This is perhaps good polemic, but not much else. The context of the quote makes it clear that Steiner opposed the war itself. In your parallel, McNamara opposes losing.

He’s talking of the Russians and the 6th epoch in that quote. His conception was that Central Europe – including the ‘Western slavs’ – was a mediator between Western and Eastern culture. In his view, if central culture was to disappear then the Eastern culture of the 6th epoch (that is to follow our own Anglo- Germanic’ one) – the epoch of brotherhood and spirituality – would be damaged. The quote from ‘Call to Save Upper Silesia’ stands:

“Then both cultures, side by side, the German and the Polish, will be able to develop in accord with their inherent forces, without fearing that they will be violated by the other and without a political State taking one or the other side.”

As we’ve established, not least from the quote above, Steiner was opposing nationalism with 3-folding. If 3-folding was ‘in the background’ of his negotiations that would suggest that he was still working out details when he set up the press office. ‘promot[ing] the cause of the Central Powers’ seems to suggest promoting 3-folding, which could have led to an early peace.

I would suggest that you are trying to make rather too much of your assumed superiority as a scholar relative to my status as a member of the public. In fact, I think I’ve done rather well as you haven’t showed Steiner supported the war, or that he was a nationalist, or that he thought attributing blame in the war was a good idea, etc Where you’ve picked me up on details it’s either been trivial (the date of one of the lectures) or wrong (your claim that the the distinction between separatism and autonomy was ‘crucial’ in the Upper Silesia conflict). It seems to me that your inability to get simple matters of interpretation like this correct points to a degree of polemical overshoot on your part, that is perhaps blocking your ability to function as a proper scholar.

———-

A modern 3-folding example

As a historian one would expect that you might be interested in understanding the history of a phenomena. But in this article you appear to have chosen an agenda beforehand to portray Steiner’s 3-folding ideas as a variety of right-wing thought, allied with nationalism and authoritarianism. But I think that I have provided sufficient quotes from Steiner to show that the reality is otherwise.

The reality of 3-folding’s implementation is also different from the account that you have provided. It is unfortunate that 3-folding did not make much headway against the forces of reaction in Europe around WW1 and had to be abandoned in Steiner’s lifetime – had it not been it is possible that Nazism might have been averted. But it is still a vital world impulse and has been used in the Philippines in the mid 90s to create an agenda for social change that attempts to foster balanced economic growth, social cohesiveness and justice, a democratic polity and to maintain a harmonious ecology. The policy objectives of this program were set out in a document known as Philippine Agenda 21. This document was piloted into existence, against much business and government resistance, by the anthroposophist Nicanor Perlas with the support of Philippine NGOs, who expressed a ‘vital and popular civil society’. The document has been approved by presidential decree and the president, Fidel V Ramos, had this to say about the program in his September 26, 1996 speech:

“In my State of the Nation address last 22nd of July 1996, I mentioned that we do not intend to ‘Grow now and clean up later’. But do not misunderstand me. Given the many demands of development, this ‘cleaning up later’ not only refers to the economy and the environment. It also means that we will clear up all other facets of Philippine life, including our policies and our culture.

When I say, we clean up in terms of our culture, we intend, for example, to grow and develop with our spirituality and sterling Filipinos values Intact. I do not want Filipinos to succumb to a materialistic consumerist lifestyle. I do not wish to see our world-renowned Filipino spirituality and social sensitivity to be sacrificed at the altar of the economic advancement.

Cleaning up as we grow in the realm of culture to me means to harness Filipino creativity, values, talents and skills to create a new model of development, one that is not only democratic, environmentally friendly and cost-effective, but also celebrates the vibrancy of our diverse cultures as well as respects and develops the tremendous potential that resides in every one of us. This, after all, is what being maka-Diyos, maka-tao, maka-kalikasan, and maka-bayan means in real terms.

..

Economic growth, unleashed by capitalism, has also been accompanied by other forms, less desirable forms, of growth. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reminds us that, if we are not careful, economic growth can lead to jobless, ruthless, voiceless, rootless, and futureless growth…

The growing awareness that economic growth is a means, not an end in itself, has influenced most of the countries of the world today to pine for ‘another development’, one that retains the useful features of capitalism without falling prey to its excesses.
Philippine Agenda 21 envisions a better quality of life for all through the development of a just, moral, creative, diverse yet cohesive society characterized by appropriate productivity, participatory and democratic processes, and living in harmony within the limits of the carrying capacity of nature and the integrity of creation.”

Jesaiah Ben-Aharon comments as follows:

“But this highest policy document of the Philippine Government, signed and approved by Presidential decree, is not only about a threefold-social- order concept, but have arisen though an intense threefold social process, in which, for the first time in human history, representative of the “third sector”, civil society, achieved an equal social standing, siting at the table of negotiation with the Government (Polity) and business (the economic sector), and bringing about a threefold reality already in the negotiation process.”
http://www.antroposofi.org/antropsy/aharon.htm

T.

Ted Wrinch

Thanks for your comment. In my view, the harmfulness of US imperial actions is much worse than that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For better or worse, though, Rudolf Steiner did not live in the US.

Enthusiasts of Steiner’s ‘social threefolding’ who want to understand what threefolding has actually looked like historically will need to become familiar with the historical context out of which threefolding emerged. The problem, of course, is that this sort of historical understanding makes naïve and uncritical celebrations of threefolding impossible. That is why lots of threefolding advocates avoid it.

Apart from historical naivete, there are a number of fundamental political disagreements involved as well. It can be hard to make this clear to threefolding fans, but from the point of view of many social ecologists and all sorts of other radicals, threefolding proposals are at best a notably timid variety of reformism. Instead of challenging capitalism and challenging the state, threefolders want “to transcend the fusion of the economic, political, and educational sectors” in the hope that this will magically make unjust social structures better. Moreover, threefolding ideas about the role of democratic procedures are directly contrary to many forms of participatory democracy, not to mention egalitarian and participatory economic and educational institutions.

One of the central arguments in my article is that ‘social threefolding’ belongs to a lengthy tradition of alternative political and economic proposals that do not offer genuine alternatives to existing structures. Like followers of Henry George, followers of Silvio Gesell, followers of C.H. Douglas, and lots of other would-be world saviors, followers of Steiner often focus so tightly on their own vision of salvation and renewal that they have a hard time discerning the points of convergence and the points of divergence with other forms of discontent with the status quo. If we want to build a future that genuinely transcends the current structures of society, we will need to take a much more critical look at such proposals. Best,

Peter Staudenmaier

Thanks for your comment. The text you linked to rehearses the usual threefolding-will-save-the-world line. But it does acknowledge that Steiner’s ideas about threefolding were based on a Habsburg framework and were meant to maintain that framework. This is exactly what critics of threefolding have pointed out for many years. Social threefolding simply takes Steiner’s cultural nationalist assumptions for granted and aims to apply them across the board, oblivious to their historical resonance. Steiner’s beliefs about the “German mission” were shaped by his involvement in the German nationalist movement in Habsburg Austria in the 1880s. Fans of threefolding often seem unaware of why that historical context matters. For a more detailed look at the subject, see here:

http://www.waldorfcritics.org/articles/Steiner%27s_Early_Nationalism.html

Best,

Peter Staudenmaier

This is a response:

“One Look to the Past: A Century without a Threefold Republic”

https://sites.google.com/site/threefoldnow/one-look

> Which is the opposite of supporting the war.

That is a very revealing statement. In the eyes of Steiner’s admirers, if he said the war has developed in the opposite way he hoped for and has led to a terrible tragedy, this must mean that he opposed the war! Imagine applying the same notion to supporters of the Viet Nam war or the Iraq war.

This is an illustrative instance of the differences between anthroposophical thinking and historical thinking. Consider a figure like Robert McNamara, for example, one of the most prominent proponents of the US cause in the Viet Nam war. By anthroposophist logic, Robert McNamara actually opposed the Viet Nam war. After all, the outcome of that war was ‘the opposite of his own intentions,’ and McNamara did come to see the war as a ‘terrible tragedy’ and so forth.

Alas, this does not mean that he opposed the war.

Steiner’s support of the Central Powers is hardly a sign of some sort of special malevolence on his part, any more than his stance on Upper Silesia. Such positions were common among German intellectuals at the time, across the political spectrum. What makes Steiner interesting in this regard is the tenacity with which his latter-day followers cling to historically groundless myths about him and his time. This makes it very difficult for them to make sense of either Steiner or his historical context.

> The press office he was trying to establish appears to be to promote 3-folding

The press office was quite explicitly to promote the German and Austrian cause in the war. It did have a connection with ‘threefolding’ as well, which in Steiner’s eyes was an expression of the German and Austrian cause; Steiner said that threefolding was “in the background” of his negotiations over establishing the press office in June 1916, though his threefolding principles as such weren’t articulated until 1917. The 1916 events are discussed both by Steiner’s anthroposophist biographers and his non-anthroposophist biographers; according to anthroposophist Christoph Lindenberg, for example, Steiner himself took the initiative on this project, while according to Helmut Zander it was Moltke’s adjutant who initially contacted Steiner. Both Lindenberg and Zander say very clearly that the purpose of the press office was to promote the cause of the Central Powers. See Christoph Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner: Eine Biographie (Stuttgart: Freies Geistesleben, 1997), 574-75, and Helmut Zander, Rudolf Steiner: Die Biografie (Munich: Piper, 2011), 345-46. A particularly thorough account can be found in Helmut Zander, Anthroposophie in Deutschland: Theosophische Weltanschauung und gesellschaftliche Praxis 1884–1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 1273-75.

> You say that Steiner believed that defeat by the ‘slavic element’ would be ‘an evolutionary tragedy’, which is not right.

Regardless of whether we think it is right, it is, alas, what Steiner said. There is no need to depend on my translation; here is Steiner in his own words:

“Was wird man unter der sechsten Kulturepoche zu verstehen haben? Man wird darunter eine Kulturepoche zu verstehen haben, innerhalb welcher ein großer Teil der östlichen Menschen ihr Menschentum demjenigen zum Opfer gebracht haben wird, was in der Volkskultur errungen worden ist, indem gleichsam wie ein Weibliches das östliche sich wird haben befruchten lassen von dem männlichen Westlichen. Dasjenige, was leben wird in den Seelen der sechsten Kulturepoche, wird dasselbe sein, was von den Seelen der fünften Kulturepoche errungen worden ist. Das bedingt, daß von Osten her das Unreife und noch nicht Gereifte sich walzt, sich wehrt gegen dasjenige, was ja doch ge schehen muß. Genau ebenso, wie das Griechisch-Römische sich einmal zu wehren hatte gegen das Germanische, so muß sich das Slawische gegen das Germanische wehren; aber genau ebenso wie beim Übergang vom Griechisch-Römischen zum Germanischen in der aufsteigenden Entwickelung, so bei dem Übergang vom Germanischen ins Slawische in der absteigenden. Indem die eigentliche Mission der fünften Kulturepoche von dem germanischen Element übernommen worden ist, war dieses germanische Element dasjenige, welches für diese fünfte Kulturepoche das eigentliche Verständnis des Christentums im inneren Erringen in die Erdenevolution einzufügen hatte und noch haben wird. Und es wäre das größte Unglück geschehen, wenn auf die Dauer das germanische Element besiegt worden wäre von dem römischen, denn dann hätte nicht geschehen können, was durch die fünfte Kulturepoche geschehen ist: Dieses germanische Element hatte eben das persönliche Erringen darzuleben. Und es wäre das größte Unglück, wenn jemals das slawische Element das germanische besiegen würde. Merken Sie den Unterschied. Der trostloseste abstrakteste Schematismus wäre es, wenn man das als ein Unglück bezeichnen würde beim Übergang von der fünften zur sechsten Kulturepoche, was man als ein Unglück bezeichnen müßte beim Übergang von der vierten zur fünften Kulturepoche. Der Sieg der Römer würde bedeutet haben: das Unmöglichmachen der Mission der fünften Kulturepoche; der Sieg des slawischen Elementes würde ebenso diese Unmöglichkeit bedeuten für die sechste Kulturepoche. Denn nur im passiven Annehmen desjenigen, was die fünfte Kulturepoche hervorbringt, kann der Sinn der sechsten bestehen.”

Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges, 42-43

As it happens, this lecture exists in English translation, in typescript form, marked “for members of the Anthroposophical Society,” and circulates among anthroposophists (it is available from the Rudolf Steiner Library in New York, for example) as Rudolf Steiner, “The Christ-Impulse as Bearer of the Union of the Spiritual and the Bodily,” translated by Mabel Cotterell. I recommend that interested readers who don’t know German consult this anthroposophist translation and see for themselves.

> And his characterisation of them as having qualities ‘belonging to mankind as a whole’ refutes any charge of nationalism.

That is a delightfully ahistorical conception of nationalism. I recommend a look at any of the following:

Robert Kann, The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy 1848-1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964)

Aira Kemilhäinen, Nationalism: Problems concerning the word, the concept and classification (Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän kasvatusopillinen korkeakoulou, 1964)

George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York: Howard Fertig, 1975)

Louis Snyder, Roots of German Nationalism: The Sources of Political and Cultural Identity 1815-1976 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978)

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983)

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983)

Michael Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800-1945 (London: Edward Arnold, 1988)

Jost Hermand and James Steakley, eds., Heimat, Nation, Fatherland: The German Sense of Belonging (New York: Lang, 1996)

Krista O’Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, Nancy Reagin, eds., The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005)

Eric Kurlander, The Price of Exclusion: Race, Nationalism and the Decline of German Liberalism 1898-1933 (New York: Berghahn, 2006)

Sinisa Malesevic, Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race Across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008)

Michael Steinberg, “Nationalist Cosmopolitanism” in Steinberg, Austria as Theater and Ideology: The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival, 1890-1938 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 84-115

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, “Formal and informal nationalism” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16 (1993), 1-25

Pieter Judson, “From Liberalism to Nationalism: Inventing a German Community, 1880-85” in Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire 1848-1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 193-222

Brian Vick, “The Origins of the German Volk: Cultural Purity and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Germany” German Studies Review 26 (2003), 241-56

Dominic Boyer, “The Bildungsbürgertum and the Dialectics of Germanness in the Long Nineteenth Century” in Boyer, Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 46-98

Eric Kurlander, “Völkisch-Nationalism and Universalism on the Margins of the Reich: A Comparison of Majority and Minority Liberalism in Germany, 1898-1933” in Neil Gregor, Nils Roemer, and Mark Roseman, eds., German History from the Margins (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 84-103

Exchanges like this are an illuminating example of the difficulties that routinely arise in discussion between esotericists and scholars of esotericism. Beholden as they are to well-worn anthroposophist myths, Steiner enthusiasts are often completely unaware of basic biographical facts about him. When historians point out some of these basic facts, anthroposophists think their founder is being demeaned and disgraced and misrepresented and abused. This makes anthroposophists cling ever more tightly to their cherished myths. The dynamic is unlikely to change until anthroposophists begin to see Steiner as a historical figure.

Peter Staudenmaier

“The events now taking place are the opposite of our own intentions, which have come to expression in this very building. [ the Goetheanum ]

Again and again we must try to see clearly which stream of spiritual development we wish to see taken up by humanity, and today we have to say it is the opposite of the stream which has led to the terrible tragedy of these last years. ”

Which is the opposite of supporting the war. And he says the same in many other places. He put the cause of the war down to materialism, that he thought had become the common debilitating world-view of Europe, and nationalism. The machinations of Western occult societies were subsidiary. On geopolitics, he believed that attributing blame was of no use, including blame to the Germans:

“From what is now happening, a few souls must come to a realization that we cannot go
on like this; human evolution must take up the spiritual! Materialism is confronting its
karma in this, the most terrible of all wars. In a certain sense, this war is the karma of
materialism. The more this fact is realized by human beings, the more they will abandon
their arguments about who is to blame for the war…”

Christ in Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman, 1918

Your expressions ‘fervent supporter’ and ‘evil machinations’, are the kinds of things he opposed, as would credible historians today.

As you’ll know, Steiner didn’t simply consider the Russians ‘immature’ but he considered them the future, when they would become the people of brotherhood and spirituality (rather like many think today). As you’ll also know, rather than considering the West ‘obsolete’, he considered it to be the culture of the present, that we would all be living through and learning from for the next 1700 years.

The press office he was trying to establish appears to be to promote 3-folding, a solution to the bloodshed and violence, not a promotion of it.

In some lectures Steiner has said that the German empire was a mistake and in others that the Germans were not natural politicians. He had a more nuanced view of ‘Germandom’ than you express:

“The life of Central Europe, with all that it was, lies in the dust. What lived in Central Europe is, to a great extent, sunk in a fearful sleep. At the present moment, the Germans are, one might say, forced to think of freedom, not as they talked of it in all manner of fine phrases at the time when they were groaning under the yoke of Ludendorff — when constraint of itself engendered an understanding of the idea of freedom. Now they think of it with crippled powers of soul and body, in total inability to summon up the energy for real intense thought. We have in Germany all sorts of attempts at democratic forms — but no democracy. We have a republic — but no republicans! And this is in every way a symptom that has especially manifested itself in Central Europe, but is characteristic of the European world in general.”

Cosmogony, Freedom, Altruism, 1919

You say that Steiner believed that defeat by the ‘slavic element’ would be ‘an evolutionary tragedy’, which is not right. His understanding of the ‘slavic element’ was a little more nuanced than that and he believed that the ‘Western slavs’ belonged to Central Europe:

“The thinking which is concerned with the good of mankind as a whole could never include the territory of Poland in the Russian Empire. For in a remarkable way it is precisely the western Slavs with their profoundest characteristics who belong to Central Europe. I cannot speak today about the checkered destiny of the Polish people. But I just want to say that the spiritual culture of the Polish people found one of its culminations in the Polish messianic movement ó let everybody think what they like about this reality ó which, out of the substance of the Polish people contains spiritual feelings and spiritual ideas belonging to mankind as a whole. We are speaking here, in a way, about that Gnostic element which corresponds to one of the three soul components which are to flow from the western Slavs to Central Europe.

The second element lies in the Czech people to whom ó not for nothing ó John Huss belongs. Here is the second soul component inserted into Central Europe out of the Slav element. And the third component is from the southern Slavs. These three soul components push westwards like three cultural peninsulas and most certainly do not belong to the eastern European Slav element. Externally, on the physical plane, by means of political marriages, but inwardly by means of what I have just been explaining, this Austria has come about whose purpose it is to amalgamate German and western Slav peoples precisely so that the western Slavs can unfold in accordance with their own impulses.”

Karma of untruthfulness, 1916

The above characterisation of ‘Western slavs’, as ‘belong[ing] to Central Europe’ dovetails with Steiner’s description in the later ‘Call to Save Upper Silesia’, that I have already quoted from, where he says, again:

“Then both cultures, side by side, the German and the Polish, will be able to develop in accord with their inherent forces, without fearing that they will be violated by the other and without a political State taking one or the other side.”

And his characterisation of them as having qualities ‘belonging to mankind as a whole’ refutes any charge of nationalism.

The rest of your quotes are almost entirely from the infamous ‘Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges’, which has not been translated into English but has been one of your favourite quote sources for years. It’s unlikely that the quotes have the meanings that you attribute to them.

Perhaps the ‘myths’, ‘erroneous belief’s and ‘mistakes’ that you talk about are more on your own side? And perhaps you have yet to come to terms with what Steiner actually said, rather that what it suits you to say for the polemical support of your own world-view?

T.

Ted Wrinch

A similar example of erroneous beliefs shared by anthroposophists and their enemies is the notion that Steiner opposed World War I. This notion is virtually an article of faith among anthroposophists today, and was popular among anthroposophy’s adversaries in the aftermath of the war itself. To some extent the durability of this myth may have to do with anthroposophical inattentiveness to their own sources; the passages quoted above, for instance, are not from 1916 but from September 29, 1917, less than a year before the collapse of the German war effort.

In reality, Steiner was a fervent supporter of the Central Powers, Germany and Austria, particularly during the early years of the conflict. He blamed the war on the English, French, and Russians, and insisted that Germany and Austria were merely defending themselves against the evil machinations of their enemies. At the same time, Steiner offered a spiritual and supernatural interpretation of the war’s causes.

In a lecture to German anthroposophists on September 30, 1914, Steiner described the war as a spiritual mentor, a “teacher” and “master” that has taught people to fight egoism and materialism and has engendered “love for humanity.” He declared that the war was cosmically necessary, that it is “founded in the karma of the nations” and “must happen for the salvation of humankind.” (Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges, 24-25) In a February 1915 lecture, Steiner acknowledged that the war had caused “enormous rivers of blood to flow,” but explained that these rivers of blood “must flow today because of the eternal necessities of earthly evolution.” He depicted the war as the earthly manifestation of necessary processes playing out in “the concrete spiritual world,” among “the beings of the spirit worlds”; it is “a world of demons and spirits which works through humankind when nations battle one another.” By understanding the war’s spiritual dimension, the conflict appeared as preparation for “the future evolution of humanity.” (ibid., 32-33) For Steiner, the war was not just a military conflict but a battle of national spirits, a cosmic confrontation between “Germandom” and the spiritually immature East as well as the spiritually obsolete West; it would be an evolutionary tragedy if the German element were to be defeated by the Romanic element or the Slavic element. “We know as anthroposophists: Europe’s I resides in the German spirit. That is an objective occult fact.” (ibid., 19)

Anthroposophists believed that the World War would bring Germany the stature it deserved, world spiritual predominance. They described the war as a “turning point in history which will give Germany and the German people leadership in the entire realm of human spiritual culture.” (The opening sentence of the premier issue of the anthroposophist journal Das Reich, April 1916). In 1916 Steiner sought to establish a press office in Switzerland to promote the German and Austrian cause, but was turned down by the German high command. (Steiner, Wie wirkt man für den Impuls der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, 232-33) But the war did not conclude with the German victory Steiner and his followers expected. Their subsequent disillusionment centered on the notion that the unblemished German spirit had been failed by an inadequate leadership and that Germany needed to be revitalized through spiritual and national regeneration.

After the German defeat in 1918, Steiner and his followers insisted that Germany was not responsible for the war. This claim became a central component of anthroposophy’s public profile during the Weimar republic. The anthroposophist emphasis on German innocence was coupled with conspiracy theories about longstanding Western plans to destroy and dismantle the German and Austrian empires. Steiner himself had declared already in 1914 that “this war is a conspiracy against German spiritual life.” (Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges, 27)

According to Steiner, occultist secret societies in the Entente countries had planned the war decades ahead of time: “I have drawn your attention to the demonstrable fact that in the 1890’s certain occult brotherhoods in the West discussed the current world war, and that moreover the disciples of these occult brotherhoods were instructed with maps which showed how Europe was to be changed by this war. English occult brotherhoods in particular pointed to a war that had to come, that they positively steered toward, that they set the stage for.” (Steiner, Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, 22) Germany was thus forced to defend itself: “The Germans could foresee that this war would one day be fought against them. It was their duty to arm themselves for it.” (Steiner, Aufsätze über die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, 321) Anthroposophists such as Karl Heise, Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, and Wilhelm von Heydebrand, with Steiner’s active support, included Freemasons and Jews within this ostensible anti-German conspiracy, publishing a range of antisemitic conspiracy theories about the lost war from 1918 onward.

Anthroposophists today have yet to come to terms with this aspect of their historical legacy.

Peter Staudenmaier

Steiner did consistently oppose WW1; there are many dozens of instances in his writings were he says this, calling it a tragedy and talking of the sadness of the blood-soaked battlefields. A quote expressing his typical view is given below:

“The quest for knowledge is intimately bound up with the most inward aspect of the human being, and every now and then we must therefore enquire into the essential nature of our will and intent. In the light of the present situation, woeful as it is, it seems the answer to this question must be a negative one. For more than three years we have seen something spread across the world that I need not discuss in detail, at least to begin with, for we are all aware of it and feel it deeply. The events now taking place are the opposite of our own intentions, which have come to expression in this very building. [ Note 1 ]

Again and again we must try to see clearly which stream of spiritual development we wish to see taken up by humanity, and today we have to say it is the opposite of the stream which has led to the terrible tragedy of these last years. This is something we may call to mind again and again when we give deep and full consideration to the events now raging all over the world. We may say to ourselves that it appears as if time were drawn out and had become elastic, as if the things we remember from before this madness took hold of the world happened not just years but centuries

There will, of course, be many today ó as there always have been ó who may be said to sleep through the events of the day, people who are not fully awake to what is going on today. But when those who are awake look back on what went through their minds four or five years ago and left an impression, they will feel more or the less the way one does when one lets the mind dwell on an old book or a work of art that was created hundreds of years ago. Events which meant something to us before this madness came on the world now seem to have happened an infinitely long time ago.”
….
“Failure to see the spiritual reality and take account of the element of the spirit is ultimately the cause of this terrible world war. Nor can it be said that through these years ó years which have turned into centuries for anyone who is awake in them, as I have said ó humanity has learned an adequate lesson from the terrible events around us. Sadly, it has to be said that the opposite is the case.

What is the characteristic element to be found day by day, hour by hour, when we take note of what people think, or rather pretend to think and pretend to want? It is that, fundamentally speaking, no one in the world knows what they want, and no one realizes that people’s perfectly justifiable aims, whichever form they may take in the minds of individual nations, would be achieved so much better if they did away with these terrible wars in which so much blood is shed. People do not realize that these terrible events with their bloodshed are really not necessary as a means of helping them to achieve their aims.”
…
“Imagine a band of children smashing up all the pots and plates, glasses and everything in the house. The adults who see this happening are considering how to stop it, for the children keep running to the larder and all over the house to find more things to smash. Finally the adults have an idea as to how they can stop it. A number of people who are watching, people who actually consider themselves to be the teachers of these children, find a solution: They take care that everything breakable is collected and smashed to pieces ó and that, they think, should put an end to it all! I do not know how many people would not consider those teachers to be fools. This is the kind of situation where people would see the truth. Yet there are people who consider themselves to be wise and who say to the whole world: Carnage must continue until peace comes; everything has to be broken, so there will be nothing left to smash in the world. This is considered wisdom. Go on murdering people for as long as you can and you will stop the murder. This is wisdom!

For anyone who has even a spark of logic it is no longer wisdom when the teacher says to a band of children: To make sure nothing else gets smashed up, I will quickly get people to collect all other breakable objects and smash them; I reckon nothing else will get smashed after that. Why do people call this foolishness and the other thing political foresight? Because people’s thinking stops at the very point where it should be most intense, which is where their thoughts relate to great questions of destiny.”
…
“We are now living in an age when one year of war is equal to more than ten years of war in the seventeenth century, because war has become so much more destructive. By the standards of those times we have more than a Thirty Years War behind us already.”

Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, 1916

T.

Ted Wrinch

> This seems to agree rather well with Steiner’s notion

These are common anthroposophist myths. Many anthroposophists today believe that the social threefolding movement was itself somehow multi-ethnic and striving for an anti-national resolution of the Upper Silesia conflict. Interestingly, these are the same claims put forward at the time by harsh critics of threefolding. They are part of a series of myths that Steiner’s latter-day followers have fallen for; many anthroposophists believe that Steiner opposed WWI, for example, while some of them think that Breslau (Wroclaw) was in Upper Silesia, and so forth.

In reality, the social threefolding movement saw its proposed resolution for the Upper Silesia conflict as a way to protect German interests in the region and save the province as a whole for Germany. That is what my article explains in some detail. Due in part to unfamiliarity with the historical context, anthroposophists today often misunderstand this. Brendan Karch’s excellent 2010 dissertation would be a fine place for anthroposophists to start in acquainting themselves with the history of the conflict. For instance, Karch’s discussion of movements for autonomy and for separatism (a crucial distinction), on pp. 172-81 of his dissertation, provides a thorough basis for anthroposophists looking for a better grasp of the historical background, as does Karch’s subsequent examination of the 1921 plebiscite. Those interested can find Karch’s dissertation here:

http://www.brendankarch.com/research/dissertation.pdf

Another good way for admirers of Steiner to gain a better understanding of ‘social threefolding’ efforts in Upper Silesia would be to read some of the materials produced by the threefolding movement at the time, though most of these materials remain untranslated. What is perhaps most important, however, is keeping in mind that Steiner and his first generation of followers lived in a different time and place, and that what seemed sensible to them in their own situation will not always align with what Steiner’s admirers consider sensible today.

Peter Staudenmaier