Wed, 22 Oct 2008

NNA book review: “Waldorf Black Book” absurdly distorted picture of anthroposophy and Waldorf education

By Wolfgang G. Voegele

LONDON (NNA) - Waldorf education worldwide will soon celebrate its 90th anniversary – and the booming success of this educational model looks set to keep on growing. This fact is very disconcerting for some investigative journalists who are still seriously persuaded that something fishy is afoot. These include the self-appointed pursuer of sects and esoteric societies, Michæl Grandt (45) from Württemberg, Germany, who describes himself on his website as an expert authority on issues of child abuse, occult sects and satanism.

Grandt, who according to Spiegel magazine used to work in the furniture retail business, made a previous, rather unsuccessful foray into this theme ten years ago, in collaboration with his twin brother Guido (“Waldorf Connection”, “Anthroposophy Black Book”). His “Anthroposophy Black Book” was proven to contain so many false assertions that, blackened by its own brush, it finally sank without trace.

Now, after years of “abstinence” from this theme, Grandt has gone solo and is trying to put the wind up his readers again. Under the provocative title “Waldorf Black Book. Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy on Trial” (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008) the book aims, according to its author, to help worried parents make an informed choice about their children’s schooling.

The book has meanwhile been the subject of at least one interim injunction preventing it from being published without corrections (see separate NNA reports) – the main hearing is still pending - and it is apparent that the “help” Grandt offers amounts only to something resembling a conspiracy theory: Waldorf schools with their attractive, friendly exterior are in fact merely fronts for a globally active, anti-democratic sect by the name of the Anthroposophical Society. Founded by the supposedly racist guru Rudolf Steiner, this society clearly has, according to Grandt, the aim of infiltrating all humanity with its dubious occultism. The teaching offered at Waldorf schools is merely a first lure for the unwary.

Neither the real aims of anthroposophy nor the actual practice of Waldorf education figure anywhere in the book. From beginning to end a seriously distorted picture is presented, which Grandt has cobbled together from decades-worth of outdated Steiner critiques.

In his new book Grandt continually calls for “strong government action” to monitor anthroposophists, ban anthroposophical books and shut down funding for Waldorf schools. Has he perhaps overlooked the fact that this “ideal” could only be realised in a totalitarian state?

At the same time he rehashes long disproven rumours to back up his absurd claims. Any reader with a taste for esoteric dilettantism will get his money’s worth: Grandt’s book throngs with nature spirits, moon beings and demons, which are said to play a part in Waldorf education. Waldorf teachers, according to Grandt, mutate into all-powerful gurus, classrooms transform into torture chambers and brainwashing is the prime mode of tuition in Waldorf teacher training courses.

What the citations from Steiner – usually quoted out of context, without proper referencing – have to do with the normal everyday life of a Waldorf school, as experienced day-in, day-out by thousands of pupils and teachers remains a mystery. How can a school model supposedly based on such questionable foundations be so successful throughout the world? This question is neither asked, nor is any answer offered.

In other words, the authorities charged with monitoring schools and intelligent and critical Waldorf parents have, it seems, noticed nothing of all these strange and concealed goings-on which Grandt aims to “expose”. Grandt has drawn the attention of numerous authorities in Germany and elsewhere to his supposed discoveries, but these have unfortunately failed to respond as he would wish. Many did not even reply to him, as can be seen in the book’s appendix. Why does Grandt even bother printing these embarrassing results? Because the authorities, too, have misjudged his “mission”?

In fact most government authorities are now clearly aware of the kind of author they are dealing with here. As Spiegel magazine put it succinctly as long ago as February 1997, Michæl Grandt and his co-author Guido are not concerned with discovering the truth nor, still less, with engaging in intellectual debate, but merely with making a lucrative profit.

To make scaremongering a profitable business, Grandt as ever makes unproven or long since disproven assertions and – wholly in gutter press style – dresses up rumour and suspicion as fact. He takes pleasure, along with other authors, in speculating whether the founder of Waldorf education might have been a cocaine addict or mentally ill (p. 13).

No punches are pulled when it comes to attacking Rudolf Steiner. Grandt, who likes to see himself as a celebrated critic of the Nazi regime (see his website) does not use arguments but instead insult and calumny to beat down minorities with different views to his. He is not in the least interested that anthroposophists, too, were among the victims of the concentration camps during the Nazi period, and that many of these drew inner strength to the last from their memories of Rudolf Steiner. Nor is he interested that there are numerous former Waldorf pupils in public life today who remember their school days with pleasure and praise.

It goes without saying that Grandt is blithely unaware of recent academic research into esotericism, which assigns anthroposophy its worthy place in modern cultural history and regards Rudolf Steiner as an important figure who gave a positive impetus for our times. Grandt locates Steiner close to racism. He obviously has no clue that leading writers on racism such as George L. Mosse clearly distance Steiner’s humanistic esotericism from the “brown swamp”. To include current academic literature in his treatise would evidently have been beyond the remit or capacity of this self-appointed “populist educator”. (1)

After reading this “Waldorf Black Book” one is left asking, above all, why a well-known publishing company with a Christian orientation would want to jeopardise its reputation by publishing a volume that never rises above the level of the cheapest tabloid journalism.

And the Waldorf school movement itself really need lose no sleep over this “new publication”. By the time the Waldorf schools celebrate their 90th anniversary next year, Grandt’s “Black Book” will long since have been relegated to the remainder pile.

END/nna/vog/mb

Literature: (1) On Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, see relevant articles in: Wouter J. Hanegraaf (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden/Boston 2006, p. 82 ff. and 1084 ff.; and on the issue of racism, see: George L. Mosse, A History of European Racism, Howard Fertig 1997

Item: 081022-01EN Date: 22 October 2008

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