Max Weber and Rudolf Steiner in Munich

Talk with Aaron French, Postdoc researcher in the project ‘Twisting the Fabric of Space: On the Art and Politics of the Hidden’.

Abstract

German sociologist Max Weber and Austro-Hungarian esotericist Rudolf Steiner are not often thought together. However, both share a historical context, belong to the same generation, and were concerned with similar questions and problems. In this short presentation, based on my monograph Max Weber, Rudolf Steiner, and Modern Western Esotericism: A Transcultural Approach (2025), Weber and Steiner’s connection to the city of Munich will be explored. The focus will be on the turbulent years of the First World War and the Bavarian Council Republic and its aftermath. Surprisingly, Weber and Steiner were part of the same context in Munich and were even connected to similar people, shared similar experiences, and often reacted in ways that contradict our received image of them. The point is to trouble the categorical distinctions of our scholarly interpretations, which still too often locate historical actors on a spectrum of rationality and irrationality, and fall back on binary categorizations like “academic scholar” vs “esoteric charlatan.”

Speaker bio

Aaron French is a Postdoc researcher in the project ‘Twisting the Fabric of Space: On the Art and Politics of the Hidden’ at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies. His monograph Max Weber, Rudolf Steiner, and Modern Western Esotericism: A Transcultural Approach was published by Routledge in 2025. His article ‘Esotericism against Capitalism? Rudolf Steiner’s Reform Pedagogy as a Site of Resistance’ is currently available in the open access journal Approaching Religion. He is also the co-editor of the book Modernity and the Construction of Sacred Space (De Gruyter, 2024), which focuses on modern architecture and sacred space.