Contrasting Ways of Knowing:Overlapping Epistemologies in the Thought and Lives of Ernst Bloch and Rudolf Steiner
First Theodor Adorno in 1965, and then a second wave of scholars in the 1980s, noted that the philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) engaged substantially with theosophy, particularly when young. This included Bloch's critique of the new religious movement anthroposophy, which some see as an offshoot of theosophy, and of anthroposophy's founder, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). I address the lack of English publications on the content of this engagement, and integrate other current questions about Steiner, including the centrality of racism to his whole philosophy. Comparing Bloch's epistemology with Steiner's ultimately reveals much that is irreconcilable, alongside significant points of convergence.
Characterizing Anthroposophy as a Movement, Philosophy, or as Doctrines: Emic and Etic Perspectives
Before investigating Bloch's engagement with Steiner, and comparing the two thinkers' epistemologies, I will attempt to characterize how anthroposophy serve as the basis for the epistemological questions discussed later. This article focuses on a specific aspect of Steiner's social-intellectual legacy: his diffuse yet internally coherent philosophy. This approach is informed by the most thorough research to date on anthroposophy, even if it appears at odds with some of that scholarship. Peter Staudenmaier, for example, in his Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Fascist Era, cites extensively from emic perspectives—from correspondence and journalism written by a large range of anthroposophists in the 1920s–1940s, for example—yet his preponderant structuring concepts are etic. Staudenmaier conceives of anthroposophy as a collection of doctrines—using the plural and the singular of the term dozens of times in his publications on the subject—which have either been [End Page 387] followed blindly, or rejected wholeheartedly.1 Although Steiner's listeners and readers, while he was alive and since his death, have developed an extraordinary variety of (critical) responses to his lectures and writings, Staudenmaier hardly considers Steiner's thinking to be philosophy.2
Wouter Hanegraaff, by contrast, integrates emic and etic perspectives more fully in researching Steiner and his purported abilities—an approach to which this article is indebted.3 While acknowledging that "the emic/etic distinction" has been "hotly debated" since its introduction into scholarly discourse in 1954, he also considers it "indispensable if we wish to avoid, or at least minimize, the risk of conceptual anachronism in disciplines like the history of religion or of science."4 A reconstruction of Bloch's engagement with Steiner must venture deep into both these fields.
That said, Staudenmaier conceptualizing anthroposophy principally as "doctrines" makes sense to many scholars. But this approach forecloses discussion on the worth of Steiner's ideas: dogmatic teachings, it is implied, cannot possess intrinsic worth. Staudenmaier also risks ignoring the agency, and often prosaic motivations, of tens of thousands of humans who have worked in anthroposophical institutions since the Anthroposophical Society was founded in December 1912. Are indeed "Waldorf schools, biodynamic farming, Camphill communities, [and] Weleda or Demeter products" "built" on "esoteric doctrines" as Staudenmaier contends?5 Or has the construction of these social edifices been informed by a cluster of motivations that include providing less mechanistic school education, a profound commitment to soil quality and animal welfare, and a desire to provide homes and meaningful work for adults and children with special needs? Doctrine, or the German term, "Lehre," is not a word anthroposophists often used to describe the object of their concern during Steiner's lifetime, and they hardly use it to self-identify today.6
Examining the language that groups use to describe their own convictions—the emic component—in no way indicates agreement with the same. All methodologies create blind spots, the one outlined here included. In turn, the focus of Eric Kurlander, Staudenmaier, and other contemporary scholars on the doctrinal leads them to neglect influential anthroposophical leaders, who, in the two decisive decades following Steiner's death in 1925, rejected the racist elements in his lectures and published writings.7 In his bibliographic notes, Staudenmaier only mentions the physician Ita Wegman (1876–1943) for example,8 who developed anthroposophical medicine together with Steiner from March 1920.9 Wegman was Steiner's closest confidante, and possibly sexual partner,10 during the last years of his life, and was one of five individuals comprising the so-called Esoterischer Vorstand (Esoteric Board). The board ran the General Anthroposophical Society, first under Steiner's direction from 1924, and on their own volition in the decade following Steiner's death in 1925, through until 1935.11 But Wegman distanced herself emphatically from the close ties to National-Socialist and Italian fascist leaders sought by Steiner's widow,12 [End Page 388] Marie Steiner-von Sivers, and other eminent anthroposophists from the late 1920s.13 Indeed, internal disputes in these decades have arguably had a greater impact on how subsequent generations experience Steiner's legacy than Steiner's writings and lectures have done themselves. Therefore, Wegman's oppositional course and her expulsion from the Anthroposophical Society 1935—a move pushed principally by Marie Steiner—matter historiographically. Wegman was expelled from both the board and the whole society with her fellow Dutch native speaker Elisabeth Vreede (1879–1943).14 Further expulsions in April 1935 hit leading figures in the "United Free Anthroposophical Groups."15 The context of individual and collective responses to Steiner has invariably been personal interactions, some characterized more by cooperation, others more by conflict. The scholarly study of anthroposophy should not negate the movement's socio-religious aspect.
The major split in the 1930s indicates conflicting wings active within the movement until the present. To simplify, I identify an orthodox wing and a more heterogeneous, progressive wing. Orthodox participants will more likely: reiterate Steiner's essentialist views on specific nations and "races"; deny Steiner's racism entirely, or portray it as an anomaly; engage in conspiracism, especially with regard to anthroposophy's "enemies."16 Heterogenous-progressive participants will more likely: support anti-racist and internationalist causes, also by drawing on Steiner's writings and lectures that support the same;17 reject racist and anti-Semitic components of Steiner's worldview unconditionally; disavow conspiracism, as part of worldviews shaped profoundly by parallel movements, including environmentalism18 and democratism.19
All these categories could be used to examine Ernst Bloch's theosophical-anthroposophical encounters. But Bloch has gone down in history as a philosopher, a further reason to prioritize the philosophical angle: what attracted him to Steiner's philosophy in the first place, and how does Steiner's epistemology compare with his own?
Bloch's First Wife Else von Stritzky, and Bloch's Early Engagement with Theosophy and Anthroposophy
If Bloch does not need an introduction, it's worth recalling this is a recent development. In a 2019 overview of Bloch's reception, Johan Siebers describes interest in Bloch's thought slumping after the Cold War, but also the upswing that eventually followed.20 The argument on why Bloch matters is persuasive:
What Bloch never ceased to stress and what determined his own thinking, that philosophy is irreducible and necessary to keep human consciousness open, is perhaps more urgent today than it was already in his own time. Academic philosophy has largely put itself out of play by withdrawing into an increasingly arcane, scholastic practice of disputation that lacks the power of imagination and the liberating potential we know from the great texts of the philosophical tradition.21 [End Page 389]
As an outspoken young scholar, Bloch reached for such "great texts" to put Steiner in his place. In May 1911, Bloch travelled southwest following a two-month stay in Bonn, and stopped at a remote Gasthaus south of Munich, where he got to know his future wife: Else von Stritzky (1883–1921).22 Bloch recalled early relations bolstered by philosophy, how he: "spoke with her about my Kant interpretation, tore Steiner to pieces. I first kissed her on a bench beside the [River] Isar."23 In the autumn of that year, Bloch began living for prolonged spells in Heidelberg,24 where he regularly crossed paths and conversed with theosophists and anthroposophists. Recounting the difference between these terms in the 1910s' context merits an excursus.
Early dialogue between Steiner, an eminence in Adyar Theosophy in Germany from 1903,25 and Annie Besant, a global leader of the same movement,26 was cordial, although the former refused to be a mere figurehead for the German movement.27 The control exercised by Steiner and his partner Marie von Sivers, over theosophy in the German language sphere grew rapidly, alongside numbers of lodges and members under their auspices. By October 1905, Steiner was de facto leader of the German section of the international Theosophical Society Adyar.28 The international, internecine conflict that began in 1911, involving Steiner, Besant, Charles Leadbeater (1854–1934), and the young Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), was fueled by German-speaking theosophists' demands for greater autonomy. Steiner opposed vehemently Leadbeater and Besant's exultations of the teenager Krishnamurti as a future "world teacher."29 The split exploded in 1912: Besant's order that Steiner be removed as leader of the German section was not carried out, but still sparked a retaliation. The German section drafted a motion on December 8 for the forthcoming general meeting in Adyar. Besant should be removed as president because of her "abuse and despotism," and replaced by "the greatest known theosophical teacher of the present day": Steiner.30 When the general meeting convened, Besant successfully deflected these attacks with anti-Semitic slurs: she called Steiner a fallen, Jesuit-educated priest,31 and a Jewish convert.32 The break irreparable, Steiner and supporters founded the Anthroposophische Gesellschaft (Anthroposophical Society) on December 28, 1912, in Cologne. Followers of Steiner who had previously referred to themselves as theosophists increasingly called themselves anthroposophists.
Von Stritzky would have probably called herself neither, although she met Bloch concurrent with his first forays into theosophical literature: the conversation beside the Isar was not the couple's last on the subject.33 Sadly, almost no letters or diaries written by von Stritzky survive, making Bloch's written portraits the main access to her history.34 In the following, I expand on von Stritzky substantial influence on Bloch regarding core theosophical and anthroposophical ideas, including reincarnation, and on the validity of revelatory truth.
Bloch's recurring visions/delusions about founding a new creed in this period, color his picture of von Stritzky as his ideal disciple. Writing to Lukács about fantastically [End Page 390] detailed plans to publish his philosophy in ten systematic volumes—intentions never remotely realized in this form—Bloch riffs expressionistically that "everyone … will feel their hand is being held [by my philosophy] … a great physical health is coming … and everyone shall be taught the strengths of my faith … I am Paraclete, and the people who I'm sent to will experience and understand God returning home within them."35 Compare this to a passage, in Bloch's Gedankenbuch für Else Blochvon Stritzki (Book of Thoughts for Else Bloch-von Stritzki), dated February 16, 1921, only weeks after his first wife had died: "Else believed firmly in the absolute truth of my philosophy. It came to her out of the same blood and the same religion as the Bible; she glossed the Bible using my philosophy and glossed my philosophy using the Bible."36
Bloch on Steiner and Stefan George: The First Edition of The Spirit (1918)
Von Stritzky supposedly identifying with Bloch's philosophy in this way—an instinctive or autochthonous form of knowledge, rather than an intellectual one—is a further clue to how the young Bloch enacted his philosophical vocation. Writing on how responses to Steiner, and to Stefan George's circle, shaped the first edition of Geist der Utopie (Spirit of Utopia, first German edition 1918), Jan Stottmeister sees Bloch occupying "a superior occult teacher [Geheimlehrer] role."37 An extraordinary, "occult teacher" passage comes in the lengthy section titled "The Intellectual Atmosphere of Our Time," cut entirely from the 1923 and 1964 editions; the only published English translation is based on the latter.38 Notably, Bloch kicks off this passage by stressing George's religious agency: "It's foremost those who determine the religious color of the times who should be counted here. So let's start with Stephan [sic] George, a tremendous poet, and a priest too, for those who believe in him."39
This praise is dampened when Bloch charges members of George's inner circle—including the 'rediscoverer' of Hölderlin, Norbert von Hellingrath (1888–1916)—with not having progressed beyond a neo–Kantian mode of knowledge extraction. As Cat Moir elucidates, anyone who studied philosophy in Germany from 1860 to 1914—this applies to both Bloch and Steiner—could not have avoided neo–Kantianism's influence, the period's "dominant philosophical movement."40 Contrasting members of George's circle with the French theosophist Edouard Schuré, who Bloch scorns as "such a petty figure,"41 Bloch is nonetheless convinced that when Schuré:
writes about Pythagoras, he draws from a different spring than [Eduard] Zeller or [Wilhelm] Windelband.
It cannot be denied that this spring is called Steiner.
Which is certainly dispiriting and disquieting enough. A miserable newspaper writer, very gossipy and only a quarter-educated, has secrets to transmit.42 [End Page 391]
Despite these major reservations, Bloch is convinced that something "essential has landed up" in Steiner:
and there is a point pertaining to this otherwise hardly bearable man from which long broken connections, which have been lying there dead, appear to reanimate and reassemble themselves again. … The simple reason that the significance of all this destroys all comprehension is that, since Newton and Leibniz, we have possessed a worldview that unquestionably omits these elements.43
His catalogue of Steiner's flaws notwithstanding, Bloch argues it would be "unobjective" not to recognize that Steiner presents us with "extraordinary valuable information."44
Rightly, Stottmeister locates this passage as part of Bloch's larger project of syncretizing the theosophical thought-world with Stefan George's own.45 Some months after the first issue of a new journal, Das Reich, appeared in April 1916, Bloch references it enthusiastically when writing to his friend, György Lukács, in August 1916: "at last George + Steiner."46 The editor, Alexander von Bernus, had indeed moved freely between theosophical-anthroposophical circles and George's in Heidelberg prior to starting the magazine. These movements overlapped with Bloch's prolonged stays in the small university city from October 1911 and his lavish life there following his wedding with von Stritzky in June 1913.47 In both the August 1916 letter, and in a subsequent missive to Lukács the following month, Bloch refers to "the conclusion of Music" that he's sent von Bernus for publication.48 Receiving no answer, Bloch asks Lukács to write to Bernus about the submission on Bloch's behalf.49
These letters represent Bloch discussing a part of "The Philosophy of Music" with Lukács, the dominating middle section of The Spirit,50 and placed, in the first edition, immediately before "On the Intellectual Atmosphere of Our Time," in which George and Steiner are discussed.51 Further evidence for identifying "the conclusion of Music" in this way comes in the August 1916 letter, in which discussion of the manuscript is immediately followed by Bloch's news about submitting two other "sections out the book" to periodicals—"The Jews" to the Weiße Blätter, and "The Alexandrine Procession" to the [Neue] Rundschau.52
In a follow-up postcard to Lukács on September 26, 1916, Bloch claims that "two hours" after his previous letter to Lukács, he received "a long letter" from "Mrs. Schmid Romberg,"53 explaining that "she had lost the manuscript."54 Bloch now wants Lukács to "forget the thing with Bernus."55
When "Philosophy of Music" was finally published in Geist in 1918 it came in at 156 pages. I contend that the final size and shape of this section, and indeed of the whole first edition, is informed by Bloch's desire to settle scores, on music and other topics, with theosophists and anthroposophists, with George's followers, and with Max [End Page 392] Weber: disputes he had originally wanted to thrash out on the pages of Das Reich. Evidence for this comes in hyperbolic assertions Bloch makes in his already cited letter to Lukács from August 1916. Explaining to Lukács that one of the manuscripts he's enclosing, the "Critique of Music," is now called the "Philos[ophy] of Music," and that this responds to Max Weber's criticisms of Bloch's views on music, he highhandedly declares that Weber has "no clue at all" about "my powers," powers that apparently include "extrasensory hearing [meines Hellhörens]."56 This same term reappears at the conclusion of the "Philosophy of Music" section of Geist (1918), and is retained in the two subsequent German editions of the book:
[C]lairvoyance is long extinguished. Is not, however, a clairaudience [ein Hellhören], a new kind of seeing from within, imminent, which, now that the visible world has become too weak to hold the spirit, will call forth the audible world … when the hour of speech within music will have come? … [W]hen the sound speaks … where the new composers will precede the new prophets; and so we want to allot to music primacy, in what is otherwise unsayable.57
Less contentious than whether Bloch was "clairaudient" is the understanding that much of Spirit is written in an apodictic and omniscient tone. The implied corollary of von Stritzky believing in the "absolute truth" of Bloch's philosophy is Bloch, at least in this phase, believing his philosophy was absolutely true, or at least for select readers. I suggest that Bloch was primarily concerned with a philosophy of revelation rather than of rational explication in this period, and his description of how von Stritzky followed the genesis of his writing corroborates this view: "when I scored out a passage in the manuscript or in the printed book, she shuddered quietly; it was only the fact that it was me who was doing it, that I inserted something different in place of what had been scored out, which mollified."58 Bloch recounts his relationship with von Stritzky as a conversion narrative, saving him from a barren epistemology based on "subjectless objectivities":
without Else I would have been unable to see or intuit the Self-Encounter,59 the metaphysical, [and] the shape of the inconstruable question,60 [as I would have] focused primarily on … ostentatious and objective, subjectless objectivities. … [I]n this Else's constant influence transformed me, and I have to thank her more for my insight into 'understanding oneself in existence' than I do Kierkegaard or Lukács.61
Moreover, the only substantial letter from von Stritzky to Bloch in the latter's "For Else"62 demonstrates that she shared Bloch's belief in reincarnation. Writing from hospital on April 27, 1920, seven months before her death and the day before the penultimate operation in a series that dogged her final years, she reminds Bloch of [End Page 393] her "strong will to live," but also has advice "in case things turn out differently": "Only think that I had it so good with you; and indeed I'm staying here, with good wishes for you, and [I would] then simply put away the old clothes and return with beautiful ones. Your philosophy also makes dying easy for me."63
The hunch that reincarnation, or the rough synonym that Bloch preferred, the "journey of the souls [Seelenwanderung],"64 is central rather than peripheral for the young Bloch, is confirmed by the eagerness of his reaction to the debut issue of Das Reich in his August 1916 letter to Lukács, and how he tackles the subject in the first edition of Spirit. Bloch and other magazine subscribers reading Steiner's article on the "Knowledge of the Condition between Death and a New Birth,"65 one of two lead articles in the debut issue, will have understood the article as a clarion call from author-Steiner together with editor-von Bernus regarding the magazine's agenda. Indeed, I follow historian Egil Asprem's conclusion that theorizing a peculiar kind of knowledge constitutes the core of Steiner's "theosophy-inspired writings" from the early 1900s.66 On this view, what distinguishes Steiner among disparate "post-theosophical" currents from 1891 into the 1930s, is his epistemological slant: "While most post-theosophical authors tended towards a certain abstraction and reported at length about cosmological cycles and metaphysical systems, the major part of Steiner's writings inspired by theosophy were focused on an esoteric epistemology—i.e. on the question of how one can attain 'Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,'67 and less on what these 'higher worlds' could look like, or how they could have been created."68
Bloch picks up the reincarnation thread in a chapter in Spirit titled "The Secret," which ties the topic to the—sometimes disappearing, sometimes reappearing—ability of clairvoyance, needed to "see" or know about souls getting reborn: "We want to know where clairvoyance has disappeared to."69 The highly idiosyncratic history of consciousness that follows sails at times so close to Steiner's recurring expositions of the same prior to 1918, without deigning to name Steiner, that plausibly still forthcoming charges of plagiarism would deserve a fair hearing.70 On Bloch's telling, pre-history began with a phase in which "external things were veiled or wholly invisible, yet their group-souls [Gruppenseelen], the naiads [Quellgeister], dryads [Baumgeister],71 and guardian angels … moved behind them [the external things] with utmost clarity … [as did] the whole proximity of the other world."72 This "soon" morphed into an epoch in which "sensory organs [sinnlichen Organe]73 became more pronounced, the visible world became water-tight [dicht], oppressive, conclusively real, and that which had become invisible, extrasensory, sank into belief, into mere concept." In this process "This-Worldliness [Diesseitigkeit]," the formation of a "disposition" reckoning increasingly with "the military, jurisprudence … and real causal nexus" became ever more rational, until finally, "in the days of Caesar Augustus,74 any kind of sensory or even thought-based contact with the transcendental had disappeared."75 At this point Jesus was born, "the transmigration of the soul of God himself [die Seelenwanderung Gottes [End Page 394] selber],"76 and humans could "once again be assured of the supernatural"77 by this "becoming flesh, descent to earth, and publicizing of the logos mystery," recognizable even to "the most sensory of organs."78
On this account, individual and group knowledge of the world, or of "worlds" is dependent on the changing condition of humans' "sensory organs [sinnliche Organe]"—Bloch—or "sense organs [Sinnesorgane]"—Steiner—throughout history. Mindful of Bloch naming Steiner as a source of "extraordinarily valuable information" in the passage in Geist (1918) discussed previously, this must be understood as a dialogue with some of Steiner's key works, principally Theosophy, first published 1904. There, Steiner postulates the existence of three worlds: a physical world, a psychological or 'soul world' (Seelenwelt) and an intellectual-spiritual world (Geisteswelt). Steiner's argument is that which of these "worlds" specific humans can gain knowledge of depends on how individuals work to develop what he terms "sense organs" or "perceptual organs": Steiner uses these terms to bridge tangible body parts, such as the eye or the ear, with non-tangible qualities of the mind. Like Bloch, whose terms and argument in the preceding passage suggest his model is based on Steiner's, Steiner postulates correspondences between an individual developing such perceptual abilities, and humankind progressing through different stages of consciousness in history. Steiner's exposition, however, is more concrete and voluntarist than Bloch's:
Just as the eye and the ear develop in the body as perceptual organs [Wahrnehmungsorgane] … the human is also able to educate in herself the psychological and spiritual perceptual organs through which the psychological and spiritual worlds open up. For that person who doesn't have such higher senses, these worlds are "gloomy and voiceless," just as for a being without ear and eye the bodily world is "gloomy and voiceless." … [T]he development of her [the human's] higher senses must result from her own efforts. To perceive the psychological and spiritual worlds, she has to educate psyche and spirit.79
So, the answer Steiner would give to the question Bloch raises—"where clairvoyance has disappeared to"—would be that it hasn't "disappeared" anywhere, it remains a faculty that can be trained, and this training is synonymous with a human choosing to develop their "higher senses" or "perceptual organs."
Steiner and Racism
Most university-based philosophers' outright refusal to consider such a system partly explains why Steiner's texts have been generally ignored by academic philosophy. Longstanding charges that Steiner's philosophy is racist and anti-Semitic are another major reason. Diverging approaches to Steiner's racism in the scholarship today have significant precursors. In a recent extended article (2022), Israel Koren tackles the [End Page 395] issue head on. "Is Steiner's philosophy racist?" he asks. If so, is it "only in part, or in an inseparable manner?"80 As I, after reviewing Koren and the further, extensive scholarship on Steiner and racism, agree that Steiner's racism is inseparable from his whole philosophy, a subsequent question arises: can readers draw epistemological gain from Bloch leaning heavily on a racist philosophy in the first edition of Spirit?
Koren's scholarship encapsulates a fundamental contradiction encountered by many of Steiner's listeners and readers, from his first lecture audiences to the present day. Recurring universalist and even anti-racist sentiments exist alongside occasional and revolting racist outbursts, and parallel to an intricately constructed "doctrine of racial development and decline."81 Attendees at a London lecture in May 1913 experienced the first pole: "Allow me … to speak to you … with that deep inner feeling of unity that is part of anthroposophy, and in which all human beings on earth should unite without distinction of race, color, or any such thing."82 Koren characterizes the second pole as a "racial/ethnic hierarchy, (primitive/degenerate/ earthly vs. advanced/sophisticated/spiritual)," maintaining that, on Steiner's view, the former hinders human progress.83 Manifestations of the second pole are not hard to find. In December 1922, Steiner lectured about a novel by the black French writer René Maran that won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1921, and which he knew in German translation.84 Steiner's claim that white women reading "Negro novels" during pregnancy could give birth to "mulattoes" has rightly become notorious.85
Although I broadly agree with Koren's conclusion that Steiner's racist theories "cannot be separated from his thought as a whole—even from its universalistic aspects," it matters that Koren's philosophical argumentation to back this does not stand up.86 Koren believes that Steiner's racial thought did not go through crucial changes during his lifetime, because it was "consistently governed by the (Neo-Platonic) theosophic principle that every physical phenomenon or psychic/spiritual characteristic is an expression and manifestation of the spiritual realm."87 But Steiner was no causal determinist; rather, his philosophy provides much room for effective agency in general, and the particular agency needed to reject racism in Steiner's own thinking. Moreover, Steiner's consistent prioritizing of individual freedom should be contextualized with regard to all potential readers, including those negatively impacted by racism.88 While Koren understands Steiner, based on the latter's statements from 1904–05, as depicting "peoples and races" serving "as a tool in the hands of spiritual beings, who operate them and work in and through them," and that this constitutes "the kernel of his [Steiner's] racial doctrine,"89 other analysis flatly rejects such a rigid determinism at the core of Steiner's thought.
Ansgar Martins, who has also written on Steiner, racism, and the "metaphysics of history," provides this kind of alternative analysis.90 Martins maintains that it is Steiner's "anthroposophical Christology" that "holds together" seemingly contradictory components in his thinking. Building on his preceding discussion of Steiner's [End Page 396] "philosophy of the 'I'," and reading Steiner in a way that attributes agentic power to ordinary people, Martins postulates that Steiner's Christology:
retains the invisible point of the 'I' as its center in aesthetic theory terms, and inverts this simultaneously into space … The crucifixion counts as the moment in history when humanity is released from the control of cosmic hierarchies into freedom. Through Christ, the 'I,' as something individual and concurrently 'universally-human' (Goethe), moves into the solar system. The human as 'I' stretches over and beyond the earthly realm, and can transform this earthly realm and itself into future forms of being [Daseinsformen].91
Esotericism and the Reception of Bloch's Spirit
The checkered reception of Bloch's Spirit in the century since first publication provides clues as to why it's only recently that more scholars have wanted to delve into such cruxes of Steiner's philosophy. Anson Rabinbach's influential study, concentrating on the first reception wave, is percipient on Bloch's esotericism, locating Bloch and Walter Benjamin's early writings within a Jewish Messianic tradition, which involves "an esoteric or secret form of knowledge."92 Yet despite what Bloch has told readers of Spirit (1918) about Steiner having "secrets to transmit,"93 Rabinbach mentions Gustav Landauer's comment to Margarete Susman, calling Bloch a "fascinating competitor of Rudolf Steiner," but doesn't enquire further.94 Moreover, Rabinbach does not investigate Bloch reading theosophical/anthroposophical texts (and perhaps attended lectures) parallel to reading about Kabbalah, syncretizing positions on reincarnation and other issues in the process.95 A significant context in understanding why Bloch's kabbalist readings matter is Wouter Hanegraaff's findings on how members of the Theosophical Society, the Anthroposophical Society's main predecessor, anchored claims for the intellectual superiority of the western occultist tradition in Kabbalah.96 Hanegraaff also draws attention to the exceptional epistemological combination that Steiner offered, which Bloch—from his own studies in German idealist philosophy—clearly picked up on:
Steiner's claim to higher knowledge based on clairvoyance connects directly with a particular occultist tradition, which emerged in America … But while this tradition's theoretical basis was thin at best, Steiner, through his familiarity with German idealist philosophy, could take on this tradition from a perspective incomparably subtler and more complex than anything that could be encountered in occultist circles until then.97
Theodor Adorno goes in deeper than Rabinbach on Bloch and Steiner, when he revisits the first edition of Spirit in his 1965 essay "Handle, Jug, and Early Experience." [End Page 397] Adorno remarks that the "Utopia book" contains "ironic respect" for Steiner,98 part of Bloch "pushing open a dimension that had been a taboo for philosophy since the exuberance of its speculative days."99 But this is mild compared to Adorno's general assault against philosophical engagement in esotericism in his earlier essay "Theses Against Occultism," written in 1946–47, and first published in German in 1951. "Occultism is the metaphysics of dunces [Metaphysik der dummen Kerle]," Adorno announces,100 its "cardinal sin" "the contamination of mind and existence";101 occultists "take speculation to the point of fraudulent bankruptcy."102 Adorno's emphasis of the speculative intersection between the occult and philosophy in the "Theses" indicates that Bloch is one of the essay's intended targets; Adorno's tone in writing to Benjamin in 1938 corroborates this reading: "We have seen Ernst Bloch a few times … The transformation of the corrupted 'Volksfront' mentality into a kind of industrious stupidity can be studied more clearly in him than any other German I know."103
Drawing on Adorno's recently published correspondence with Gershom Scholem, a pioneer in translating and communicating Kabbalistic texts into German and English, Ansgar Martins has examined "Kabbalistic traces in Theodor W. Adorno's philosophy."104 Indeed, Adorno's "philosophical appropriation of concepts from Jewish mysticism … in his published texts," which he was "always keen" to send to Scholem,105 reads like a contradiction to his ferocious opposition to occultism, as retraced above. Modernity, esotericism, and Kabbalah are thickly intertwined entities. Jonathan Garb concludes "that the blending of Kabbalah into European occult as well as philosophical and scientific culture accelerated in the eighteenth century," and continued after that.106
Scholem shared Adorno's extreme disdain for variants of esotericism that he regarded as emerging from the theosophical-anthroposophical stable. Broadly positive about a new translation of Zohar, a key Kabbalist text, by a fellow Zionist, Ernst Müller, which appeared 1932, Scholem bemoaned how, in "numerous comments," the translator's "anthroposophical viewpoints do violence to the original's intention."107 But Müller's deep commitment to anthroposophy is only half the story.
Müller was also active in the influential Bar Kochba group of Jewish and Praguebased university graduates. Contributors to Bar Kochba projects included Landauer,108 Martin Buber,109 Max Brod (who became Kafka's literary executor), Kafka himself,110 and many others. Brod describes Müller's collaborator Hugo Bergmann as a "leading, selfless figure" in Bar Kochba during this period.111 Bergmann, lecturer and professor in philosophy in Jerusalem from 1928, encountered Steiner's ideas around 1908, which began a lifelong engagement with anthroposophy and a personal relationship with Steiner.112 The fruits of Bergmann and Müller's collaborative translations from Zohar were first published in the anthology Vom Judentum in 1913.113 It is untenable that Bloch did not know this work: Susman was the only woman who wrote for the [End Page 398] anthology, an essay on Spinoza;114 Bloch and Susman were writing frequently to each other from 1909–1913 and beyond, and their letters thematize Spinoza explicitly.115
Conclusions
Bloch's approach to theorizing knowledge, and to interrogating the metaphysical gap that Yeats thought habitually separated the "Knower from the Known,"116 remained speculative throughout his life. In his younger years this included speculating about potential truth in alternative religious currents and practices, including anthroposophy, Kabbalah, and clairvoyance. After 1918, his focus slowly shifted to a materialist approach to both ontology and epistemology. Bloch and Steiner intersected in both producing rich, although highly dissimilar, epistemologies of the physically invisible. Different reader groups will reject either Bloch or Steiner's account out of hand, while other reader groups will applaud one or both initiatives. As demonstrated, such refutations, or indeed affirmations, can proceed independently of an unconditional rejection of Steiner's racism.
Steiner's epistemology ultimately tends toward how interested individuals can know about "higher worlds," Bloch's toward an epistemology of matter as process, which encompasses unseeable and contestable elements. Overall, Bloch's profound engagement with theosophical-anthroposophical thinking and milieus, which stretches into the 1930s,117 is dramatically under-researched. Indeed, significant passages on theosophy and anthroposophy in Heritage of Our Times (1934),118 in his magnum opus The Principle of Hope, written from 1938–1947,119 and in Bloch's other writings, should be tackled in further studies. Space reasons alone made it necessary to omit these entirely in this article. As relevant to further research on the young Ernst Bloch, I have shown how convictions held by Else von Stritzky, Bloch's first wife, converged with theosophical-anthroposophical influences to shape the kinds of knowledge, and theories of the same, that Bloch's Geist (1918) proposes.
henry holland (henryrholland@gmail.com) is a scholarly translator and editor since 2010. He was a translation fellow at Fortunoff Archive at Yale University, 2020–2021 with a focus on the German occupation of Lithuania during World War II. Translator and board member for the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg (Verso Books); further translations for the Barenboim-Said Academy, Berlin (co-translation from Arabic), the Goethe Institute, and Literature Ireland.
Notes
1. In Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race, Staudenmaier uses the term "doctrine(s)" on at least thirty-two occasions, specifically to describe Steiner's own thinking or anthroposophical thinking generally. See: Peter Staudenmaier, Between Occultism and Nazism. Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Fascist Era, (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1, 4, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 36, 38, 39, 40, 44, 47, 56, 74, 87, 105, 163, 178, 194, 207, 208, 213, 242, 264, 280, 281, 284, and 320.
2. Steiner gave 5105 "dated lectures" between 1888 and 1924, see John Paull, "Rudolf Steiner and the Oxford Conference: The Birth of Waldorf Education in Britain," European Journal of Educational Studies 3 no. 1 (2011): 53–66, here 53. Zander estimates that ca. 4500 lectures were stenographed. His claim, however, that only records produced by professional stenographer Helene Finckh, from 1916–1924, are reliable should be treated with caution: Helmut Zander, Anthroposophie in Deutschland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 1: 63.
Compare records of Steiner's lectures to scholarship on the Zusätze (Additions) in Hegel's Philosophy of Right: "the verbatim lecture notes of students who attended Hegel's classes in 1821–2 and 1822–3 ([Heinrich] Hotho) and 1824–5 ([Gustav] von Griesheim)." Dudley Knowles, Hegel and the Philosophy of Right (London: Routledge, 2002), xvi. Referring extensively to the "Additions" is established in Hegel Studies. See, for example, Knowles, Hegel, 329. Further, Knowles and many other Hegel scholars assert that "no-one has demonstrated that these secondary sources are unreliable" even though, as was also the case with Steiner, Hegel had no opportunity to systematically check these notes for publication before he died. Knowles, Hegel, xvi. The lecture notes from Steiner's five principal stenographers function similarly to the Additions to Hegel: as revealing but imperfect sources. On Steiner's stenographers, see Robert McKay, "Remembering Rudolf Steiner's Stenographer," Rudolf Steiner College Canada, October 18, 2021, https://rscc.ca/remembering-rudolf-steiners-stenographers. Annette Sell does not understand what Hotho wrote in Hegel's lectures in 1821–23 as verbatim notes. Annette Sell, "Das Problem der Authentizität von Nachschriften zu Hegels Vorlesungen über Logik und Metaphysik," in Autor – Autorisation – Authentizität: Beiträge der Internationalen Fachtagung, ed. Thomas Bein et al. (Berlin: Max Niemeyer, 2004), 262.
The oral and social dimensions in mediating Steiner's ideas cannot be overstated. At a public discussion on October 14, 2011, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk claimed provocatively that Steiner is "the twentieth century's greatest oral philosopher." Cited in: Wolfgang G. Vögele, "Sloterdijk: Steiner der größte mündliche Philosoph des 20. Jahrhunderts," Erziehungskunst, October 2011, https://www.erziehungskunst.de/nachrichten/inland/sloterdijk-steiner-der-groesste-muendliche-philosoph-des-20-jahrhunderts/.
3. Wouter Hanegraaff, "Vorwort: Rudolf Steiner und die hellsehende Einbildungskraft" in: Rudolf Steiner, Schriften–Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Christian Clement (frommann-holzboog: Stuttgart, 2018), 8.1: vi. Subsequent citations as Steiner, SKA with volume and page numbers.
4. For a detailed comparison of "emic" and "etic" approaches, see Wouter Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy (New York: Cambridge University, 2012), 157–158.
5. Staudenmaier, Between Occultism, 1.
6. See, for example, the German Association of Free Waldorf Schools rejection of the term in their mission statement: "Anthroposophy is no doctrine [Lehre]," https://www.waldorfschule.de/paedagogik/anthroposophie.
7. On "Steiner's völkisch-esoteric doctrine of 'biodynamic agriculture'," see Eric Kurlander, "Völkisch-Esoteric and Völkisch-Religious Movements in Germany and Austria 1890–1945," in Handbuch der völkischen Wissenschaften, ed. Michael Fahlbusch et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 1241. Ebbestad Hansen sees Curt Conrad Englert-Faye—"perhaps the most influential anthroposophist in Norway in the second half of the 1930s"—as a doctrinal acolyte of Steiner's. Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen, "The Jews – Teachers of the Nazis? Anti-Semitism in Norwegian Anthroposophy" in: Nord Europa Forum (2015), 180, http://doi.org/10.18452/8179.
8. Staudenmaier references the "Wegman Institut" as publisher of one book, and Wegman as the co-author of a second. Staudenmaier, Between Occultism, 61n90, 124n84, and 359.
9. Wegman was one of several medical practitioners lecturing at the "First [Anthroposophical] Course for Doctors," from March 21 to April 9, 1920. See Zander, Anthroposophie, 2:1490. In December 1923, Steiner made Wegman director of the "Medical Section" of the Anthroposophical Society. See Zander, Anthroposophie, 2:1534.
10. See Zander, Anthroposophie, 2:1535.
11. Zander, Anthroposophie, 1:247–248. The other four board members from 1924–1935 were Elisabeth Vreede, Steiner's wife (and later widow) Marie Steiner, Albert Steffen, and Guenther Wachsmuth. Describing an interview Wachsmuth gave to a Danish paper in June 1933, Staudenmaier erroneously categorizes Wachsmuth as "one of the three members of the Society's board," generating the false impression that the board's "decidedly friendly stance toward the Nazi state" was unanimous. Staudenmaier, Between Occultism, 103. Staudenmaier does not mention Vreede once in Between Occultism, despite her influential leadership during the transition into the fascist era.
12. Writing in English to the British anthroposophist Daniel Dunlop in April 1933, Wegman communicates that the dangerous National-Socialist government will become even more totalitarian, and that the Jews are threatened existentially by discrimination. Wegman's English is evidently imperfect, and it's unclear what exactly she means by "the Jews will be put off," though the context suggests she is communicating that the Jews' situation will deteriorate substantially. Wegman to Dunlop on April 17, 1933, cited from the facsimile of the letter in Peter Selg, Geistiger Widerstand und Überwindung. Ita Wegman, 1933–1935 (Dornach: Am Goetheanum, 2005), 21. Wegman's imperfect English does not diminish the solidarity expressed: "Our first care is now to see to the friends who cannot stay in Germany, be it that they are of Jewish descent, be it that they are not quite safe anymore through a certain work they used to do more on a social level." Wegman to Dunlop, April 17, 1933, Geistiger Widerstand, 21. Wegman also acted on her concern for Jewish acquaintances, organizing, in August 1933, a residential training in Switzerland for Hanna Lissau, a young woman of Jewish heritage, and coordinating an international reception organization for Jewish friends from the anthroposophical medicine movement. Selg, Widerstand, 26–28, and 210–211. Lissau ultimately died at Auschwitz on October 14, 1942, despite Wegman's attempts to have her released.
13. An exemplary document of such efforts is Marie Steiner's letter to German Imperial War Minister Werner von Blomberg. The subject is longstanding polemics against Rudolf Steiner, attributing Germany's devastating loss at the Battle of the Marne, in September 1914, to Steiner's occult influence over Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of German General Staff during that battle. Repeatedly addressing von Blomberg as "your excellency," Marie Steiner requests that he orders local police authorities to prevent further screenings of a documentary film about the Marne that strongly criticizes Steiner. Marie Steiner names the individual who lectures to accompany the film—a Mr. "W. Kunde"—and, callously, provides Blomberg with Kunde's address. Steiner ends by requesting von Blomberg's "support and chivalrous assistance." Marie Steiner in Dornach, Switzerland to Reichskriegsminister von Blomberg, Berlin, January 18, 1936. In: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1941–, Record Group 242, Records of Headquarters, German Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht/OKW). Microfilm Publication T77, roll 0815, frames 1410–1412. Staudenmaier doesn't cite this, but does cite Kirstin Schäfer, on von Blomberg's "fondness for anthroposophy and theosophy." Staudenmaier, Anthroposophy, 68n10.
14. On this and the related exclusion of the Dutch and British national societies from the General Anthroposophical Society, see Zander, Anthroposophie, 1:248. Van Emmichoven dates the removal of Wegman and Vreede from the board to the General Assembly motion on April 14, 1935. J. E. Zeylmans van Emmichoven, Wer war Ita Wegman, 1924 bis 1943. Kämpfe und Konflikte (Dornach: Am Goetheanum, 2013), 3:28.
15. Zander, Anthroposophie, 1: 248.
16. Frei and Nachtwey see "a tight dovetailing of esoteric and conspiracy myths" as "typical" for "Corona Protests in Baden-Württemberg," and identify "the anthroposophical milieu," along with three others, as "sources" for "Querdenkertum"—societal activity aimed against government Covid policies. Oliver Nachtwey and Nadine Frei, Quellen des "Querdenkertums." Eine politische Soziologie der Corona-Proteste in Baden-Württemberg (Basel: University of Basel, 2021), 29, and 30–56. They don't, however, correlate conspiracist convictions to specific anthroposophical actors in 2020 and 2021. Indeed, a director of an anthroposophical clinic stresses his anti-conspiracist stance: his hospital has "clear structures regarding masks etc. … There were no discussions or revolutions or anything." Cited in Frei and Nachtwey, Quellen, 41. An earlier study concludes that majorities of protest participants hold social-democratic positions, contradicting the so-called "Great Replacement," and other anti-immigrant and racist conspiracy narratives: "National–Socialism is relativized less often than in the population as a whole … and a large majority want to allow people from other countries to come into the country to live here permanently." Nadine Frei, Oliver Nachtwey and Robert Schäfer, Politische Soziologie der Corona-Proteste, (Basel: University of Basel, 2020), 54, https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/zyp3f. These studies are inconclusive on anthroposophy and conspiracism. For anthroposophy and conspiracism in history, see Aaron French, "Esoteric Nationalism and Conspiracism in WWI," in Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories, ed. Francesco Piraino et al., (London: Routledge, 2022), 107–123.
17. Israel Koren names this pole of Steiner's thinking the "universalism (of the 'I' and the future unity of humanity)," and points to the massive contradiction: Steiner took a "strong stand against racism" while also disseminating "extremist racial views." Throughout this article, I cite from the extended version of Koren's article: Israel Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism," at Acadmia.edu (2022), https://www.academia.edu/82054792/Between_Racism_and_Universalism_Rudolf_Steiners_Doctrine_of_Racial_Development_and_Decline, 1. The shorter version is: Israel Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism: Rudolf Steiner's Doctrine of Racial Development and Decline," Aries (published online ahead of print 2022), 点击下载. One "strong stand" Steiner took against racism was through repeated calls to develop internationalist consciousness. See, for example, his Zürich lecture on October 30, 1919: Rudolf Steiner, Soziale Zukunft. GA 332a (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner, 1977), 190.
18. An outstanding example of a progressive shaped by anthroposophy and environmentalism is Marjorie Spock (1904–2008). A "stalwart of anthroposophical activity in the United States," Spock and her partner Polly Richards "launched a series of lawsuits" from 1957 to stop DDT spraying. Following intensive correspondence with Rachel Carson based on thousands of pages of testimony collected, Carson "used their evidence as the scientific foundation" for the paradigm-shifting Silent Spring, published 1962. Dan McKanan, Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 66–68.
19. A 2005 study on students at Swedish Waldorf schools by Bo Dahlin "showed that Waldorf pupils met the objectives of democratic education to a greater degree" and "developed more openness and tolerance toward social outsiders" than their public-school counterparts. Quoted in Heiner Ullrich, Rudolf Steiner, trans. Janet Duke and Daniel Balestrini (London: Continuum, 2008), 190.
20. Johan Siebers, "Transgression," in Revue Internationale de Philosophie 3 (2019): 251.
21. Siebers, "Transgression," 252.
22. The account of events given here follows Peter Zudeick, Der Hintern des Teufels, (Bühl-Moos: Elster, 1987), 41.
23. Cited according to Zudeick, Hintern, 41. Bloch places a definite article before the name, "den Steiner," as a mocking epithet.
24. Zudeick, Der Hintern, 41.
25. Zander's Anthroposophie presents a history of theosophy around the world and in the German language sphere, including Steiner's leadership role in the latter from 1903. Zander, "Die Adyar-Theosophie in Deutschland," in Anthroposophie, 1: 122–172.
26. On Besant's rise to leadership in the movement, see Joy Dixon, Divine Feminine. Theosophy and Feminism in England, (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 2001) 52–55, and 60–63.
27. Steiner's October 1903 lecture, attended by Besant when she was in Berlin to present him with a charter, was not sycophantic. Helmut Zander, Rudolf Steiner: Die Biographie, (Munich: Piper, 2011), 168–170.
28. Zander, Biographie, 197–198.
29. Pupul Jayakar, J. Krishnamurti: A Biography (London: Penguin, 1986), 24–25.
30. Motion of the board of the German Section, from December 8, 1912, cited in: Zander, Biographie, 207.
31. Zander, Anthroposophie, 1: 161.
32. Zander, Biographie, 208.
33. Zander dates the conversation to 1911. Helmut Zander, Geschichte der Seelenwanderung in Europa (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999), 563n.
34. Alongside scores of unpublished handwritten and typed letters by Ernst Bloch, the Deutsches Literatur Archiv Marbach holds only two unpublished letters written by "Bloch-von Stritzky, Else," both to the philosopher Karl Jaspers, on January 13 and 18, 1915, 75.10355/2 and 75.10335/1. These respond to a letter from Jaspers to Bloch-von Stritzky on January 10, 1915, DLA Marbach, 75.7695a.
35. Bloch to Lukács, end of October, 1911. Ernst Bloch, Briefe: 1903–1975, ed. Karola Bloch et al. (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), 1:66. Paraclete, used as a "[r]abbinical term," means "advocate." The word is also used to name the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, in the sense of "intercessor." See: Kaufmann Kohler, entry for "Paraclete," in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer and Cyrus Adler (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906), Vol. 6, https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11899-paraclete.
36. Bloch's Gedankenbuch für Else Bloch-von Stritzki (Bloch's spelling), written in 1921, was first published in 1978, the year after his death, in: Ernst Bloch, Tendenz—Latenz—Utopie: Ergänzungsband zur Gesamtausgabe, (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), 16.
37. Jan Stottmeister, Der George-Kreis und die Theosophie (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014), 271–286, and particularly 281.
38. Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia, trans. Anthony Nassar, (Stanford: Stanford University, 2000). This book's frontmatter mistakenly identifies the 1964 German text that it follows as "the second edition." In fact, it was the third (German) edition, with significant differences to the second, 1923 edition.
39. Cited from the facsimile of the 1918 edition, reprinted on Bloch's wishes in 1971. All translations from the 1918 edition are my own, unless otherwise stated. Ernst Bloch, Geist der Utopie. Faksimile der Ausgabe von 1918 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 238.
40. Cat Moir, Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 89.
41. Bloch, Geist, 239. Schuré (1841-1929) was translated by Rudolf Steiner's partner Marie von Sivers (1867–1948), and published in German from 1904.
42. Bloch, Geist, 239. This and several other sentences in this section of Geist (1918) first appeared in identical or extremely similar form in Bloch's 1912 essay "Die Okkulten," included in Bloch's 1923 collection Durch die Wüste. Ernst Bloch, Durch die Wüste, (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), 77–86, and particularly 81–85. Eduard Zeller and Wilhelm Windelband were leading representatives of neo-Kantianism, contemporary to Bloch. Bloch's also refers here to Schuré and Steiner's shared belief that Pythagoras was one in a line of "great initiates," a category which lumped together both real historical and mythical-religious figures, including Krishna, Plato, and Jesus. See: Zander, Anthroposophie, 1: 790, for a précis of Steiner's 1903 lecture on the subject. Zander's account contradicts Bloch's, demonstrating that it was primarily Steiner who leant on Schuré's pronouncements about Pythagoras, rather than vice versa.
43. Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 239–240. Compare recent scholarship on Newton's esoteric commitments with Bloch's suggestion here that Newton embodied a synthesis of exoteric and esoteric intellectual currents: Rob Iliffe, Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton (New York: OUP, 2017).
44. Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 240.
45. Stottmeister, George, 271.
46. Bloch to Lukács on August 16, 1916. Bloch, Briefe, 1:168.
47. Zudeick, Hintern, 41. Von Stritzky's father earned "millions" from a brewery and platinum mines in Riga. Regular money transfers initially enabled the newly-weds to live in luxury: a Heidelberg villa beside the River Neckar, then a palatial home in Grünwald, south of Munich, from the end of 1914. Zudeick, Hintern, 52.
48. Bloch uses this same phrase, using "Music" as the title for his manuscript, in both letters: Bloch to Lukács on August 16, 1916, and on September 22, 1916. Bloch, Briefe, 1:168 and 1:174.
49. Bloch to Lukács on September 22, 1916. Bloch, Briefe, 1:174.
50. Arno Münster and Hanna Gekle, the editors of Bloch's letters to Lukács, are unequivocal that Bloch refers here to the "Philosophy of Music" section of Geist (1918). Bloch, Briefe, 170 n16.
51. In Geist (1918), the "Philosophy of Music" section runs to over 150 pages. Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 79–234. This is followed by the "On the Intellectual Atmosphere of Our Time" section: Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 235–342.
52. Bloch to Lukács on August 16, 1916. Bloch, Briefe, 1:168.
53. Claire Schmid-Romberg, presumably involved in Bernus's publication, and, with Marianne Weber, part of an influential circle in Heidelberg's cultural life in the 1910s. See: Karol Sauerland, "Heidelberg zur Jahrhundertwende," in: Heidelberg - Stadt und Universität, ed. Studium Generale, (Heidelberg: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, 1997), 203.
54. Bloch to Lukács on September 26, 1916. Bloch, Briefe, 1:175. Emphasis in the original.
55. Bloch to Lukács on September 26, 1916. Bloch, Briefe, 1:175.
56. Bloch to Lukács on August 16, 1916. Bloch, Briefe, 1:168–169.
57. Bloch, Spirit, 163. I have adapted Nassar's translation to recreate the idiomatic tone of Bloch's original text at this point.
58. Entry for February 16, 1921 in Bloch, Tendenz, 17. Emphasis in original.
59. See "Forms of the Universal Self-Encounter, Or, Eschatology (1918)" in Bloch, Spirit, 267–275.
60. The title of the final section in all three editions of Geist. See Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 343–390.
61. Entry for February 16, 1921, Tendenz, 17-18.
62. The only other correspondence from von Stritzky to himself that Bloch cites is a note from December (Bloch must mean 1920) about food that is cited in Bloch's entry for April 4, 1921 in the Gedankenbuch. Bloch, Tendenz, 38.
63. Von Stritsky to Bloch on April 27, 1920, cited in Bloch's entry for March 20, 1921, in the Gedankenbuch. Bloch, Tendenz, 26.
64. Bloch uses the term Seelenwanderung on several occasions in the 1918 edition of Geist, including: Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 242, 411 and 422. At 422, Bloch contrasts beliefs in reincarnation, in various regions of the globe, and at various points in history, with what he characterizes as the Christian doctrine of immortality.
65. Rudolf Steiner, "Die Erkenntnis vom Zustand zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt," Das Reich 1, 4-16.
66. Egil Asprem, "Foreword" in: Steiner, SKA, 6:xii.
67. Wie erlangt man Kenntnisse der höheren Welten? was serialized in 1904–1905, and published as a book in 1909. Rudolf Steiner, SKA, 7:iv–164.
68. Asprem, "Foreword," in Steiner, SKA, 6:xii. Emphasis in original.
69. Bloch, Spirit, 158.
70. Bloch not citing sources here provokes suspicion. Asprem refers to Olav Hammer on "source amnesia" as a dynamic of doctrinal innovation inside occultism. Bloch utilizes this dynamic. Asprem, "Foreword," in Steiner, SKA, 6:x n10; Olav Hammer, Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age, (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 180–181.
71. Lecturing on April 6, 1912 in Helsinki—a lecture also first published in 1912—Steiner describes plants and animals having "group souls [Gruppenseelen]," in a passage that also characterizes these group souls as "nature spirits [Naturgeister]" and "dryads [Baumeister, sic]." See: Rudolf Steiner, Die geistigen Wesenheiten in den Himmelskörpern und Naturreichen. GA 136, ed. Johann Waeger (Dornach: Rudof Steiner, 1999), 76.
72. Translation modified. Bloch, Spirit, 159; Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 228–229.
73. Cf. Steiner's concept of Sinnesorgane (sense organs). Steiner explicates the term in lectures in Berlin on October 23 and 27, 1909, and on many other occasions. Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophie, Psychosophie, Pneumatosophie. GA 115, ed. Cornelius Bohlen und Hella Wiesberger (Dornach: Rudof Steiner, 2001), 29, 77–78.
74. Bloch's original here resonates with German-language renditions of Luke 2:1, making his revelatory and aesthetic priorities evident. I suggest an aesthetics-based epistemology informs Spirit (1918 edition), but that this description does not adequately describe Steiner's epistemology.
75. Nassar's translation modified. Bloch, Spirit, 159.
76. My translation. Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 229. Nassar obscures the bombast of Bloch's claim, by translating Seelenwanderung at this same point of the German text as "metempsychosis," and losing the obvious connotations that Seelenwanderung has for non-expert German speakers. Bloch, Spirit, 159.
77. Bloch, Spirit, 159.
78. My translation. Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 229.
79. Rudolf Steiner, Theosophie. Einführung in übersinnliche Welterkenntnis und Menschenbestimmung, (Berlin: Schwetschke, 1904), 67–68.
80. Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism," 6.
81. Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism," 14.
82. Lecture on May 1, 1913, in London. Steiner's lecture in German was consecutively translated into English. Rudolf Steiner, Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgatha. GA 152, (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner, 1990), 11.
83. Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism," 1.
84. René Maran, Batuala. Ein echter Negerroman, trans. Claire Goll (Basel: Rhein, 1922); on Maran's novel as topic of the 1922 lecture, see Ted A. van Baarda et al, Zwischenbericht der niederländischen Untersuchungskommission "Anthroposophie und die Frage der Rassen", trans. Ramon Brüll, (Frankfurt/Main: Info3, 1998), 274–275.
85. Lecture on December 30, 1922 in Dornach. Rudolf Steiner, Über Gesundheit und Krankheit. GA 348 (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner, 1983), 188–189.
86. Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism," 60.
87. Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism," 4n4.
88. Native American scholar Joaquin Muñoz proposes "decolonising approaches to Steiner education." Joaquin Muñoz, "Integrating Waldorf Education, Indigenous Epistemologies, And Critical Pedagogy," (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2016), 140.
89. Koren, "Between Racism and Universalism," 4n4.
90. Ansgar Martins, Rassismus und Geschichtsmetaphysik: Esotericher Darvinismus und Freiheitphilosophie bei Rudolf Steiner (Frankfurt/Main: Info3, 2012).
91. Ansgar Martins, "Foreword" in Steiner, SKA, 3:xxxii.
92. Anson Rabinbach, "Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jewish Messianism," New German Critique 34 (1985), 78–124, here 85.
93. Bloch, Geist. Faksimile, 240.
94. Letter from Landauer to Susman on January 31, 1919, cited from: Rabinbach, "Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse," 114n156.
95. Interviewed late in life, Bloch recalled that he learned about Zohar and other Jewish mystical texts from secondary sources during WW1—for example, from Franz Joseph Molitor's Philosophie der Geschichte (1827–1853). See Zander, Seelenwanderung, 562 and 829n14.
96. Wouter J. Hanegraff, "Vorwort," in Steiner, SKA, 8.1:ix.
97. Hanegraaff, "Vorwort," in Steiner, SKA, 8.1:vi–vii.
98. Theodor Adorno, "Henkel, Krug und frühe Erfahrung," in Gesammelte Schriften, Digitale Bibliothek Band 97, ed. Rolf Tiedemann et al. (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2003), location 931.14. Cited in Stottmeister, George, 283n216.
99. Adorno, "Henkel," location 931.14.
100. Theodor Adorno, "Theses against occultism," in Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. and ed. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 2005), 241. Theodor W. Adorno, "Thesen gegen den Okkultismus," in Gesammelte Schriften, Digitale Bibliothek Band 97, ed. Rolf Tiedemann et al. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986)
101. Adorno, "Theses," 243.
102. Adorno, "Theses," 244. Compare Adorno's views on philosophical speculation with perhaps the outstanding secondary work on Bloch: Cat Moir, Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism, (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
103. Letter from Adorno to Walter Benjamin, November 10, 1938, in Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 286.
104. Ansgar Martins, The Migration of Metaphysics into the Realm of the Profane: Theodor W. Adorno Reads Gershom Scholem, trans. Lars Fischer, (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 1.
105. Martins, Migration, 8.
106. Jonathan Garb, A History of Kabbalah from the Early Modern Period to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2020), 136, and 136–140.
107. Gershom Scholem in the Orientalistische Literaturzeitung in December 1934, cited in Nathanel Riemer, "Ein Wanderer zwischen den Welten – Zum 50sten Todesjahr von Ernst Müller," in David: Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift 62 (2004), https://davidkultur.at/artikel/ein-wanderer-zwischen-den-welten-zum-50sten-todesjahr-von-ernst-muller.
108. Gustav Landauer, "Sind das Ketzergedanken?" in Vom Judentum: Ein Sammelbuch, ed. Verein jüdischer Hochschüler Bar Kochba, (Leipzig: Wolff, 1913), 250–257.
109. Martin Buber, "Der Mythos der Juden," in Bar Kochba, Vom Judentum, 21–31.
110. On Kafka's involvement in Bar Kochba, see Rabinbach, "Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse," 89n36.
111. Max Brod, Der Prager Kreis (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016), 73.
112. Bergmann's was the only chair of philosophy worldwide to celebrate the centenary of Steiner's birth in 1961 with a festive act. Riemer, "Wanderer."
113. "Aus dem Buche Sohar: I," trans. Hugo Bergman, in Bar Kochba, Vom Judentum, 274–290; "Aus dem Buche Sohar: II," trans. Ernst Müller, in Bar Kochba, Vom Judentum, 281–284.
114. Margarete Susman, "Spinoza und das jüdische Weltgefühl," in Bar Kochba, Vom Judentum, ed. Bar Kochba, 51–70.
115. On Bloch's frequent correspondence with Susman from 1909–1913, including correspondence on Spinoza from 1911 that cannot be dated more specifically, see: Bloch's letters to Susman, 1909–1965, Deutsches Literatur Archiv Marbach, Zugangsnummer HS.1988.0011.00388; and Margarete Susman, "Das Nah- und Fernsein des Fremden": Essays und Briefe, ed. Ingeborg Nordmann, (Frankfurt/Main: Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp, 1992), 79. Susman's letters to Bloch are considered lost.
116. From section I of W. B. Yeats, "A Dialogue of Self and Soul," cited at: "Poetry Foundation," https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43294/a-dialogue-of-self-and-soul Emphasis in the original.
117. See Bloch's letter and postcard, from December 1932, to Karola Piotrkowska—who later became his third wife—narrating his visit to his second wife, Linda Oppenheimer (the couple had divorced in 1928), at Dornach beside the Goetheanum, the physical headquarters of anthroposophy until today. These depict Oppenheimer as part of the anthroposophical milieu: Ernst Bloch, Das Abenteuer der Treue. Briefe an Karola, 1928–1949, ed. Anna Czajka, (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 141–143.
118. Criticism and credence are applied to Steiner and theosophy in Ernst Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, trans. Neville Plaice and Stephen Plaice (Berkley: University of California, 1991), 170, 174–178.
119. Bloch credulously portrays Steiner's "atavistic clairvoyance" in Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight, (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1986), 3:1186–1188.
