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Race And Redemption: Racial And Ethnic Evolution In Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, Peter Staudenmaier Feb 2008

Race And Redemption: Racial And Ethnic Evolution In Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, Peter Staudenmaier

History Faculty Research and Publications

With its origins in modern Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy is built around a racial view of human nature arranged in a hierarchical framework. This article examines the details of the Anthroposophical theory of cosmic and individual redemption and draws out the characteristic assumptions about racial and ethnic difference that underlie it. Particular attention is given to textual sources unavailable in English, which reveal the specific features of Steiner’s account of “race evolution” and “soul evolution.” Placing Steiner’s worldview in its historical and ideological context, the article highlights the contours of racial thinking within a prominent alternative spiritual movement and delineates …


Politics Among Danish Americans In The Midwest, Ca. 1890-1914, Jorn Brondal Jan 2008

Politics Among Danish Americans In The Midwest, Ca. 1890-1914, Jorn Brondal

The Bridge

During the last decades of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, ethnicity and religion played a vital role in shaping the political culture of the Midwest. Indeed, historians like Samuel P. Hays, Lee Benson, Richard Jensen (of part Danish origins), and Paul Kleppner argued that ethnoreligious factors to a higher degree than socioeconomic circumstances informed the party affiliation of ordinary voters.1 It is definitely true that some ethnoreligious groups like, say, the Irish Catholics and the German Lutherans boasted fullfledged political subcultures complete with their own press, their own political leadership and to some extent, at least, their own …