The Biodynamic Movement in Britain, A History of the First 100 Years, Bernard Jarman, Floris Books, 2024 (Book Review)

Abstract

The book ‘The Biodynamic Movement in Britain, A History of the First 100 Years’ is timely but disappointing. Timely, because Dr Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) presented his Agriculture Course at Koberwitz a century ago, and thereby laid foundations for the development of the Biodynamics (BD) and organic agriculture movements. Disappointing, because it is riddled with errors, hearsay, and gratuitous fabrication. The book is not founded on rigorous scholarship but rather presents a mischmasch of truths, half-truths, and fabrications as historical fact. In Britain, the Biodynamics movement dates back to an Anthroposophy Conference at the Quaker Centre in London in 1928, where Dr Carl Mirbt (aka Mier) (1902-1975), as an emissary of Count Carl Keyserlingk (1869-1928), presented a lecture on Steiner’s agricultural ideas. The newly widowed Marna Pease (1866-1947) promptly took up the challenge of advancing the cause and recruited Mirbt to promote BD in Britain. Under Marna Pease’s stewardship the BD movement took root in Britain and the Anglo-sphere more broadly. The book’s account of her is muddled. On a positive note, this book lists all the office bearers of the three British BD associations from 1928 through 2023. The book creates and propagates false narratives and is not recommended for reading or acquisition. The book is recommended for retraction and subsequent revision; or alternatively, reassignment as ‘historical fiction’.