I.

Rudolf Steiner’s doctrines are infested with racial prejudice. I got my first inklings of this during my senior year at a Waldorf school.

One morning in a biology course, our headmaster laid out for us the overarching structure of the family of man. He explained that the various races stood at different levels of moral development—each was forging its own destiny. He said these things sympathetically, with no hint of condescension. Yet his words were jarring. The Oriental races, he said, are ancient, wise, but vitiated. The African races are youthful, unformed, childlike, he said. Standing near the center of humanity’s family are the currently most advanced races, the whites, he said.

I also remember a lesson our class received in a related subject: botany. The teacher drew figures-of-eight on the blackboard and lectured us about "lemniscates": the mystic interaction of the "telluric" and "etheric" forces, which is the basic structure of nature, she said. During one day's main lesson, she veered off topic to warn us never to receive blood transfusions from members of other races. Blacks and Orientals have blood types that are physically different from ours, she taught us: Receiving such inferior blood would diminish our “Aryan” qualities. The moral once again seemed to be that for Anthroposophists racial identity has great significance.

Here is one of Rudolf Steiner’s statements about the differences between various human races: “On one side we find the black race, which is earthly at most. If it moves to the West, it becomes extinct. We also have the yellow race, which is in the middle between earth and the cosmos. If it moves to the East, it becomes brown, attaches itself too much to the cosmos, and becomes extinct. The white race is the future, the race that is creating spirit.” [1]

Let’s not pause to puzzle out, just now, the question of races becoming extinct when they move; our focus here is on Steiner’s discrimination between races. Steiner taught that the differences between races are so profound, they will lead to a racial Armageddon. Here is a statement he made dealing with the process by which humanity will proceed to its next evolutionary stage. The process will not be peaceful. Before humankind can make its intended progress, vigorous measures must be taken to deal with the less-evolved peoples. Racial struggle is an historical necessity. For those who remember Fascism, this will ring a few bells: “[T]hese things [future human evolution] cannot happen in the world without the most violent struggle. White mankind is still on the path of absorbing spirit more deeply into its essence. Yellow mankind is on the path of preserving the period when the spirit is kept away from the body, when the spirit can only be sought outside of the human-physical organization. But the result will have to be that [mankind’s next step upwards] cannot happen differently than as a violent fight between white mankind and colored mankind in the most varied areas. And world history will consist of that which will lead to these battles between white and colored mankind until the great fight between white and colored mankind has been delivered. Future events are frequently reflected in previous events. You see, we stand before something so colossal that, if we regard it through the diverse perceptions of spiritual science, we will in the future recognize it as a necessary occurrence.” [2]

One of Steiner’s basic racial tenets is that the division of mankind into races was a crime committed by two disruptive spirits. Lucifer and Ahriman (a demon invented by Zoroaster) interfered with the harmonious evolution of humanity by causing older forms of mankind to survive even while other segments of humanity evolved to higher levels. “Lucifer and Ahriman...fought against this harmonious tendency of development in the evolution of humanity, and they managed to change the whole process so that various developments were shifted and displaced. While there should have been basically only one form of human being...Lucifer and Ahriman preserved [earlier human types]...Thus, forms that should have disappeared remained. Instead of racial diversities developing consecutively, older racial forms remained unchanged and newer ones began to evolve at the same time. Instead of the intended consecutive development of races, there was a coexistence of races. That is how it came about that physically different races inhabited the earth and are still there in our time although evolution should really have proceeded [unimpeded].” [3]

Note that the older racial forms preserved by Lucifer and Ahriman would necessarily be less evolved and hence inferior to newer forms. Anthroposophists often argue that Steiner was not a racist. Yet making distinctions between races—and placing whites at the top of a racial hierarchy—are recurrent themes in his work. In Steiner’s view, the simultaneous existence of multiple races is, in itself, wrong. Correcting this “error” will allow “higher” races to get on with the task of evolution: “A race or nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type...The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation [leading to] an ideal future.” [4]

Attaining a “pure, ideal human type” may or may not be desirable goal. Racial divisions would end if we all became alike—but this vision certainly runs contrary to the current ideals of diversity, multiculturalism, and mutual respect.

Steiner taught that the external physical characteristics of the various races reflect and even cause those races’ inner qualities. Hair- and eye-color, for instance, have surprising importance: “If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense...Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. In the case of fair people, less nourishment is driven into the eyes and hair; it remains instead in the brain and endows it with intelligence. Brown- and dark-haired people drive the substances into their eyes and hair that the fair people retain in their brains.” [5]

Steiner was no humorist, but often enough he was unintentionally absurd. On the subject of race, his absurdity was pernicious and inexcusable. The only way to even partially excuse him is to say that he was a man of his times, sharing the prevailing attitudes and prejudices of his times. But that defense is, in effect, an acknowledgment that Steiner was not a clairvoyant savant, as he claimed. He could not see ultimate truth. He had no special insight. As the statements I have quoted make abundantly clear, he was a flawed, bigoted, ordinary man who chose to spread hateful nonsense.

II.

Steiner taught that thinking is the special field of endeavor for Aryans [6]. German Aryans occupy a lofty place: They are enabled by their mythology to understand human evolution particularly well [7], and their mission now is to comprehend the world from many angles [8]. Steiner, an Austrian-German, took upon himself what may be considered an extension and fulfillment of the German national/racial mission, to create in Anthroposophy a system that organizes spiritual wisdom gleaned from around the globe.

Here are some of Steiner’s other statements about human races. To make Steiner’s statements clear, I have edited out extraneous verbiage and added some explanatory notes. Please check the sources I cite. You’ll see that I have not changed Steiner’s meaning:

◊ “The Jews have a great gift for materialism, but little for recognition of the spiritual world.” [9]

◊ “If you look at pictures of the old American Indians the process of ossification is evident in the decline of this race ... [The American Indian] did not participate in [further human evolution].” [10]

◊ “If we contemplate ourselves, we here in Europe are thus the fifth Sub-Race of the great Aryan Root Race.” [11] Aryans “comprise present-day civilized humanity...” [12] Note that Steiner was speaking to whites.

◊ Reds and blacks descend from abnormal humans and have not participated in the evolution led by whites: “[I]t was the normal human beings that were ... the most capable of evolving. [Abnormal] peoples whose ego impulse was developed too strongly ... became ... the Red Indians of America. [Likewise, the abnormal] people whose ego-feeling was too little developed ... became the subsequent Negro population of Africa ... The human beings who had developed normally [i.e., ancestors of whites] lent themselves best to progress.” [13]

◊ “[A] centre of cosmic influence [is] situated in the interior of Africa. At this centre are active all those terrestrial forces emanating from the soil which can influence man especially during his early childhood ... The black or Negro race is substantially determined by these childhood characteristics.” [14]

◊ “The French are committing the terrible brutality of moving black people to Europe, but it works, in an even worse way, back on France. It has an enormous effect on the blood and the race and contributes considerably toward French decadence. The French as a race are reverting.” [15]

◊ “Negroes” are “decadent" and “completely cut themselves off from the spiritual world” [16]

◊ “Anyone who has dealt with Jews knows [that] ... [m]istrust of non-Jews has completely taken over their souls ... I consider antisemites to be harmless people.” [17]

◊ “[I]f we give these Negro novels to pregnant [white] women to read, then it won’t even be necessary for Negroes to come to Europe in order for mulattos to appear. Simply through the spiritual effects of reading Negro novels, a multitude of children will be born in Europe that are completely gray, that have mulatto hair, that look like mulattos!” [18]

◊ “[T]he remaining human bodies belonged to the races that had become decadent and were falling into decline. The souls left the bodies of [these] races and rose up to higher races.” [19] Note the concept: Higher races, lower races.

◊ “This was the reason that the lower races had fewer and fewer descendants, while the higher races had more and more.” [20]. One of Steiner’s adherents has added that Steiner foresaw the necessary “actual division between good and evil races.” [21]

Racism was near the core of Rudolf Steiner’s thinking. Most Anthroposophists deny this, although a few have acknowledged the truth. The latter group, however, includes individuals who assert that they and all of their fellow Anthroposphists rejected Steiner’s racial doctrines following the racial horrors of World War II — that is, after 1945. This, however, is incorrect. I can attest that racism cropped up in some Waldorf classrooms nearly twenty after the war (see my essays, “Unenlightened” and/or “I Went to Waldorf”), and others have reported similar problems at Waldorf schools much more recently (e.g., “Woman Sees Waldorf Racism on First Visit” : http://waldorfcritics.org/active/articles/WomanSeesRacism.html).

— Roger Rawlings

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ENDNOTES

[1] Rudolf Steiner, VOM LEBEN DES MENSCHEN UND DER ERDE {On the Life of Human Beings and of the Earth} (Verlag Der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, 1961), p. 62.

[2] Rudolf Steiner, DIE GEISTIGEN HINTERGRÜNDE DES ERSTEN WELTKRIEGES {The Spiritual Background of the First World War} (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1974), p. 38.

[3] Rudolf Steiner, THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN: THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALITY, Lectures from 1909-1916 (USA: Anthroposophic Press, 1990), p. 75.

[4] Rudolf Steiner, KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS AND ITS ATTAINMENT (London & New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1944), p. 149.

[5] Rudolf Steiner, HEALTH AND ILLNESS, VOL. 1. Lectures from 1922 (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1981), pp. 85-86.

[6] E.g., Rudolf Steiner, COSMIC MEMORY (SteinerBooks, 1987), p. 46.

[7] E.g., Rudolf Steiner, THE MISSION OF THE FOLK SOULS (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2005), p. 17.

[8] E.g., Rudolf Steiner, THE CHALLENGE OF OUR TIMES (SteinerBooks, 1979), pp. 207-209.

[9] Rudolf Steiner, FROM BEETROOT TO BUDDHISM (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999), p. 59.

[10] THE MISSION OF THE FOLK SOULS, pp. 108-109.

[11] Rudolf Steiner, THE TEMPLE LEGEND (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1997), p. 201.

[12] Rudolf Steiner, COSMIC MEMORY (Garber Communications, 1990), pp. 45-46.

[13] Rudolf Steiner, THE BEING OF MAN AND HIS FUTURE EVOLUTION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981), pp. 118-119.

[14] THE MISSION OF THE FOLK SOULS, p. 75.

[15] Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), pp. 558-559.

[16] Rudolf Steiner, quoted by an investigative commission of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands, which labeled the quote “unobjectionable.”

[17] Rudolf Steiner, "Die Sehnsucht der Juden nach Palästina," Magazin für Literatur, vol. 66 no. 38, 1897.

[18] Rudolf Steiner quoted by Peter Staudenmaier, “Race and Redemption: Racial and Ethnic Evolution in Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy,” 2004.

[19] Rudolf Steiner, READING THE PICTURES OF THE APOCALYPSE (SteinerBooks, 1993), pp. 49-50.

[20] Rudolf Steiner, THE SPIRITUAL FOUNDATION OF MORALITY (SteinerBooks, 1995), p. 30.

[21] Richard Seddon, THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND OF THE EARTH AS FORSEEN BY RUDOLF STEINER (The Temple Lodge, 2002), p.