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Rudolf Steiner. For some a visionary. For others, an esoterist on the distant fringes of science. Steiner offers solutions that, if you don't question them, sound interesting. I think if he were alive and pushing his views today, you'd more likely find him in a psychiatric hospital than at the forefront of a religious, occult and medical movement. Over 100 years after his death, his pseudo scientific influence can still be found in medicine, wine making and education.
Anthroposophical content very clearly isn't in the Waldorf school curriculum. I found a drawing in my notebook of the head as the sun, the body as a crescent moon. The arms and legs were rays of stars. What I was taught back then was simply unscientific nonsense. In Steiner's view of medicine, illness come, in part, from a person's biography and from their past lives. You could call it a genetic predisposition. You could also use the term karma. What role has anthroposophical thought had in eroding notions of truth and fragmenting societies, especially since COVID?
It shows the worldview that emerges when you consistently deny facts: It can ultimately lead you to distance yourself from democratic process. Just how much does Rudolf Steiner's legacy influence our present? What role has it played in society? Waldorf schools, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine. They have one thing in common: Rudolf Steiner. His esoteric, pseudo scientific doctrine lacks solid evidence.
Yet it has survived over more than a century since his death. Just who was Rudolf Steiner? Rudolf Steiner was born on February 27, 1861, in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire. He grew up modestly. He was the son of a railway worker and often relocated with his parents. A childhood between railroad tracks and timetables. He was an avid reader and developed an early interest in technology and natural science. Steiner grew up relatively poor. He attended secondary school and was then able to study natural sciences at Vienna's technical university.
At the same time, he was deepening his studies in the humanities. He spent time in the Viennese salons, coffeehouses and intellectual circles… wherever fin de siècle Vienna was gathering. He made a name for himself despite his austere beginnings. Steiner has said he had a strong spiritual inclination even as a child, seeing an apparition of his dead aunt when he was nine. He was certain a spiritual world existed. That early experience would later lead him to claim that the supernatural could be revealed using the right system.
What was interesting and new about Steiner is that he believed anyone could achieve it, in theory. In his writing, he always structures his methods… exercises in thinking, feeling and willpower… to encourage individuals to develop their own powers of perception. To receive what we might call 'esoteric insights' or'clairvoyant truths.- ' Following school, Steiner studied natural sciences in Vienna, but he never completed his degree. In 1882 Karl Julius Schröer… a teacher and scholar of the great German writer Goethe… took Steiner under his wing.
Steiner first edited Goethe's scientific writings and, in 1890, moved on to a position in the writer's archive in Weimar, Germany. I see a common thread in Steiner's life. That was, in a way, his attempt to stand on Goethe's shoulders. To understand what holds the world together at its core. Rudolf Steiner was someone who wanted to understand the world. He wanted to understand basically everything. Then he began editing Goethe's scientific writings; that was also about knowledge.
Steiner believed human knowledge had no limits. A paradox. In editing Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner saw the results of making careful observations. But his thinking began to shift around 1900. He gave his first lectures to a group called the Theosophists, and became more and more involved with them. Theosophy was a 19th century esoteric movement, shaped by Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky. An alternative form of spirituality, based on the idea that a secret, higher spiritual world exists. After Rudolf Steiner came into contact with Helena Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, he joined these occult and esoteric circles.
He'd previously wanted to be a scientist and researcher, pursuing an academic career. Soon after, he was quickly attracting very large audiences as a lecturer. These were very small, cultured, middle class circles… predominantly women… focused on higher knowledge, alternative living and a certain religious spirituality. If criticism came, it came from individuals. Albert Einstein, for example, once attended one of Steiner's lectures in Prague. He apparently hoped to learn something from Steiner's cosmology… then dismissed it.
Einstein realized they were in completely different worlds. It no longer had anything to do with physics and was, at best, a form of occult metaphysics. Modern occultism flourished in this age of positivism, industrialization and technological development. While progress was revealing all that could be measured and seen, a counter movement searched for the spiritual beyond the material world. Theosophy became one of the most influential movements, attracting seekers of alternative forms of knowledge. There's not just a religious world; you could also say there's an invisible scientific world.
Perhaps that's always been a driving force behind curiosity… exploring areas that are unknown, that aren't yet visible. Ones that can be accessed indirectly through our other senses and through higher faculties, including the intellect. Rudolf Steiner split away from Theosophy in 1912 following an extended conflict with Annie Besant, a leading Theosophist. Besant took Hinduism seriously, incorporating it into her worldview. Quite a step in the thick of colonialism. Steiner countered with a Western, ultimately Christian tradition.
His relationship with Annie Besant went from one of great affection to a very painful, bitter conflict. I think a key reason why Steiner ultimately turned away from Theosophy was that he couldn't deal with having a woman as his superior. Besant was a woman who knew how to wield power. Steiner didn't want her interfering in his German Theosophical Society. In the end, they'd burnt any common ground they shared. At the end of 1912, after breaking away from Theosophy,
Rudolf Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society. He began promoting his own spiritual science… an esoteric doctrine with no scientific founding. But he retained elements of Theosophy, including Blavatsky's concept of 'root races'… terminology and hierarchies that run throughout his work. They continue to be criticized as racist and, in some cases, antisemitic. Steiner held onto the German nationalist outlook he had developed, which had been building up from 1879 in Vienna. He kept it throughout his life. It resurfaced during his Theosophical period, too.
Through Theosophy, Steiner had encountered the notion that there are human races which developed through evolution. He was simply repeating the crude, social Darwinist evolutionary thinking of his time. In other words, the whole gamut of 19th century, racist ideas resurfaces in Steiner's work. Steiner ultimately never distanced himself from that. The difficult thing is that Steiner never made a break with those ideas.
Anthroposophists have an incredibly hard time taking a critical stance because they're things Steiner said. And they're afraid that removing one stone will cause the whole structure to collapse. Just as people once criticized him for promoting freedom, individuality and self determination… today they primarily find wrong ideas about nationalism, racism and antisemitism in Steiner's work. Overall the accusation of antisemitism, especially, is completely wrong. Steiner considered antisemitism stupid. There were many interesting Jewish members of the Anthroposophical Society at the time, including Zionists.
When Stefan Zweig was completely devastated by the events in Europe and wrote The World of Yesterday, he honored two people in that book. Two he found particularly impressive: Theodor Herzl and Rudolf Steiner. Stefan Zweig, who was extremely sensitized to antisemitism and the madness of that time, wouldn't have done that if he considered Steiner an antisemite. That Steiner was respected by some of his Jewish contemporaries doesn't automatically absolve him. Admirers can't erase problematic, racist or antisemitic passages in his work.
All the people with blond hair and blue eyes, they're the wise ones… because they retain the knowledge inside themselves. Whereas people with brown eyes and brown hair let it all out and have nothing left inside. Something like that. Of course, that counts for me too. I'm aware I'm biased, but even so. It's just a crazy explanation. Recent debate around Steiner and racism has again raised concerns; about antisemitism in the Nazi era. And research on the Dachau concentration camp has again raised questions about Weleda…
a German cosmetics brand with roots in the anthroposophical movement. There's solid new research on Dachau. There was a medicinal herb garden there that the anthroposophists were heavily involved with. They'd tried to test things like the effects of anti frost creams. And Weleda offered an anti frost cream. And when anti frost experiments… cruel experiments… were carried out in Dachau, and when anthroposophists and National Socialists can be identified as part of a network. That raises a lot of questions about cooperation.
Weleda publicly distances itself from antisemitism and National Socialism, but continues to face criticism. Controversy over racism may have shaped anthroposophy in its later years, but in Steiner's lifetime, public criticism focused more on its lack of science and its occult leanings. The movement established a center of worship known as the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, by then dead over a century, couldn't object to being associated with the movement. But his name helped the movement gain momentum.
Steiner avoided right angles in the Goetheanum design, claiming nature had none. If I drop a stone into flat water, I get an exact right angle. That disproves Mr. Steiner. And if I look at salt crystals today, I'll see that a sodium chloride crystal has right angles. This was the basis of his comprehensive esoteric system. He introduces concepts such as the 'etheric body' and 'astral body' and talks about karma and reincarnation.
Legally, it wasn't a church, but in practice, a tightly knit congregation began forming around a shared worldview. It gained status, especially among the educated middle class. The ideas Steiner offered appealed to educated people… people who are active in society,
who have an idea of what science is, but who still want to explore questions of meaning. That's part of the secret to its success. Is anthroposophy a cult? I wouldn't say it qualifies as a cult. But I would say it has cult like traits. You have the charismatic leader figure you find in cults. There's that clear divide between the group and the outside world.
A closed worldview. In that sense, I'd say it's cult like. It's true that anthroposophy has cult like characteristics. A good way to assess that is to look at guidelines on cults published by some churches and counseling centers. They'll sometimes have lists of ten points or more. If you're able to check off several of the points about any religious community, you should be cautious… it could veer that way. When you look at Rudolf anthroposophy, many of those points apply.
The most important of those maybe: That it shields itself from outside criticism, that it claims to possess a higher, elite form of knowledge and, of course, that it has a charismatic leader who is not criticized… or not allowed to be criticized. Any movement growing out of a spiritual tradition always runs the risk of becoming sect like. That's very clear. You have to pay close attention to that. It happens, and when it does, the criticism is justified. We can say Steiner moved away from natural science, and the teachings he presented became an esoteric spiritual science.
He had answers for everything. Evidence didn't matter. Yet his lectures still drew large crowds. When it comes to Steiner, many account describe him as a passionate and captivating speaker. But there are also accounts from people who found it painful to sit through one of his lectures. They felt they were in church rather than at an educational event.
Tucholsky, in particular, was very critical. He was apparently at one of his lectures in France. He said people were actually falling asleep, and he saw the whole thing as humbug. Steiner became an expert on almost everything. He offered answers on education, medicine, agriculture and more, along with sweeping interpretations and theories. He had no formal training in those fields and had to rely upon his'supernatural insights.' Many of his ideas still guide his followers today, largely unquestioned. You could say Steiner was an influencer of his time.
Today, we have influencers who give advice with no expertise. And people follow them. One charismatic figure is all it takes for people to believe nonsense. I'd recommend that anyone who defends him read his books. They'll either fall asleep, or finally see that it can't be right. Austria has anthroposophic doctors. Anthroposophic medicine isn't a separate branch of medicine, but rather an additional qualification.
Following Steiner, they take a holistic approach to diagnosis. They make sweeping claims about the body's ability to heal itself… though any hard evidence is scarce. When I have a patient, I have to assess them from the perspective of conventional medicine, too. Naturally. But anthroposophy gives me an additional diagnostic tool that helps complete the picture. I don't understand it. I don't understand how the medical school can offer a diploma in anthroposophy. I don't understand how you can study medicine and then follow those teachings, or practice medicine according to them.
I can't comprehend it. Esoteric concepts from Steiner's pseudoscience as he himself preached it… like the etheric body, astral body and ego organization… still show up in patient histories and diagnoses in anthroposophical medicine today. You have the physical body, you have the life forces. You can also call that the etheric body. You have the forces of the soul. You can also call that the astral body. And you have the forces of the ego, or the'spiritual forces,' as Paracelsus also called them. All of those interact. In Steiner's view of medicine, karma plays a major role. Illness can be seen as the result of wrongdoing in a person's life or experiences from past lives.
This idea is brought into diagnosis and treatment, shifting the weight from something demonstrable to something beyond verification. I find Steiner's views on children pretty cynical. For example, he says that if parents have a child with a disability, organ damage or a hereditary disease, it's because the child was a bad person in a previous life. That's what Rudolf Steiner said. 'The inherited traits emerge because the individual's personality was too weak to overcome them and work according to its karma.' If you have a big problem with terms like these, of course you'll fight them tooth and nail.
You'll say, 'This is esoteric, this isn't serious, you can't prove any of it!' But if you have a child with Down syndrome, I can only applaud all the parents who accept that and say, ' Ok, this child was made this way, those are the circumstances. - We'll make the best of it. ' It's very difficult when you have a child with a disability. The idea of reincarnation offers an answer. It's not the answer I have, but I understand it.
The child previously had a bad life and now has to bear the guilt from that life or the consequences of it. Or, Steiner could also argue, the child is preparing for a better incarnation. I think the idea of karma can be comforting for people who believe in it. But you have to take the logical next step: That people are responsible for their own fate. Many people want treatments to work even when there's no evidence that they do, including various alternative therapies.
One example: Mistletoe therapy in oncology, which doctors offer as a complementary cancer treatment despite a lack of solid evidence. Mistletoe therapy is basically the flagship of anthroposophic medicine. Rudolf Steiner claimed that through clairvoyance, he could see the mistletoe's aura. Then he drew an analogy: Just as mistletoe is a parasite on its host plant… it grows on another tree… cancer also acts as a parasite on the organs. That's where he saw a similarity to cancer. A cancer tumor grows in the body the way mistletoe grows on a tree.
Mistletoe must work against cancer. He made a completely arbitrary connection. That's how mistletoe therapy began. I find it unbearable. Promoting a method based on clairvoyance, with no evidence of it working, and using it to treat the most serious diseases. Belief in these approaches to healing remains strong. Personal stories and echo chambers often speak louder than the data.
People need hope. Especially when scientific facts are hard to come by. Of course it's unpleasant to face uncomfortable truths, especially about your own health. It's n ice to have a simple, cheap answer that you can believe in, and use that instead. The problem is, it's not science and it's not medicine. They're just making money and taking advantage of people, despite knowing better.
Steiner's esoteric ideas also show up in biodynamic wine growing. Biodynamics is based on his 1924 agriculture course: Cow horns and special mixtures, stirred in water, working according to cosmic rhythms. The practice is certified under the Demeter brand. We use preparations that heal the soil, heal the plant, and help the grapevine bring that life force into the grapes and the seeds.
'Biodynamic preparations' include certain medicinal herbs, intended to enrich the soil and strengthen plants. Here we have dried yarrow. We harvested it this year. We have a small plot just 200 meters from here where we grow the plants ourselves. A Steiner process allows the resulting substances to produce a supposed cosmic effect. Each preparation is essentially associated with a planet, or with its forces, which it brings into harmony with what's around it, wherever it's applied. That's probably an aspect that often makes biodynamic farming
a little hard to grasp. The influence of the planets is a central component. You don't just look at a crop that's growing from an earthly perspective. You also pay attention to what affects us from outside, from very far away. And t hat includes the planets. Another esoteric element of biodynamics is what's known as 'dynamization.' A water solution containing the diluted preparation is stirred for about an hour, alternating between a vigorous vortex and a chaotic whirlpool.
The idea is that this supposedly increases the substance's power in the water and distributes it evenly before the liquid is applied. It's ultimately about energy and mixing. Those are the two main things that matter when you stir it. And a third point that I think is pretty central: My own energy also goes into it. When we're working with a horn preparation, I usually get up around three in the morning to stir it so we can start applying it at four. Biodynamics promises healthy, living soil and higher quality. But solid, reproducible results are lacking.
The FiBL Institute near Kassel, Germany, has spent almost 50 years trying to identify the differences between conventional, organic and biodynamic farming. They've found that soils in organic and biodynamic farming are much healthier. That of course also has to do with the fact that they don't use synthetic fertilizers. But they can't find any evidence that these occult practices with cosmic rays or moon phases have any effect. In other words, there's no evidence the method works. What Demeter gets right is what it doesn't do: It doesn't use too many pesticides or too much fertilizer.
Steiner was a hero in the 1910s and 20s. Society was in turmoil and scientific knowledge was more limited than it is today. But more than a hundred years later. In the age of nanoscience, quantum computers and cutting edge medicine? Science has never invented anything. Only discovered things. And of course, sometimes I think something is nonsense. But maybe it isn't nonsense, because later you realize it was actually right. But I have to have the freedom to decide for myself, 'Could this be true for me or not? ' Animosity toward science is built into anthroposophy.
This skepticism toward science becomes most apparent with vaccines. It's been present in parts of the movement for years and came to a head during COVID. During COVID, anthroposophists also believed the vaccine was bad. There was a reason the pandemic had come. It was somehow supposed to cleanse or enlighten humanity or something like that. That's generally how they approach pandemics and infectious diseases. I think opposition to vaccines is ultimately part of Steiner's legacy. In Steiner's logic, anyone who had advanced far enough along the path to knowledge didn't need vaccines.
Those who weren't yet that far needed to be vaccinated. Statements of Steiner's like this one, which aren't clear cut, can easily drive anthroposophists to their wit's end. Because then they have to make a choice. In a serious situation, they'd have to go against Steiner. And they don't like doing that, so they give these vaccine critics a relatively free pass. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic saw the rejection of science reach new levels. The debate spilled onto the streets, different groups began to mix. It shows the worldview that emerges when you consistently deny facts: It can ultimately lead you to distance yourself from democratic processes too.
Societies need a factual, measurable truth to exist together. When that truth is downplayed and weighed up against an allegedly much greater cosmic truth that stands above evidence, it clears the way for'alternative truths.' Everyone can build their own version of the world. The echo chambers and communication problems of our time… could they also be a late legacy of Steiner's relativism? I also see anthroposophy as an anti modern movement, supposedly offering an answer to humanity's fundamental wounds.
In it, the Earth really is the center of the universe. And we really are masters of our own house here. Anthroposophy wants to demonstrate all of that, and it elevates the individual in the process. That becomes very concrete when it comes to illness. Rudolf Steiner saw illness as something to be experienced and lived. Adults can decide for themselves who to follow. But children don't get that choice. When it came to measles, mumps and rubella, it was clear: The child had to go through it. Experiencíng the illness was a developmental step. That's nonsense, of course. That's obvious. Then we actually moved closer to the Waldorf school just so I'd be able to attend it. I had to go through the rest
of the childhood diseases there. I wasn't'allowed to, I had to. Cigarette manufacturer Emil Molt and Rudolf Steiner founded the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart in 1919. They named it after Molt's company, Waldorf Astoria. Molt wanted a modern school for his employees' children. Steiner saw an opportunity to put his educational ideas and view of humanity into practice.
The more than 1,200 Waldorf schools can now be found in over 70 countries around the world. Waldorf schools have an approach to achievement that puts a high value on the individuality of each student. They also look at achievement in terms of where each person starts out from. One example: Waldorf schools generally don't give grades. People who send their children to a Waldorf school are usually interested in stress free education. They care very little about the esoteric worldview in the background. At a Waldorf school, they're much more interested in the school garden,
the school theater, in most cases not giving grades. Critics say Waldorf schools don't just teach an alternative educational method. They also bring an esoteric, anthroposophical worldview into the classroom. I can only speak about what I've observed in schools and, of course, about what we stand for in teacher training. The distinction is very clear: Anthroposophical content is not part of the curriculum.
I could only separate those things out in hindsight, and it was a very difficult process. In history, for example, I learned about the downfall of Atlantis. I was supposed to take that as fact. I wrote it down in my notebook, and there it was. And because there were no textbooks, that notebook was basically my textbook. I took it as fact. There is so much more knowledge now in almost every scientific field Steiner spoke about back then. It would be crazy to say that we have to stick dogmatically to certain statements. But I don't think that was ever his intention, either.
I think he always trusted that there would be people who would keep thinking, keep developing the ideas he set in motion. After 1919, Rudolf Steiner oversaw his movement's progress from Dornach, Switzerland. He also gained recognition in Austria. In 1922, his East West Congress filled the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. A gathering focused on the differences between the Western and Eastern worlds, with numerous guests. For a few days, Vienna became a showcase for his movement. But there were setbacks, too. On New Year's Eve in 1923, the first, wooden Goetheanum in Dornach burned down. Arson was at first suspected, but the case went unsolved.
Steiner designed the second Goetheanum in exposed concrete, but didn't live to see it completed in 1928. He became gravely in 1924 and died in Dornach on March 30, 1925. His death had something of an air of mystery at the time… and raises questions to this day. When Steiner died in 1925, wild rumors immediately started circulating. That he'd been poisoned, for instance. One thing that wasn't supposed to have happened: He wasn't supposed to have died of cancer, since Steiner claimed he had found treatments for cancer.
What's known is that Steiner had an enlarged prostate. He needed a catheter. Everything points to the possibility that he had a cancerous prostate growth. A questionable autopsy report describes procedures that cannot be historically verified. Steiner would remain under scrutiny long after his death. You can easily determine the purpose of an autopsy report like that one, which was almost certainly fake. It was an attempt to make him die from something other than cancer. That's why it says he died from heart failure, weakness and exhaustion.
Steiner died just as his movement was expanding, laying the groundwork for its future. Much of the development came only after his death. It's not allowed to say anything negative about Steiner. What he said has to be true. Anthroposophy is always about finding evidence after the fact for what Steiner had already established. In other words, the truths are established first, and then they look for evidence to support them. But they never question the original truth they believe they found. Rudolf Steiner has remained a public figure, despite his esoteric ideas,
Vienna made the 150th anniversary of his birth, 2011, the'Steiner Year.' The country's political elite went along with it. I find it really awful to support Steiner, to promote him again or celebrate him. You can't devote an entire year to someone who said what was clearly an incredible amount of nonsense. Anthroposophy can still be felt. It relies upon symbols and networks to reinforce beliefs and marginalize doubt. I don't think anthroposophists are only concerned with Weleda healing salves, Demeter brand tomatoes and Waldorf schools.
It's about living in a meaningful cosmos in which everything that exists can be explained. You can be a kindergarten teacher, But as an anthroposophical kindergarten teacher, your work will be much more holistic in its approach. You can be a farmer, but the approach will be very holistic. The same applies to medicine. So I think it's possible for new people who are interested and committed to keep joining. Anthroposophists don't see any need to explain their beliefs to people who aren't anthroposophists. They have higher knowledge, higher organs, and they can perceive higher worlds around us… and those exist. And a worldview that shuts itself off like that,
that doesn't clearly express itself and doesn't want to or can't express itself clearly, is also hard to see through. More than a centur y after his death, Rudolf Steiner remains an apostle of esotericism, able to both move and divide people. His influence endures not because it's supported by evidence, but because it's sustained by belief.
