Lecture: The well-minded: "Antroposophy, Waldorf education and biodynamic agriculture in dialog with the radical right."

Series of events: "Heimat, Volk, Scholle - legal pressure in rural areas"

After the First World War, the esotericist and life reformer Rudolf Steiner proclaimed his "anthroposophy": "higher knowledge" about the spiritual reasons for the existence of man,
the world and the universe. The practical implementation of anthroposophy in education (Waldorf), medicine and cosmetics (Weleda) or agriculture (Demeter) is more popular today than ever before. This success can be attributed not only to a thorough institutionalization structure, but also to the ideological flexibility of anthroposophy.

Steiner can - indeed, at will - be read as folkish and individualistic, brown and green, liberal and authoritarian. However, anthroposophy's organizing, "holistic" character and "self-governing" impulse always attracted right-wing interests, from the "blood and soil" ideologue Richard Walther Darré to the national-ecological artist prophet Joseph Beuys and today's "Reichsbürger". The example of anthroposophy can be used to study how only the zeitgeist ever speaks from the "higher worlds", how the search for freedom can turn into a claim to authority and how philanthropy can turn into inhumanity.

The speaker, Ansgar Martins , is doing his doctorate at the University of Frankfurt am Main on the philosophy of Siegfried Kracauer and has published on various occasions on the criticism of modern esotericism.

More information on the series at: http://gegen-rechtsdruck-veranstaltungsreihe.de/