When Covid-19 was not even an issue in China and the anthroposophists had not yet distinguished themselves as opponents of corona vaccinations, the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Health Manfred Lucha made an announcement about the relationship of the Greens to Rudolf Steiner's teachings and homeopathy: If If the Greens parted from this milieu, then it would be like when the Union parties deleted the "C" from their abbreviation.

Thomas Holl

Editor in politics.

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Rudiger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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When they were founded, the Southwest Greens in particular had an anthroposophical wing organized in the Achberger Kreis.

In the founding phase, many anthroposophists who were more middle-class socialized were corrective for the eco-party in terms of content and habituality to a large number of socialist currents.

In the first green parliamentary group, two out of six members of parliament were supporters of Rudolf Steiner's teachings.

Compared to other federal states, Baden-Württemberg is still a stronghold of anthroposophy today, a quarter of all Waldorf schools, seven of 13 anthroposophical clinics and around a third of all Demeter organic farms are located in Baden-Württemberg.

Where widespread industrialization and growth thinking resulted in a great deal of collateral damage, the romantic need for the other life is greater.

The influence of Steiner supporters within the eco-party later declined; it is likely to be strongest today in Stuttgart, where the first German Waldorf school was founded 102 years ago and the German anthroposophical society has its seat.

The writer Anna-Katharina Hahn once compared the commitment to anthroposophy in the Stuttgart bourgeoisie with the “conversion to a spiritual order”.

Baden-Württemberg as a stronghold of lateral thinkers

In addition to Saxony, Baden-Württemberg has been a stronghold of the lateral thinker movement and vaccination refusals since the beginning of the pandemic. The vaccination rate is still just under 70 percent, at Waldorf schools there were repeated disputes about corona policy and vaccination: There was a corona outbreak at a Waldorf school in Freiburg as early as October because it was apparently only for an in-house circus event there was a poor hygiene concept.

The Waldorf umbrella organizations profess to wear masks, and in many schools there are repeated quarrels between orthodox and moderate anthroposophists. Waldorf schools in Freiburg, Überlingen and Emmendingen did not adhere to the hygiene regulations adequately because they accepted inadequate medical certificates with which pupils could be exempted from the mask requirement. Parents of a Waldorf school in Rottweil protested in October against the enforcement of the mask requirement. In Waldmössingen - a village with 2,000 inhabitants in the Black Forest - corona deniers from a progressive milieu sent their children to a secret parallel school.

Parents and teachers who think anthroposophically often play a role when there are disputes in schools about corona policy and vaccination. Steiner's attitude towards vaccination was ambivalent: on the one hand he spoke out in favor of the smallpox vaccination, on the other hand he warned against vaccination because it could prevent people who did not yet follow his teachings from experiencing the "inclination towards spirituality".

In the opinion of the anthroposophists, a disease must be read as a “sign” that can be an occasion to change one's own life and that offers the opportunity to reach “higher insights”.

According to the historian of religion Helmut Zander, Steiner's work and his whispers about secret societies contain many aids to argumentation for conspiracy mystics.

This then gives rise to reservations about conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, which is dangerous in a pandemic.