{"id":69377,"date":"2025-12-09T22:27:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T21:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=69377"},"modified":"2025-12-12T20:35:54","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:35:54","slug":"dachau-demeter-and-weleda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/dachau-demeter-and-weleda\/","title":{"rendered":"Dachau, Demeter, and Weleda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Historical Studies and Historical Reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201cEco-products for Nazis\u201d was the headline of an article in the September 5, 2025, issue of the news magazine Der Spiegel<\/em>.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The subtitle read: \u201cIn the Dachau concentration camp, the SS experimented with anthroposophical methods and remedies using forced labor. The natural cosmetics company Weleda also played a role.\u201d Included in the article were photographs of Rudolf Steiner, Margarete Himmler (the wife of the SS chief), Sigmund Rascher and another SS doctor conducting human experiments on concentration camp prisoners in Dachau, prisoners performing forced labor, buildings belonging to the Dachau SS operation of the German Research Institute for Nutrition and Food (DVA, Deutschen Versuchsanstalt f\u00fcr Ern\u00e4hrung und Verpflegung<\/em>), along with images of the Weleda logo\u2014and a photo of historian Anne Sudrow. The report served as an effective promotion for her book Heil Kr\u00e4uter Kulturen. Die SS, die \u00f6kologische Landwirtschaft und die Naturheilkunde im KZ Dachau<\/em> [Healing herb cultures: The SS, organic farming, and naturopathy in the Dachau concentration camp]. The book was published a few weeks later by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in G\u00f6ttingen and made available to the news magazine in advance.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u201cNetwork of Anthroposophists in the SS\u201d?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In his article, Spiegel author Stefan Hunglingern quotes from the monograph but also walks with the historian across the grounds of the former DVA facility. He emphasizes that there was an active \u201cnetwork of anthroposophists\u201d within the SS, consisting of biodynamic farmers, gardeners, and an SS doctor (Sigmund Rascher), who were not victims but perpetrators in the context of the Dachau concentration camp and pursued their own interests. According to Hunglingern, based on the supposed research of the \u201cclairvoyant\u201d Steiner, profitable anthroposophical enterprises had already emerged in the 1920s (including the pharmaceutical manufacturer Weleda). Biodynamic agriculture, in particular, then received special support from the SS during the time of National Socialism, specifically as an instrument for cultivating the new \u201cliving space\u201d [Lebensraumes<\/em>] after the conquests in Eastern Europe in the course of World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the SS\u2019s DVA facility in Dachau, Weleda\u2019s former head gardener, Franz Lippert, and another Weleda gardener, Erich Werner, conducted botanical studies on the huge area cultivated by prisoners. SS doctor Rascher, who carried out cruel human experiments (high-altitude\/low-pressure and freezing) in experimental block 5 of the concentration camp, was also associated with Weleda. Reportedly, the anthroposophical \u201cnetwork\u201d within the SS at that time has been deliberately \u201cconcealed\u201d to this day. According to Hunglingern and Sudrow, consumers of Demeter or Weleda products should be conscious of the inhumane support their manufacturers received not so long ago and the collaboration with the Nazi and SS regime that underlies these morally tainted products. According to the implicit statement in Der Spiegel<\/em>, anyone who buys Demeter or Weleda products becomes a belated beneficiary of the Nazi concentration camps and the labor, blood, and ashes of innocent people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not Dealt With and Obscured?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

With few exceptions, the article describes facts that have been known for decades from historical studies and publications\u2014albeit with deliberate exaggeration and biased interpretation. The delivery of Weleda frostbite cream to Sigmund Rascher in January 1943 was made public by G\u00f6tz Aly in early 1983. From 1991 to 1993, Arfst Wagner published five volumes of \u201cDocuments and Letters on the History of the Anthroposophical Movement and Society during the Time of National Socialism\u201d [Dokumente und Briefe zur Geschichte der Anthroposophischen Bewegung und Gesellschaft in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus<\/em>] from state and private archives (Volume III: \u201cBiodynamic Farming. Materials on Sigmund Rascher\u201d [Biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise. Materialien \u00fcber Sigmund Rascher<\/em>]). In 1999, Uwe Werner took into account all the material available to him at that time on the relationship between the Reich Association for Biodynamic Agriculture and Horticulture [Reichsverband f\u00fcr biologisch-dynamische Landwirtschaft und Gartenbau<\/em>] and the SS and the DVA, as well as on Franz Lippert and Sigmund Rascher, in his comprehensive monograph Anthroposophists in the Time of National Socialism<\/em> [Anthroposophen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Numerous other publications on Lippert and the DVA followed, including the work of Jens Ebert, Tanja Kinzel, Meggi Pieschel, and Kristin Witte in 2021. In the spring and early summer of 2024 and in the early summer of 2025 (two months before Sudrow\u2019s monograph), three comprehensive volumes on the biodynamic movement during the time of National Socialism, as well as on anthroposophical doctors and anthroposophical drug manufacturers (1933\u20131945), were finally published\u2014the result of several years of research projects and with the participation of scientific advisory boards with no connection to anthroposophy.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The documentary material, insofar as it concerned persons or institutions close to anthroposophy, had thereby already been carefully and critically examined before Anne Sudrow\u2019s work, and had not been deliberately \u201cobscured.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merits and Shortcomings of a Publicly Funded Study<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Of lasting value in Sudrow\u2019s book publication\u2014which bears the logos of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site [KZ-Gedenkst\u00e4tte Dachau<\/em>], the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media [Beauftragten der Bundesregierung f\u00fcr Kultur und Medien<\/em>], and the Bavarian State Ministry of Education and Culture [Bayrischen Staatsministeriums f\u00fcr Unterricht und Kultur<\/em>] in the imprint\u2014are the statements on the DVA facility in Dachau and the history and context of the extensive operation, in which edible and medicinal herbs were primarily cultivated, researched, and distributed on a large scale, using up to a thousand forced laborers (concentration camp prisoners). Sudrow\u2019s vivid descriptions and testimonies of the harsh working conditions of the prisoners and the specific research programs carried out at the plant facility, which was mainly managed according to biodynamic methods from April 1940 onwards, including Franz Lippert\u2019s botanical studies, are also of lasting value. Sudrow has reconstructed these programs in their entirety for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author sees the DVA facility in Dachau both as a center of scientific teaching and research in the field of organic farming and horticulture during the time of National Socialism, and also as a center of \u201calternative medicine\u201d and the Reich Labor Association\u2019s project for a \u201cNew German Art of Healing\u201d [Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft f\u00fcr eine \u201cNeue Deutsche Heilkunde\u201d<\/em>]. With this assessment of medical history, she most likely overshoots her target; what is undoubtedly correct, however, is that the SS under Himmler understood itself as an elite group, had a mandate for operational settlement policy in the territories conquered by Germany, and wanted to carry out fundamental work and practical tests along these lines on its DVA estates. Among Sudrow\u2019s primary interests were employees from the biodynamic movement who had different relationships with anthroposophy but were connected to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prejudices<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For Anne Sudrow, anthroposophical spiritual science, Rudolf Steiner\u2019s life\u2019s work, is nothing more than a \u201ctheosophical web of dogma.\u201d<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> According to her, Steiner, with his \u201cauthority as a clairvoyant,\u201d did not actually teach anything; specifically, he did not teach any methodology, but instead relied solely on a mere esoteric \u201ctransference of knowledge,\u201d which inherently excludes source criticism and contextualization.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Even the Agricultural Course in Koberwitz near Breslau\u2014the starting point for the Demeter initiative (June 1924)\u2014was solely attended by \u201cfollowers\u201d and required a \u201cprofession of faith in anthroposophy.\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Sudrow, Steiner\u2019s ideas and suggestions, including those in the field of organic farming, focus on \u201canthroposophical questions of faith.\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The agricultural preparations and their production are also based on \u201cquasi-religious affirmations.\u201d<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> According to Koberwitz, biodynamic farmers, in accordance with Steiner\u2019s requirements, pursued \u201cnature-mystic practices\u201d and meditated while sitting in the fields of grain. The biodynamic farming method is an \u201coccult version\u201d of organic farming,<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> characterized by a \u201cspeculative-esoteric approach\u201d<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and is (to this day) only practiced by people who have previously undergone training in \u201canthroposophical beliefs and ways of thinking,\u201d<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> with \u201cmagical practices\u201d and \u201csuperstitious uses of plants in the tradition of Paracelsus.\u201d<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She writes that there has never been any original scientific activity in the field of biodynamic agriculture; rather, Steiner\u2019s \u201cfaith community\u201d was assigned the task of \u201ccommunicating their own work to the rest of the world in seemingly natural scientific concepts in order to conceal its esoteric roots.\u201d<\/span>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> This was solely a matter of giving their work a natural scientific \u201cveneer,\u201d<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> of \u201creligious esotericism in the guise of science.\u201d<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a><\/span> To this day, the preparations of the Demeter movement, like the entire practice of biodynamic agriculture, have, according to Sudrow, remained without any proof of effectiveness; open-ended studies have never been published. Rather, the entire movement works \u201cesoterically\u201d and in the tradition of \u201csecret schools\u201d with \u201chidden\u201d knowledge, a \u201cdoctrine\u201d into which \u201cnewcomers are initiated through a teacher-student relationship and through meditative techniques\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d<\/span>16<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of Sudrow\u2019s assertions have nothing to do with the historical reality and current practice of biodynamic agriculture, its work, its content, its methods, and scientific research. They distort and caricature reality beyond recognition\u2014and defame the people working in this field worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0Part of a Questionable Tradition<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Since Sudrow believes that people who engage with anthroposophy in theory and practice are tainted in some way, she consistently applies such labels to their work as \u201canthroposophical<\/em> historians\u201d and \u201canthroposophical<\/em> biographers,\u201d as well as all research projects sponsored by \u201canthroposophical<\/em> foundations,\u201d which therefore indicates they are not to be taken seriously, as they come from a sectarian subgroup of society and consequently do not serve the cause of finding the truth but rather of concealing or reinterpreting it. Consciously or unconsciously, Sudrow\u2019s discriminatory prejudices are not only in line with contemporary criticism of anthroposophy but also with much older German traditions. Anyone who reads the reports of the SS security service on the surveillance of anthroposophists or suspected anthroposophy cases, or even just the last summary document of the Reich Security Main Office [Reichssicherheitshauptamtes<\/em>, RSHA] on \u201cAnthroposophy and its Special-Purpose Associations\u201d [Die Anthroposophie und ihre Zweckverb\u00e4nde<\/em>] (1941), will find not only Sudrow\u2019s conceptions of Steiner\u2019s occult \u201csecret circles\u201d and \u201csecret teachings,\u201d but also the conviction of influential anthroposophical \u201cnetworks\u201d striving for power and working underground in contemporary history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is not found in these reports, however, is Sudrow\u2019s assertion that the Nazi rejection of anthroposophy was based on the fact that the anthroposophical worldview \u201cwas closely related to folkist ideas and exhibited overlaps with the social goals of the NSDAP [National Socialist Party].\u201d<\/span>17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> All surveillance reports and Nazi expert opinions, including those of Alfred Baeumler, state the exact opposite\u2014that anthroposophy rejects racial doctrine and does not discriminate according to biology or folk group but rather is individualistic, pacifist, and humanistic, as well as friendly toward Jews. According to the assessment of the Reich Security Main Office in 1941, \u201cBased on these findings, it must be concluded that anthroposophy in all its forms\u2014whether it be the Christian Community or an agricultural, medical, educational, or artistic method\u2014presents a danger to the unified National Socialist orientation of the German people that cannot be underestimated.\u201d<\/span>18<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never Described in \u201cAnthroposophical Studies\u201d?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to Sudrow, the fact that individual anthroposophists collaborated in DVA enterprises (in consultation with the leading officials of the Reich Association under the leadership of Erhard Bartsch and Franz Dreidax) was downplayed, reinterpreted, or \u201cconsistently concealed\u201d in \u201call publications of anthroposophically commissioned research.\u201d<\/span>19<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Sudrow confidently presents her study as the first \u201chistorical correction of the pure victim narrative of the anthroposophists,\u201d<\/span>20<\/sup><\/a><\/span> who, as such, had no interest in clarification. Lippert\u2019s free decision to collaborate in a leading position at the DVA Dachau has also been \u201cturned on its head in anthroposophical studies.\u201d<\/span>21<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Even Sigmund Rascher\u2019s \u201cclose connections\u201d to anthroposophy have \u201cnot been adequately taken into account\u201d to date.<\/span>22<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susanne zur Nieden, Meggi Pieschel, and Jens Ebert wrote a book entitled Die biodynamische Bewegung und Demeter in der NS-Zeit: Akteure, Verbindungen, Haltungen <\/em>[The biodynamic movement and Demeter during the time of National Socialism: Participants, connections, approaches], after being commissioned as part of a three-year research project by the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum, Demeter Germany, and the Biodynamic Federation Demeter International. On July 2, 2024, at the Topography of Terror [Topographie des Terrors<\/em>] in Berlin (with Anne Sudrow present in the auditorium), they presented their book, wherein they describe, in thoroughly detailed chapters, the path of biodynamic farmers in the Nazi state.<\/span>23<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside much else, they show how Reich-influenced groups pushed forward with all their might the Nazi state\u2019s dirigisme in agricultural policy and the industrialization of agriculture, demanded maximum yields and efficiency in the agricultural sector, advocated an aggressive national expansion policy, and saw the \u201cfood security\u201d of the population as only being guaranteed by artificial fertilizers. Together with Nazi ideologues critical of anthroposophy, official experts, and representatives of the Gestapo and the SD [Sicherheitsdienst<\/em>, \u201cSecurity Service,\u201d intelligence agency of the SS], these groups had been pushing since 1933 for a ban on the biodynamic \u201coutsider and provocateur.\u201d The Reichsn\u00e4hrstand<\/em> [Reich Food Society], the professional organization for agricultural policy and economics in the German Reich, as well as leading agricultural scientists and the majority of the employees of the Ministry of Agriculture, all rejected biodynamic agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confronted with this situation, and shortly before their ban, the biodynamic farmers and their association, led by Erhard Bartsch, attempted to establish relationships within the Nazi Party with circles that were critical of industry and artificial fertilizers, as well as with influential adherents of naturopathy and those lobbying for a \u201cpublic health\u201d based on the use of biological methods (purification processes using microorganisms) in party and government circles. They did, in fact, succeed and continued their work. After the start of World War II, Heinrich Himmler favored biodynamic farming as an option free of artificial fertilizers for estates in territories conquered in Eastern Europe, provided that it gave a positive result. Erhard Bartsch did not refuse this collaboration but saw promise in the opportunities for work and development, as Uwe Werner critically pointed out in 1999.<\/span>24<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 1941, following the Reich-wide Gestapo action against anthroposophy, many of the efforts of Demeter officials foundered, the Reich Association was banned, Erhard Bartsch and other farmers were imprisoned, and biodynamic agriculture no longer had a chance in agricultural policy. Still, Himmler stuck to his plan within the framework of his SS sovereignty over the DVA estates and, despite Heydrich\u2019s veto, ensured that individual experts from the biodynamic movement carried out the conversion of the DVA estates and that their methods were tested there. Zur Nieden, Pieschel, and Ebert examined the serious problems of this collaboration in detail in their study, including the obscuring of the context of Lippert\u2019s and K\u00fcnzel\u2019s Dachau plant research in publications after 1945. Of the twelve biodynamic experts described by Sudrow who worked for the DVA, ten were already known to zur Nieden, Pieschel, and Ebert, while Sudrow\u2019s meticulous Dachau studies revealed two more individuals. However, zur Nieden, Pieschel, and Ebert are rightly far removed from the interpretation of these ten or twelve as a strategically operating \u201cnetwork of anthroposophists in the SS\u201d (Sudrow), without in any way downplaying the problematic nature of their collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rascher Case<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to Sudrow\u2019s assertions, Sigmund Rascher\u2019s connections to anthroposophy are not the only ones to be found in the first volume of the study Anthroposophische Medizin, Pharmazie und Heilp\u00e4dagogik im Nationalsozialismus 1933\u20131945 <\/em>[Anthroposophic medicine, pharmacy, and curative education under National Socialism] (commissioned by the Academy of the Society of Anthroposophic Doctors in Germany [Akademie der Gesellschaft Anthroposophischer \u00c4rztinnen und \u00c4rzte in Deutschland, GA\u00c4D<\/em>] and the Medical Section of the Goetheanum) on the basis of all source material available to date by P. Selg, S. H. Gross, and M. Mochner (in much greater detail than Anne Sudrow).<\/span>25<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The same applies to Rascher\u2019s activities in the Dachau concentration camp (following Julien Reitzenstein and all the literature available on the subject to date).<\/span>26<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rascher\u2019s relationships with the anthroposophical drug manufacturer Weleda, his position within the anthroposophical medical profession, and his relationships with those who worked with Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and Lilly Kolisko\u2019s natural scientific methods in the Dornach Glasshaus and other locations have also already been analyzed. As has been known for decades, Rascher had learned the method of \u201csensitive crystallization\u201d during his medical studies in Basel while working with Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, and later used it to obtain a doctorate and publish two articles in the prestigious M\u00fcnchener Medizinische Wochenschrift<\/em> [Munich medical weekly], which aroused great interest in the circles of anthroposophical physicians and Weleda. Sudrow\u2019s assertion that Pfeiffer\u2019s methods had always been rejected in the academic natural scientific disciplines \u201cdue to a lack of conclusive empirical studies\u201d<\/span>27<\/sup><\/a><\/span> is scientifically untenable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pfeiffer\u2019s biological research methods can hardly be held responsible for the fact that Rascher came into close contact with Heinrich Himmler (via Rascher\u2019s partner Karoline Diehl) in the spring of 1939 and became a concentration camp researcher conducting brutal human experiments; they have nothing whatsoever to do with Rascher\u2019s freezing and high-altitude\/low-pressure experiments on prisoners. Sigmund Rascher increasingly distanced himself from anthroposophy, which he had been introduced to in his parents\u2019 home. During his time at the Dachau concentration camp, he reported his father, the anthroposophical doctor Hanns Rascher, to the Munich police, called in the Gestapo, and accused his father of having connections to the center of anthroposophy in Dornach<\/span>28<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u2014most likely to protect himself, since Himmler wanted to try out biodynamic farming methods but (like Reinhard Heydrich) saw anthroposophy and Steiner as extremely dangerous factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sigmund Rascher\u2019s publications in the M\u00fcnchener Medizinische Wochenschrift<\/em> were known to anthroposophical doctors and Weleda, but they were also aware of his serious personality problems, which were already evident before his close relationship with Himmler, his entry into the SS research community Ahnenerbe [Ancestral heritage], and his start of work at the Dachau concentration camp, where he then became the \u201clord of life and death.\u201d A boastful demeanor with traits of megalomania, a narcissistic need for recognition, and a latent propensity for violence, including threats involving Himmler and the Nazis, characterized Rascher\u2019s few surviving correspondences with anthroposophically oriented physicians who kept their distance from him (and the SS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sigmund Rascher exchanged a few surviving letters with Weleda, which are not easy to interpret due to the lack of context; the documents do not suggest that Rascher played an \u201cimportant mediating role\u201d between the SS leadership and the anthroposophical \u201cpractitioners,\u201d as Sudrow claims,<\/span>29<\/sup><\/a><\/span> but rather exactly the opposite. Likewise unfounded is the claim that \u201cfrom 1939 onwards, empirical knowledge circulated between the Weleda enterprise and Rascher for his reports to Himmler and his experiments in the Dachau concentration camp.\u201d<\/span>30<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Sudrow exaggerates a request made by Rascher to various biological pharmaceutical companies (including Weleda) in July 1939 regarding the effectiveness of a coal preparation that Heinrich Himmler was interested in.<\/span>31<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sudrow\u2019s assertion that Rascher\u2019s work \u201cclearly shows personal influences and professional references to developments and ideological premises of anthroposophic medicine,\u201d as she also postulates in her assessment, and that Rascher\u2019s work continues to be \u201cused\u201d in anthroposophic medicine,<\/span>32<\/sup><\/a><\/span> is also completely misguided. Only Rascher\u2019s publications in the M\u00fcnchner Medizinische Wochenschrift<\/em> on the method of \u201csensitive crystallization\u201d (Pfeiffer\/Kolisko) are still included in relevant publication overviews. What else could be included?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weleda during the time of National Socialism: \u201cExtensive contacts with the DVA and the SS\u201d?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to Sudrow, Weleda used its \u201cextensive contacts with the DVA Dachau and the SS\u201d for its own procurement of raw materials\u2014and reciprocally, the DVA saw Weleda\u2019s orders as \u201crecognition of the biodynamic character of its products.\u201d<\/span>33<\/sup><\/a><\/span> This is simply not the case. According to Sudrow, the dissent between Weleda and Franz Lippert, who left Weleda and ended up in Dachau via a roundabout route, as described in the literature, was invented specifically to \u201cdistance and exonerate the enterprise and to conceal the reality of its numerous and diverse connections with the SS and the Dachau concentration camp.\u201d<\/span>34<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their 580-page study on Weleda (and WALA) during the Nazi era, published in July 2025, Selg, Gross, and Mochner document the impressive resilience of Weleda\u2019s management under the difficult living and survival conditions of the Nazi state. Weleda maintained its corporate identity and idealistic goals, did not adapt the speech and diction of its company newspaper (with a circulation of up to 80,000 copies) and employee training courses to the premises of National Socialism and the \u201cNew German Art of Healing,\u201d and, despite interrogations and company searches (due to the anthroposophical background of the company), went its own way, partly under the protection of the Swiss consulate. The Weleda management was extremely critical of the political relations of the biodynamic Reich Association under the leadership of Erhard Bartsch,<\/span>35<\/sup><\/a><\/span> as were large sections of the anthroposophical medical profession.<\/span>36<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Weleda\u2019s disagreement with Franz Lippert was not fabricated, but did actually take place and had to do with Lippert\u2019s dual role as head of the Weleda herb garden and as head of the information center for the Reich Association and co-worker of Bartsch.<\/span>37<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2024 and July 2025, Selg, Gross, and Mochner published documents from the Weleda archives showing that Lippert wanted to come to Schw\u00e4bisch Gm\u00fcnd with Rudolf Lucass, the DVA\u2019s medicinal plant expert, in early 1942, four months after he started working in Dachau. The German Weleda management was not enthusiastic about this idea, but the visit probably took place nonetheless. A seed order for Echinacea angustifolia <\/em>placed by Weleda with the DVA in Dachau (September 1941) and a free delivery of vine leaves from the Heppenheim subcamp (summer 1942) are sparsely documented and, along with the testing of a Weleda veterinary medicine on DVA properties and the delivery of frostbite cream in January 1943, form the narrow documentary basis of what Sudrow calls the \u201cvery diverse and numerous connections between the enterprise and the SS and the Dachau concentration camp.\u201d Based on meeting minutes, it was possible to prove that Weleda\u2019s commercial director, Fritz G\u00f6tte, visited Franz Lippert at the DVA once and, upon his return, made extremely critical comments to the Weleda management circle\u2014presumably about the reality of life at the DVA facilities with the forced laborers from the adjacent concentration camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dealing With the Past<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Despite intensive research, the exact circumstances surrounding the delivery of Weleda frostbite cream to Sigmund Rascher remain unclear to this day. However, it can be inferred that G\u00f6tte and his colleagues in management expected Rascher to conduct an experimental efficacy test, as he had planned to compare different preparations for treating the effects of frostbite and submitted a corresponding research application on December 13, 1942.<\/span>38<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It is not clear whether the German leadership of Weleda was aware at the beginning of 1943 that Rascher was producing the freezing injuries himself, nor whether he ever used the preparations from Weleda (and other manufacturers) to treat the injuries.<\/span>39<\/sup><\/a><\/span> At the latest, four years after the delivery, in April 1947, Weleda was aware of Rascher\u2019s cruel freezing experiments through the report on the Nuremberg Doctors\u2019 Trial by Mitscherlich and Mielke.<\/span>40<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It is unclear how the company management then dealt with this; when confronted by G\u00f6tz Aly in the early 1980s about their delivery of frostbite cream, they denied any knowledge of Rascher\u2019s SS position, claiming that he had ordered the delivery to his private address.<\/span>41<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reunion between Weleda leadership and Franz Lippert in early 1947 at a conference on biodynamic issues had already been fraught with tension. As documented by Selg, Gross, and Mochner, the Weleda leadership nevertheless concluded a temporary consulting contract with Lippert, whose expertise the company urgently needed. However, Sudrow\u2019s assertion that the company leadership had no reservations whatsoever about collaboration with former DVA collaborators\u2014Lippert and K\u00fcnzel\u2014after 1945<\/span>42<\/sup><\/a><\/span> does not correspond to historical reality. In fact, there were considerable moral reservations; Lippert had heard of G\u00f6tte\u2019s criticism after his visit to the DVA and felt that Weleda handled him with mistrust because of his collaboration in Dachau\u2014even though a former prisoner and forced laborer had personally vouched for him at Weleda, attesting to his extraordinarily humane and protective treatment of the prisoners. Shame and embarrassment were certainly present on the part of Weleda\u2019s leadership (but apparently not on Lippert\u2019s part); nevertheless, they decided to compromise with him, though this was short-lived. G\u00f6tte refused to hire Lippert\u2019s colleague in Dachau, Martha K\u00fcnzel, because of her DVA activities but was interested in her Dachau research results in the field of plant breeding\u2014and thereby entered into another compromise after 1945. The name Dachau was blacked out in documents\u2014and after Lippert\u2019s early death in 1949, the temporary rapprochement with the former head gardener was erased from the company\u2019s memory.<\/span>43<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEco-Fascism\u201d and Enemy Stereotypes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Dealing with the company\u2019s history during the Nazi era and the dilemmas that Weleda faced despite its clear anti-Nazi stance and the compromises it made proved difficult for its leaders for many decades and until very recently. The company had not followed the path of resistance taken by the White Rose\u2014and yet it was miles away from the behavior of the Nazi and concentration camp profiteers of the IG Farben complex and other German companies.<\/span>44<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Accused by parts of the press since the early 1980s of collaboration with \u201ceco-fascism,\u201d Weleda\u2019s leadership shifted its focus to emphasizing its resistance to the Nazis, which ultimately did not help it\u2014and missed the opportunity for a nuanced reappraisal of its own resistance and compromise. Thanks to Anne Sudrow and Der Spiegel<\/em>, the company has once again come under media scrutiny, even though the anthroposophical pharmaceutical manufacturer is hardly mentioned in the 692-page Dachau monograph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAny errors in content remain my own,\u201d writes Ms. Sudrow at the end of her study. It would have been nice if some of the \u201cerrors\u201d and assertions she mentions had<\/em> remained with her alone; however, it\u2019s no accident that she presented and propagated them far and wide. There is an undeniable tragedy in the collaborative behavior of people like Erhard Bartsch, Franz Lippert, Martha K\u00fcnzel, and others, even without their being guilty of any direct crimes, and even when there is no doubt that anthroposophy itself was harshly prohibited and even persecuted by the Nazi state. But there is also a tragedy in the case of a historian like Sudrow, who works fully committed to researching the time of National Socialism but who generates new, discriminatory enemy stereotypes with obvious aggression. This is deeply regrettable, given the important aspects of Sudrow\u2019s commendable work on the DVA in Dachau, but also in view of the reputation of Weleda and Demeter\u2019s work, indeed of anthroposophy in the public sphere. It is to be hoped that a differentiated reappraisal of the much more complex historical reality will ultimately prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historical Studies and Historical Reality. \u201cEco-products for Nazis\u201d was the headline of an article in the September 5, 2025, issue of the news magazine Der Spiegel. The subtitle read: \u201cIn the Dachau concentration camp, the SS experimented with anthroposophical methods and remedies using forced labor. The natural cosmetics company Weleda also played a role.\u201d Included in the article were photographs of Rudolf Steiner, Margarete Himmler (the wife of the SS chief), Sigmund Rascher and another SS doctor conducting human experiments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9186,"featured_media":69118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8846,8789],"tags":[11729,11734,8814],"class_list":["post-69377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-research","tag-ausgabe-48-2025-en","tag-english-issue-50-2025","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}