The Phase of Schisms

Anthroposophy does not seem to flourish in authoritarian, intolerant societies. Through siting the Goetheanum in Switzerland, Steiner made it visible as a centre of peace and international freedom during the 1914-1918 war. It is doubtful whether it could have been built in Germany during these years. The liberal Weimar Republic seems to have coincided with a rise in membership, but the increasing totalitarianism of the 1930s led in the end to active persecution by the Nazis in the last years of the Second World War. This can be seen as the suppression of one occultism by another, that underlying much Nazi ideology.24 Hitler, through his occultist espousal of ruthlessness of means (whether or not he personally believed his ends were good), can be interpreted in terms of black rather than white magic. Recovery and growth followed in the liberal democracy of post-war West Germany.

The conflict experienced in the Nazi years was accompanied by internal splits. As has been seen in relation to Theosophy in Wilhelminian Germany and Edwardian England, divisions within spiritual movements can have analogies with the situation outside. 

After the end of the Weimar Republic existing tensions led to a formal split within Anthroposophy: most of the German-speaking members separated from the others, even though the former were not Nazi.

The unifying magnetism of Steiner had long been absent because of his early and unexpected demise. This exposed the cultural fault-line between the German-speaking and the increasing numbers of non- German-speaking members.

The slow growth of Anthroposophy since the First World War took place in an overall context, until the 1960s, of little if any growth for similar movements. The intellectual climate of the mid-twentieth century was relatively unfavourable to optimistic, spiritually evolutionist movements such as Theosophy. This had been easily the largest ‘esoteric’ system, with very many more members than Anthroposophy. Theosophy declined from the 1920s. This was speeded by Krishnamurti’s (its reluctant World Teacher’s) attitude of, ‘Why did they ever pick on me?’25 Theosophy, until the emergence of Rudolf Steiner, had made little impact in the unique conditions of Germany, whose occultism and esotericism were not Anglo-Saxon. Yet Anthroposophy later spread in the English- and Dutch-speaking worlds when Theosophy declined.

Theosophy lacked Anthroposophy’s social embeddedness, as well as its intellectuality, apparent Christocentricity, applications and sense of community. By the 1930s the Dutch, English and other non-Germanspeaking memberships were no longer relatively insignificant. It was at this stage, despite the ordering of Anthroposophical social institutions which had been signified by the laying of the Foundation Stone, that the formal schisms occurred.

As has been suggested, the schisms, which took place between 1933 and 1935, were in many ways a reverse replay of the original Anthroposophical secession from Theosophy. Cultural legitimacy was with the loyalist German-speaking majority. Thus the first English Anthroposophic News Sheet declared (at Michaelmas, 1933): ‘Any translation can only imperfectly render Rudolf Steiner’s words. May its imperfections induce readers to penetrate more and more into the German original’. The minorities, in breach of Steiner’s constitutional ordinances, but following the Dutch and English Protestant traditions, set up ‘United Free’ Anthroposophical societies. In 1935 the great majority of Dutch and English members were expelled from the General Anthroposophical Society, by 1691 to 76 votes with 53 abstentions.

Postal voting would have made no decisive subtraction from the German-speaking majority at this time.

Meanwhile the European arena was building up to the 1939-1945 war. 

The new President, the German-speaking poet Albert Steffen, presided over this period of internal conflict. After the shock of Steiner’s death, his conservative-minded widow, who spoke no English, became the rallying point for the loyalist German speakers. Ita Wegman, the Dutch putative reincarnation of Gilgamesh, whose English was fluent, became a focus of dissent. She ran a clinic only a kilometre or so away from the Goetheanum at Arlesheim, but in another Anthroposophical world.

Steffen was leading a movement which, with the death of Steiner, had passed beyond the stage of unifying charismatic leadership, and into one of bereavement, infighting over inheritance, and difficult self-definition. Steiner himself had once questioned ‘the use of telling people over and over again that we are not a sect when we behave as though we were a sect’.26 The splits, which extended into the School of Spiritual Science, created a complex situation through leaving small minorities in each country affected. A very small but qualitatively important Germanspeaking group joined the dissidents. Less than a third of the Dutch membership remained loyal to the Goetheanum. This group was to grow more slowly than the dissident Dutch society. The English leader, Collison, remained loyal to the primary Anthroposophical body, together with a small minority of members who called themselves the ‘English Section’. Collison himself saw the British Empire as the great stepping stone to a higher world consciousness. The roots of many of the ‘English Section’ seem to have been in the relatively conservative and imperially-minded Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The other British Anthroposophists included pacifists and ex-Quakers.

The dissident Dutch included Ita Wegman and their General Secretary, Dr Zeylmans van Emmichoven. They appear to have increased their numbers considerably. At the end of the Second World War van Emmichoven took the initiative in trying to seek reconciliation with the primary Anthroposophical body through discussions with Steffen.

The dissident English Anthroposophists, led by the young Cecil Harwood, formed the carefully named ‘Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain’. In 1930 total UK membership had been nearly 600. The movement appears to have become more communitarian and less metropolitan. It was comprehensible to Gandhi, who had himself been much influenced by Theosophy. On visiting a Rudolf Steiner children’s home in 1935 he commented, ‘no explanations are necessary’.27 The Second World War was not a severe setback for English Anthroposophy because the movement, which in Germany was being increasingly put in the shadows by the Nazis, was not perceived as Nazi. The London headquarters was used as a canteen for H.M. Forces, whose numbers included members themselves.

There have been recent allegations that Anthroposophy in Germany was tainted by Nazism and racism. The claims, probably not from disinterested sources, state that Steiner’s racial theories involve a small minority evolving, and that they link in with Hitler’s. They suggest that, according to Anthroposophy, aboriginal peoples are descended from the already degenerate remnants of the third root race, the Lemurians, and are devolving into apes. It is further alleged that in 1922 Steiner said that the negro race does not belong in Europe, and that Anthroposophists today handle this not by outright denial that Steiner said this, nor by condemnation of him for saying it, but by explaining that Steiner was a product of his times. In another, related controversy, it has been said that in 1937 Guenther Wachsmuth, a prominent Anthroposophist, expressed sympathy and admiration for National Socialism28. Furthermore, Weleda has been accused of having had state contracts throughout the war, and even of supplying naturopathic materials for experiments on prisoners at Dachau.

More generally, the allegations of racism are dealt with not only through mitigating admissions that Steiner reflected the mentality of his times. These other methods include denial29 and the isolating of specific admissions through the claim that they are untypical. Indeed, given the Zeitgeist and the cultural proximity of German Anthroposophy to the often occult Nazi ‘ecology’ movement of blood and soil, it would be surprising if there were no compromising statements to quote.

National Socialism and Anthroposophy, despite their fundamental differences, have in common an aversion to positivistic intellectualism.

This reputedly was the basis for initial Nazi support for Waldorf (i.e. Anthroposophical) education. It is a good question how widespread the Nazi mentality was among German Anthroposophists, and difficult to assess how far Anthroposophy was less or more besmirched than the general population in Germany, or than large sections of non- German Europe and America where racist and anti-Semitic sentiments were rife. Steiner, it seems, publicly rejected anti-Semitism. It is very difficult to imagine Steiner agreeing, had he lived long enough, with the abhorrent practical policies of the Nazis.

In 1930 the Anthroposophical President spoke of the need to purify the ego ‘of all that clings to it of a racial nature’.30 Later, Jewish and other members were emigrating, and the German Anthroposophical Society itself was dissolved in 1935 on Himmler’s orders, it seems because it was international and individualistic. After 1936, the Swiss Anthroposophists had to bear the brunt of financing the Goetheanum because German contributions were blocked by the rigid Nazi exchange controls. Rudolf Hess was apparently an Anthroposophist, as was his wife.31 But in 1941, when Hess was succeeded by Martin Bormann following the former’s journey to the UK, the many Steiner schools were closed and Anthroposophical books were confiscated.

Himmler apparently viewed Anthroposophy as competition to his own esoteric paganism.32 At this devastating time there was a further schism in the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum. In 1942 its President and Guenther Wachsmuth broke with Marie Steiner, accusing her of using the copyright of Steiner’s books too restrictively. The widow was widely perceived to be using a subtle form of confiscation, though she reconciled herself at about this time with Ita Wegman, who died in 1943. On her death in 1948 Marie Steiner bequeathed the copyright to Anthroposophical friends (the ‘Nachlass faction’) who were not members of the Vorstand (i.e. the overall Executive Committee). The General Society tried to assert control over the publication of Steiner’s works but in 1950, after legal proceedings, paid − without prejudice to its claims − 180,000 Swiss francs to the legatees. The latter then rubbed salt in the wound by circulating a pamphlet on the struggle.