Peter Staudenmaier
In response to questions about Rudolf Steiner’s racial doctrines or the political background of German anthroposophists or various other issues that occasionally arise in discussions of the history of Waldorf education, admirers of Waldorf will often claim that the Waldorf movement in Germany was merely a victim of Nazi persecution, and nothing more, during the period of Nazi rule from January 1933 until May 1945. In some versions of this story, the claim is made that the Nazis issued a general ban on Waldorf schools, that there were no points of contact and no ideological affinities between Waldorf supporters and Nazi officials, and that the anthroposophical movement as a whole was without exception profoundly opposed to Nazism from the beginning. Each of these claims is mistaken. They nevertheless continue to be promoted by anthroposophists and Waldorf representatives.
The usual anthroposophist line on this issue is strikingly simple: the Nazis detested Waldorf, we are told, and Waldorf detested Nazism. In fact, the actual relationships were much more complex. Within the echelons of the Nazi party there were a number of important figures who took an active role in supporting and promoting various Anthroposophical projects, including Waldorf schools (and especially biodynamic farming), while other powerful Nazis were convinced opponents of anthroposophy. Most Nazis were likely indifferent to anthroposophy and its offshoots. Within the Waldorf movement, meanwhile, there were two main contending camps: on the one hand, Waldorf teachers and parents who were dedicated Nazis and who considered anthroposophy and Waldorf compatible with and congruent with Nazi ideals; and on the other hand, those who were willing to compromise with Nazism as along as it allowed them to continue their own pursuits. In most cases the second group appears to have been larger than the first.
Because this topic has been the subject of considerable contention between defenders of Waldorf and those who are skeptical of their arguments, it may be helpful to provide a critical overview based squarely on anthroposophist sources themselves. What follows is a brief and by no means comprehensive look at the less frequently mentioned aspects of Waldorf’s history during the Nazi era, as reflected in anthroposophist works, both primary and secondary. A list of sources is provided at the end. While I will draw extensively on the material presented in these anthroposophical texts, my presentation will not endorse their interpretations.
Waldorf education was founded in Germany only fourteen years before the Nazis came to power. The first Waldorf school was established in Stuttgart in 1919 under Steiner’s direction, and the movement quickly spread from there. By 1933 there were eight Waldorf schools in cities throughout Germany (some sources mention an additional school, in Essen, but it receives little attention in the works cited here). The history of the Waldorf movement in the Third Reich is inevitably entwined with the complicated history of anthroposophy as such during this period. The headquarters of the international anthroposophical movement were located in Dornach, Switzerland, while a very large proportion of the membership remained in Germany, with Stuttgart in particular a prominent anthroposophist stronghold. In the midst of the intertwined struggles between competing factions of Nazis and different tendencies within the Waldorf movement after 1933, there were simultaneously very bitter controversies over unrelated issues between opposing camps within the Anthroposophical milieu; indeed in 1935 the more powerful Dornach tendency expelled a competing tendency that had strong support in parts of Germany. A further complicating factor was the far-flung nature of the anthroposophical milieu in Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere, which encompassed not only Waldorf schooling but biodynamic farming, anthroposophist medicine, the Christian Community, and a variety of anthroposophist publications.
The initial responses by anthroposophist leaders to the rise of Nazism included a number of markedly positive appraisals. In June 1933, for example, Guenther Wachsmuth, Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, gave an interview to the Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet in Copenhagen (published in their June 6, 1933 issue). When asked about the relationship between anthroposophy and the Nazi government, Wachsmuth explicitly noted his “sympathy” and “admiration” for the new rulers of Germany. (Wagner I p. 41) The newspaper titled the interview “Anthroposophists and Nazis Hand in Hand” with the subtitle “Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth from the Goetheanum in Switzerland declares his sympathy for Hitler” (ibid. p. 40) In private correspondence, Wachsmuth characterized his relationship with Nazi officials as “friendly” (Werner p. 37).
Also in June 1933, in Dornach, the leading anthroposophist journal Das Goetheanum commended “the forces of cultural renewal that are currently at work in Germany” (Das Goetheanum June 18, 1933, p. 199). The pages of the Stuttgart-based journal Anthroposophie, meanwhile, were in the early years of Nazi rule full of pathos-suffused material on “the mission of the German spirit”. Another periodical, the Korrespondenz der Anthroposophischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft, reprinted large sections of Christian Community founder Friedrich Rittelmeyer’s pamphlet “Rudolf Steiner und das Deutschtum” celebrating anthroposophy’s commitment to Germandom. (Korrespondenz der Anthroposophischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft April 1933, pp. 18-19)
These sorts of rhetorical convergence between anthroposophists and Nazism were not confined to newspapers and journals. Christian Community leader Alfred Heidenreich, in his negotiations with Nazi officials, emphasized the ideological commonalities between anthroposophy and National Socialism. (Werner p. 194) Sometimes such commonalities had practical effects. Hanns Rascher, a prominent Munich anthroposophist and follower of Steiner since 1908, joined the Nazi party in 1931 and worked for the Nazi Security Service, the SD, in the 1930s; after the Nazis came to power he became the liaison between the German branch of the Anthroposophical Society and the SS. (Werner p. 32) The continuum of anthroposophist reactions to Nazism included not just rejection and resentment but complacency, compromise, and collaboration as well.
The Waldorf movement specifically displayed similar dynamics at this time. Indeed attempts by Waldorf officials to ingratiate themselves with Nazi circles began even before the Nazis came to power. In late 1932, for example, the Stuttgart Waldorf school sent an advertisement for several upcoming student theater performances, along with free tickets, to the local Nazi newspaper. (Deuchert p. 96; the paper returned the tickets and explained regretfully that they couldn’t print the ad for ideological reasons.) Two possible explanations might be offered for incidents such as this: the Waldorf leaders in question were politically oblivious, or they expected and hoped for acceptance by sections of the Nazi leadership and Nazi readership.
Once the Nazi party attained power, the main German Waldorf journal Erziehungskunst (‘The Art of Education’) published several declarations of fidelity to the new state and its ideals. For example, in a December 1933 article on the relation between Waldorf schools and anthroposophy, Erziehungskunst editor Caroline von Heydebrand announced that the aim of Waldorf education is to "place stalwart and duty-conscious people into the nation and the state." (Heydebrand, "Waldorfschule und Anthroposophische Gesellschaft", Erziehungskunst December 1933, p. 500) In an August 1934 article, anthroposophical race theorist Richard Karutz celebrated "love and loyalty to race and nation, to blood and homeland" as the height of spiritual achievement. (Karutz, "Durch die Sprache zum Volk", Erziehungskunst August 1934, p. 122) And in August 1933, anthroposophist Paul Baumann, a leading figure at the original Waldorf school in Stuttgart, submitted an article titled “Waldorf Schools and National Socialism” to the chief Nazi educational journal, Nationalsozialistische Erziehung. Its conclusion stated in part: “Much of what is being said today by National Socialism, in significant words by the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and his comrades, has lived for more than a decade in these schools, often against the tide of public opinion” (Werner p. 104). From this perspective, the Nazi accession to power appeared as an opportunity for the Waldorf movement to fully unfold its potential.
Attempts such as these toward a friendly approach to Nazism on the part of prominent Waldorf figures were met with a measure of sympathy among several branches of the Nazi movement. Diverse anthroposophist undertakings found supporters within the Nazi leadership and bureaucracy for at least some portion of the Third Reich. Nazi officials who were at times favorably disposed toward various anthroposophist endeavors included Lotar Eickhoff (who was part of Himmler’s staff and eventually joined the Anthroposophical Society), Alwin Seifert (whom some historians consider an anthroposophist as well), Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, and above all Rudolf Hess and Richard Walther Darre. In practical terms, Hess and later Darre were the two most active supporters of anthroposophist projects. At the top of the Nazi hierarchy, Goering, Himmler, and Ley were all at some point open to various anthroposophical initiatives; Himmler in particular was notably ambivalent toward anthroposophy and its practical applications, as was Rosenberg. Other well-known Nazi leaders, such as Bormann and Heydrich, were determined to eliminate anthroposophist institutions from the new Germany. The anti-anthroposophist faction within the party finally gained the upper hand with Hess’s flight to Britain in mid-1941, after which a general suppression of anthroposophist activities did take place under the supervision of the Gestapo, and the last of the Waldorf schools was closed. Even after this point, however, a number of anthroposophists such as Max Karl Schwarz and Franz Lippert continued to work with various Nazi agencies, and the SS continued to sponsor a network of biodynamic installations at several concentration camps. The biodynamic plantation at Dachau, for instance, continued until the end of the war, as did the anthroposophical firm Weleda.
Waldorf representatives today sometimes claim that the Nazi state shut down the Waldorf schools in 1935. This is inaccurate. What did occur in November 1935 was an official order dissolving the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. The order did not close any of the Waldorf schools. The 1935 ban on the Anthroposophical Society was signed by SS chief Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most tenacious opponents of anthroposophy within the Nazi hierarchy (his boss Himmler only partly shared his views in that regard). Heydrich did not focus on anthroposophy alone; he saw Steiner’s movement as one of the dangerous pseudo-masonic organizations that in his view theatened the integrity of the Nazi state, along with rival tendencies such as the Ariosophists and the Ludendorffers. (Heydrich’s hostility, and his occasional orders banning various esoteric groups, hardly meant that anthroposophy or ariosophy or the Ludendorffers disappeared from Nazi Germany; as late as 1941, Heydrich was still urging an all-out struggle against ariosophy, for instance, at the very same time as the final crackdown on organized anthroposophy.) For years after 1935, and in some cases even after 1941, anthroposophist institutions continued to operate in Germany.
As far as Waldorf education in particular is concerned, a similarly complex situation existed. Anthroposophist author Norbert Deuchert distinguishes a “hard line” and a “soft line” toward Waldorf within the Nazi movement, associating the former primarily with Bormann and the latter primarily with Hess. (Deuchert p. 111) Another anthroposophist author, Uwe Werner, provides ample evidence of Hess’s extensive efforts on behalf of Waldorf schools. Influential Nazis who helped further the Waldorf cause included not just Hess and his staff (particularly his adjutant Leitgen) but also Baeumler, Ohlendorf, Seifert, and Holfelder, chief assistant to Education Minister Rust (Deuchert p. 118). Hess is nevertheless rightly seen as the primary powerful backer of Waldorf within the upper echelons of the party. Concretely, Deuchert (p. 98) notes, for example, the crucial role of Hess’s office in supporting the Waldorf movement in Stuttgart against the regional Nazi minister Mergenthaler, a foe of private schools in general. Mergenthaler eventually succeeded in closing the Stuttgart school in 1938. The faculty at the Berlin school then decided to shut down their school on their own initiative rather than make further compromises with the Nazi state (and were criticized by other Waldorf schools for doing do); the schools in Altona, Breslau and Kassel followed suit in 1939. The schools in Hannover and Hamburg closed down for internal reasons in 1939 and 1940. (Deuchert p. 105; Werner p. 375 gives different dates in some cases) The only Waldorf schools that were closed by the Nazi authorities were the Stuttgart school in 1938 and the Dresden school in 1941. (The Dresden school was shut down in mid-1941 after Hess’s flight to Britain.)
What of Waldorf attitudes toward Nazism? Here as well Deuchert distinguishes two main tendencies, a Stuttgart line and a Dresden line, so designated after the differing approaches to Nazi officials exemplified by the Waldorf schools in those two cities; the Dresden Waldorf leadership was overall more willing to accomodate Nazi standards in education, while the Stuttgart school for the most part attempted to maintain a more autonomous profile. However, Deuchert (p. 98) presents data showing that in 1934 in Stuttgart alone dozens of Waldorf parents were active Nazis. He also reports (Deuchert p. 97) that all Waldorf faculty throughout Germany joined the National Socialist Teachers League collectively in May 1933. This was by no means a government requirement, and many non-Waldorf teachers did not join until years later. Deuchert further describes a “relatively small but influential group of Nazi parents” at the Stuttgart Waldorf school (p. 118), a school which he otherwise depicts, in contrast to the Dresden school, as a decided opponent to Nazism. Some of the more fanatical pro-Nazi Waldorf personnel in Stuttgart were in fact impatient with their less convinced colleagues. Els Moll, for example, a teacher at the original Waldorf school, a longstanding member of the Anthroposophical Society, and an outspoken Nazi (she described herself as a “dedicated National Socialist”), left the Stuttgart school in 1934 feeling that the majority of her fellow teachers lacked “an internal connection to the Nazi state” (Wagner II p. 48). Other Waldorf activists were also committed Nazis, such as Eugen and Margarete Link. (Werner pp. 121, 135) In Stuttgart, figures like Moll and the Links tried to turn the Waldorf school into an forthrightly Nazi institution. A majority of the faculty resisted these efforts, not due to an uncompromising anti-Nazi stance, but rather because, in their own words, “the school has already proven its positive attitude toward the [Nazi] state.” (Werner p. 135)
Aside from figures such as these, the two leading Waldorf representatives in negotiations with various Nazi agencies were Rene Maikowski and Elisabeth Klein. Both of them showed pronounced sympathies for Nazism, along with skepticism toward some of its aspects. Maikowski wrote a substantial letter to Hitler in February 1934 detailing the compatibilities between Waldorf and Nazism. (Wagner II pp. 14-16) Maikowski’s late brother, a graduate of the Stuttgart Waldorf school, had been an SA officer and was something of a Nazi hero and martyr figure; Maikowski and others repeatedly exploited this reputation in their dealings with Nazi officials. In a September 1933 submission by the Hannover Waldorf school to Nazi educational authorities, Maikowski wrote: “The faculty bases itself entirely on the National Socialist state.” (Werner p. 106)
The Nazi state itself nevertheless continued to take an ambiguous stance toward Waldorf pedagogy. Some assessments were positive: In 1934 Hess had one of his assistants, Schulte-Strathaus, prepare an official report on Waldorf schools. The report concluded that Waldorf pedagogy was quite compatible with Nazi goals for education. (Werner p. 113) In 1936 Rust decreed a moratorium on new pupils at all private schools; the only exceptions were recognized ‘experimental schools’. Four Waldorf schools (Dresden, Hamburg, Hannover, Kassel) applied for official status as state-sponsored ‘experimental schools’. By 1939 the first three schools were recognized as such by the Nazi education ministry (Deuchert pp. 101, 105). The proposal for restructured and state-supported Waldorf schools was endorsed by Hess as well as by the prominent Nazi philosopher Alfred Baeumler, a member of Rosenberg’s staff.
These events and their intricate contexts point to a considerably more complicated history than is usually acknowledged by Waldorf supporters today. Two final instances, one from an anthroposophist viewpoint and one from a Nazi viewpoint, may serve to fill out the partial and partisan perspectives that seem so common in current discussions of the topic. One of the more thorough accounts of the relationship between Waldorf and Nazism from within the Waldorf movement is an official report to Hess from the Bund der Waldorfschulen, the Association of Waldorf Schools, from March 1935, a nineteen page overview of the ways in which Waldorf education serves the tasks of the new Germany. (Wagner II pp. 83-102) This document boasts among other things that Waldorf educates its pupils to be upstanding members of the Volksgemeinschaft, the Nazi term for the racially and ethnically pure ‘national community’ (e.g. p. 86), and in several places the document emphasizes that Jews find Waldorf unappealing because of Waldorf’s “rejection of the one-sided intellectual element” (e.g. pp. 93, 98).
This anti-intellectual orientation was strongly appreciated by Baeumler, who produced some of the most extensive Nazi analyses of Waldorf and anthroposophy. Baeumler’s 1937 report on Waldorf education is critical of Waldorf practices from a National Socialist perspective (he offers a negative appraisal, for example, of anthroposophical race doctrines, arguing that “Steiner’s thinking is not biological-racial, but biological-cosmic”). Nonetheless, even here Baeumler had several approving things to say about Waldorf and anthroposophy. Indeed one of the most critical passages in the document begins with praise for Steiner's "deep and correct insights" that lie at the basis of anthroposophy, while Baeumler’s conclusion commends "the great advantages of Waldorf pedagogy". His reports were extremely enthusiastic about Waldorf’s anti-intellectualism, and the 1937 document concludes by endorsing the establishment of state-supported Waldorf ‘experimental schools’ and the development of a “modified Waldorf curriculum.”
There is much more to be said about the convoluted interactions between anthroposophy and Nazism. The fragmentary but telling evidence examined above, if taken seriously, can contribute to a fuller picture of the Waldorf experience during the Third Reich. Relying on historical events to justify current preferences is always a risky tactic, whether practiced by critics or admirers of Waldorf education. Perhaps the more appropriate lesson to be taken from this material is that there is always more to learn about subjects that we think we already know well, and that history contains surprises that may not be particularly palatable at first sight, but that can with reflection yield a richer understanding of the past and its myriad connections to the present.
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Sources:
Arfst Wagner, Dokumente und Briefe zur Geschichte der anthroposophischen Bewegung und Gesellschaft in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Rendsburg 1991); volume II concerns the Waldorf movement in particular
Norbert Deuchert, “Zur Geschichte der Waldorfschule im Nationalsozialismus” Flensburger Hefte, Sonderheft 8 (1991): Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, pp. 95-108; and Deuchert, “Der Kampf um die Waldorfschule im Nationalsozialismus” ibid. pp. 109-128
Uwe Werner, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Munich 1999)
Anthroposophist journals:
Das Goetheanum (Dornach)
Anthroposophie (Stuttgart)
Erziehungskunst (Stuttgart)
Korrespondenz der Anthroposophischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Stuttgart)
For a non-anthroposophist examination of the history of Waldorf schools in the Nazi era, see the pioneering article by Achim Leschinsky, “Waldorfschulen im Nationalsozialismus” in Neue Sammlung: Zeitschrift für Erziehung und Gesellschaft, vol. 23 no. 3 (1983) pp. 255-278; the 1937 report on Waldorf schools by Alfred Baeumler is reprinted in full as an appendix to the article, pp. 279-283