Nazism as
opportunity for Waldorf
von Peter Staudenmaier
Many Waldorf advocates viewed the Nazi era as an
opportunity, a positive opening, a chance for
anthroposophical pedagogy to come into its own; Waldorf
was to become the form of education appropriate to the
German Volk in Germany’s newly revived status under
Hitler’s leadership. Such hopes found expression in
Waldorf literature throughout the Nazi period.
A June 1933 notice in Erziehungskunst, the journal of
the Waldorf movement, announced a series of public
talks by Waldorf representatives under the title
“Contributions to overcoming intellectualism and
materialism in education and pedagogy.” The notice
declared that all teachers in the new Germany should
“contribute to building a new education based on the
German spirit” and boasted that Waldorf schools have
pursued this goal for a decade and a half in order to
“overcome the materialist and intellectualistic
attitudes that have had such a disastrous influence on
German schools in recent years.” Since Waldorf schools
had shown how a true German education can be achieved,
they were eager to share this experience with other
educators in the present “struggle of German teachers
to find new paths” in pedagogy.
Corresponding statements can be found throughout
Waldorf publications at this time; see for example
Caroline von Heydebrand, “Wege der Überwindung der
materialistischen Weltanschauung durch die
Menschenkunde Rudolf Steiners” Erziehungskunst December
1933, 493-98, which depicts Waldorf teachers as
“warriors against the dragon of materialism” (498) and
a bulwark against both intellectualism and materialism,
which come from the West; Heydebrand here as elsewhere
strongly emphasizes the Germanness of Waldorf pedagogy.
Similar sentiments appear in a newsletter sent by the
Kassel Waldorf school to parents and friends of the
school in March 1934, announcing a public conference to
be held that month in order to promote and publicize
Waldorf education: “Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogy, which
has struggled for its position through years of silent
effort, may now hope that its goals and achievements
will find greater understanding in the new Germany.”
The newsletter continued: “Since their founding,
Waldorf schools have fought for an educational art
drawn from the wellsprings of the German Volk, and
fought against Western intellectualism and Eastern
Bolshevism.”
Further statements of this sort indicate a vision of
Waldorf education as a potential complement to the
rebirth and renewal of Germany heralded by Nazism. For
additional examples of such claims see the January 1934
newsletter of the Kassel Waldorf school, which calls
for a “renewal of the German Volk through the German
spirit” in order to defeat “the intellectualism of the
West”. See also René Maikowski’s February 15, 1934
letter to Adolf Hitler, reprinted in Arfst Wagner, ed.,
Dokumente und Briefe zur Geschichte der
anthroposophischen Bewegung vol. II, 14-16.
Peter Staudenmaier