Explain Steiner’s teachings about human psychology. What are the differences between threefold, fourfold, and sevenfold human nature? How does the evolutionary dimension enter in?
HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT
June, 1917: two memoranda at behest of Count Polzer-Hoditz, who hesitated, and didn’t show it to the Kaiser until after he had already abdicated. Kaiser asked for more info; Count prepared a memorandum on the institution of “Dreigliederung” in Austria-Hungary, submitted it in Feb 1918.
vs. Woodrow Wilson’s “self-determination”: “An abstract mélange of outmoded notions.” Steiner:
· Central Europe should keep its political boundaries
· The economy should become international (recognizing econ rivalry that began war), and decoupled from the nation-state
· The spiritual and cultural life should become truly free
But nobody had the courage to try something so radical, and by the Autumn, everything had collapsed into chaos. [Steiner: the most important virtue for our time is courage. Think about it: Gandhi, Lech Walensa going over the fence, the students who sat down at the lunch counters in the South; Rosa Parks, MLK]
April, 1919: The Threefold Social Order published in an edition of 80,000 copies (German; also eight other European languages)
Soon thereafter, “Unions for Threefolding” founded in Stuttgart and Zürich, each of which published a journal, in which Steiner published many articles. Steiner traveled extensively, giving lectures, training others to lecture. Especially in Stuttgart, where his ideas were well received by the workers at the Bosch, Daimler and Waldorf Astoria factories.
Emil Molt asks Steiner the Parzival-question: What about education? And then backs the experiment financially! 1919. Blood in the streets.
Steiner tried to be the bridge-builder between the proletariat and the industrialists / “ruling classes,” and succeeded to some degree. But also got it from both sides. E.g. factory councils. Steiner (and Molt) supported these as good examples of association and cooperation within the economic sphere (cf. Daimler today: unions represented on the Board of Directors), but this drove other industrialists crazy: they saw the workers’ councils as a prelude to Bolshevism. But Steiner also insisted that these workers’ councils should be purely economic, and not political, which drove away the committed communists.
1921: Plebescite in Silesia: Poland or Germany? A perfect example of the kind of problem threefold was meant to address. But Steiner accused of a lack of patriotism by the Germans.
Steiner sold shares in companies that would undertake social initiatives.
Eventually, everything except the Waldorf School collapsed due to the hyperinflation of the 1920s. The Waldorf School remained open until it was closed by the Nazis (who tried to assassinate Steiner in Munich, in Feb 1922).
CONTEMPORARY INITIATIVES
Combining for-profit with non-profit
The first Waldorf School worked this way. Steiner created companies, issued stock, in order to multiply such initiatives, but what little he was able to accomplish was destroyed in the hyperinflation of the 1920s.
Banks and Social Finance
Surprisingly, Steiner puts banks in the rights/equality sphere. Why?
Barkhoff founds German bank. A genius. I heard him speak once; truly a great man.
Cf. RSF Social Finance in San Francisco. Decades of successful experience.
Community Supported Agriculture, Community Supported Medicine
We will have a guest speaker from the local biodynamic CSA.
(Variant: income communities. Brings freedom into lives that would not have it otherwise. Rotating sabbaticals! Some are the “breadwinners,” others contribute to quality of life in other ways).
Politics
Prague Spring 1968 (Eugen Loebl)
Aktion Dritter Weg [Action Third Way]
“Appeal for an Alternative” published by Joseph Beuys in a major German newspaper in 1978. SEE THE SECTION “THE WAY OUT,” which is so obviously an echo of the threefold social order
Green Party: Beuys and Schily among the founders!
Part of the governing coalition in Germany!
Joschka Fischer is the most popular poltician in Germany!