INTRODUCTION

The first volume of these lectures was published in an English translation in 1988. In Anthroposophy Today No. 8 I wrote a short article in which I said that they needed a careful introduction and extended notes if they were not to baffle the English-speaking reader. Recently I was asked to write such an introduction for the second volume. It became clear to me that I was insufficiently prepared for this task. I am not a professional historian nor have I access to any large library. The circumstances of my life make it impossible for me to supply the factual notes which I should have liked to provide. I also doubted whether the introduction I could write would really be helpful. My hesitation disappeared when I read in Lecture Eleven:

‘One who possesses the sense for truth is one who unremittingly strives to find the truth of the matter, one who never ceases to seek the truth and who takes responsibility for himself even when he says something untrue out of ignorance.’ [ Note 1 ]

I have occupied myself with these lectures for the last thirty years and have discussed them with friends. I have read fairly widely some relevant literature and often changed my mind in the light of new facts and with, I hope, more mature judgement.

The English-speaking reader might be disturbed by three particular aspects of these lectures. They present a description of the causes of the War of 1914–18 which differs fundamentally from what had been learned at school; they seem to reveal a pro-German bias; and they repeatedly portray Rudolf Steiner in an emotional mood to which we are not accustomed. It is these points which to some extent I hope to clarify. This will involve a brief study of the lecturer himself and also the question as to what extent subsequent historical events have borne out Steiner's main contentions.

There are two underlying contentions: the existence and aims of certain occult societies; and what is called the Karma of Untruth — in contemporary language the conscious manipulation of the media by power elites which may or may not be influenced by these societies. Today, the second contention can hardly be disputed by any thinking woman or man. Some of us still remember the late Dr Goebbels. All of us can ask ourselves what information we were fed day by day during the Gulf War and what we were allowed to know about Iraq in those days when it was at war with Iran. Steiner could understand the Briton who wanted to defend the Empire which his ancestors had built up over four centuries. But why the cant and why the smears?

So we come to the first of Steiner's main points: the existence of secret societies. A reader who is not prepared to consider the possibility of such groupings is advised not to read any further — neither this Introduction nor the lectures themselves. Rudolf Steiner spoke about these societies mainly during three periods. In the autumn of 1915 he lectured about The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, [ Note 2 ] dealing particularly with the history of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Then came the lectures under consideration here, while a number of subsequent lectures, mainly on social themes, find secret societies responsible for the establishing of Communism in Russia.

But it is particularly the present lectures which make us appreciate Steiner's position: He is involved in an occult, that is, a secret battle. Steiner and his adversaries agree on certain facts. They agree that ours is the age of the ‘consciousness soul’ in Steiner's terminology — the age of alienated man and woman, divorced from the Divinity, nature and their fellow men, but endowed with clear, dispassionate thinking. These characteristics blossomed particularly among the English-speaking peoples who became the pioneers of science, industrialization, commerce and banking; of capitalism and imperialism. But here the paths divide. Steiner is concerned with the next stage — the greening of the globe, the establishment of a new social culture and of a new awareness of the mysteries of the human being and its connections to the universe. These insights were to be conveyed to anybody ready to listen regardless of rank, sex or colour. The other side — according to Steiner — were anxious to keep this knowledge to themselves and thereby create power elites which could manipulate their fellow citizens and dominate the world.

One passage in these lectures seems to be particularly important in this context. Does it not show that Steiner knew in advance of the ambitions of secret societies? The very least it shows is that he had an amazing understanding of the course history was to take. In Lecture Six, using those ‘terms which are customary within these secret brotherhoods’, Steiner speaks of a Russian Government that ‘is to be swept away’, and of the task ‘of carrying out certain quite definite economic experiments, that is, of instituting a certain form of economic society of a socialist nature ...’ [ Note 3 ] These statements were made months before Kerensky's revolution, let alone Lenin's, had started.

The modern reader is not only struck by Steiner's prescience of the Russian revolution, but also by a number of aspects which testify to his clarity of observation and his modern attitude. I can mention but a few. The last lecture contains an alternative explanation of the origins of the War, an explanation with which most modern scholars would agree. We are living, Steiner tells us, in a ‘totally wrong social structure’. [ Note 4 ] In another passage he refers to a ‘carcinoma’ which he had spoken about in Vienna three months before the outbreak of war. The main fault in our social structure, he had said, lies in the unlimited production of goods. The implication is that individual firms and, behind them, their governments must constantly be looking for new markets — a topic to which further reference will be made. The rapid rise in German industrial potential was perceived by Britain as a threat to the Empire, while Germans could not see why they, the late industrial developers, had not an equal claim to the world markets as the British who for generations had been enjoying a dominant position.

While all Europe believed in the virtue of nationalism, following the Romantic tradition of the nineteenth century, Steiner pointed to its utterly destructive tendency. The strongest statement is near the end of Lecture Nineteen. Nationalism lies in our unconscious depths and has a demonic character. It was — and still is — being manipulated by power elites for their own group interests.

To Steiner it seemed ludicrous to speak of the freedom of nations, one of the professed war aims of the Allies. A human being can be free. A nation is ‘free’ if it is independent, but what does it profit a free man if the dictator who imprisons and tortures him happens to speak the same language? At the time of writing this introduction the Baltic States, Yugoslavia, Romania are some examples of unresolved nationalistic tensions. To a large extent these countries are a result of the War. In Lecture Seventeen Steiner expresses his wish to preserve Austria-Hungary, the country where federalism had made greater strides than anywhere else in Europe. As a comparison we might take the position of Ireland or Wales in 1914 or remember that not so long ago inhabitants of Friuli protested against their Italian government and bureaucracy by demonstrating under the flags of the old Monarchy. Before 1918, in a multi-lingual country, they had had more regional freedom than in the centralized Italy of the 1970s. Steiner would have liked the federalistic tendencies in Austria-Hungary to be extended and deepened, and this principle to be applied to the whole of Europe. This intuition forms one of the most important points in his subsequent attempts at social renewal. The fallacy of the ‘free nation’, the demonic character of nationalism, the wrong social structure that made war inevitable — which contemporary of Steiner showed so much foresight and clarity of vision?

Lectures Two, Three and Four give a coherent and persuasive account of Steiner's view that the machinations of secret societies caused — or at least largely contributed to the origin of — the war. Yet is is doubtful whether his account persuaded many readers who were not already aware of his unusual insights. But Steiner never wanted to be believed. He wanted to be taken seriously and be critically evaluated. The writer of this Introduction will attempt to do so.

We said above that there are three reasons why readers of these lectures might feel reservations concerning some of the statements Steiner made. Firstly, many people experience a natural reluctance to accept conspiracy theories — reds under all the beds! Secondly, Steiner seems at times clearly partisan, emotional, exaggerating — a point to which we will return later. But the most important point in readers' reluctance to accept a conspiracy theory is the fact that a convincing case can be made for the origin of the War without reference to secret societies. This applies to the causes of the War as well as to some of the details which Steiner mentions. We can look at a few examples only.

There are three passages in which reference is made to King Edward VII. The king was certainly no friend of Germany. But why? Steiner does not tell us the reason. Was the king's attitude a consequence of his belonging to a secret society? Can it be explained by reference to his biography? His rejection of his father who had tried to educate him in a strict and narrow manner and who, too often for the boy's liking, enumerated the high moral qualities of the Germans? His marriage to a Danish princess whose country was attacked and defeated by Prussia? His enjoyment of the non-puritanical delights of Paris?

A scene which Steiner frequently refers to is Sir Edward Grey's interview with Lichnowsky, the German ambassador. ‘Will Britain remain neutral if Germany respects Belgium's neutrality?’ Sir Edward fudges. Manipulation by the lodges or logical outcome of a normal process?

After the shock of the Boer War Britain created for the first time a military and naval planning group, the Committee of Imperial Defence. This body was at first primarily concerned with naval and colonial matters. But the military men got their chance when in 1905 France and Britain resolved their difficulties. In conversations with the French General Staff practical propositions were discussed as to how France might be supported in the event of a German invasion. ‘Political leaders in London were repeatedly to declare that these were merely contingency plans which did not commit the country to fight for France’, but ‘their very existence ... created a moral bond from which it would be difficult to escape’. [ Note 5 ]

The book from which this quotation is taken was published in 1980. It describes a number of causes for the outbreak of hostilities. The most important, however, was commercial rivalry. As we have seen, Steiner did not disagree with this view. He himself quoted figures to show how in the course of less than two generations Germany had turned the tables on Britain, which consequently felt deeply threatened in its commercial dominance of the world.

Now we turn to Steiner himself. In these twenty-five lectures we find discrepancies and, occasionally, factual mistakes. Nor can it be said that the lecturer treats all nations and individuals he mentions with equal understanding and respect. A case in point is his treatment of Sir Edward Grey. Furthermore, Steiner's defence of Germany's innocence is hardly credible today when most official documents of the time are known. We can only quote one example. In 1900 Szögyeny, Austria-Hungary's ambassador in Berlin, a man who had no interest in slandering Germany, wrote in his official dispatches:

‘The leading German statesmen, and above all Kaiser Wilhelm, have looked into the distant future and are striving to make Germany's already swiftly-growing position as a world power into a dominating one, reckoning hereby upon becoming the genial successor to England in this respect. People in Berlin are, however, well aware that Germany would not be in the position today or for a long time to assume this succession, and for this reason a speedy collapse of English world power is not desired since it is fully recognized that Germany's far-reaching plans are at present only castles in the air. Notwithstanding this, Germany is already preparing with speed and vigour for her self-appointed future mission. In this connection I may permit myself to refer to the constant concern for the growth of the German naval forces...England is now regarded as the most dangerous enemy which, at least as long as Germany is not sufficiently armed at sea, must be treated with consideration in all ways...but because of the universal anglophobia it is not easy [to convince public opinion of this].’ [ Note 6 ]

This document precedes by five years the Anglo-French rapprochement.

To understand such weaknesses in Steiner's position we must look at him more closely. Repeatedly he made it clear that not everything he says stems from clairvoyant investigations. He was, of course, also a product of his age. Much comes from the education he received, the books and newspapers he read. It is unlikely — to take one example — that he would have spoken about Sir Edward Grey in the way that he did if he had been able to study the karma of this tragic personality. A question which might tentatively be asked is this: In Lecture Four Steiner expresses his conviction that karma grants him the right books at the right time; in other places he tells us how often and how intensively he had read the sources which he quotes. But could it not be that in a small number of cases he had not had the time to investigate clairvoyantly the being of the author quoted, and so trusted him more than might have been warranted? Where Steiner could not make special spiritual investigations, he could only know what his age knew. Had Sir Edward been able to assure Lichnowsky that Britain would remain neutral provided Germany respected Belgian neutrality, the German General Staff would have had to inform their government that this promise did not help the situation at all. They only had one plan and this one plan could not be slowed down, altered or put into reverse. But this fact only emerged years after the end of the War.

In the magazine Anthroposophy Today No. 2 there appeared an article In Search of Rudolf Steiner. In it the present writer gave examples of the intimate contact which Steiner had with his audience. In Vienna Steiner described how the emotions of his audience affected him and that he took care to avoid two particular issues because he found it difficult to deal with the waves of emotion which arose in his audience on such occasions. One of these issues was human sexuality. But Steiner put nationalism, a drive in our subconscious, on the same level as sexuality. We, living at the end of the twentieth century, have often no idea of the crude, primitive, thoughtless nationalism of Europeans — British, French, Germans, Italians — at the beginning of this century. In dealing with burning contemporary issues Steiner had to expose himself to the nationalistic emotions of his audience. Is it then surprising that occasionally he was affected by them?

Nor should it surprise us that a man in search of objective spiritual insights is in some respects like any other human being. Occasionally even prejudices become manifest. Steiner was in an exceptionally burdened situation. A study of his ‘prophetic’ utterances shows that he was surprisingly aware of the inner and outer history of the remainder of our century. In 1916–17 he stood utterly alone, experiencing the tragedy and the horror which were to overtake Europe in the next two generations if the offer of peace was shouted down. Cassandra-like, he could look into the future, but like Cassandra he could not convince. He would not have been human if in this situation he could have remained calm and collected throughout.

But against this we have to set his desperate cry in Lecture Eighteen:

‘Those who believe that I say these things from any kind of nationalistic feeling, simply do not understand me.’ [ Note 7 ]

Time and again we find passages and whole lectures in which he spoke with the utmost objectivity. Lecture Seven contains a deeply moving passage about the suffering and heroism of the Serbs.

We can now approach the central question: Why did Rudolf Steiner care so passionately that Germany's international reputation should not be besmirched? We turn to Lecture Twenty:

‘And what we now hope for in Central Europe is the development of the element of spiritual science.’ [ Note 8 ]

What he called Mitteleuropa is a spiritual impulse which fired people living around 1800. Some of their names — Goethe, Novalis, Carus, Schelling — are familiar to students of Steiner's work. In many ways he looked at his own task as a continuation and enhancement of their achievements. But in his lectures in November and December 1918, The Challenge of the Times, [ Note 9 ] he clearly distances himself from the Wilhelminian Reich. Repeatedly he quotes Nietzsche's statement that the foundation of this Reich meant the murder (extirpation) of the German spirit. By their endeavour to make all things German despicable, Steiner's occult enemies hoped to deal a mortal blow to Steiner's work, and in particular to his social intentions, the very antithesis of imperialism, capitalism and manipulation.

We might ask: Why should the United States have wanted in 1917 to humiliate Germany? The same United States which from the late 1940s on found not the slightest difficulty in establishing a close relationship with Germany politically and economically? Was it perhaps that apart from Anthroposophy precious little was left of Mitteleuropa? And why should we have heard recently such howls of triumph about the death of socialism when what we witnessed was the end of a totalitarian system built on the theories of Lenin and the practice of Stalin?

Lecture Twenty-Five is a farewell to his Dornach audience. Steiner is to speak in Germany and does not know whether the Swiss authorities will permit his return. He sums up the whole series by referring to this occult battle in an amazingly restrained way, far beyond any nationalism:

‘Today's tragic destiny of mankind is that in striving upwards today, human beings are endeavouring to do so not under the sign of spirituality but under the sign of materialism. This in the first instance is what brought them into conflict with those brotherhoods who want to develop the impulses of the mercantile, commerce and industry, in a materialistic way on a grand scale. This is today's main conflict. All other things are side issues, often terrible side issues. This shows us how terrible maya can be. But it is possible to strive for things in different ways. If others had been in power instead of the agents of those brotherhoods, then we would, today, be busy with peace negotiations, and the Christmas call for peace would not have been shouted down.’ [ Note 10 ]

A short postscript concerning an issue which Steiner developed subsequently. He indicated that spiritual powers were at work during the critical days of August 1914 and that a haze descended on the various European chancelleries. (In more general terms this situation is described in Lecture Seventeen). Today this statement can be documented. The panic in the German government when they found that the General Staff had robbed them of any room for diplomatic manoeuvre because the inexorable logic of the Schlieffen plan had already taken over was paralleled by a lack of unanimity and by confusion in the British cabinet. Churchill was ready to go to war — I follow here Kennedy whom I quoted above; Morley and Burns were resolved to avoid a British entanglement on the side of France and resigned when the large majority of waverers inclined more and more to Churchill's side, particularly after the invasion of Belgium.

Two events need special mention: the assassination of Jean Jaurès, a man of great authority and one who had striven for peace; and, even more dramatic, the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He had been on an official visit to Sarajevo. In the morning a tour of the city was on the programme. The archduke and his wife travelled in an open motor car. Suddenly shots were fired, the car accelerated out of danger. Three young men were arrested. The archduke's party proceeded to the town hall where there was an official reception and banquet. It was decided to continue the drive in the afternoon, but for security reasons a few details were altered.

Through the city flows a narrow river — the Miljacka. It is flanked by promenades, and a number of bridges connect the two banks. Approaching one of the bridges the driver forgot the change of route. An adjutant shouted to him, pointing out the mistake. So he reversed — in those days a rather cumbersome manoeuvre.

But a fourth assassin, Gavrilo Princip, had been overlooked by the police. He was sitting in an open-air cafe when to his surprise the archducal cavalcade passed just in front of him. It came to a halt, reversed; he shot. Princip was arrested and sentenced to death, but owing to his youth was not executed. After the War he returned to Serbia and became a schoolmaster. Such were the dramatic and convoluted events by which karma became manifested.

Rudi Lissau, August 1991. 

References:

1.	Rudolf Steiner The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol 1, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1988, p.240.
2.	Rudolf Steiner The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1973.
3.	Rudolf Steiner The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol 1, p.126–7.
4.	Rudolf Steiner The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol 2, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1992, p. 212.
5.	Paul Kennedy The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, Allen & Unwin, London 1980, p.280.
6.	The original document can be found in the Staatsarchiv, Vienna.
7.	Rudolf Steiner The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol 2, p. 78.
8.	Rudolf Steiner The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol 2, p. 130.
9.	Rudolf Steiner The Challenge of the Times, Anthroposophic Press, New York, no date.
10.	Rudolf Steiner The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol 2, p. 222–3.