ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a very few academic works. It characterizes the anthroposophic understanding of history based on a differentiated analysis of Steiner's statements and of their interpretation and contextualization by the authors just mentioned. Anthroposophic recipients tend to treat Steiner's lecture notes and transcripts, which were often not authorized by him, as writings, not considering that they were orally presented in a particular context. Historical references often serve the self-contextualization of anthroposophic initiatives. Steiner's analyses of historical events can illustrate the difficulty of engaging with him as a historian. While Steiner's considerations and interpretations of cultural history have not found access to the discourse on history and history teaching, they have attracted polemical comments, mostly in relation to individual statements that were taken out of context. In the early 20th century, it was mostly Karl Lamprecht who tried to present the evolution of human consciousness by including psychological concepts for collective social processes.
