Daniel Hindes

Rudolf Steiner's joke about "mulatto children" was made in a specific context. While insensitive today, it was nevertheless a joke. As a scholar who had edited Goethe's scientific writings and written numerous essays on evolution Rudolf Steiner was well aware of the influence of genes on the characteristics of offspring. That Peter Staudenmaier would repeat this joke as a serious statement of Rudolf Steiner's beliefs speaks to either his credulity or his duplicity in dealing with the issue of Rudolf Steiner's view of race. That is, either Peter Staudenmaier did not actually check the context of the original when he wrote from his secondary source, and thus did not notice that his secondary source was misrepresenting Rudolf Steiner, or, knowing that this was actually a joke, he represented it as a serious statement anyway for polemical effect.

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 19 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

Steiner propagated a host of racist myths about "negroes." He taught that black people are sensual, instinct-driven, primitive creatures, ruled by their brainstem. He denounced the immigration of blacks to Europe as "terrible," "brutal," "dreadful," and decried its effects on "blood and race." He warned that white women shouldn't read "negro novels" during pregnancy, otherwise they'd have "mulatto children." In 1922 he declared, "The negro race does not belong in Europe, and it is of course nothing but a disgrace that this race is now playing such a large role in Europe." (Footnote: All quotes from Steiner as cited in Oliver Geden, Rechte ökologie, Berlin 1996, p. 127, 130, and 132. Steiner's typical remarks on Asian stupidity, French decadence, and Slavic primitiveness are of similar caliber.)

First to the footnote: The statement that blacks do not belong in Europe also has a specific context. It was made in at least two places in the complete works, and always referred to the French colonial troops, conscripted in the French colonies and made to fight on the French side of the First World War. These troops were then used in the occupation of the Ruhr around the time that Steiner made these statements. The German public at large was up in arms about the issue. What Steiner clearly meant was that it was not proper for Africans to be impressed into service in foreign European wars. Steiner did not imply that a black person who that wanted to come to Europe of his or her own free will ought not to.

These single-word quotes that Peter Staudenmaier found in Geden attributed to Steiner are doubtless accurate in the narrowest technical sense. That is, the word doubtless occurs in the place stated. Lost is any meaningful context. Peter Staudenmaier appears confident that he, following Geden, is fair and accurate. I submit that an analysis of Steiner’s original statements does not bear this out. The problems are deeper than the mere fact that Peter Staudenmaier has translated Steiner’s reference to black people as “Negroes” using a deliberately archaic formulation that does not reflect the fact that Steiner was simply using the universally accepted terms of his day.

And Peter Staudenmaier has again cited a secondary source. We have a bunch of disturbing single-word “quotes” - direct quotes attributed to Rudolf Steiner himself. Beyond the problem that Steiner did not speak of “Negroes” (for the simple reason that Steiner spoke German and not English) an objective reader wanting to examine the context is prevented by the fact that they are extracted from a secondary source with no reference to the original sources. Further, there is no indication that Peter Staudenmaier has investigated the context himself. Instead he presents single words plucked almost at random and arranged to suit his thesis. This is simple character assassination, not scholarship.

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 18 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

The fourth root race which emerged between the Lemurians and the Aryans were the inhabitants of the lost continent of Atlantis, the existence of which anthroposophists take as literal fact. Direct descendants of the Atlanteans include the Japanese, Mongolians, and Eskimos. Steiner also believed that each people or Volk has its own "ethereal aura" which corresponds to its geographic homeland, as well as its own "Volksgeist" or national spirit, an archangel that provides spiritual leadership to its respective people.

In anthroposophical literature “Atlantis” is the period of time in human development that ended with the end of last great Ice Age about 10000 years ago. Yes, “Atlantis” is primarily a period of time, like “the Romans”. It is also a location. As to descendants, everyone alive today is a descendant of both the Lemurians and the Atlanteans: the Europeans no less than the Japanese, Mongolians and Eskimos.

Steiner did not tie racial characteristics to geographic “homelands”, nor has Mr. Peter Staudenmaier offered any citation as to where he thinks Steiner might have done so. Bold assertions appear sufficient for his purposes.

Rudolf Steiner's use of the word "Aryan" is amazingly broad, as it includes all who "comprise present-day civilized humanity" a definition that includes at the very least the Chinese, Burmese, Arab, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian and Tibetan civilizations. Perhaps that is why Steiner referred to them as "the so-called Aryans." The terms "Aryan" and "root races" Steiner inherited from Blavatsky, but he was well aware that he was using the term very differently than most others of the time. Shortly thereafter he replaced the words for the time periods, referring to root races as Epochs and the Epoch after Atlantis the Post-Atlantean Epoch. Steiner never revised these early articles after their publication. Had he done so, it would have been specifically to change this phrasing, as he had done with other of his early works. They were only published in book form 10 years after his death.