In fact Weleda supplied naturopathic materials for ‘medical experiments’ (i.e. torture) on prisoners at Dachau.

Jazz and popular music are often scorned at European Waldorf schools, and recorded music in general is frowned upon; these phenomena are considered to harbor demonic forces. Instead students read fairy tales, a staple of Waldorf education. Some sports, too, are forbidden, and art instruction often rigidly follows Steiner’s eccentric theories of color and form. Taken together with the pervasive anti-technological and anti-scientific bias, the suspicion toward rational thought, and the occasional outbreaks of racist gibberish, these factors indicate that Waldorf schooling is as questionable as the other aspects of the anthroposophist enterprise.

And if you choose to follow the wikipedia trail lots more weird things, such as this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Tomberg

And lots of nazis and fellow travelers or intellectual precursors in there, like this guy:

Karutz war ein deutscher HNO-Arzt und Ethnologe

That combination of professions is extremely sketchy. German Wikipedia neglects to mention this particular bit (weird how that keeps happening):

Karutz was more openly antisemitic than many of his anthroposophist colleagues. He denounced the “spirit of Jewry,”which he described as “cliquish, petty, narrow-minded, rigidly tied to the past, devoted to dead conceptual knowledge and hungry for world power.”

Well worth a read and not so long as you would think. A lot of the page consists of notes and comments.

https://social-ecology.org/wp/2009/01/anthroposophy-and-ecofascism-2/

Yesterday night then finally, I saw Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns at the Festival d’Avignon in the courtyard of a French Lycée. A play treating the world financial crisis based on a recent text by Elfride Jelinek. This is a topic whose absurdity and scale are still baffling and which has not seemed to reach a reasonable conclusion, even though everybody thought things would change (read this interview of an employee of a ratings agency by Joris Luyendijk).

Instead of a headlong approach that bored us to death (like Ten Billion), yesterday’s ensemble was very well aware of the challenges brought forth by such a complex theme and a vague but terse text by Jelinek. We were encouraged by Nicolas Stemann to step in and out during the play to get a drink at the bar in the garden. That made the entire ordeal of three and a half hours rather bearable.

The play progressed through all the stages we have gone through with the financial system. The naiveté, the promises made, the excuses, the horror at capital evaporating, the shamelessness and reach-arounds, the hope of a united Europe, the anger, so much anger.

The actors perform pornographic routines, confidence tricks, laments and lullabies. They tell us that we didn’t have a lot of money but that it did make them so happy when it burned. That our insecurity is their security. That they don’t know what to make from the flesh of our children. Shall they turn it into sausages? That the money may come back but that it will be too small to recognize. That it may come back to somebody else. That the most important part of making money is believing. That we need to keep the faith. We have to believe. That that is what is important about money.

We, the audience, have to sing that we are all so very individual. We sing that the rest of us is the bank. There is more music. Post-rock instrumental soundscapes combine with chorals lyricizing about the state of our finances. Gainsbourg’s song turned into: J’achète. Non, je n’achète rien. Heal the banks, make them a better place, for you and for me and the entire European race. That may be the best summary of the play: it is an elongated Ne me quitte pas for the capital that has forsaken us.

At the beginning along with introductions we are given a countdown very similar to the progress indicators in ebooks. It starts at 99 and shows the number of pages left in the script. This was a very useful aid to pace visits to the bar with. At the end of it those who have sticked around —with some pride for having accomplished that— have witnessed a tour de force that makes twisted sense of the capitalist experience.