Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 109

Continuing my commentary on the 33rd paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

Peter Staudenmaier writes, “Soon after the revolutionary upsurge of workers across Germany was crushed, Steiner was invited by the director of the Waldorf-Astoria tobacco factory to establish a company school in Stuttgart.” Staudenmaier has the basic chronology correct, but the reasons implicit in his formulation are wrong. Emil Molt had been working fervently to implement the Threefold Social Order in the entire state of Württemberg. The same forces that crushed the revolutionary upsurge of workers across Germany also prevented Molt from realizing his goal, so he turned to a more modest endeavor, founding a school for his worker's children. If he couldn't improve society through political means, then he aimed to do so through education. So Molt invited Steiner to be the director of the school he wished to establish. The primary focus of the school was from the start to realize and model a particular pedagogy (since named Waldorf Education) and not to be a company school. As such, starting in the second year the school separated itself administratively from the Molt's company, and financial subsidies ended in the seventh year of the school when the company went under, a victim of the German economy, then in hyperinflation. The school continued until it was shut down by the Nazi's in 1938 for - I'm not making this up - educating students to be too independent! The school reopend after WWII and spawned an entire movement: Waldorf Education. Today there are over 1000 schools operating with Waldorf methods.