The Conduct of Anthroposophical Doctors, Pharmacists, and Educators during the Nazi Era (1933–1945)
Publication information:
Abstract
A comprehensive study conducted between 2016 and 2025 examined the behavior of anthroposophical doctors, pharmacists, and curative educators during the Nazi era. The study explored how these professionals operated within a biopolitical dictatorship that, on one hand, sought to exterminate those deemed “unworthy of life” based on racial ideology and, on the other, aimed to optimize the “desirable” life. Critics of anthroposophy have argued that its proponents benefited from the Nazi regime’s support of “natural medicine” and alleged ideological similarities. However, this was not substantiated by the historical analysis.
Instead, the research revealed that anthroposophical doctors, pharmaceutical producers, and curative education institutions demonstrated significant resistance to Nazi policies. The study highlighted that, while individual behaviors ranged from resistance to conformity, the broader picture showed the inherent incompatibility between National Socialism and anthroposophy. This was particularly evident in the contradictions between the racial ideology of the Nazis and the humanistic, individualized approach of anthroposophic medicine.
Anthroposophic medicine as such, grounded in Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, was never accepted within the Nazi system. Despite some high-ranking Nazi officials privately using anthroposophic remedies or consulting anthroposophic doctors, the regime considered anthroposophy a threat. In 1941, a report from the Reich Security Main Office stated: “If one accepts the totality of ideological thinking and its effect on the overall opinion and attitude of human beings, there can be no doubt that followers of anthroposophy must inevitably become opponents of National Socialism, or at least remain alien to it.”¹
Note
1. Quoted in Uwe Werner, Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Piper, 1999), 383.
Presenter Biography
Peter Selg, Prof. Dr. med., born in 1963, studied medicine at the University of Witten/Herdecke, in Berlin and Zurich, and obtained his doctorate with a thesis on „The historical development of an anthroposophical human physiology in the work of Rudolf Steiner“. Specialised training in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy, senior physician at the Herdecke Community Hospital and the Ita Wegman Clinic in Arlesheim. Worked at the Institute for Applied Epistemology and Medical Methodology in Freiburg. Current: Director of the Ita Wegman Institute for Anthroposophical Basic Research (Arlesheim), Professor of Medical Anthropology and Ethics at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences in Alfter near Bonn, member of the Faculty of Health at the University of Witten/Herdecke. Co-director of the General Anthroposophical Section at the Goetheanum. Since 2008, regular seminars on medical ethics with students from the Witten/Herdecke faculty at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial (Poland). Publication of over 200 book monographs on the life and work of Rudolf Steiner and on issues of medical anthropology and ethics.