Zero Tolerance for Intolerance

Erziehungskunst | Since August 2023, you have been the point of contact for the Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen (Federation of Independent Waldorf Schools Germany) in matters relating to racism, discrimination, and extremism. How often do people contact you, and who are they?

Frank Steinwachs | Within the last 24 months, around 50 schools have contacted me. School administrators, principals, school social workers, parents, teachers, and even students (once through their teacher) have reached out, and I have worked with them. In addition to advice on a specific case, they often want background information to raise awareness among their own staff. I visit schools and hold workshops on topics such as democracy or participation, and in the evenings I usually give a lecture for interested parties and parents. However, I must point out that I am not a mediator who can work on conflict resolution on site, but merely a consultant.

EK | What kind of advice do schools seek from you?

FS | Some schools want to know how they can protect themselves contractually against people with extremist views coming to the school. Sometimes one or two phone calls can help. Just recently, however, I developed new self-administration and admission documents with a school. This was a school that originally had a very big problem with right-wing influence. I don't want to go into details now, but there were real attempts at infiltration by neo-right-wing individuals. At first, my colleagues were shocked and at a loss, but then we worked together very productively. The goal was: How can the school avoid admitting parents who are not interested in Waldorf education, but either want to synchronize it with right-wing ideology or are looking for a space where they can believe they can live out their rejection of «the state» or a confused parallel world? It was important to understand how the term neutrality is understood and used. For the first time, we have used an expanded definition of neutrality in relation to the Stuttgarter Erklärung (Stuttgart Declaration) against racism, nationalism, and discrimination by the Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen (BdFWS). We incorporated philosopher Karl Popper's so-called neutrality paradox from 1945, which states: «If a tolerant group, because of its tolerance, allows intolerant forces to abolish its own tolerance, this is paradoxical because tolerance is thus directed against itself.» It was therefore stipulated in the school regulations and school contracts that it is not discriminatory for the school to refuse admission to individuals or groups whose worldview discriminates against or excludes other people. In this way, we protect all people from discrimination.

EK | The Stuttgarter Erklärung states that we do not want discrimination. This can also be interpreted to mean that people with different political views should not be discriminated against.

FS | There are colleagues who consider tolerance or integration of identitarian or right-wing nationalist positions to be a free spiritual life, failing to recognize that in doing so they are opening the door to new right-wing positions, attempts at synchronization, or appropriation. In my opinion, it is time to revise the Stuttgarter Erklärung in this regard and to clarify what free spiritual life actually means in a philosophy of freedom on which Waldorf education is based. Waldorf education has a humanistic ethos that opposes the ideology of the new right and identity movement as well as a conspiracy myth scene that claims to know the «real» truth. And if schools believe that, for educational reasons, they should accept children from families in parallel worlds such as the Anastasia movement, then they must also have functional concepts and experts in their teaching staff who can professionally address and support this.

EK | How can you recognize people with extremist views?

FS | Externally, this is difficult today, unless codes or identifying marks become visible. In my opinion, it is much more important to listen carefully to what is being said. And when people and their attitudes, their locations, their statements, and their sources are critically researched, surprising things often come to light. I can recommend this, for example, for supposed statistics from right-wing bloggers' TikTok reels, among other things, with which our children are bombarded: It would be a good exercise in family media literacy in the sense of critically dealing with the digital overwhelming strategies of the New Right to examine these aspects. This is not a conspiracy myth; you can read about it directly in the posts by Erik Ahrens, the social media manager in the AfD's last European election campaign, or Martin Sellner on social media, who stand by their strategy and have made it public.

EK | Which people in schools are usually involved?

FS |  Meanwhile, it is no longer just about neo-right-wing or nationalist employees in schools with ties to the Reichsbürgermilieu (Reich Citizens' Movement); more often than not, it is now about parents and, in some cases, students who subscribe to these ideologies. For example, there are photos from chats showing students standing in front of a swastika on the blackboard giving the Hitler salute. So it is also about digital situations in which students spread new right-wing propaganda. Stickers or slogans appear in class that may not be dealt with, or reels and memes that reach students and parents and have an impact on schools.

EK | What do you like about your job?

FS | My work at the center is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but it is an important and therefore worthwhile task. It is good that we can be effective. Many people currently feel powerless in the face of the social and political situation. And of course, this does not stop at Waldorf schools. Our activities show people that they are not alone and that together we can do something. We are the majority, we are many. I also really enjoy working with young people and engaging in educational discourse on political issues and controversial topics, especially when things get heated.

EK | What challenges do you face?

FS | (laughs) Everything! No, seriously: I really hope that Waldorf schools become even more aware of liberal education with a critical view of society. Fortunately, this is already the case in many schools. But: This must be implemented as a basis, especially in self-administration, because a shaky self-administration or one that is controlled by individual dominant colleagues is always a gateway for people who abuse committees. It is important for schools to be clear about what they stand for. What attitudes do we definitely not want to promote in our schools? For teachers, including those who do not teach social studies, there is an easy-to-read book suitable for everyday use, Politische Bildung in reaktionären Zeiten (Political Education in Reactionary Times), which I recommend to all teaching staff as an introduction to raising awareness of the problem and for initial strategies for action. It is available free of charge as a PDF from Wochenschauverlag (see QR code). In 2023, we all underestimated how big the rush on the specialist unit would be. It is good and important that Hans Hutzel, a member of the BdFWS executive committee, has been able to devote more time to this issue since September and get more deeply involved in the specialist unit, because we need reinforcement.

EK | Rudolf Steiner has been dead for 100 years; he no longer has the authority to interpret his own work, which means that his writings are open to all kinds of readings, interpretations, and appropriations. Must the BdFWS respond when the New Right interprets Steiner's texts to suit their ideology?

FS | Rather reinterpret or appropriate. There have already been attempts at appropriation by the new right, and we, the specialist department, the Verein Bildungseinrichtungen gegen Rechtsextremismus (Association of Educational Institutions Against Right-Wing Extremism), and a number of other actors from the Waldorf movement have repeatedly pointed this out. But: The BdFWS has done its homework in this regard. While anyone, regardless of their ethical, moral, or philosophical stance, can call themselves an anthroposophist and spread any kind of nonsense verbally, online, or in print, this is no longer possible in Waldorf education. The registration of trademark rights ensures that the BdFWS can respond to inadmissible attempts at appropriation, including through legal action. We draw attention to problematic attitudes and trends, advise or publish, as was the case in the extreme cases of Martin Barkhoff and Caroline Sommerfeld, but also in the case of the party die Basis or supposedly popular Waldorf or anthroposophy explainers, of whom there are several. Actually, it is not a question of «interpretive authority», but rather that we should not allow the new right-wing scene to impose its ideology on Waldorf education. Increased scrutiny by the authorities is making it increasingly difficult for the new right-wing scene to establish schools, and interest in free alternative schools and Waldorf schools is growing again—but not out of an educational interest. And this is where appropriation becomes relevant again, something we as school communities must take action against.

EK | Steiner spent the last years of his life in Germany and Switzerland—both countries were democracies at the time. What was Steiner's relationship to the political system of «democracy»?

FS | Steiner stood for a kind of democratic principle in which he saw a liberal idea when he said, for example: «The big question for the future will be: How should we behave towards children if we want to educate them in such a way that they can grow up to be social, democratic, and liberal in the broadest sense? And one of the most important social issues for the future, indeed for the present, is the question of education.» This also includes the fact that in his writings he repeatedly advocated for women's equality and emphasized that a society that discriminates against or disenfranchises half of its members, meaning all women, cannot truly be free. Overall, Steiner's political idea, the threefold social order, is based on the goal of guaranteeing human freedom and not on defining a political system. However, the core ideas of anthroposophy woven into this concept automatically rule out identitarian and thus de-individualizing ideologies, since their basic ideological consensus of an exclusively defined group stands in opposition to a free spiritual life and ethical individualism.

On the one hand, Steiner called for a critical approach to his positions, yet on the other hand he displayed a rhetorical and apodictic attitude. He often determined what was right and wrong, sometimes without argument and with the feeling that his words should convey a universal claim to truth. Here it is our task to take a stand and find a way of dealing with this. Anthroposophy is an individual and ethical search «between dogma and method», as Ulrich Kaiser put it in his 2014 essay Wann wird das symbolische Gewand fallen? (When will the symbolic veil fall?). Today, this could be a contemporary attitude based on Steiner's ideas. 

EK | Thank you very much! 

The interview was conducted by Angelika Lonnemann.