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RUDOLF STEINER's ANTHROPOSOPHY, A NAZI CULT?Peter Nasselstein
Wilhelm Reich had to say the following about movements like Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy: "It would be worthwhile to make a thorough study of (...) the various theosophic and anthroposophical trends (...) as socially important manifestations of patriarchal sexual economy. Let it suffice to say here that mystical groups merely represent a concentration of facts that we find in a more diffuse, less tangible, but, for all that, no less clear form, in all layers of the population. There is a direct correlation between mystical, sentimental, and sadistic sentiments on the one hand and the average disturbance of the natural orgastic experience on the other hand. (...) Compare this with the realistic, unsentimental, vital experience of the genuine revolutionary, the dedicated natural scientist, healthy adolescents, etc." (16:138). "The setting up of 'animal' and 'man of spirit' as opposites, follows from the setting up of 'sexual' and 'spiritual' opposites. It is the antithesis that always forms the basis of every theosophical moral philosophy"(1) (16:162). "As might be expected, the mystical attitude operates as a powerful resistance to the uncovering of unconscious psychic life, especially to repressed genitality. It is significant that mysticism tends to ward off natural genital impulses, especially childhood masturbation, more so than it tends to ward off pregenital infantile impulses. The patient clings to his ascetic, moralistic, and mystical views and sharpens the philosophically unbridgeable antithesis between 'the moral element' and 'the animal element' in man, i.e., natural sexuality. He defends himself against his genital sexuality with the help of moralistic deprecation. He accuses those around him of not having an understanding for 'spiritual values' and of being 'crude, vulgar, and materialistic.' In short, to one who knows the argumentation of the mystics and fascists in political discussion, and of the characterologists and 'scholars'(2) in natural scientific discussions, all this sounds all too familiar. It is one and the same thing" (16:180-181). "German fascism made an all-out effort to anchor itself in the psychic structure of the masses and therefore placed the greatest emphasis upon the inculcation of the adolescents and children. It had no other means at its disposal than the rousing and cultivation of slavery to authority, the basic precondition of which is ascetic, sex-negating education. The natural sexual strivings toward the other sex, which seek gratification from childhood on, were replaced in the main by distorted and diverted homosexual and sadistic feelings, and in part also by ascetism. This applies, for instance, to the so-called esprit de corps that was cultivated in the Labor Conscription Camps as well as the so-called 'spirit of discipline and obedience,' which was preached everywhere. The hidden motive behind these slogans was to unleash brutality and make it ready for use in imperialistic wars. Sadism originates from ungratified orgastic yearnings. The facade is inscribed with such names as 'comradeship,' 'honor,' 'voluntary discipline.' Concealed behind the facade, we find secret revolt, depression to the point of rebellion, owing to the hindrance of every expression of personal life, especially of sexuality" (16:192). "Fascism is supposed to be a reversion to paganism and an archenemy of religion. Far from it - fascism is the supreme expression of religious mysticism. As such, it comes into being in a peculiar social form. Fascism countenances that religiosity that stems from sexual perversion, and it transforms the masochistic character of the old patriarchal religion of suffering into a sadistic religion. In short, it transposes religion from the 'other-worldliness' of the philosophy of suffering to the 'this-worldliness' of sadistic murder" (16:XV).
1. The Nature of AnthroposophyRudolf Steiner's (1861-1925) anthroposophy dates back to Helena Petrowna Blavatsky who founded in 1875 the Theosophic Society with her Secret Doctrine of Atlantis and its six "root races," among which the "master race" belonged, the "aryans." Steiner joined the theosophic movement in 1902 and split from it in 1913, founding his own anthroposophic movement, because of his personal racist convictions. He could not accept the "absurdity" that the brown Hindu child Jiddu Krishnamurthi was declared the reincarnation of Christ (18). In 1917 he left his gnostic seclusion and started a social reform movement based on the subdivision of society into three completely independent spheres of state (judiciary), economics, and culture. It is a rigid patriarchal totalitarian concept behind a liberal mask of freedom and "independence": the anthroposophists (culture) at the top as the educational élite directing the two other spheres, while anthroposophy itself has to remain free from all economic and legal interference (14). Anthroposophy is a cult for people fearing inner movement and development, searching for complete ideological armoring, the complete petrifaction ("Ver-Steiner-ung") of the world (20). When Steiner was still alive the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyajev noted: "Some anthroposophists impressed me as possessed. They were spellbound by a fixed idea. When they uttered the words: 'The Doctor (i.e., Steiner) says...' the expression of their eyes changed, the face became different and it was impossible to continue the conversation. Devout anthroposophists are much more dogmatic, much more bound to authority than the most orthodox Orthodox or Catholics" (11). Steiner had any reason to present his teachings as divine revelation not to be questioned: his complete metaphysical philosophy, as well as his educational "Waldorf" theories, were stolen from the German idealistic philosopher, educationist, and psychologist Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841). Herbart's follower Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898), who was Steiner's teacher at the university, had published in 1882 a book on Anthroposophie (Vienna 1882). Another source of "Steiner's" "anthroposophy" is the romantic natural philosopher and physician Ignaz P.V. Troxler (1780-1866), who created in the wake of Schelling a speculative anthropology and, what he called, "biosophy" (14). Steiners second wife Marie von Sievers, of Russian-German background, pointed Steiner to the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, who had formulated a philosophical theology Steiner incorporated into "his" anthroposophy (11). The rest of anthroposophy, like "biodynamic" farming, is taken from Celtic-Germanic traditions, Hannemann's homeopathy and, of course, Goethe. Although Steiner's approach to nature, from "pure" ideas downwards, is the very opposite of Goethe's functional approach. Thus the "Goethenaum," the anthroposophic center and stuff, is a nasty misnomer (2). Additionally Steiner simply "spiritualized" the natural science of his time, e.g., the four ethers of anthroposophic theory he formulated according to the four aggregate states of matter (11). Anthroposophy is nothing but chaotic eclecticism. Its energetic function is total confusion to avoid genuine contact (5). The goal of the anthroposophist is the "Dreigliederung" (three-segmentation, trinomialisation) of his or her own inner life into thinking, feeling, and will. These three elements shall become independent of each other. Steiner thus cut to three the inner unity of man, so that a follower of Steiner "stands besides himself." A feel of imbalance and confusion conveyed in the typical anthroposophic architecture, which disturbs the sense of balance and actually leads towards a schizo-like state of mind (12). And then there is this special necrophiliac feel particular to anthroposophy, rendered by the colors purple and lilac. An outgrow of Steiner's personal (stomach-) cancer biopathy he died of (4). Steiner felt his thoughts as something given by beings of spirit, who were, according to his autobiography, his constant companions since childhood (18). He experienced no genital but only "spiritual" release. Sex not restricted to propagation he considered "Black Magic" (5, 14). According to his recollections he came to know happiness for the first time during his studies of geometrics when he was ten (18). By feeling and emotion we are, says Steiner, separated from the cosmic unity, while by thinking we are universal beings permeating everything and being one with the universe (13). Anthroposophy wants to prove the superiority of spirit over matter, which "spiritualisation" is the purpose of life (18). Control of breathing shall free man from his animal state (9). Anthroposophy always operates from above to below, from idea to matter, from doctrine to reality. Look at the art children are forced to make at Waldorf schools: it is all made according to one scheme, there is no spontaneous personal expression. Also Marie von Siever's "expressional dance," eurhythmics, has nothing to do with spontaneous expression but is all from the brain (2). Steiner says that the head has to control the brute "human animal" which constantly fights against the "spiritual power of higher evolution" (9). It is only natural that Steiner hated and fought psychoanalysis (18). According to a contemporary anthroposophist, psychoanalysis is "the illusions of Satan" (2). Quite fitting that all characteristics of "Ahriman" (the materialistic devil of anthroposophy) are best applicable to Steiner himself. One has only to compare photos of Steiner with his sketches of Ahriman, to see that Ahriman was nothing but Steiner's own behated self (15:pictures 14 and 18). The British anthroposophist Trevor Ravenscroft unintentionally reveals this secret identity when on page 275 of his book The Spear of Destiny he cites an alleged "hymn of triumph of the evil powers" (15). In reality this hymn is the very opposite: it is Steiner's personal "Cosmic Lord's Prayer!" (6). Thus by way of the confusion typical of anthroposophy an outstanding anthroposophist subconsciously identifies Steiner with Ahriman!
2. Anthroposophy and the Nazi MovementSome anthroposophists declare the nazis the "Ahrimanic shadow" of anthroposophy and claim that the nazis usurped the place originally entitled to the anthroposophists. According to this, nazism was the work of a "sun demon," while anthroposophy represents the "high sun spirit" Christ. They mention that originally the center of anthroposophy should have been built in Munich (not in Dornach, Switzerland) - the later center of the nazi party and its braunes haus (Brown House), and that the NSDAP was (after its ban in 1923) re-inaugurated on Feb. 27, 1925, the last birthday of Steiner's (6, 7). In this logic Steiner was the real Hitler, since according to Steiner this age is governed by the arch-angel Michael - the national spirit of Germany - and Steiner himself is considered by some anthroposophists the "right hand" of Michael (9). The similarity of Steiner and Hitler was unintentionally revealed in the anti-nazi book The Spear of Destiny, mentioned. Ravenscroft portraits Hitler as a "dark genius" of black magic with "open centers in his astral body," and as a kind of satanic saint with "magical charisma of personality" and the power of age old esoteric wisdom, "a figure of almost superhuman power" and with "the most arrogant face and demonical eyes (one) has ever seen." This "mad genius" had "superhuman power of will and self-discipline" and "super-personal strength and resolution." Moreover Hitler was backed by the beyond and thus was "counseled" by spiritual beings (15). The perfect twin of Steiner! Ravenscroft writes that in the pure, aryan bloodline there is permeated the capacity for clairvoyant vision as "blood memory" of the aryan sons of God. According to Ravenscroft, Steiner believed his "spirit vision" had arisen by some freak "blood heredity" and "identified this kind of faculty as the very last vestige of the ancient Germanic tribes, which had once been symbolized by the four-armed swastika." Out of this occult faculties of vision Steiner had spoken about the "occult meaning of blood," "the vessel of tribal and racial identity," and of "occult blood rites," "creating a magical mutation in the aryan race, a mutation which would bring about a new stage in human evolution, the birth of 'superman,'" by an "aetherisation of the blood." To achieve that, the aryan blood had to be kept pure, since "Lucifer had established himself in the blood of mankind," namely in "the blood of the Jewish race," which today has become the "vehicle of tragedy and evil," because the Jews clinched to their own "evil blood." As Ravenscroft writes further: "The Jewish blood had become gall and would be of no further significance in the evolution of humanity, for it had been replaced with the blood of the New Convenant" (15). Ravenscroft's book is quite typical for anthroposophy. For example back in 1920 the anthroposophist Karl Heise wrote a book on Entente-Freimaurerei und Weltkrieg (entente-freemasonry and World War One). The book was a product of Steiner's lectures on contemporary history and Steiner personally financed its publication and wrote the introduction. He called the First World War the "punishing storm wind" for the unbelieving allies. Wilson and Lenin were "Ahrimanic powers" against Germany's spiritual mission. The book is about a "British free masonic conspiracy" against Germany and cites many times Guido von List, the arch-anti-Semitic occult proto-nazi per se (complete with swastika and propagating a holocaust). List was the founder of the proto-nazi Armanenorden, which is known for its racist tantric-sexual magic. Heise mentions the swastika as the "prime aryan symbol of the manifest will of God." Today Heise's book, including Steiner's introduction, is constantly reissued by German neo-Nazi groups (3, 6). Steiner taught that in humanity, like in a single human being, there is a "spiritual evolutionary development" from child to adult. Thus the Negroid race is "baby," the Malayan-Polynesian race is "child," the Mongolic race is "youth," and the Indoaryan race is "adult," while the Amerind race is "aged" and destined to die out (21:192-205). Chaotic as anthroposophy is, in other lectures Steiner said quite the opposite: the Malayan-Polynesian race is a "dying race," they become "useless humans" because as former Mongols they cannot deal with the Sun and warmth of their tropic regions. Thus the brown people are doomed just as the red people. Also the Blacks are "atrophic humans" (9). In the same order as those decadent races, devoid of any spirit, belong the manlike apes who are an even further degeneration of man (8). According to Steiner Blacks absorb the light and heat from the Sun and process it in their "well developed afterbrain," from there it goes down the spine, where the Black's inner organs are cooked by the solar energy, which explains why the Black's metabolism and his instinctual life is so "hot." If the Black goes to the West, where is less Sun, he becomes an Amerind and his skin turns red, because the Reds are forced to radiate back some of the light and heat, and because of this energy discharge the Amerinds will die out. In contrast to this the Aryans are not dependent on external energy but are self-reliant. With their big forebrain they are capable of developing the spirit and, thus, only they are human beings in strict terms (8, 9). In 1922 Steiner pleaded that pregnant women should not read the then popular "Negro novels" since by the spiritual influence of this reading on the foetus their children would become gray, with frizzy hair, and mulatto-like. Also, in general, he lamented the influence of Negro culture in Europe, because it is detrimental to Europe's spiritual-racial purity. In 1926 his widow Marie von Sievers wrote, in one of her introductions to Steiner's lectures, about "the imbecility and the Negro-likeness" which the modern European admires as the latest fashion, one would aspire to the "sub-sensual-demoniacal which issues from the Negro-like," thus (7, 9). Steiner considered the by nature "egotistical, materialistic, and intellectualistic Jews" "ferments of decompensation" inside the Aryan host race (3). It was, according to Steiner, more than their religion: "Certainly it cannot be denied that today Jewry still acts as an unified whole and as such has intervened in the development of our current state of affairs in a manner, in fact, not favorable for the occidental ideas of civilization. Jewry as such has been out-lived for a long time now, is not entitled to take part in the modern intercourse of nations, and that it nonetheless kept itself alive is a mistake of world history, which consequences would be inevitable. We do not only mean the forms of Jewish religion, we especially mean the spirit of Jewry, the Jewish way of thinking" (9). It is only natural that in 1933 Günther Wachsmuth, the former personal secretary of Steiner and later member of the Board of Anthroposophy, said to a Danish newspaper, it is no secret that the anthroposophists are looking with sympathy to the developments in Germany, something good could come from it, only. At the same time Albert Steffen, the president of the Board of Anthroposophy, sent a circular to all nazi officials, assuring them that Steiner's teachings were in full agreement with nazism (6). Some anthroposophists had been already active, accordingly. There was, e.g., Hans Eberhard Maikowski (nickname "Red Rooster"), a major (Sturmbannführer) of the SA (storm troopers) and in this capacity the leader of the infamous butcher commando "SA Mordsturm 33." His brother, René Maikowski, a Waldorf teacher, had been a close co-worker of Steiner and also the "Red Rooster" himself was an ardent admirer of Steiner. Hans had been since 1922 a pupil at his brother's school, the very first Waldorf school, where he met Steiner in person. At the day the nazis took over he was killed by a communist assassin, after which he became, besides his SA-comrade Horst Wessel, one of the national saint heroes of the Third Reich (6). When in 1934 his Waldorf school was in danger to get closed down like all other private schools in Germany, René Maikowski wrote a letter to Hitler praising the true German education of will and character at Waldorf schools and that Steiner always stood for the same spirit as the nazis. In his letter he attributed the "blood heroism" of his brother Hans to his Waldorf education. Nevertheless Reinhard Heydrich, at that time leader of the Gestapo, judged anthroposophy an "Oriental soiling of the clear Germanic mind," and banned the Anthroposophic Society in 1935. Thereupon the anthroposophic board wrote to Hitler that they never had any connections with "Freemasonic and Jewish circles" and furthermore that nazi race experts had given them the official attestation that Steiner was of aryan origin (6). Despite Heydrich's attitude Steiner had many followers in the SS. In a 1986-interview on the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch of 1923 the later SS-Sturmbannführer (major) Gustav Adolf Lenk (born 1903 and a youth activist of the putsch) said on German TV: "For me Hitler is a shinning light of the 20th century which will never come back. I already told you that three men were my guiding personalities. That was General Ludendorff, and Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the great anthroposophist, and Hitler. As a boy Hitler had a tremendous influence on me. If I think about his very face, about those magnificent blue eyes, he has had. And how he spoke to us, to the German youth. You had to be just filled with enthusiasm. I had given myself over to this man from the very first moment. I decided in favor of Hitler immutably. And still today, until the last moment, until I die" (1). In 1935 Jules Sauerwein of Paris-Soir was the first foreign journalist who was allowed to visit a KZ. After Sauerwein returned to Berlin his colleague Stephane Roussel noted that he was in a state of enthusiasm she saw in him never before. Sauerwein had been accompanied during his visit to the KZ "Sonnenburg" by a young SS-officer from the ministry of justice. On their travel this SS-man had revealed himself an ardent admirer of Steiner, which was perfect since Sauerwein was the French translator of Steiner's books. Thus he and the anthroposophic SS-man befriended, calling one another by the first name. "Alexander," the SS-man, had explained the KZ to his fellow-anthroposophist "Jules" as follows: "This is one of our most wonderful institutions. These are no penalty camps but reform institutions. We do not consider our prisoners criminals but people going astray." (A kind of Waldorf school, I guess!) Accordingly enthusiastic was the report in Paris-Soir (17:189). Another SS-anthroposophist was the leading SD-officer (Security Department of the SS) SS-Gruppenführer (lieutenant general) Otto Ohlendorf, who supported his anthroposophic like-minded in Nazi-Germany as good as he could. He was a regular participant of anthroposophic conferences, e.g., on bio-dynamic farming or medicinal eurhythmics, and instrumental in saving the Waldorf schools from closing as long as possible. Born 1907 he entered in 1925, as one of its first members, the then, after its ban, newly formed NSDAP and SA. In 1927 he came to the SS, and in 1936 to the domestic intelligence of the SS, the SD, as chief of the department of economy. In 1939 he became responsible for the internal opinion service of the NS-state. Between June 1941 and July 1942 he was chief of the "SD-Einsatzgruppe D" (SD-Task Force D), which murdered 91 000 Jews in Russia. He directed an Einsatzgruppe longer than any other officer and refused all offers to return to Berlin, where he was more needed. Himmler called this puritanical representative of nazi-orthodoxy "grail-knight of National Socialism", alluding contemptuously to his anthroposophic faith. At the end of the Hitler regime Ohlendorf had plans to re-organize, and thus safe, Nazi-Germany according to anthroposophic principles, i.e., by transforming the NSDAP into a "temple of wisdom" free of all power politics. Up to his execution in 1951 as a major war criminal he continued to study Steiner (6). Ohlendorf was laid to rest by a pastor of the anthroposophic church Christengemeinschaft (Christian Congregation), Werner Georg Haverbeck. Born in 1909 Haverbeck became at a very early time member of the NSDAP and SA. He converted to anthroposophy at the home of Rudolf Hess, becoming in 1937 departmental chief in the staff of Hess. After the war in 1950 he became an anthroposophic parson, and later a Professor of Social Engineering. Prof.Dr. Haverbeck's "Collegium Humanum" (an anthroposophic "Academy for Environmental and Life Protection") in Vlotho, Germany founded in 1963, is a central meeting center of anthroposophists, neo-nazi groups, revisionists, ecological pacifists, new age people, neo-paganists, leftist supporters of the people of Palestine, life energy researchers, and the like. In 1989 Haverbeck appeared before the public with his book Rudolf Steiner - Anwalt für Deutschland (Rudolf Steiner, advocate for Germany). The general theme: there was no First and no Second World War, but actually only a 30-year-long defensive battle of the German race and nation as the spiritual, anthroposophic center of the world with Steiner as the Germanic führer of mankind. Germany had to defend itself against the "aspiration to world domination of the Anglo-Saxon race," behind which is "the ancient Jewish idea of vocation for world domination." Hitler, writes Haverbeck, was forced into war by Poland and the USA. Moreover there was no holocaust, and Auschwitz is, according to Haverbeck, a "historical lie" and "atrocity propaganda" of the Allies (6, 7). In 1992 the Swiss Waldorf history teacher Bernhard Schaub published the book Adler und Rose (eagle and rose) where he too wrote that the Second World War was a pre-emptive war of Hitler's, that there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz, and other such revisionist "theories." The holocaust is an "Anglo-American-Zionist propaganda lie." A similar book by the leading Russian anthroposophist Gennadij Bondarev, was 1996 published in Switzerland. Two years after the publication of his book the neo-Nazi Bondarev was expelled from the Anthroposophic Society but the same year, 1998, its central organ Goethenaum published an article by the leading anthroposophist Irene Diet, where she wrote that Jewry "as a retarded group soul" is a "dyed-in-the-wool factor in world history" (9). A co-worker of Haverbeck's, the Waldorf teacher Heinz Pfeifer, wrote in 1981 a book on Ahrimanic conspiracies Brüder des Schattens (brothers of the shadow). Claiming that in 1948 the National Council of Israel declared Israel the "spiritual center of the globe," and that, together with the masonic "World Lodge," Zionism would be the enemy of mankind. Jewish bankers had financed the Bolshevist revolution, and the Zionists "Sachs, Einstein, and Lubin" were responsible for the atomic bomb. Einstein had asked Roosevelt to drop the bomb on Germany (6). In 1990 Dieter Rüggeberg expanded Peiffer's theme in his book Geheimpolitik - Der Fahrplan zur Weltherrschaft (secret politics, the schedule to world domination), giving it a peculiar twist, by saying that Hitler and the other nazi leaders in reality were agents of the Anglo-Saxon-Jewish "Wisemen of Zion"-conspiracy for world domination. At the end of the book Rüggeberg proposes the "trinomialisation of the social organism" after Steiner (7). This "trinomialisation of the social organism" some anthroposophists see already materialized in the Third Reich. Walther Darré, the Reichsbauernführer (leader of nazi-peasantry) and Secretary of Agriculture, personally protected anthroposophic "biodynamic farming" (6). For the time after the war it was planned that the territories of the original German Reich would be cultivated according to anthroposophic bio-dynamic principles, while the new territories in the East would be cultivated with industrial chemical fertilizers. Accordingly in 1941 Himmler ordered a scientific study in Auschwitz to determine, once for all, whether Anthroposophic (Himmler favored) or industrial farming would render better results (6). (In his exchange of letters about his order to examine anthroposophic farming in Auschwitz, Himmler mentions an unnamed SS-officer who is an agitating anthroposophist at Auschwitz [10:89f]. Just another of these apparently many anthroposophic SS-officers.) The head gardener of the anthroposophic joint-stock "Weleda" (which to this day produces anthroposopic medicine), the anthroposophist and SS-officer Franz Lippert, was 1941-45 assigned to the KZ Dachau, to take care of the medical herb garden of the concentration camp, where the prisoners were "exterminated by work." Weleda was involved in medical experiments in the KZ, e.g., prisoners were frozen to death to test the Weleda anti-frostbite ointment. These experiments were performed by the KZ-physician, anthroposophist, and SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Sigmund Rascher. His father had been a leading member of the Anthroposophic Society at its center in Dornach, who, of course, had sent his son to a Waldorf school. As a kid Rascher even met Steiner himself at Dornach personally (6). Rascher was of equal quality to his colleague Mengele, an unbelievable pathological sadist, who not even begrudged his victims the delicacies of their last meal, so that in 1945 he was, because of embezzlement, shot on orders from Himmler. At the time Rascher still was a special favorite of Himmler, if not his personal friend, he submitted to Himmler in August 1942 his own invention: the gas chamber. Here one has to know that it was one of Steiner's teachings that potassium cyanide (like in the insecticide "Zyklon B" used in Auschwitz) from an occult point of view not only destroys the body but also the soul.(3) Thus Rascher aspired to a truly anthroposophic "final solution" (6). Ravenscroft proudly claims that Himmler, as a follower of Steiner's bio-dynamic farming, used anthroposophic "pest control of rabbits, rats, and sub-humans" (Ravenscroft words) to drive away the remaining Jews from the European continent by means of ashes from the KZ-crematories homeopathically dispersed in the air (15).
3. Waldorf SchoolsAccording to Haverbeck's Handbuch zur Deutschen Nation (handbook on the German nation, 1986) many elements of Waldorf education became in 1936 part of the then inaugurated official Adolf-Hitler-Schools and Napola-Schools (National Political Institutions to form the future Nazi élite) (6). Indeed, the leading Nazi pedagogue Alfred Bäumler liked Waldorf schools very much and, e.g., the educational concepts of the Nazi pedagogue Magdalene von Tiling were quite like those of Steiner's (20). Today there are in Germany about 170 Waldorf schools (with 68 000 pupils) and 110 more are under construction or planned currently. Worldwide there are more than 700 schools (9). Even if anthroposophy per se is not taught the "atmosphere" is there and the whole structure of the educational course is based on anthroposophic theory (9). There are the rigid schemes of four "ether bodies," cycles of seven years, and the traditional Aristotelian four tempers (2). Steiner took the more specific elements of this latter concept, the very heart of Waldorf education, from the, at the end of the 19th century, popular trivial educational books of Bernhard Hellwig, together with all its popular depreciatory notions on, e.g., the "phlegmatic" temper (20). Also there is the "law of karma," the Waldorf teacher has to support, undermining any possibility of personal development (14). Due to Steiner's version of the law of karma any bodily feature gains moralistic significance since the spirit got this special body due to his former karmic actions - a kind of micro racism (20). A little female pupil told her female teacher that her father abuses her sexually, the teacher answered: "You have chosen your parents yourself" (18). According to Steiner the Waldorf teacher is a "prophet" of "the coming development of humanity" and a missionary of the "spiritual world." A "mediator" between the "divine world order" and the child (9). Typical for Waldorf teachers are hysterical outbursts of corporal punishment and even sadistic exorcisms of "evil spirits," literally! (12). Nonconformity is treated with "medical eurhythmics" (9). Everything is seen from a moral point of view. Even the artistic expression of the children is submerged in morality: no color contrasts and no edges are allowed, and everything has ethical meaning (2). The Waldorf view of life is patriarchic, moralistic, anti-sexual, and conservative (18). Little children who ask where the babies are coming from are told about the heavenly origin of the human soul, the role of the guardian angel, and other such stuff (9). The world of the old 19th century fairy-tales is brought to the children with all its guilt, fear, and angst. A little girl, who did not enjoy fairy tales, Steiner called a "natural demon" void of any humanity (18). According to him since the 1890s human shapes were born who are no reincarnations of humans, at all, but the human form is filled by natural demons (3). The main enemy of Waldorf education is the masturbatory interest of the child. According to Steiner little children are not egoistic, not aggressive, not curious, not erotic, not sexual - if they are, there are Ahrimanic forces behind it (18). Before the age of 20 or 21 sexuality is considered something pathological and perverse. Accordingly kids are fired from Waldorf schools if their sexuality gets too obvious (12). Teenagers should be distracted from puberty by the spiritual. Younger children are beaten up. There is a case where a Waldorf kindergarten teacher heavily slapped the face of a pre-school boy who had exposed himself naked in front of a pre-school girl. One boy's mouth was washed with soap after he used dirty words (18). It is reported that in Waldorf educationally-subnormal-schools restless children are bind fast to their chairs. Other measures of anthroposophic special education are writing down sentences a hundred times, staying in the quoin, or slugs: like in the merry old Prussian school (2). But the main educational technique of the beloved Waldorf teacher-führer is the withdrawal of love (18). The teachers, of course, also operate with devastating moral judgments - and occult spells, literally! (2). To call Waldorf a "free school" is the same as calling a private Catholic school a "free school" (2). Well, there are no marks and reports as in other schools, instead the teacher writes little assessments, "appraisal reports," of the pupil's personality: opening the door for all kinds of stigmatization of the pupil by psychological dilettantes (9).
Literature
Footnotes
(1) In the original German one reads "gesamte theosophische Moralphilosophie" and could thus also translate "the theosophical moral philosophy as a whole."
(2) In the German original one reads "Geisteswissenschaftler," which one should, because of the brackets Reich put the word in, translate as "spiritual scientist" (as opposed to "natural scientist"). Reich clearly alluded with those brackets to the anthroposophists who called themselves "Geisteswissenschaftler."
(3) Steiner spoke about Zyankali (the poison 20 years later used in Auschwitz) to workers building the Goethenaum on Oct. 10, 1923. He said that Zyankali takes away not only the body but also the soul, and if anthroposophy would be known more nobody would commit suicide with Zyankali (19:47).
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Peter Nasselstein