffer heavy censorship and banishment of some “disgruntled” community members (like most of the Anthroposophical forums do). The site I invited parents to was created so that open dialog between people involved in Waldorf education could exist and hopefully bring them closer. It is uncensored and anyone may join and stay as long as they like and discuss anything they like. It is healthy to talk about things.

Regarding “negative” comments, my comments aren’t negative, the atmosphere at Highland Hall is negative and my comments describe and reflect this. No specific individuals were mentioned in my posts but as with any close community, most of us in the community have a good idea of who the players are. When I related my response to a private email, I was careful to remove references to individuals. It is curious that not a single parent has posted a positive comment about Highland Hall. For that matter, no teacher, board member, college member or administrator has made the slightest effort to challenge anything that I have said. That’s because I always speak the truth. Some people don’t like this. Apparently, many people from our community have signed up for notification whenever new posts are made so certainly it behooves Highland Hall to set the record straight if I am not being truthful.

You state “You have also refused to meet with the group designated by the College to speak with your about your concerns and activities.” I had to make a phone call to Highland Hall to find out what meeting this refers to. I am told it refers to one that was scheduled several months ago that I declined to attend after two other parents attended a similar meeting and were ambushed and humiliated by the “group”. You expect me to welcome this sort of exchange? Your own actions have made this impossible.

You close with “Our decision only applies to [my daughter] and next year’s sixth grade class. It does not apply to your other children at Highland Hall as long as you follow the guidelines of our communications protocol.”
Why, I wonder does this only apply to [my daughter]? Why don’t my public criticisms about Highland Hall affect the status of my other children? Could it be that [my daughter] has already decided not to return to Highland Hall next year? Could it be that she has made her desire to never return to Highland Hall clear to the school, to her lawyer, to her classmates? Why is this letter even necessary? Could it be to blackmail or shame me into compliance with the ridiculous communication protocol? To disgrace me in the community? Do you think that by taking this non-action with me you can satisfy other parents that something has been done?

I had a lot of concern when I realized I would have to tell [my daughter] about your cruel and unnecessarily hurtful letter. I let her read it herself. When she was finished – she cheered and asked me if she could call her friends and tell them the good news! She is excited about leaving Highland Hall and the mind control and humiliation that comes with it. It was as if a huge burden was lifted off her shoulders. Does your communication protocol allow her to share her excitement at leaving your school with her friends or is she still bound by your silly control issues now that she is out?

I understand why you don’t like me rocking the boat. Clearly, this is not the boat I would have chosen if I knew at the beginning of this journey where this boat was headed. I am someone who regularly checks the integrity of the boat. Yet despite my diligent efforts, the boat has veered off course, as it commonly does, and the Captain has already run into an iceberg. The crew is straightening the deck chairs while I, one of the passengers, have noticed that the boat is sinking and have brought it to everyone’s attention. Clearly, in your minds, I, the passenger must be to blame. Your conclusions don’t hold water. Your actions don’t hold water. Your characterizations of me don’t hold water. Your boat is sinking, I’m trying to help you bail water and you’re trying to throw me overboard. Fine, it’s your boat – I can swim. Maybe without me, your boat will hold water.

What you have allowed to transpire, not just now but over many years at Highland Hall is shameful and you need to consider yourselves accountable. You are supposed to be educators, yet you let your arrogance and misapplications of your spiritual philosophy continually lead you to make terrible decisions that adversely and sometimes harmfully affect the children in your charge. You claim that the 6th grade class needs to heal. In reality, it is the school that needs to heal. This cannot happen until you realize that YOU need to heal – that your relationships with parents need to heal.

Open your eyes – I’m not the one with the behavioral problem here. You haven’t the dignity or the courage to stand up and face for yourselves, let alone admit to the community, what has happened. One of your own, a Waldorf teacher, did cruel and horrible things to the children in her class. She humiliated them, emotionally tortured them, exposed them to horrible ideas that still give children nightmares and in some cases directed them to hide her actions from their own parents, even told them they didn’t see what they saw with their own eyes. She admitted doing almost every one of these things. You all stood by her, watched her behave this way and later defended her when her actions were brought to the attention of the community. And you still do. Why? Is it because she’s an Anthroposophist, and in your eyes, the worst Anthroposophist is better than the best outsider? Shame on all of you for harboring such prejudice. You let Anthroposophy guide you rather than truth and honesty – and believe me (and thousands of other people who have been exposed to and rejected Anthroposophy), there is a big difference. Your dishonesty causes people to repel you more than your philosophy does. It causes you to lose your most valuable asset – parents who are already enrolled in your school. My daughter saw through you – my sons will too in time. Any one of my kids has ten times more character than all of you collectively. You don’t deserve them at your school and, in my view, you have nothing to offer them as long as you work outside of truth and honesty. I am proud of my behavior and feel nothing but shame for yours.

Pete Karaiskos