Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 98

Continuing my commentary on the 29th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

Let us look first at the origin of the concept behind the Threefold Social Order:

Europe is in flames. The First World War has entered its final phase. It is May 1917. Otto von Lerchenfeld, a German diplomat in Berlin, was searching for ideas that might offer a basis for genuine peace once the war finally ended. He decided to turn to the once person whom he believed might have insights that could penetrate to the sources of the social sickness that underlay the war. The person to whom he turned was Rudolf Steiner, whose work he knew. Von Lerchenfeld made an appointment and poured out the despair in his heart, speaking of his realization that Germany and Middle Europe had allowed themselves to be driven into a dead end. Steiner listened intently, asked a few questions, and invited him to return the next day. The result was that these two men worked together daily for more than three weeks to hammer out two memoranda in which Rudolf Steiner presented the ideas that he believed could serve as a foundation for peace.

Von Lerchenfeld circulated the memoranda in the highest echelons of the German government. Somewhat later, through the interest of a mutual friend whose brother was then the cabinet chief of the old Austrian Emperor, the memoranda reached a few officials in the government of Austria-Hungary.*

This memorandum suggested that Central Europe offer peace on the basis of a social order based on the freedom of the individual, and that all social forms be freed from state control, establishing a free cultural life, truly a revolutionary idea for the time and place (though not unknown in the United States).** How Peter Staudenmaier turns a proposal for peace based a federalist system of autonomous social and cultural units and individual freedom into a dangerous theory to be imposed upon a conquered territory is simply incomprehensible.

* Barnes, Henry. A Life for the Spirit: Rudolf Steiner in the Crosscurrents of Our Time. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1997. Page 9.

** See Christoph Lindenberg. Rudolf Steiner: Eine Chronik. Stuttgart : 1988. Pages 614-620 for the full account.