Rudolf Steiner über alles?

"The Karma of Untruthfulness" is a controversial work in two volumes, featuring a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Swiss Dornach in December 1916 and January 1917. This is the second volume.

Steiner, a German-speaking Austrian, was the founder of the Anthroposophical Society, a religious or spiritual group which still exists today. Anthroposophists believe in reincarnation and nature spirits, operate bio-dynamic farms and have inspired an entire branch of alternative education known as Waldorf pedagogy. Steiner also wrote a number of philosophical works, discussing the epistemology and worldview of Goethe in particular.

Critics have long suspected that Anthroposophy also have a darker side, with "The Karma of Untruthfulness" often being seen as the smoking gun evidence. Indeed, Steiner's lecture series was so controversial that it was kept under wraps for generations. Not even the Dornach archives had access to it until 1948. Even then, access to the documents was strictly limited. Steiner's widow Marie von Sivers "decided to bring out a restricted mimeographed edition which was handed out on a personal basis only". The public German edition of the first volume was published in 1966, while the second volume wasn't made public until 1983. The first English translations appeared in 1988 (Vol 1) and 1992 (Vol 2). What was it about "The Karma of Untruthfulness" that made Steiner's admirers so reluctant to circulate or publish it?

According to the official version, Steiner was against World War I, moved to neutral Switzerland and there commenced building the Goetheanum with his supporters as a kind of monument to peace. (The Goetheanum is the international headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society, and functions as a kind of modern mystery temple.) "The Karma of Untruthfulness" reveals Steiner's real position: he supported Germany and Austria-Hungary during the war, blaming the war (including the German occupation of neutral Belgium) on the British, the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey in particular. In the second volume, Steiner also defends Treitschke, Bernhardi and Nietzsche, often seen as representatives of German chauvinism and bellicosity. This strongly pro-German stance could have created problems for Anthroposophy in Britain after the war, apparently making Steiner whitewash the whole thing. It had already led to a break with French Anthroposophist Édouard Schuré, who seems to have belonged to the inner circle and knew very well what Steiner thought about the Great War.

An additional problem is that Steiner's ideas aren't simply political. Steiner claimed to be a clairvoyant seer, and was in effect the resident prophet of Anthroposophy. He made a direct connection between esotericism and the pro-German stance. Steiner believed that the world war had been planned decades in advance by secret brotherhoods based in the British Empire, most notably the Freemasons (or rather some kind of ultra-esoteric wing of Masonry). The goal was to destroy the civilization of Central Europe, replacing it with materialism, commercialism and the Anglo-American spirit. The deeper purpose was to hinder the further spiritual evolution of mankind. Thus, the war effort of the Central Powers was an attempt to defend higher spiritual values against an occult offensive of the Allies. Had Steiner supported the Central Powers for purely political or ethnical reasons, one could perhaps have argued that he made a mistake, or that his stance was the natural one to take for a German-speaking Austrian. What makes "The Karma of Untruthfulness" extra embarrassing is Steiner's claim to have access to infallible information from the spirit-world.

In all fairness to Rudolf Steiner, it should be pointed out that he wasn't a pan-German nationalist or anti-British chauvinist. Calling for a return to Goethe, Lessing, Fichte and the German Romantics, he also believes that the British have a historic mission to create "the Consciousness Soul". The later attempts by British Anthroposophist Owen Barfield to combine Goethe with Coleridge seem to be very much in line with Steiner's original intentions. Indeed, the present cultural period is Anglo-Saxon, according to Steiner. It's also interesting to note that Steiner isn't anti-Slav. He is opposed to Czarist Russia and "Russianism", but he doesn't mind the Slavs living in his native Austria-Hungary. Steiner wanted the double monarchy to become a triple monarchy, with the Slavs being granted a "kingdom" of their own. This is somehow connected to the plans for turning Austria-Hungary into a federation, as proposed by Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Steiner even implies support for Polish independence, and claims to have "occult" knowledge about the joint destinies and equal status of Germans and Slavs. I'm not sure how "occult" this really was - surely, Steiner is speaking as a good citizen of cosmopolitan Austria here? I get the impression that Steiner's views of Mitteleuropa are of a more benign variety than those of more rabid German nationalists. Say, one Adolf Hitler, stationed in German-occupied Belgium. Curiously, Steiner even predicts the defeat of the Central Powers and the eventual victory of Britain!

That being said, "The Karma of Untruthfulness" is nevertheless a very problematic work, with Steiner explicitly throwing his clairvoyant powers behind Germany and German war propaganda. When the second volume was finally published in English in 1992, it carried an introduction by Austrian Anthroposophist Rudi Lissau, which apparently sharply criticized the anti-British stance taken by Steiner. Lissau had fled Austria during the 1930's and been granted asylum in the United Kingdom. This new edition from 2006 has a more laudatory introduction by one Terry Boardman, who seems to support Steiner's original perspective. Boardman has a conspiracist view of history, mentioning the sinking of the Lusitania, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, the 9/11 attacks and the recent Iraqi war as examples of conspiracies. He sees the Internet as a positive development, since it has made it easier to disseminate alternative information about such events. Boardman also claims that the secret brotherhoods were behind the October revolution in Russia! Note the family likeness with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories...

As already indicated, this is really a work in two volumes. Most of the relevant material on World War I can be found in volume 2. The twelfth lecture in volume 1 (on Belgium) is also important in this context. Otherwise, I must say that the lectures included in the first volume are extremely rambling (or perhaps badly stenographed or edited) and often deal with subjects other than the war. The second volume is also hard to read, but is nevertheless better stylistically than the first.

I don't know how to rate the best kept secret of Anthroposophy, but since the work is of obvious interest to both friends and foes of this particular spiritual path, I give it three stars (the OK rating).