Rudolf Steiner and Guido von List
Guido
von List (1848-1919) was a Viennese
author and proponent of Aryanism. Nicholas
Goodrick-Clarke describes him as "the
first popular writer to combine völkisch ideology with occultism and theosophy".
(Goodrick-Clarke 33)
Steiner's
anthroposophy bears some resemblance
to Blavatsky's theosophy, and List
mixed theosophy with a völkisch ideology.
For superficial critics, it was not
difficult to see in Steiner, a leading
German-speaking proponent of a branch
of theosophy, similarities to Guido
von List. This is what happened in
1917 when Max Dessoir, a professor
of philosophy at the University of Berlin, published a book titled "Vom Jenseits der Seele. Die Gehimwissenschaften
in kritischer Betrachtung" (From the
Far Side of the Soul. A Critical look
at the Occult Sciences). While the
book covered much ground, parts were
highly critical of Steiner and his
work. Steiner published a lengthy response
in his own book "Vom Seelenrätzelen" (Riddles
of the Soul) later that same year.
In one part of his disagreement with
the criticism of Max Dessoir, Steiner
writes:
Fundamentally
Dessoirs criticism is nothing else
than numerous "retorts" directed
against the Anthroposophy that
I represent. With him debates are
useless because
he does not actually criticize
that which he purports to judge,
but rather
he criticizes an arbitrarily formed
and distorted image thereof that
he has created. Criticizing this
is then
quite easy for him. To me it seems
entirely impossible that someone
who understands what I represent - what
Anthroposophy is to me - could
equate it - as Dessoir does - with
a literary knee-jerk burlesque
such as the Faust books
of J. A. Louvier, or with the peculiar
racialist mysticism of Guido List,
or with Christian Science - or
indeed with anything that Dessoir
designates "neo-Buddhism".
(Steiner GA21 74)
List's
work is tossed off as "racialist
mysticism" and
Steiner cannot imagine how Anthroposophy
as he presents it could possibly
be confused with such a thing. Expanding
on that thought in a lecture that
same
year, Steiner said:
"Then
[Dessoir] brings up the racialist mysticism
of Guido von List. I have no other
relationship with Guido von List beyond
the fact that I once, so far as I know,
received from him - back when he was
a sensible man and had written his
novel "Carnuntum" in the
beginning of the 1880's - an essay,
during the time when I was still publishing "Lucifer-Gnosis"; I sent it back as dilettantish and unusable.
That is the only relationship that
I have to Guido von List." (Steiner GA176 94)
It is
clear that Steiner both knew of the
work of Guido von List, and held in
them low regard. The first documented
expressions of Steiner's contempt for
List's work date to 1917. Did Steiner
know about List and the Aryans any
earlier? In volume 31 of the complete
works (titled Essays On Current
Events And Culture, 1887-1901)
Steiner discusses Müller's linguistic
investigations into the Aryan language
from a critical standpoint. This demonstrates
that Steiner was familiar with the
label Aryan as a linguistic
concept before the Theosophical period.
Given the scope of Steiner's statements
on Müller, it is reasonable to infer
that Steiner had read broadly on the
subject.
In works from the period between 1902 and 1906 the
term Aryan comes up in Steiner's
books with some frequency, but almost always in the context of Theosophical
root
races (Blavatsky had named the
5th Root-Race the Aryan).
With one exception all of these references
are all in books that are reconstructed
from listener's notes, and often reconstructed
years after the fact. Since these listeners
were Theosophists, it is plausible
that they may have altered Steiner's
formulation to fit their familiar Theosophical
schema. After 1906 Steiner stopped
talking about Root Races, preferring
his own term Cultural Epoch. Steiner's
subsequent use of the word Aryan refers
to Aryans from a cultural perspective,
and is clearly in the context of ethnographic
discussions. Such is, for example,
the one instance of the adjective "Aryan" in
GA 121 - "The Mission of Individual
Folk Souls" - where Steiner makes
reference to the Aryan peoples of Europe
and Asia Minor.
Personally I think that Steiner stopped using the word
Aryan because of its misuse among
the Ariosophists. Steiner held a position
of responsibility within the European
Theosophical movement, was by all
accounts
extraordinarily well read and informed
of the developments within the occult
fringe, and therefore must have known
in detail about List and his ilk
earlier than 1917. In dealing with
Steiner
it is important to note that he avoided
whenever possible criticizing others,
and especially on points of doctrine.
It is clear that he objected to 90%
or more of what most Theosophists
of his day spoke and wrote, but his
remedy
was to lecture and present what he
thought was correct, and let his
listeners make the obvious conclusion,
rather
than declaim the errors of others
as such. This behavior is especially
evident
during the split from the Theosophical
Society that took place between 1909
and 1912. So I find it probable that
Steiner was fully aware of the Ariosophists
and for that reason stopped using
the term. Proving this contention
would
be more difficult; the evidence is
circumstantial.
While
the exact date that Steiner first formulated
his negative opinions on List cannot
be precisely determined, Steiner's
position on List's work is clear. He
sees no similarities with his own intentions,
and finds it of low quality.
Works
Cited
Goodrick-Clarke,
Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism:
Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence
on Nazi Ideology. The Ariosophists
of Austria and Germany,
1890-1935. New
York: New York University Press, 1985.
Steiner, Rudolf. Von Seelenrätseln. 1. Aufl. Berlin 1917, GA 21,
Dornach 1976. p 74.
Steiner,
Rudolf. Menschliche und menschheitliche
Entwicklungswahrheiten. Das Karma des
Materialismus. Dornach: Rudolf
Steiner Nachlassverwaltung. (Lecture
of June 26th, 1917. GA 176. Translation
by Daniel Hindes.)
A search of Steiner's complete works
for the noun Aryan (in German Arier)
returns 16 results. In looking for
the adjective forms we find that the
adjective "Aryan" appears
in Steiner's work 39 times. This means
that a maximum of 56 out of 90,000
pages. Since several of these occur
on the same page, you have less than
50 pages that contain any sort of reference
to Aryans. That is, the concept of
Aryans occurs in less than 0.00056%
of Steiner's work.
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