Was Rudolf Steiner a German Nationalist?

Nationalism: ideology based on the premise that the individual's loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. (Britannica)

Rudolf Steiner was Austro-Hungarian by birth, born at the periphery of the empire, in Kralevic, of present-day Croatia. Thus Steiner was not a German national. Being Austro-Hungarian does not preclude Steiner from adopting a German nationalist stance, however he never did this.[1]  Steiner was ethnically German and spoke German as his native language. Quite a few German-speaking Austrians during his lifetime yearned for a union of Austria with German to form a greater German empire comprising all German-speaking peoples. But Steiner never called for a political union of Austria and Germany or any sort of German empire, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor did he ever so much as intimate that this might be desirable. On the contrary he explicitly praised the multi-ethnic aspect of the Austro-Hungarian State.

Steiner's lack of a German passport became an issue during World War One. He spent much of the later part of the war in Switzerland, unable to cross into Germany for fear of arrest for spying. His work placed him in the center of an international group of people interested in his spiritual insights. But precisely these international connections would have caused the authorities in Germany to suspect espionage. Steiner decided not to take the risk, and was thus unable to travel in German during the war.[2] Meanwhile in Dornach, Switzerland, a large international group of volunteers worked on building a theatre and lecture hall to support Steiner's anthroposophical movement. This building was called the Goetheanum.[3]

Many of Steiner's contemporaries have commented on the absence of any national chauvinism in their perception of Steiner's work, as well as all of his efforts to overcome the nationalistic tendencies among his followers. For example, Andrei Belyi, a Russian, writing about 1928 or 1929 recalls:

Belyi continues:

Belyi's reference to the Schuré incident casts light on some of the original sources for claiming Steiner as a German nationalist. Eduard Schuré was a French writer interested in spirituality in general and Theosophy in particular. One of his famous works was a book called "The Great Initiates". Schuré met Steiner some time around 1904 and became a fried and admirer. During the war, however, Schuré, a Frenchman, became convinced that Steiner's work was pro-German, and he publicly repudiated Steiner's work on the grounds that Steiner was advocating the German side. They reconciled in 1922 and Schuré apologized. But the charges, widely repeated during the war, remain to this day.

Since the events surrounding the Second World War exposed the darker side of the German national character the accusations are plausible. The simple fact that Steiner spoke German is frequently a starting point for claims that he somehow embodied this darker side, even that he inspired it. In fact Steiner's anthroposophy is fundamentally opposed to nationalism. But that has not stopped anthroposophy's opponents from claiming that it inspired Nazism, or at the very least that sprang with Nazism from a common source. This point of view has been stated very clearly by Peter Staudenmaier in an article originally published in Norwegian, titled the "Anthroposophy and Ecofascism."[4] While sounding quite scholarly, it relies almost entirely on hostile secondary sources, and makes the cardinal sin of willfully misrepresenting primary sources. Even in the context of propaganda this is called slander.

Works Cited

Belyi, Andrei, Aasya Turgenieff, and Margarita Voloschin. Reminiscences of Rudolf Steiner. Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 1987.

"Nationalism." Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition. CD-ROM. New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, 2002.