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Anthroposophy founder Steiner on a mural: Direct line to the cosmos
Photo: Dubravka Petric / Pixsell / IMAGO
Memory is sometimes deceptive. But I must have been in the 9th or 10th grade when all the students in my school were called into the auditorium in the morning. A classmate had died and there was to be a memorial service. I was a Waldorf student, and I can still remember the feeling of shame when we were asked by the teachers in the ceremony, an anthroposophical service, to help "carry the boy over".
Carried over? The boy had died of severe flu. Not a disease that meant certain death in the 1980s. There was a lot of talk at the school after that. The child had been the son of very staunch anthroposophist parents, and the attending physician was also an anthroposophist. Obviously, a decision had been made against adequate drug treatment. And the boy who was learning to do arithmetic had, shortly before he got sick, added up in class how many days he had already lived. So told the teachers at the funeral service. That was a sign.
Nothing ever followed from this story.
The boy's siblings continued to go to school, the doctor continued to practice, everyone dealt with his grief differently.
What stuck with me was: There are people who, in case of doubt, sacrifice their children for their convictions.
The vaccination skepticism of the German bourgeoisie
According to statistics published a few days ago, the German-speaking area has the worst vaccination rate in Western Europe.
There are a lot of reasons for that.
If you look at the map of the Federal Republic of Germany, Thuringia, Saxony and Bavaria are particularly badly affected by Covid-19 along their external borders; it stands to reason that the geographical location is one of the driving factors.
In Poland and the Czech Republic, the numbers are even worse than ours.
But there is another reason: the vaccination skepticism of a special bourgeois milieu, which has its centers mainly in southern Germany and Switzerland. And a lot of these people are anthroposophists. What is it about you?
Many Germans deal with anthroposophy every day without even knowing it. The cosmetics group Weleda, for example, is a company that was co-founded in 1921 by Rudof Steiner, the inventor of anthroposophy. All creams, soaps and medicines that Weleda sells are manufactured according to anthroposophical guidelines, which include rather strange rituals. The water in which substances are dissolved has to be jerked in a certain way so that they can develop their power. Biodynamic agriculture is also an anthroposophical event. A bio-dynamically produced apple is not just ecological - if you want the label "bio-dynamic", you have to align your farm with Rudolf Steiner's esotericism - which also includesburying cow horns filled with minerals in the fields in autumn. Steiner believed that in this way they would transfer their "tremendous" power "to the astral and the etheric" over the winter. Of course, it doesn't hurt. It's still bizarre.
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Thinker Steiner (1861 to 1925): To convince by the informal compulsion of the better argument is pretty hopeless
Photo: akg-images / picture alliance
The GLS-Bank was founded by anthroposophists (however, it has long since distinguished itself from parts of anthroposophical teaching).
And then there are the Waldorf schools, which many Germans consider to be an alternative to the state education system.
Anthroposophists are involved everywhere in education, personal hygiene, nutrition and health.
You yourself believe that you are working for a better world.
A world in which culture and nature are no longer in contradiction, labor and capital, belief and knowledge.
But one could also simply say: You are a Christian sect.
Never commented on television
Because Rudolf Steiner (1861 to 1925), the founder of anthroposophy, is a very similar figure for the Germans as L. Ron Hubbard is for the Americans.
A sect founder and big spinner who connects some strands of cultural history and made a belief system out of it.
It is hyper-individualism, self-improvement ideology and belief in the future with Hubbard.
It is the Goethe cult, criticism of modernism and belief in the reform movement in nature for Steiner.
Indeed, like Hubbard, who wrote science fiction novels before founding Scientology, Steiner was an extremely modern figure in his day.
He was a scientist, book editor, traveling speaker, tutor, researcher, industrial consultant.
He was politically left-wing and had contacts with social democrats.
But he was also one of the great weirdos in German cultural history.
He believed that he had a direct line into space, and that he had received his teachings through it, which he presented in 5,965 lectures and many books - thematically there is nothing that does not exist. From the "essence of bees" to the question "How do you get to know higher worlds?" There are allegations that Steiner's image of man has racist elements because he believed in different stages of human development - the dispute has been raging for many years.
But what can be stated: Because they believe in the worldview of a man who has been dead for almost a hundred years, because they study his writings as if they were sacred, very many anthroposophists have difficulty finding their way around the present. Or the other way around. The present is too confusing for them, so they take refuge in the visions of a man like Steiner. And his mixture of mysticism, natural science, reading Goethe, German idealism and occultist secret knowledge - a rather liberal teacher at our school liked to joke at the time that we students were not allowed to watch television because there was no television, Steiner had himself after all, never commented on television.
All of this could now be deducted from the kind of spinning to which every citizen has a good right.
However, it gets dangerous when it comes to vaccination.
Bad for karma
Rudolf Steiner believed that illnesses have their meaning in karmic events.
A fever, for example, could help children establish themselves in their bodies.
Anyone who did things wrong in previous lives may have to compensate for them through illness - and whoever vaccinates himself becomes deaf to the karmic message.
Hence the vaccine skepticism of the anthroposophical circles - at least their hard core.
And if that sounds crazy, it is.
And very many anthroposophists prefer their life to their faith.
Most of them would not risk their social position either, and would announce such nonsense in public.
For them, anthroposophy is more of a wellness philosophy, a surface for a more pleasant everyday life.
However, those who take anthroposophy seriously will end up with other conclusions.
Because with all the supersensible parts it has - it is also a philosophy of the body and of being.
Man, says Steiner, has a material, an ether and an astral body.
To live successfully means to bring these bodies together.
Greater influence than many realize
What you are vaccinating with. The syringe that protects one from disease injects the poison of civilization into the body. It artificially accelerates what would otherwise take. It prevents the body from growing on its own and mobilizing its natural forces. Which, in turn, are beliefs that tie in with a long history of skepticism towards conventional medicine, which has so far helped rather than harmed anthroposophists in bourgeois milieus.
Especially because the anthroposophical attitude that diseases promote children in their development, that they strengthen the child’s body and thus also the child’s soul against the dangers of modern life, against allergies and diseases of civilization, meets with approval from many even superficially ecologically motivated parents - here that tender creatures, there the dangers of a world in which there has long been no harmony between the original forces of nature and those created by man.
The many young parents who feel that they are somehow green are probably closer to anthroposophy than they are aware.
And so the teachings of Doctor Steiner have a greater impact on our society than many realize.
As long as it was about wooden toys or pellets against flatulence, the political effects of this closeness were just as difficult to prove as those of homeopathy itself - with the pandemic, things are a little different.
But convincing anthroposophists through the informal compulsion of the better argument is rather hopeless.
If they get vaccinated, it is either because they are forced to.
Or because they are inconsistent and don't want to experience the ultimate consequence of their convictions after all.
But don't forget: there are others too.