Rudolf Steiner was a self-described occultist and clairvoyant. [See "Occultism" and "Clairvoyance".] 

Understandably, Steiner's followers today prefer to use other terms to describe him: They call him an academic, a scientist, a philosopher, and so forth. Such descriptors make Steiner seem respectable, but they are inaccurate — they ascribe to Steiner qualifications and credentials that he did not actually possess.

The following is a message, posted in early 2022, that delves into the question of Steiner's academic credentials. The writer is historian Peter Staudenmaier.

Background: Toward the end of the second decade of the 21st century, official school inspectors in the United Kingdom found significant flaws in Waldorf schools operating there. Eventually, several Waldorf schools in the UK were shut down. [See "Steiner School Crisis".] 

The umbrella organization for British Waldorf Schools — the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) — responded by attempting to "modernise" their schools, hoping to mollify the inspectors. Staudenmaier's message, below, came during an online discussion of these matters. 

Staudenmaier begins by referring to a previous message posted by Steve Walden. In his own message, Staudenmaier refers to the Executive Director of the SWSF, Fran Russell.

Here is Staudenmaier's message:

Walden pointed out the SWSF website describes Steiner as an "academic" in its overview of Waldorf education. This inaccurate claim, repeated in various forms by many anthroposophist institutions, reflects a common confusion among Steiner's followers and obscures the more interesting history behind Waldorf schooling. 

Steiner was not an academic. He tried repeatedly to secure an academic position in the 1890s and around the turn of the century and failed each time, for reasons that had as much to do with the restrictive nature of the German and Austrian academic system as they did with Steiner himself. Even Steiner's doctorate was obtained under unusual circumstances, after several failed attempts. Despite support from patrons in Vienna, Berlin, and elsewhere, Steiner was largely excluded from the academic world of his day. He went to the 'wrong' kind of high school and the 'wrong' kind of college, and he did not take his exams at the end of his curtailed college studies, which technically disqualified him from pursuing a higher degree. He was only able to earn his doctorate (with the lowest possible passing grade) through an ad hoc long-distance arrangement with a professor at a university he never attended. Here is some brief background:

Steiner's initial schooling was at the village school in provincial Austria where his family lived at the time. He was a precocious student, and within a few years was able to jump up several rungs in the traditional Austrian educational hierarchy and ended up at the nearby Realschule, a science-oriented secondary school. In the German and Austrian system of secondary education, a Realschule stands between the less prestigious Hauptschule and the more prestigious Gymnasium. Steiner did quite well at the Realschule, and supplemented his classes in math and science etc. with his own philosophical reading. When he was 18 he began his college studies at the Technical College in Vienna. At first he studied primarily natural science subjects, though perhaps his most important influence came from a teacher of German literature. Steiner studied at the Technical College for four years, with excellent grades, and then left without taking his exams; in other words, he did not graduate, contrary to common claims in anthroposophist contexts.

During his time in Vienna Steiner was deeply involved in a variety of intellectual pursuits and evidently uninterested in academic qualifications. Most prominently, he helped edit some of Geothe's scientific works. Seven years after leaving the Technical College, having moved to Weimar, Steiner tried to re-orient toward an academic career, an option that faced several hurdles: for one thing, he hadn't gone to a Gymnasium for secondary school, the normal prerequisite for pursuing a university degree, and for another thing, he hadn't completed his studies at the Technical College. But Steiner persisted, at first attempting to have a book he had previously published accepted as a dissertation. When this failed, he contacted a professor at the university in Rostock, which Steiner never attended, who agreed to serve as his doctoral supervisor from afar. In 1891 Steiner submitted a dissertation which was accepted, just barely, by the philosophy department at the university of Rostock, and Steiner received his PhD.

In my view, these sorts of certification are much less important than Steiner's substantive intellectual background and the content of his publications. Experiences like these may, however, offer insight into Steiner's later complaints about scholarship after his esoteric turn, and into the specific forms of anti-intellectualism that have been a conspicuous part of anthroposophy from its beginnings.

Many of Steiner's latter-day followers are unfamiliar with these basic aspects of his biography, but the tone of disappointment in the academic world is hard to miss in his later works. In a sense, his rejection by the academy and his embrace of occultism went hand in hand. Since Steiner's educational model is founded squarely on his esoteric teachings, not on an academic foundation, descriptions like the one at the SWSF site misrepresent him. If Fran and her colleagues want to modernize their organization, correcting that error would be a good place to start. 

Peter S.

March 19, 2022

"Steiner the Academic"

https://groups.io/g/waldorf-critics/message/33010

[R.R., 2022.]