Anthroposophy and Critics: April 2004 Archives

"No occult teacher will ever instruct a person who is filled with superstition or common prejudice, or one who is prone to senseless judgment or apt to fall prey to any illusion. The golden rule applying here is that, before even taking the first step in the direction of higher learning, a person must free himself from any flighty thinking or possibility to mistake illusion for reality. Above all an aspirant for spiritual enlightenment must be a person of common sense who only devotes himself to disciplined thinking and observations. If a person leans toward prejudice and superstition in the world of sense reality, it soon tends to be corrected by sense reality itself. If, however, a person does not think logically but indulges in fantasies, correction is not so simple. It is essential, therefore, that one have one's thought-life completely in hand and be able to exercise strict control over one's thoughts before ever venturing into soul and spirit worlds. One who easily leans to fantasies, superstitions and illusions is unfit to enter into the schooling prerequisite for spiritual teaching. It would be simple to reiterate that one were free of fantasies, illusion and superstition. But it is easy to deceive oneself here. Freedom from fantasies, illusions, prejudices and superstitions is gained by stern self-discipline. Such freedom is not easily attained by anyone. It must be remembered to what extent most people tend to sloppy, careless thinking and are unable to control their thought life through their own will-power."
Rudolf Steiner. "The Inner Development of Man." New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1970, page 10. Lecture of December 15th, 1904 (GA53). Translated by Maria St. Goar.

Despite a long record of opposing prejudice and discrimination in any shape or form, Rudolf Steiner is occasionally depicted as a racist. Some even describe Anthroposophy as "racist to the core". These attacks are so ludicrous as to be silly if the charges weren't so serious, for it does not take much reading in Rudolf Steiner's works for the uninformed reader to become aware of how strongly Steiner campaigned for the overcoming of all forms of prejudice, and thus how absurd the accusation really is. Yet as these claims are repeated more frequently, a danger arises, namely that something starts to be perceived as true simply because it is repeated so often. In our media saturated age, opinions are often formed by quick soundbites rather than careful consideration, and advertisers and propagandists of every persuasion exploit this fact. Another tendency also comes into play: the obsession with sensationalism that is so prevalent in our culture contributes to the situation where people are more eager to hear that once revered personalities actually had feet of clay than to build well-informed opinions. So there is a real danger that Rudolf Steiner's life work dedicated to overcoming prejudice might actually become associated in the minds of a many with an opposite ideal, the discredited and harmful doctrine of racism and anti-Semitism, simply through having the accusation repeated frequently. And it is very easy to throw labels like this around.

In an effort to prove Steiner's anti-Semitism, Peter Staudenmaier offered a quote from volume 92 of Rudolf Steiner's complete works (called GA92). There is only one slight problem. These words are not Rudolf Steiner. True, they are printed in GA 92, but if you read the title page, it makes clear that these are listener's notes of the lectures, and not a stenographic reproduction. This particular lecture is reconstructed from the notes of two participants: Walter Vegelahn and Eugenie von Bredow (this is stated on page 181). It was first put into coherent form and published in the 1930's, almost 30 years after the fact. From these notes, what Steiner might have said was reconstructed and put into a coherent form, edited for this edition by Helmuth von Wartburg at the Steiner Archive, and only published in 1999. What Steiner's actual, carefully-formulated exact words on the subject we can only guess. He obviously spoke about the topic of Wagner's racial views. Whether actually uttered the words "Wagner... cannot possibly be an anti-Semite" simply cannot be known. Certainly at least one of his listeners came away with the impression that he said something to this effect when they later sat down to write their notes, and then much later when the lecture was reconstructed the sentence was written. But we cannot know how much the issue is contaminated with the personality of either Walter or Eugenie. Nor can we correlate this to any other statements of Steiner's on the same theme, as this is the only place the issue is mentioned. Further I must not that even as these words stand, it is hard to call them an endorsement of Wagner's anti-Semitic statements. They are a description of Wagner's views and an explanation of their origin, not praise thereof.

Peter Staudenmaier appears not to have actually read the book that he is relying on to make his statement. If he had read the whole book, he would not go running around claiming these to be Steiner's actual words. He has thus demonstrated an incredible carelessness with historical sources for someone claiming to be working as a historian, and shown once again why he is not qualified to call himself a Steiner scholar. There is really no excuse for such sloppiness.