Lecture: The Well Minded: "Antroposophy, Waldorf Education and Biodynamic Agriculture around Dialogue with the Radical Right."

Series of events: "Heimat, Volk, Scholle - Rechtsdruck im ländlichen Raum" (Home, People, Countryside - Legal Pressure in Rural Areas)

After the First World War, the esoteric and life reformer Rudolf Steiner proclaimed his "anthroposophy": "higher knowledge" about spiritual reasons for existence of man,
world and universe. The practical implementations of anthroposophy in education (Waldorf), medicine and cosmetics (Weleda) or agriculture (Demeter) are 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 be read - indeed at will - völkisch and individualistic, brown and green, liberal and authoritarian. But always the organizist, "holistic" character and the "self-governing impulse" of anthroposophy attracted right-wing interested parties, from the "blood and soil" ideologue Richard Walther Darré to the national-ecological artist-prophet Joseph Beuys to today's "Reichsbürger". The example of anthroposophy shows how the "higher worlds" always speak only of the spirit of the times, 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 on the philosophy of Siegfried Kracauer and has published several times on the criticism of modern esotericism.

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