Daniel Hindes

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 22 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

In 1995 there was a scandal in the Netherlands when it became publicly known that Dutch Waldorf schools were teaching "racial ethnography," where children learn that the "black race" has thick lips and a sense of rhythm and that the "yellow race" hides its emotions behind a permanent smile. In 1994 the Steinerite lecturer Rainer Schnurre, at one of his frequent seminars for the anthroposophist adult school in Berlin, gave a talk with the rather baffling title "Overcoming racism and Nationalism through Rudolf Steiner." Schnurre emphasized the essential differences between races, noted the "infantile" nature of blacks, and alleged that due to immutable racial disparities "no equal and global system can be created for all people on earth" and that "because of the differences between races, sending aid to the developing world is useless." (Footnote: Schnurre quoted in ibid., p. 144)

So here again we have a misleading statement extrapolated from a basic fact. A scandal in the Netherlands broke when it became publicly known that one teacher in one Dutch Waldorf school was teaching "racial ethnography". She was fired. At the time the press attempted to determine whether this was common to all Waldorf schools, but found out that, in fact, it was not. Further, the claims that Dutch Waldorf schools might be propagating racism were promptly investigated in by the State Education Inspection Service of the Netherlands. The results of this investigation were made public on March 28th, 1995:

"The investigation into Steiner Schools in the Netherlands, carried out by the State Education Inspection Service at the request of Deputy Minister Netelenbos, conclusively proved that there is no evidence of racism in the Steiner Schools. In fact much attention is given in the schools to developing an awareness among the students so that racism is actually countered." (Joint press release of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Science, and Cultural Affairs, and the Association of Rudolf Steiner Schools in the Netherlands. Translation Detlef Hardorp )

The commission investigated all 95 Waldorf schools in the Netherlands. While it found no evidence of racism, it did uncover instances of racial stereotyping in seven of the 95 schools. The Association of Rudolf Steiner Schools in the Netherlands instituted new procedures and a curriculum review in order to ensure that racial stereotyping would not reoccur. (For a detailed description see: http://www.waldorfanswers.org/Netherlands.htm).

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 21 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

Anthroposophists today often attempt to excuse or explain away such outrageous utterances by contending that Steiner was merely a product of his times. This apologia is utterly unconvincing. First, Steiner claimed for himself an unprecedented degree of spiritual enlightenment which, by his own account, completely transcended his own time and place; he also claimed, and anthroposophists believe that he had, detailed knowledge of the distant future. Second, this argument ignores the many dedicated members of Steiner's generation who actively opposed racism and ethnocentrism. Third, and most telling, anthroposophists continue to repeat Steiner's racist nonsense to this day.

The apologia may not convince Staudenmaier, it is also virtually non-existant, and unnecessary; Steiner did not hold any view remotely resembling the ones here attributed to him. We can only wonder what counterargument to his blatant misrepresentations Peter Staudenmaier would be willing to entertain. It is little wonder that anthroposophists are unwilling to stand by and see Steiner's record of struggle for equality being maligned and his work towards racial equality turned into its opposite. It appears Peter Staudenmaier is unwilling to consider even the theoretical possibility that an argument counter to his thesis might have any validity; they are all apologias. Going further into the problems with Peter Staudenmaier's objections, Steiner was generally quite modest about his spiritual enlightenment. When he spoke about his abilities, it was usually in the third person, as in “when the initiate has reached the fourth stage of enlightenment, he is able to see...” and did not specify which stage he felt he had reached. Nor did he claim that his knowledge transcended time and space. And Steiner's indications about the future were in the most general terms, and are not detailed at all. The mere fact that Steiner spoke of events the he felt likely to happen in the future seems to bother Peter Staudenmaier. Steiner's statements are for the most part the equivalent of saying today that bioengineering will play a role in the future.

Finally, Peter Staudenmaier will try to build an entire case for the racism of present-day anthroposophists on a few examples below, attempting to characterize a movement of some half a million people by the actions of at most a few dozen black sheep. Yet even here it is necessary for him to mischaracterize events and misrepresent the actual facts.

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 20 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

But the worst insult, from an anthroposophical point of view, is Steiner's dictum that people of color can't develop spiritually on their own; they must either be "educated" by whites or reincarnated in white skin. Europeans, in contrast, are the most highly developed humans. Indeed " Europe has always been the origin of all human development." For Steiner and for Anthroposophy, there is no doubt that "whites are the ones who develop humanity in themselves. [ . . . ] The white race is the race of the future, the spiritually creative race." (Footnote: Steiner quoted in ibid., p. 128.)

Once again we have a collection of short quotes strung together for effect, without any sort of context. Peter Staudenmaier writes confidently of the conclusions that we should draw from his arrangement. While doubtless effective polemic, this is not scholarship by any stretch of the imagination, nor does it in anyway resemble Rudolf Steiner's actual thought. And again, Peter Staudenmaier is doubtless faithful to Geden’s presentation. What he has not done is any critical examination of whether Geden accurately represents Rudolf Steiner.

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.

Continuing my commentary on the 17th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier'sAnthroposophy and Ecofascism.

In his footnote, Peter Staudenmaier cites Rudolf Steiner's writing to support his contention. Here's what Steiner says on page 32 of Aus der Akasha-Chronik. This English translation taken from the online Rudolf Steiner eLib and Archive where the reader can find the whole book.

"The ancestors of the Atlanteans lived in a region which has disappeared, the main part of which lay south of contemporary Asia. In theosophical writings they are called the Lemurians. After they had passed through various stages of development the greatest part of them declined. These became stunted men, whose descendants still inhabit certain parts of the earth today as so-called savage tribes. Only a small part of Lemurian humanity was capable of further development. From this part the Atlanteans were formed.
Later, something similar again took place. The greatest part of the Atlantean population declined, and from a small portion are descended the so-called Aryans who comprise present-day civilized humanity. According to the nomenclature of the science of the spirit, the Lemurians, Atlanteans and Aryans are root races of mankind. If one imagines that two such root races preceded the Lemurians and that two will succeed the Aryans in the future, one obtains a total of seven. One always arises from another in the manner just indicated with respect to the Lemurians, Atlanteans, and Aryans. Each root race has physical and mental characteristics which are quite different from those of the preceding one. While, for example, the Atlanteans especially developed memory and everything connected with it, at the present time it is the task of the Aryans to develop the faculty of thought and all that belongs to it."

The key phrase in German is:

"Er wurde zu verkümmerten Menschen, deren Nachkommen heute noch als sogenannte wilde Völker gewisse Teile der Erde bewohnen."

I would translate this as:

"These languished, and their descendants inhabit certain parts of the earth as the so-called wild peoples to this day."

The word "verkümmerten" is the adjectival form of the intransitive verb "verkümmern." In the dictionary it is defined as: of growth: to become stunted; of muscles: to atrophy; of plants or talents: to wither, wilt; of people: to languish (Langenscheidts Handwörterbuch Deutsch-Englisch, Berlin 1996, p. 1396). I feel that the adjective "languish" best fits the meaning of the original, though it is difficult to work into the flow of an the English. In German you can "become languish people" but in English it doesn't work. So as a translator, you either have to drop the "become" ("wurde zu") because it is implicit in the activity of languishing, or you keep the word "become" and go for a more active adjective. The translator, one Karl E. Zimmer, opted for the phrasing "became stunted men," which I disagree with.

The statement that aboriginal peoples are devolving into apes I find nowhere in Peter Staudenmaier's cited source (which I have printed in its entirety below in my comments on Peter Staudenmaier's footnote 8) and is completely foreign to Steiner's Anthroposophy. Steiner's actual statement is: "These [the declining remnants of the Lemurian civilization] languished, and their descendants inhabit certain parts of the earth as the so-called wild peoples to this day." There is nothing about apes. Even Peter Staudenmaier's use of the word "degenerate" is a mistranslation, as we have seen. "Verfall" means "degeneration" only in biological contexts. When speaking of cultures or civilizations, it means "decline." Steiner did not say that they physically degenerated; he said that their culture declined.

In this paragraph we have here another fabrication and a mistranslation. Of course this is really the only way to make Steiner into a racist, but it is sad to see it being done so deliberately here.

Steiner, a cosmopolitan humanist renowned for his calls for a universal brotherhood of man and the overcoming of racial and ethnic prejudice, is here depicted on the flimsiest pretenses as a heartless spiritualistic racist. Steiner deplored the treatment of Native Americans by the Europeans, yet a comment he made explaining their genetic susceptibility to diseases – a point today well established – is here offered as evidence of his callous disregard for their suffering and even overt racism. The quote offered here is greatly helped by some context. Steiner wrote:

"The Native American population did not die out because this pleased the Europeans, but because the Native American population had to acquire such forces as lead to their dying out."* 

This sentence does not make a lot of sense on its own. It is part of a larger thought that Steiner expressed over several pages on how the geography of the earth influenced the formation of racial characteristics in past epochs. (In the present time, indeed for the last 10,000 years, the task of humanity has been to overcome racial divisions, according to Rudolf Steiner. ) In the west, said Steiner, the forces that lead to the overcoming of the influence of racial characteristics are strongest, and this he tied to the physical weakness behind the death of so many Native Americans. Though not explicitly mentioned in this context, this weakness was immunological, as research from the last 40 years has indicated. Steiner strongly deplored the behavior of the Europeans towards the Native Americans, but the simple fact remains that most of the inhabitants of the Americas in 1491 would not have survived the contact with Europe even if not a single one was murdered directly at the hands of a white man. Steiner intuited this even though the science of his day had no concepts to express why.

* Translation by the author. In the original:  

"Nicht etwa deshalb, weil es den Europäern gefallen hat, ist die indianische Bevölkerung ausgestorben, sondern weil die indianische Bevölkerung die Kräfte erwerben mußte, die sie zum aussterben führten."

Steiner, Rudolf. Die Mission Einzelner Volksseelen. Dornach: Verlag der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, 1962. (GA 121, page 75).

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 17 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

Steiner didn't shy away from describing the fate of those left behind by the forward march of racial and spiritual progress. He taught that these unfortunates would "degenerate" and eventually die out. Like his teacher Madame Blavatsky, Steiner rejected the notion that Native Americans, for example, were nearly exterminated by the actions of European settlers. Instead he held that Indians are "dying out of their own nature." Steiner also taught that "lower races" of humans are closer to animals than to "higher races" of humans. Aboriginal peoples, according to Anthroposophy, are descended from the already "degenerate" remnants of the third root race, the Lemurians, and are devolving into apes. Steiner referred to them as "stunted humans whose progeny, the so-called wild peoples, inhabit certain parts of the earth today." (Footnote: Rudolf Steiner, Aus der Akasha-Chronik, Basel 1955, p. 32.)

This straw man, an unrecognizable Steiner, is further abused here, relegated to a pupil of Blavatsky who allegedly promulgated every nasty thing she ever wrote. Steiner's relationship to Blavatsky is a complex subject, but while many notice at a superficial glance that there are indeed similarities, a simple teacher-pupil relationship posited from their chronological succession does not find support in any in-depth investigation.