The Rudolf Steiner Archive

50. A Call for the Rescue of Upper Silesia

Flyer, January 1921

Upper Silesians!

[ 1 ] Should discord, hidden and open internal struggle become a permanent state in Upper Silesia to the agony of its population, to the detriment of the economy, to the destruction of all cultural assets? Can Upper Silesia remain a constant threat to peace in Europe?

[ 2 ] No! But how can this be prevented?

[ 3 ] The Upper Silesian question is a European question. The whole of Europe is concerned about the economic prosperity of industry, especially the coal resources of Upper Silesia. Upper Silesia is of crucial importance for the European economic cycle. The spiritual-cultural problems and tasks of this region, as a middle ground between Eastern and Central Europe, weigh heavily in the balance. The spirituality of the Upper Silesian peoples can only have the right effect if a real solution to the nationality question is found here. This would also be a decisive step towards ushering in a new era of international relations in general.

[ 4 ] It is also imperative in the European interest that political and governmental conditions are restored to health if Upper Silesia is not to become a source of political unrest that permanently calls European peace into question.

[ 5 ] So the problem of the organization of Upper Silesia is a question of the economic, legal-political and cultural-spiritual recovery of the whole of Europe. All the measures taken by the powers to date have brought nothing less than a solution to European problems and social issues. But since the Upper Silesian question can only be solved in the context of a truly contemporary reorganization of European relations, no current solution to these questions that is grounded in reality can be anything other than a temporary state. It is therefore necessary to deliberately create such a transitional state in Upper Silesia. Neither Wilson's famous unworldly 14 points, whose application to real life, especially in the East, is an impossibility, nor the violent methods of a bygone era can lead to a reconstruction of European life. This reconstruction can only be achieved if we realize that we are basically dealing with three different areas:

economic life,
the legal-political life,
the spiritual-cultural life.

[ 6 ] In the previous state, these three areas were intertwined, and the chaotic conditions of the present have ultimately emerged from this confusion. The only realistic organization of social life can therefore only consist in the independence of these three areas. The way to this is shown by the threefold structure of the social organism. It demands that the state releases the economy on the one hand and intellectual life on the other from its sphere of power.

[ 7 ] Economic life then only includes the production, distribution and consumption of goods, which are to be managed by experts on an "associative basis" ^{1Note in the leaflet: Details on the "associative economy" can be found in the publications listed below.}. Unhindered by state and political power relations, the producers and consumers of the various countries will work together to regulate the satisfaction of all needs.

[ 8 ] The spiritual link in the threefold social organism comprises science, art, religion, the entire educational system and the administration of justice. All these spiritual and cultural factors can only fulfill their task and properly stimulate social life in complete freedom from state intervention. Spiritual life, culture, must develop out of the free cooperation of all spiritual-creative individual personalities and give itself its own administrative bodies.

[ 9 ] The middle link, the legal-political part of the social organism, then remains primarily the police and administrative activity on a legal basis; it is regulated by a democratically elected parliament. Since this parliament deals only with purely state-political questions, it can disturb neither economic nor intellectual life.

[ 10 ] (All details about the threefold structure of the social organism can be found in the book "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage" by Dr. Rud. Steiner, "Der Kommende Tag" AG Verlag, Stuttgart, Champignystraße 17, as well as in the weekly newspaper "Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus" published by the same publisher and other relevant literature.)

[ 11 ] Only through such a structuring of the social organisms in Europe would the economic cycle be able to take place independently of political state borders, across them, according to its own laws. - Likewise, the intellectual exchange between parts of the people that are separated by political borders is possible across these borders in a free manner, uninhibited by state power politics.

[ 12 ] Until such a healthy tripartite organization of the social organism has been carried out in the various national territories throughout Europe, the Upper Silesian question cannot really be brought to a final solution.

[ 13 ] In Upper Silesia in particular, conditions are crying out for such a tripartite solution.

[ 14 ] Here, two cultures, two national individualities that permeate each other, fight for the opportunity to live out their lives. The school system and judicial jurisdiction are the most important points of friction. Only through the liberation of intellectual life can these burning issues be resolved, especially in Upper Silesia. The two cultures, the German and the Polish, will then be able to develop side by side in accordance with their respective life forces, without the one having to fear being raped by the other, and without the political state taking sides for one or the other. Each nationality will establish not only its own educational institutions, but also its own administrative bodies for cultural life, so that friction is excluded. - And if the economic cycle in Upper Silesia were also detached from the state-political, the economic issues in Upper Silesia could be integrated into the overall European economy and only solved by agreements between the economists of the countries involved.

[ 15 ] In the present, therefore, the following is the only realistic, viable option:

[ 16 ] The Upper Silesian region rejects annexation to a neighboring state for the time being, until an understanding of the tripartite structure is awakened there. It constitutes itself in such a way that its economic factors manage themselves - as do its spiritual factors. It creates a harmony between the two by means of a provisional legal-police organism extending only over its territory and remains in this state until the entire European situation has been clarified.

[ 17 ] Despite the fact that this state of affairs is a provisional one, it appears, if it is carried out, as a model for the measures which the whole of Europe must take for the recovery of its conditions.

[ 1 ] Only short-sightedness can understand this call as not being in the German spirit. True German sentiment has always thought this way.

[ 18 ] So, inhabitants of Upper Silesia, unite all branches of your economic life in free associations independent of the state! Declare your educational system independent of the state and place it under its own administration! Set up a provisional police-administrative-parliamentary state until European conditions assume a healthier basis! The only thing that will help you is what you can achieve from these demands at the Entente Commission. Everything else is worthless for you.

Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus
Wroclaw local group

Speaker on threefolding and Upper Silesia at the Wroclaw branch of the Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus, Wroclaw, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 16, 2 Treppen, request.