"The old beliefs will be brought back to honor again.
The whole secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the demonic.
We will wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race."
Adolf Hitler
T H E O C C U L T H I S T O R Y O F T H E T H I R D R E I C H
National Socialism is a unique phenomena in the history of political thought - probably because National Socialism is not strictly speaking a political philosophy.
The NSDAP did propose a political program - in it very early days - known as the 25 point Programme.
The National Socialist Program originated at a DAP congress in Vienna, then was taken to Munich, by the civil engineer and theoretician Rudolf Jung, who, having explicitly supported Hitler, had been expelled from Czechoslovakia, because of his political agitation.
The politician Josef Pfitzner, a Sudetenland German Nazi, wrote that “the synthesis of the two, great dynamic powers of the century, of the national and social ideas, had been perfected in the German borderlands [i.e. the Sudetenland], which thus were far ahead of their motherland.”
Moreover, despite the political syncretism of National Socialism, the 25-point Program advocated democracy and greater popular rights, although only for "racially pure" Germans.
THE 25 POINT PROGRAMME
1. We demand the union of all Germany in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national self-determination.
1. We demand the union of all Germany in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national self-determination.
2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and the revocation of the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain.
3. We demand land and territory (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our surplus population.
4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever be their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.
4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever be their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.
5. Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens.
6. The right to vote on the State's government and legislation shall be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens.We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of filling posts merely in accordance with party considerations, and without reference to character or abilities.
7. We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich.
8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Reich forthwith.
9. All citizens shall have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the general interest, but must proceed within the framework of the community and be for the general good.We demand therefore:
11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work. The breaking of the slavery of interest
12. In view of the enormous sacrifices of life and property demanded of a nation by any war, personal enrichment from war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore the ruthless confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.
15. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that the utmost consideration shall be shown to all small traders in the placing of State and municiple orders.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation; the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand the ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race.
19. We demand that Roman Law, which serves a materialistic world order, be replaced by a German common law.
20. The State must consider a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education (with the aim of opening up to every able and hard-working German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement). The curricula of all educational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the school must be to give the pupil, beginning with the first sign of intelligence, a grasp of the nation of the State (through the study of civic affairs). We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State.
21. The State must ensure that the nation's health standards are raised by protecting mothers and infants, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and by the extensive support of clubs engaged in the physical training of youth.
22. We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the foundation of a people's army.
23. We demand legal warfare on deliberate political mendacity and its dissemination in the press. To facilitate the creation of a German national press we demand:(a) that all editors of, and contributors to newspapers appearing in the German language must be members of the nation; (b) that no non-German newspapers may appear without the express permission of the State. They must not be printed in the German language; (c) that non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and that the penalty for contravening such a law shall be the suppression of any such newspaper, and the immediate deportation of the non-Germans involved. The publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare must be forbidden. We demand the legal prosecution of all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand.
24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the State, provided they do not threaten its existence not offend the moral feelings of the German race.
The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not commit itself to any particular denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health only from within on the basis of the principle: The common interest before self-interest. 25. To put the whole of this programme into effect, we demand the creation of a strong central state power for the Reich; the unconditional authority of the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and its organizations; and the formation of Corporations based on estate and occupation for the purpose of carrying out the general legislation passed by the Reich in the various German states.
click below for a fascinating insight into the early life and personality of Adolf Hitler
click below for a fascinating insight into the occult source of Hitler's power
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Now this is all very well - socialism and nationalism - but is it National Socialism as we know it ?
There is undoubtedly something missing - in fact almost everything is missing - because National Socialism is not a political and economic ideology, but rather a gnostic-religious philosophy - a quasi-religion - a separate understanding of the cosmos - which, while looking to the future, has its roots in the distant, ancient past.
The Völkische Bewegung - (volkisch movement) is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic".
The term völkisch, meaning "ethnic", derives from the German word Volk (cognate with the English "folk"), corresponding to "people", with connotations in German of "people-powered", "folksy" and "folkloric", and the word also has overtones of 'nation', 'race' and 'tribe'.
The defining idea that the völkisch movement revolved around was that of a Volkstum (lit. "folkdom", probably more precise in meaning would be "ethnicity").
The völkisch "movement" was not a unified movement but "a cauldron of beliefs, fears and hopes that found expression in various movements and were often articulated in an emotional tone," Petteri Pietikäinen observed in tracing völkisch influences on Carl Gustav Jung.
The völkisch movement was "arguably the largest group" in the Conservative Revolutionary movement in Germany, however, like "conservative-revolutionary" or "fascist", völkisch is a complex term.
In a narrow definition it can be used to designate only groups that consider human beings essentially preformed by blood i.e. by inherited characteristics.
The völkisch movement had its origins in Romantic nationalism, as it was expressed by early Romantics such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte in his 'Addresses to the German Nation' published during the Napoleonic Wars, from 1808 onwards, especially the eighth address, “What is a Volk, in the higher sense of the term, and what is love of the fatherland ?," where he answered his question of what could warrant the noble individual's striving "and his belief in the eternity and the immortality of his work," by replying that it could only be that "particular spiritual nature of the human environment out of which he himself, with all of his thought and action... has arisen, namely the people from which he is descended and among which he has been formed and grown into that which he is".
The movement combined sentimental patriotic interest in German folklore, local history and a "back-to-the-land" anti-urban populism.
In part this ideology was a revolt against modernity.
The dream was for a self-sufficient life lived with a mystical relation to the land; it was a reaction to the cultural alienation of the Industrial revolution and the "progressive" liberalism of the later 19th century and its urbane materialist banality.
In addition the völkisch movement, as it evolved, often combined the arcane, esoteric and occult aspects of folkloric occultism alongside "racial adoration" and, in some circles, a type of anti-Semitism linked to exclusionary ethnic nationalism.
The ideas of völkisch movements also included anti-communist, anti-immigration, anti-capitalist and anti-Parliamentarian principles.
The völkisch ideas of "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft) came more and more to exclude Jews.
A number of the völkisch-populist movements that had developed during the late 19th century in the German Empire, under the impress of National Romanticism, were reorganized along propagandistic lines after the German defeat in World War I, as the word "the people" (Volk) became increasingly politicized as a flag for new forms of ethnic nationalism.
The Völkisch movement was a force as well in Austria.
From the left, elements of the folk-culture spread to the parties of the middle-classes, but whereas Volk could mean "proletariat" among the left, it meant more particularly "race" among the center and right.
Although the primary interest of the Germanic mystical movement was the revival of native pagan traditions and customs (often set in the context of a quasi-Theosophical esotericism), a marked preoccupation with purity of race came to motivate its more politically oriented offshoots such as the Germanenorden, the Germanic or Teutonic Order.
This latter was a secret society (founded at Berlin in 1912) which required its candidates to prove that they had no "non-Aryan" bloodlines and required from each a promise to maintain purity of his stock in marriage.
Local groups of the sect met to celebrate the summer solstice, an important neopagan festivity in völkisch circles and later in Nazi Germany, and more regularly to read the Eddas as well as some of the German mystics.
This branch of the völkisch movement quickly developed a hyper-nationalist sentiment and allied itself with anti-semitism.
Völkisch ideologies were influential in the development of Nazism, indeed, Joseph Goebbels publicly asserted in the 1927 Nuremberg rally that if the populist (völkisch) movement had understood power and how to bring thousands out in the streets, it would have gained political power on 9 November 1918 (the outbreak of the SPD-led German Revolution of 1918–1919, end of the German monarchy).
Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (My Struggle): "the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are populist (völkisch) and the populist (völkisch) ideas are National-Socialist." Nazi racial science was couched in Völkisch terms, as when Eugen Fischer stepped into the vacuum, as other scholars withdrew from the University of Berlin in 1933, and delivered his inaugural address as Nazi rector, "The Conception of the Völkisch state in the view of biology" (29 July 1933).
Some of the first roots of Völkische Nazism can be traced back to 1900 when Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (see right) founded a group called the Order of the New Templars. Lanz’s Templars chose the swastika (see left) as their emblem, and concerned themselves with topics such as race superiority, astrology, homeopathy, and nutrition.
In 1908, Guido von List, who had been a teacher of Lanz’s, founded an organization known as the Armanen.
List was the first popular writer to combine völkisch ideology (völkisch being an extreme German nationalist movement of the time) with occultism, and he thought of himself as the link with an ancient race of Germanic priests and wise men called the Armanen, whose holiest symbol had been the swastika.
List took the swastika, which to the Germanic people represented an occult symbol for the sun, and made it the symbol for his Armanen as well. Members of the Armanen included the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, and were taught runic occultism by List.
Membership between the Order of the New Templars and the Armanen was often overlapping, and in 1912 members of both cults came together and founded the Germanen Orden.
Following the close of World War I, the Germanen Orden joined forces with another occult society known as Thule Gesellschaft.
The symbol of the Thule Society was a curved swastika, with a dagger superimposed on top, (see above) which shows the clear link this society bore to both the Armanen and the Germanen Orden.
One of the most prominent members of the Thule Gesellschaft was Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff (see left).
Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff (or von Sebottendorf) was the alias of Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer (November 9, 1875 – May 8, 1945?), who also occasionally used another alias, Erwin Torre.
He was an important figure in the activities of the Thule Society, an organization that influenced many members of the NSDAP.
He was a Freemason and a practitioner of meditation, astrology, numerology, and alchemy.
Glauer was born in Hoyerswerda (located northeast of Dresden in Saxony, Germany), the son of a locomotive engineer from Silesia.
He appears to have worked as a technician in Egypt between 1897–1900, although according to his own account he spent less than a month there in 1900 after a short career as a merchant sailor.
In July of that year he travelled to Turkey, where he settled in 1901 and worked as an engineer on a large estate there.
By 1905 he had returned to Dresden where he married Klara Voss, but the couple divorced in 1907.
The Münchener Post (14 March 1923) reported that he was sentenced as a swindler and forger in 1909, which Goodrick-Clarke (1985: 251) insists is a misprint for 1908.
He became an Ottoman citizen in 1911 and was apparently adopted, (under Turkish law), by the expatriate Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorff shortly thereafter.
(for more information about Ottoman Turkey see 'The House of Osman')
The adoption was later repeated in Germany, and its legal validity has been questioned, but it was endorsed by the Sebottendorff family and, on this basis, he asserted his claim to the Sebottendorff name and to the title of Freiherr.
After fighting on the Ottoman-Turkish side in the First Balkan War, Sebottendorff returned to Germany with a Turkish passport in 1913.
He was exempted from military service during the First World War because of his Ottoman citizenship and because of a wound received during the First Balkan War.
Glauer was initially interested in Theosophy and Freemasonry.
In 1901 he was initiated by a family of Greek-Jewish Freemasons into a lodge which is believed to have been affiliated to the French Rite of Memphis.
In Turkey, he became interested in numerology, Kabbalah and Sufism (including secret mystical exercises still practised by Sufis of the Bektashi order).
Speculations say he might have converted to Sufi Islam, although the evidence (from his own semi-autobiographical writings) is rather tenuous on this point.
In his autobiographical novel Der Talisman des Rosenkreuzers (The Rosicrucian Talisman), Sebottendorff distinguishes between Sufi-influenced Turkish Masonry and conventional Masonry.
(for more information about Islam see 'Islam')
By about 1912 he became convinced that he had discovered what he called "the key to spiritual realization", described by a later historian as "a set of numerological meditation exercises that bear little resemblance to either Sufism or Masonry".
By 1916, Sebottendorff had attracted only one follower.
In that year, however, he came into contact with the Germanenorden.
The Germanenorden (Germanic or Teutonic Order, not to be confused with the medieval German order of the Teutonic Knights) was a völkisch secret society in early 20th century Germany.
It was founded in Berlin in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch and several prominent German occultists including Philipp Stauff, who held office in the List Society and High Armanen Order as well as Hermann Pohl, who became the Germanenorden’s first leader.
Theodor Fritsch (28 October 1852, Wiedemar – 8 September 1933) was a German political scientist whose views did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A believer in the absolute superiority of the Aryan race, Fritsch was upset by the changes brought on by rapid industrialization and urbanization, and called for a return to the traditional peasant values and customs of the distant past, which he believed exemplified the essence of the Volk.
One of Fritsch's major goals was to unite all anti-semitic political parties under a single banner; he wished for anti-semitism to permeate the agenda of every German social and political organization.
This effort proved largely to be a failure, as by 1890 there were over 190 various anti-semitic parties in Germany.
He also had a powerful rival for the leadership of the anti-semites in Otto Böckel, with whom he had a strong personal rivalry.
In 1893, Fritsch published his most famous work, 'The Handbook of the Jewish Question', also known as the 'Anti-Semitic Catechism', which leveled a number of conspiratorial charges at European Jews and called upon Germans to refrain from intermingling with them.
Vastly popular, the book was read by millions and was in its 49th edition by 1944 (330.000 copies).
The ideas espoused by the work greatly influenced Hitler and the Nazis during their rise to power after World War I.
Fritsch also founded an anti-semitic journal - 'The Hammer' (in 1902) and this became the basis of a movement, the Reichshammerbund, in 1912.
His better known book, 'The Riddle of the Jew's Success' was published in English in 1927 under the pseudonym F. Roderich-Stoltheim, and dealt with the negative impact that Jewish values and the centralization of the German economy in Jewish hands had on the German people.
Philipp Stauff (1876-1923) was a prominent German/Austrian journalist and publisher in Berlin.
He was an enthusiastic Armanist, a close friend of Guido von List, and a founding member of the Guido-von-List-Society.
He was also the obituarist for List in the Münchener Beobachter.
Stauff joined the List Society in 1910 and swiftly graduated to the High Armanen Order, the intimate inner circle around List.
In 1912 he became a committee member of the List Society and a generous patron.
He was the chief German representative of the High Armanen Order at Berlin.
His esoteric treatise Runenhäuser (Rune Houses), published in 1912, "extended the Listian thesis of 'armanist' relics with the claim that the ancient runic wisdom had been enshrined in the geometric configuration of beams in half-timbered houses throughout Germany".
He was active in both the Reichshammerbund and the Germanenorden (pre-World War I völkisch leagues).
He was one of the principal officers in the loyalist Berlin province of the original Germanenorden after a splinter group led by Hermann Pohl broke away in 1916.
Germanenorden was a clandestine movement aimed at the uppper echelons of society and was a sister movement to the more open and mainstream Reichshammerbund.
The order, whose symbol was a swastika, had a hierarchical fraternal structure based on Freemasonry.
Local groups of the sect met to celebrate the summer solstice, an important neopagan festivity in völkisch circles (and later in Nazi Germany), and more regularly to read the Eddas as well as some of the German mystics.
In addition to occult and magical philosophies, it taught to its initiates nationalist ideologies of Nordic racial superiority and antisemitism, then rising throughout the Western world
As was becoming increasingly typical of völkisch organisations, it required its candidates to prove that they had no non-Aryan bloodlines and required from each a promise to maintain purity of his stock in marriage.
In 1916, during World War I, the Germanenorden split into two parts.
Eberhard von Brockhusen became the Grand Master of the "loyalist" Germanenorden.
Pohl, previously the order’s Chancellor, founded a schismatic offshoot: the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail.
He was joined in the same year by Rudolf von Sebottendorff.
Sebottendorff was also an admirer of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels.
Convinced that the Islamic and Germanic mystical systems shared a common Aryan root, he was attracted by Pohl’s runic lore and became the Master of the Walvater's Bavarian province late in 1917.
Charged with reviving the province's fortunes, Sebottendorff increased membership from about a hundred in 1917 to 1500 by the autumn of the following year.
The Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater when it was formally dedicated on August 18, 1918 was given the cover name, the Thule Gesellschaft, which became increasingly political, and in 1918 established a political party, the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei DAP - (German Workers' Party)
The DAP was founded in Munich in the hotel "Fürstenfelder Hof" on January 5, 1919 by Anton Drexler, a member of the occultist Thule Gesellschaft.
It developed out of the "Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden" (Free Workers' Committee for a good Peace) which Drexler had also founded and led.
Its first members were mostly colleagues of Drexler's from the Munich rail depot.
Drexler was encouraged to found the DAP by his mentor, Dr. Paul Tafel, a leader of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-Germanist Union), a director of the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg, also a member of the Thule Gesellschaft, and his wish was for a party which was both in touch with the masses and nationalist, unlike the middle class parties.
The initial membership was about forty people.
On March 24, 1919, Karl Harrer (a sports journalist and member of the Thule Society) joined the DAP to increase the influence of the Thule Society over the DAP's activities, and the party name was changed to the "Political Workers' Circle".
The membership was as scarce as the original DAP's and the meetings were reduced to the local beer houses.
The DAP was founded in Munich in the hotel "Fürstenfelder Hof" on January 5, 1919 by Anton Drexler, a member of the occultist Thule Gesellschaft.
It developed out of the "Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden" (Free Workers' Committee for a good Peace) which Drexler had also founded and led.
Its first members were mostly colleagues of Drexler's from the Munich rail depot.
Drexler was encouraged to found the DAP by his mentor, Dr. Paul Tafel, a leader of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-Germanist Union), a director of the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg, also a member of the Thule Gesellschaft, and his wish was for a party which was both in touch with the masses and nationalist, unlike the middle class parties.
The initial membership was about forty people.
On March 24, 1919, Karl Harrer (a sports journalist and member of the Thule Society) joined the DAP to increase the influence of the Thule Society over the DAP's activities, and the party name was changed to the "Political Workers' Circle".
The membership was as scarce as the original DAP's and the meetings were reduced to the local beer houses.
This party was joined in 1919 by Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler, then a corporal in the German army, was ordered to spy on the DAP on September 12, 1919 during one of its meetings at the Sterneckerbräu, a beer hall in the center of the city.
While there, he got into a violent argument with one guest.
Following this incident, Anton Drexler was impressed with Hitler's oratory skills and invited him to join the party.
After some thinking, Hitler left the army and accepted the invitation, joining in late September.
At the time when Hitler joined the party there were no membership numbers or cards.
It was on January 1920 when a numeration was issued for the first time: listed in alphabetical order, Hitler received the number 555.
In reality he had been the 55th member, but the counting started at the number 501 in order to make the party appear larger.
Also, his claim that he was party member number 7, which would make him one of the founding members, is refuted, however, in his work 'Mein Kampf', Hitler claims that he received a membership card with the number 7.
After giving his first speech for the Party on October 16 in the Hofbräukeller, Hitler quickly rose up to become a leading figure in the DAP.
The small number of party members were quickly won over to Hitler's political beliefs.
In an attempt to make the party more broadly appealing to larger segments of the population, the DAP was renamed on February 24, 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei NSDAP - (National Socialist German Workers' Party) or Nazi Party (see badge left).
The name was borrowed from a different Austrian party active at the time (Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei, German National Socialist Workers' Party), although Hitler earlier suggested the party to be renamed the "Social Revolutionary Party"; it was Rudolf Jung who persuaded Hitler to follow the NSDAP naming.
The emblem on the flag of the new party was the black,straight-armed clockwise swastika (see right), on a white circle against a red ground - unlike the DAP, which used the curved armed,static swastika (see left), taken from the Thule Gesellschaft emblem.
Sebottendorf was also the owner of the 'Völkischer Beobachter', which Hitler bought in 1921. The paper was to become Hitler’s most important propaganda tool.
Adolf Hitler, then a corporal in the German army, was ordered to spy on the DAP on September 12, 1919 during one of its meetings at the Sterneckerbräu, a beer hall in the center of the city.
While there, he got into a violent argument with one guest.
Following this incident, Anton Drexler was impressed with Hitler's oratory skills and invited him to join the party.
After some thinking, Hitler left the army and accepted the invitation, joining in late September.
At the time when Hitler joined the party there were no membership numbers or cards.
In reality he had been the 55th member, but the counting started at the number 501 in order to make the party appear larger.
Also, his claim that he was party member number 7, which would make him one of the founding members, is refuted, however, in his work 'Mein Kampf', Hitler claims that he received a membership card with the number 7.
After giving his first speech for the Party on October 16 in the Hofbräukeller, Hitler quickly rose up to become a leading figure in the DAP.
In an attempt to make the party more broadly appealing to larger segments of the population, the DAP was renamed on February 24, 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei NSDAP - (National Socialist German Workers' Party) or Nazi Party (see badge left).
The name was borrowed from a different Austrian party active at the time (Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei, German National Socialist Workers' Party), although Hitler earlier suggested the party to be renamed the "Social Revolutionary Party"; it was Rudolf Jung who persuaded Hitler to follow the NSDAP naming.
The emblem on the flag of the new party was the black,straight-armed clockwise swastika (see right), on a white circle against a red ground - unlike the DAP, which used the curved armed,static swastika (see left), taken from the Thule Gesellschaft emblem.Sebottendorf was also the owner of the 'Völkischer Beobachter', which Hitler bought in 1921. The paper was to become Hitler’s most important propaganda tool.
By then, however, Sebottendorff had left the Thule Society and Bavaria, having been accused of negligence in allegedly allowing the names of several key Thule Society members to fall into the hands of the government of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, resulting in the execution of seven members after the attack on the Munich government in April 1919, an accusation that he never denied.
Sebottendorff fled Germany for Switzerland and then Turkey.
After leaving Germany, Sebottendorff published 'Die Praxis der alten türkischen Freimauerei: Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis der Alchimie' ("The practice of ancient Turkish Freemasonry: The key to the understanding of alchemy"), and then, in 1925, 'Der Talisman des Rosenkreuzers', a semi-autobiographical novel which is the main source for his earlier life.
He returned to Germany in January 1933, and published 'Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundlich aus der Frühzeit der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung' - (Before Hitler Came: Documents from the Early Days of the National Socialist Movement), - dealing with the Thule Society and the DAP. Hitler himself understandably disliked this book, which was banned. Sebottendorff was arrested, but somehow escaped (presumably due to some friendship from his Munich days) and in 1934 returned to Turkey, wher he died on May 8, 1945.
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The symbol of the 4-sided swastika is an archetype for the rotations of time and consciousness - moving clockwise and counterwise - in upward or downward spirals - allowing souls to experience many levels of reality simultaneously.
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles either clockwise or anticlockwise.
It is traditionally oriented so that a main line is horizontal, though it is occasionally rotated at forty-five degrees, and the Hindu version often has a dot in each quadrant.
It seems to have first been used by early inhabitants of Eurasia.
It is an important symbol in Eastern religions, notably Hinduism and Buddhism, among others, and was also used in Native American faiths.
The ancient Greeks and Romans also extensively used the swastika (see left).
The ancient Greeks and Romans also extensively used the swastika (see left).
By the early twentieth century it was regarded worldwide as a symbol of good luck and auspiciousness.
Swastikas appeared on the spines of books by the Anglo-Indian writer Rudyard Kipling (see right), and the symbol was used by Robert Baden-Powell's Boy Scout movement (see left).
The use made of the swastika by the NSDAP derived from earlier German völkisch nationalist movements, for which the swastika was a symbol of "Aryan" identity, a concept that came to be equated by theorists like Alfred Rosenberg with a Nordic master race originating in northern Europe.
The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit svastika, meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck.
It is composed of su- (cognate with Greek e?-), meaning "good, well" and asti a verbal abstract to the root as "to be"; svasti thus means "well-being".
The suffix -ka forms a diminutive, and svastika might thus be translated literally as "little thing associated with well-being", corresponding roughly to "lucky charm", or "thing that is auspicious".
The word first appears in the Classical Sanskrit (in the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics).
Alternative historical English spellings of the Sanskrit word include suastika and svastica.
Alternative names for the shape are:
Crooked cross
Cross cramponned - in heraldry, as each arm resembles a crampon or angle-iron
Cross gammadion (see left) - tetragammadion or just gammadion, as each arm resembles the Greek letter (gamma)
Fylfot - meaning "four feet", chiefly in heraldry and architecture
Sun wheel - German Sonnenrad (see right) - a name also used as a synonym for the sun cross
Tetraskelion - Greek "four legged", especially when composed of four conjoined legs
Thor's hammer (see right) - from its supposed association with Thor, the Norse god of thunder, but this may be a misappropriation of a name that properly belongs to a Y-shaped or T-shaped symbol. - The Swastika shape appears in an 8th century Icelandic grimoire where in it is named Þurs Hamar
Hooked cross - (Dutch: hakenkruis, Icelandic Hakakross, German: Hakenkreuz, Finnish: hakaristi, Norwegian: Hakekors, Italian: croce uncinata and Swedish: Hakkors)
The swastika appears in art and design from pre-history symbolizing, in various contexts: luck, the sun, Brahma, or the Hindu concept of samsara.
In antiquity, the swastika was used extensively by Hittites, Celts and Greeks, among others.
It occurs in other Asian, European, African and Native American cultures sometimes as a geometrical motif, sometimes as a religious symbol.
Today, the swastika is a common symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, among others. The ubiquity of the swastika has been explained by three main theories: independent development, cultural diffusion, and external event.
The first theory is that the swastika's symmetry and simplicity led to its independent development everywhere, along the lines of Carl Jung's collective unconscious.Another explanation is suggested by Carl Sagan in his book 'Comet'.
Sagan reproduces an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows comet tail varieties: most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, recalling a swastika.
Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world.
Theories of single origin as a sacred prehistorical symbol point to the Proto-Indo-Europeans, noting that the swastika was not adopted by Sumer in Mesopotamia, which was established no later than 3500 BC, and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, beginning in 2630 BC, arguing that these were already well-established and codified at the time of the symbol's diffusion.
As an argument ex silentio, this point has little value as a positive proof.
The swastika symbol is prominent in Hinduism, which is considered the parent religion of Buddhism and Jainism, both dating from about the sixth century BC, and both borrowing the swastika from their parent.
Buddhism in particular enjoyed great success, spreading eastward and taking hold in southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan by the end of the first millennium.
The use of the swastika by the indigenous Bön faith of Tibet, as well as syncretic religions, such as Cao Dai of Vietnam and Falun Gong of China, is thought to be borrowed from Buddhism as well.
Similarly, the existence of the swastika as a solar symbol among the Akan civilization of southwest Africa may have been the result of cultural transfer along the African slave routes around 1500 AD.
Regardless of origins, the swastika had generally positive connotations from early in human history, with the exceptions being most of Africa and South America.
The swastika has also appeared in most other ancient cultures of the world.
For example, the counterclockwise variant of it, adopted by the Nazis, is also the letter “G” in the medieval Northern European Runic Script.
The Freemasons took the letter as an important symbol, since “G” could stand for God, the Great Architect of the Universe, or Geometry.
The swastika is also a traditional symbol of the Old Norse God of Thunder and Might (Scandinavian Thor, German Donner, Baltic Perkunas).
Because of this association with the God of Thunder, the Latvians (see right above) and Finnish (see left above) both took the swastika as the insignia for their air forces when they gained independence after the First World War.
The swastika has also appeared in most other ancient cultures of the world.For example, the counterclockwise variant of it, adopted by the Nazis, is also the letter “G” in the medieval Northern European Runic Script.
The Freemasons took the letter as an important symbol, since “G” could stand for God, the Great Architect of the Universe, or Geometry.
The swastika is also a traditional symbol of the Old Norse God of Thunder and Might (Scandinavian Thor, German Donner, Baltic Perkunas).
Because of this association with the God of Thunder, the Latvians (see right above) and Finnish (see left above) both took the swastika as the insignia for their air forces when they gained independence after the First World War.
The word Swastika also means 'source', and was seen by occultists as representing 'eternal cause' or the 'fountain of creation'.
Accordingly, the Thule Society used the Swastika - which is a symbol of the Vril - the power of creation itself - as their symbol.
The Vril Force or Vril Energy was said to be derived from the Black Sun, - represented as a Swastika made up of Sig runes - which supposedly exists in the center of the Earth, giving light to the Vril-ya and putting out radiation in the form of Vril.
Vril is a substance first described in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel 'The Coming Race', which was later reprinted as 'Vril: The Power of the Coming Race'.
The novel is an early example of science fiction. However, many early readers believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" was accurate, to the extent that some theosophists accepted the book as truth.
The vril Race was originally published anonymously in late 1871, but Bulwer-Lytton was known to be the author.
Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon', (Nowhere - in reverse) was also published anonymously, in March 1872, and Butler suspected that its initial success was due to it being taken by many as a sequel by Bulwer-Lytton to 'The Coming Race'.
The uses of Vril in the novel amongst the Vril-ya vary from an agent of destruction to a healing substance.
According to Zee, the daughter of the narrator's host, Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate.
It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure.
It is used to rend ways through solid matter.
Its light is said to be steadier, softer and healthier than that from any flammable material.
It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms. Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration.
A Vril staff is an object in the shape of a wand or a staff which is used as a channel for Vril.
It is also said that if army met army and both had command of the Vril-force, both sides would be annihilated.
Considering Bulwer-Lytton's occult background, many commentators were convinced that the fictionalised Vril was based on a real magical force.
Helena Blavatsky *** (see below & left) , the founder of Theosophy, endorsed this view in her book 'Isis Unveiled' (1877) and again in 'Die Geheimlehre' (The Secret Doctrine - 1888).
In Blavatsky, the Vril power and its attainment by a superhuman elite are worked into a mystical doctrine of race.
The racial ideas of Madame Blavatsky, concerning root races and the emergence of a spiritually-developed type of human being in the Aquarian Age, were avidly accepted by the nineteenth-century German nationalists who mixed Theosophical occultism with anti-Semitism and the doctrine of the racial supremacy of the Aryan or Indo-European peoples.
For more information about Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky
click on the logo on the above
Willy Ley was a German rocket engineer who had emigrated to the United States in 1937.
In 1947, he published an article entitled "Pseudoscience in Naziland" in the science fiction magazine 'Astounding Science Fiction'.
There he attempted to explain to his readers how National Socialism could have fallen on such a fertile ground in Germany. He explained this with the high popularity of irrational convictions in Germany during the time.
Among other pseudo-scientific groups he mentions a very peculiar one: "The next group was literally founded upon a novel. That group which I think called itself Wahrheitsgesellschaft - Society for Truth - and which was more or less localized in Berlin, devoted its spare time looking for Vril."
The article by Ley describes a perpetual motion generator based on Vril, is the main basis for the speculation that developed later.
The 'Society for Truth' that Ley describes was conducting 'research' on the existence of Vril.
The speculations surrounding the Nazis' wonder weapons might support links to research to the existence and application possibilities of Vril, for example in the purported top secret and highly sensitive scientific technological device 'Die Glocke'.
Die Glocke (German for "The Bell") is a purported top secret Nazi scientific technological device, secret weapon, or Wunderwaffe.
It is associate with Nazi occultism and antigravity or free energy research.
Allegedly an experiment carried out by Third Reich scientists working for the SS in a German facility known as Der Riese near the Wenceslaus mine. Die Glocke is described as being a device "made out of a hard, heavy metal" approximately 9 feet wide and 12 to 15 feet high having a shape similar to that of a large bell. This device ostensibly contained two counter-rotating cylinders which would be "filled with a mercury-like substance - “Element 115". Additional substances said to be employed in the experiments, referred to as Leichtmetall (light metal), "included thorium and beryllium peroxides". Die Glocke emitted strong radiation when activated.
More precisely, the Luminous Lodge or Vril Society was a secret community of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin.
The Berlin Vril Society was in fact a sort of inner circle of the Thule Society.
Its leading light was Karl Haushofer, and members included Alfred Rosenberg, Dr
Theodor Morrel, later the Führer's doctor, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, and Hitler
himself.
It was also thought to be in close contact with the English group known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The Vril Society in Germany believed that Aryans were a creation of the Black Sun - which is a form of Swastika, and had originated close to the Pliades, from a planet orbiting the star الدبران Aldaberan (which translates literally as "the follower" presumably because this bright star appears to follow the Pleiades, or "Seven Sisters" star cluster in the night sky).
The upshot of this belief was that the Aryans were originally aliens.
And this information came from Maria Orsitsch (see right), in cooperation with the occultist Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, the Gurdjeff disciple Karl Haushofer, the engineer and ace pilot Lothar Waiz, Prelate Gernot of the secret "Societas Templi Marcioni" (The Inheritors of the Knights Templar).
Maria Orsitsch was born in Vienna.
Her father was a Croatian and her mother was a German from Vienna.
Maria Orsitsch was the head of the Alldeutsche Gesellschaft für Metaphysik (The All German Society for Metaphysics) founded in the early 20th century as a female circle of mediums who were involved in extraterrestrial telepathic contact.
The society was later renamed the ‘Society of Vrilerinnen Women’.
In 1917 Maria Orsitsch is said to have made contact with extraterrestrials from Aldebaran with her female Vril circle.
In December 1919 a small circle of persons from the Thule Gesellschaft, the Vril Society and the DHvSS - Die Herren vom Schwarzen Stein met in a specially rented forester’s lodge near Berchtesgaden, close to the home of Dietrich Eckart.
They were accompanied by the medium Maria Orsic and another medium only known as Sigrun. Maria had mediumistically received transmission in a secret Templar script – a language unknown to her – with the technical data for the construction of a flying machine.
According to Vril documents these telepathic messages also came from the solar system Aldebaran, which is sixty-four light-years away in the constellation Taurus.
The Vril Society not only taught concentration exercises designed to awaken the forces of Vril, their main goal was to achieve Raumflug (Spaceflight) (see right) to reach Aldebaran.
To achieve this, the Vril Society joined the Thule Gesellschaft and the DHvSS Die Herren des schwarzen Steins to fund an ambitious program involving an inter-dimensional flight machine based on psychic revelations from the Aldebaran aliens.
click here for 'UFOs - Mystery and Meaning'
a study of the Nazi UFOs and alien abduction phenomena
Not only was the Vril a new form of energy, but it was also the force that the inner occult circle of the Thule Gesellschaft were so desperately trying to unleash upon the world, and for which the Vril Society had apparently groomed Adolf Hitler.
The idea of mutation and transformation into a higher form of a "god-man" was envisioned, through the Vril-ya, in Buller-Lytton's 'The Coming Race'.
Lytton, himself, was an initiate of the Rosicrucians and was well versed in the arcane-esoteric philosophies (and of course the greatest advances in the sciences of his day).
Through his romantic works of fiction he expressed the conviction that there are beings endowed with superhuman powers. These beings will supplant us and bring about a formidable mutation in the elect of the human race."
The upshot of this belief was that the Aryans were originally aliens.
Maria Orsitsch was born in Vienna.Her father was a Croatian and her mother was a German from Vienna.
Maria Orsitsch was the head of the Alldeutsche Gesellschaft für Metaphysik (The All German Society for Metaphysics) founded in the early 20th century as a female circle of mediums who were involved in extraterrestrial telepathic contact.
The society was later renamed the ‘Society of Vrilerinnen Women’.
In 1917 Maria Orsitsch is said to have made contact with extraterrestrials from Aldebaran with her female Vril circle.
In December 1919 a small circle of persons from the Thule Gesellschaft, the Vril Society and the DHvSS - Die Herren vom Schwarzen Stein met in a specially rented forester’s lodge near Berchtesgaden, close to the home of Dietrich Eckart.
They were accompanied by the medium Maria Orsic and another medium only known as Sigrun. Maria had mediumistically received transmission in a secret Templar script – a language unknown to her – with the technical data for the construction of a flying machine.
According to Vril documents these telepathic messages also came from the solar system Aldebaran, which is sixty-four light-years away in the constellation Taurus.
The Vril Society not only taught concentration exercises designed to awaken the forces of Vril, their main goal was to achieve Raumflug (Spaceflight) (see right) to reach Aldebaran.To achieve this, the Vril Society joined the Thule Gesellschaft and the DHvSS Die Herren des schwarzen Steins to fund an ambitious program involving an inter-dimensional flight machine based on psychic revelations from the Aldebaran aliens.
click here for 'UFOs - Mystery and Meaning'
a study of the Nazi UFOs and alien abduction phenomena
Not only was the Vril a new form of energy, but it was also the force that the inner occult circle of the Thule Gesellschaft were so desperately trying to unleash upon the world, and for which the Vril Society had apparently groomed Adolf Hitler.
The idea of mutation and transformation into a higher form of a "god-man" was envisioned, through the Vril-ya, in Buller-Lytton's 'The Coming Race'.
Lytton, himself, was an initiate of the Rosicrucians and was well versed in the arcane-esoteric philosophies (and of course the greatest advances in the sciences of his day).
Through his romantic works of fiction he expressed the conviction that there are beings endowed with superhuman powers. These beings will supplant us and bring about a formidable mutation in the elect of the human race."
But now back to the Swastika - Heinrich Schliemann discovered the symbol of the Swastika in the site of ancient Troy and associated it with the ancient migrations of Proto-Indo-Europeans. He connected it with similar shapes found on ancient pots in Germany, and theorized that the swastika was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors", linking Germanic, Greek and Indo-Iranian cultures.
The work of Schliemann soon became intertwined with the völkisch movements, for which the swastika was a symbol of the "Aryan race", a concept that came to be equated by theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg with a Nordic master race originating in northern Europe.
By a strange coincidence - or maybe not - the Benedictine choir school at Lambach Abbey, Upper Austria, which Hitler attended for several months as a boy, had a swastika chiseled into the monastery portal and also the wall above the spring grotto in the courtyard by 1868.
Their origin was the personal coat of arms of Abbot Theoderich Hagn of the monastery in Lambach, which bore a golden swastika with slanted points on a blue field.
The Lambach swastika is probably of Medieval origin.
The swastika flag adopted by the NSDAP (see right) was the brain-child of another Thulist, a dentist from Sternberg called Dr Krohn.
His design was subsequently modified by Hitler to the version seen on the left.
His design was subsequently modified by Hitler to the version seen on the left.
The flag was also used as the national flag fo Germany from 1933 until 1945
A right-facing swastika may be described as "clockwise"...... or "counter-clockwise". A swastika composed of 17 squares in a 5x5 grid.
Geometrically, the swastika can be regarded as an irregular icosagon or 20-sided polygon. The arms are of varying width and are often rectilinear (but need not be). Only in modern use are the exact proportions considered important: for example, the proportions of the Nazi swastika were based on a 5x5 grid.
The swastika is chiral, with no reflectional symmetry, but both mirror-image forms have 90° rotational symmetry (that is, the symmetry of the cyclic group C4).
A right-facing swastika may be described as "clockwise"...
or "counter clockwise
A swastika composed of 17 squares in a 5x5 grid
The mirror-image forms are often described as: left-facing and (as depicted above) right-facing
left-hand and right-hand
clockwise and counterclockwise
"Left-facing" and "right-facing" are used mostly consistently.
Looking at an upright swastika, the upper arm clearly faces towards the viewer's left (SM) or right (SP). The other two descriptions are ambiguous as it is unclear if they refer to the direction of the bend in each arm or to the implied rotation of the symbol.
If the latter, the question as to whether the arms lead or trail remains. The terms are used inconsistently (sometimes even by the same writer) which is confusing and may obfuscate an important point, that the rotation of the swastika may have symbolic relevance.
The swastika is, after the simple equilateral cross (the "Greek cross"), the next most commonly found version of the cross.
Seen as a cross, the four lines emanating from the centre point to the four cardinal directions. The most common association is with the Sun.
Other proposed correspondences are to the visible rotation of the night sky in the Northern Hemisphere around Polaris.
The occult nature of the philosophy of the Third Reich was also expressed through the German Faith Movement (Deutsche Glaubensbewegung) (see above), and although there is no known direct link between the Thule Gesselschaft and the Deutsche Glaubensbewegung, it is significant that the Glaubensbewegung used the Thule Gesselschaft curved swastika in their emblem.
The Deutsche Glaubensbewegung was closely associated with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer during the Third Reich (1933–1945) and sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion based on "immediate experience" of God.
The Deutsche Glaubensbewegung was closely associated with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer during the Third Reich (1933–1945) and sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion based on "immediate experience" of God.
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer
Initially trained in the family trade as a plasterer, he entered the missionary school at Basel in 1900 and served as a missionary in British India from 1907 to 1911.
His time in India and his study of indigenous religions saw him lose faith in Christianity and instead he returned to his studies, reading religious studies and Sanskrit at a doctorate level at the University of Oxford and the University of Tübingen, before going on to teach at the University of Marburg (1925) and Tübingen itself (1927).
Under his tutelage religious studies at Tübingen became increasingly close to Nazism and by 1940 he was heading up an 'Aryan Seminar'.
In 1920 he formed the 'Bund der Köngener', a youth movement that grew out of groups of Protestant Bible circles who had come into contact with the Wandervogel tendency.
Initially little more than a more organized version of the Wandervogel*, the Bund, which was for a time led by Rudolf Otto**, became attracted to the ideals of the Völkisch movement, especially as Hauer began to move more towards developing his own religion.
Hauer began to look into his own forms of religion in 1927 when he set up the 'Religiöser Menschheitsbund', which aimed for a greater unity amongst Germany's faiths towards common goals.
He joined with Ernst Graf zu Reventlow in this endeavour and in 1934 founded the 'German Faith Movement' (Deutsche Glaubensbewegung), which combined a number of existing communities in a Völkisch faith.
By July 1934 the religion had been ratified as Hauer celebrated his first wedding without other clergy.
When Hitler came to power, Hauer remained close to the Nazis, finally joining the party in 1937, and wrote to Heinrich Himmler immediately after Rudolf Hess' flight to Scotland to denounce Hess as a victim of the anthroposophy, which he had opposed.
In 1935 he wrote that:
"every undertaking and activity of anthroposophy necessarily arises out of the Anthroposophical world view. The anthroposophical world view is in the most important points directly opposed to National Socialism. Therefore, schools which are built out of the anthroposophical world view and led by anthroposophists mean danger to true German education."
Hauer was removed from his university position after World War II and was interned from 1945 to 1949.
He continued to agitate for his own religion, forming the 'Arbeitsgemeinschaft für freie Religionsforschung und Philosophie' in 1947 and the 'Freie Akademie' in 1955.
Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews (November 1, 1865-July 19, 1935) (see left) was a German philosopher, writer, and important representative of German Monist thought.
He was born in Uetersen, Holstein, present day Germany.
Drews became professor of philosophy and German at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe.
During his career he wrote widely on a variety of subjects, often provoking controversy—in part because of his unorthodox ideas on religion, and was instrumental in the rise of the 'German Faith Movement'.
Along with Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews is one of the best known representative of the 'Christ myth theory', which disputes the existence of a historical Jesus.
His work 'Die Christusmythe' ("The Christ Myth") (1909) expounded this theory, arguing that the figure of "Christ" arose from mystical and apocalyptic ideas of the period, that indeed everything about the story of Jesus had a mythical character, and that it was therefore not necessary to presuppose that a historical Jesus had ever existed.
The book caused considerable controversy, drawing Drews into many public debates which often became emotionally charged.
Nikolai Berdyaev observed that Drews, "in his capacity as a religious anti-Semite", argued against the historical existence of Jesus "for the religious life of Aryanism."
Drews ultimately embraced a form of Germanic Neopaganism and was instrumental in early attempts during the Nazi era to unite the various German pagan organizations into a unified body.
It was in this period that Drews wrote 'Deutsche Religion' - (German Religion), a book that has been described as a "work on the ‘new’ German religion that mixes faith and Nazi mysticism."
Drews died on 19 July 1935 in Illenau bei Bühl, Baden at the age of 70.
Ernst Graf zu Reventlow
Ernst, Count Reventlow (see left) (18 August 1869 – 21 November 1943) was a German naval officer, journalist and Nazi politician.
Ernst Christian Einar Ludwig Detlev Graf zu Reventlow was born at Husum, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, the son of Ludwig Reventlow, a Danish nobleman, and Emilie Julie Anna Louise Rantzau.
His younger sister was Fanny zu Reventlow, the "Bohemian Countess" of Schwabing.
Reventlow embarked upon a career in the German Imperial navy, reaching the rank of lieutenant commander, before his marriage to a Frenchwoman, Marie-Gabrielle-Blanche d'Allemont, forced him to resign his commission.
He became a free-lance writer on naval issues, and later general politics.
During World War I, as an editorial writer on the 'Deutsche Tageszeitung' (German Daily Times), he advocated extreme ruthlessness, particularly in submarine warfare.
He accused United States Ambassador Gerard of being a British spy, but assailed Zimmermann for the plot to form an alliance berween Mexico and Japan against the United States. He furiously attacked Germany's leaders for a supposed inclination to yield to the United States' demands for respect of its rights after the sinking of the Lusitania, and the Tageszeitung was suspended 25 June 1915.
For an attack on Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (see right), accusing him of misleading von Hindenburg, he was sued for slander in 1916.
He was highly critical of the policies of Kaiser Wilhelm II (see left) and later of the Weimar Republic.
In 1920 he founded his own newspaper, 'Der Reichswart' (“Reich Guardian”), which was published until his death.
In 1924 Reventlow and Albrecht von Graefe formed the 'German Völkisch Freedom Party' (DVFP).
This greatly improved the NSDAP position in northern Germany, where the DVFP had always been stronger than the NSDAP, and by the end of 1928 the DVFP had for all intents and purposes ceased to exist.
Though a power in the party to the end, this group became less influential as Hitler turned to overt militarism and antisemitism after attaining power.
Though sometimes critical of Hitler's policies, he was allowed to publish his newspaper, 'Der Reichswart', until his death in 1943.
Reventlow supported a theory first proposed by Lesley Fry, who had conceived the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' as part of a conspiracy theory according to which a group led by the "cultural Zionist" Asher Ginzberg plotted world domination.
At the time Ginzberg supported an international Jewish cultural and political revival rather than a single Jewish state.
Reventlow’s antisemitism was racial and cultural, and this led to his involvement with the 'German Faith Movement'.
From 1934 to 1936, Reventlow served as deputy chairman of this semi-religious movement which postulated that every people “through its blood” developed its own religious knowledge. The movement was anti-Christian and tried to create a “species-true faith” for Germany.
* Wandervogel
Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward.
The name can be translated as rambling, hiking or wandering bird (differing in meaning from "Zugvogel" or migratory bird) and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom.
Soon the groups split and there originated ever more organisations, which still all called themselves Wandervogel, but were organisationally independent, nonetheless the feeling was still of being a common movement, but split into several branches.
The Wandervogel movement was officially established on 4 November 1901 by Herman Hoffmann Fölkersamb, who in 1895 had formed a study circle at the boys' Berlin-Steglitz grammar school where he was teaching.
The Wandervogel soon became the pre-eminent German youth movement.
It was a back-to-nature youth organization emphasizing freedom, self-responsibility, and the spirit of adventure, and took a Völkish approach, stressing Germany's mystical Teutonic roots.
After World War I, the leaders returned disillusioned from the war.
The same was true for leaders of German Scouting, so both movements started to influence each other heavily in Germany.
From the Wandervogel came a stronger culture of hiking, nacktkultur, (see right - German naturism was part of the Lebensreform movement and the Wandervogel youth movement, which promoted ideas of fitness and vigour. At the same time doctors of the Natural Healing Movement were using heliotherapy to treat diseases such as TB, rheumatism and scrofula with exposure to sunlight
During the Nazi Gleichschaltung period after Adolf Hitler came to power, nudism benefited from official recognition and sponsorship for its health benefits. Nevertheless, all naturism clubs had to register with Kraft durch Freude,)The Wandervogel movement also encouraged adventure, Völkish mysticism, romanticism and a younger leadership structure.
Scouting brought uniforms, flags, more organization, more camps and a clearer ideology.
There was also an educationalist influence from Gustav Wyneken.
Together this led to the emergence of the Bündische Jugend.
The Wandervogel, German Scouting and the Bündische Jugend together are referred to as the German Youth Movement.
They had been around for more than a quarter of a century before National Socialists began to see an opportunity to adopt some methods and symbols of the German Youth Movement to use it in the Hitler-Jugend - (Hitler Youth) (see right).
This movement was very influential at that time.
Its members were romantic and prepared to sacrifice a lot for their ideals. Some of the Wandervogel groups were anti-semitic or close to the Nazi Party
From 1933 the Nazis outlawed the Wandervogel, German Scouting, the Jungenschaft, and the Bündische Jugend, along with most youth groups independent of the Hitler-Jugend
The name can be translated as rambling, hiking or wandering bird (differing in meaning from "Zugvogel" or migratory bird) and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom.
Soon the groups split and there originated ever more organisations, which still all called themselves Wandervogel, but were organisationally independent, nonetheless the feeling was still of being a common movement, but split into several branches.
The Wandervogel movement was officially established on 4 November 1901 by Herman Hoffmann Fölkersamb, who in 1895 had formed a study circle at the boys' Berlin-Steglitz grammar school where he was teaching.
The Wandervogel soon became the pre-eminent German youth movement.
It was a back-to-nature youth organization emphasizing freedom, self-responsibility, and the spirit of adventure, and took a Völkish approach, stressing Germany's mystical Teutonic roots.
After World War I, the leaders returned disillusioned from the war.The same was true for leaders of German Scouting, so both movements started to influence each other heavily in Germany.
From the Wandervogel came a stronger culture of hiking, nacktkultur, (see right - German naturism was part of the Lebensreform movement and the Wandervogel youth movement, which promoted ideas of fitness and vigour. At the same time doctors of the Natural Healing Movement were using heliotherapy to treat diseases such as TB, rheumatism and scrofula with exposure to sunlight
During the Nazi Gleichschaltung period after Adolf Hitler came to power, nudism benefited from official recognition and sponsorship for its health benefits. Nevertheless, all naturism clubs had to register with Kraft durch Freude,)The Wandervogel movement also encouraged adventure, Völkish mysticism, romanticism and a younger leadership structure.
Scouting brought uniforms, flags, more organization, more camps and a clearer ideology.There was also an educationalist influence from Gustav Wyneken.
Together this led to the emergence of the Bündische Jugend.
The Wandervogel, German Scouting and the Bündische Jugend together are referred to as the German Youth Movement.
They had been around for more than a quarter of a century before National Socialists began to see an opportunity to adopt some methods and symbols of the German Youth Movement to use it in the Hitler-Jugend - (Hitler Youth) (see right).
This movement was very influential at that time.
Its members were romantic and prepared to sacrifice a lot for their ideals. Some of the Wandervogel groups were anti-semitic or close to the Nazi Party
From 1933 the Nazis outlawed the Wandervogel, German Scouting, the Jungenschaft, and the Bündische Jugend, along with most youth groups independent of the Hitler-Jugend
** Rudolf Otto
Rudolf Otto (see left) (September 25, 1869–6 March 1937) was an eminent German Lutheran theologian and scholar of comparative religion.
Born in Peine near Hanover, Otto attended the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim and studied at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen, where he wrote his dissertation on Martin Luther's understanding of the Holy Spirit, and on Kant.
By 1906, he held a position as extraordinary professor, and in 1910 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Giessen.
In 1915, he became ordinary professor at the University of Breslau, and in 1917, at the University of Marburg's Divinity School, then one of the most famous Protestant seminaries in the world.
Although he received several other calls, he remained in Marburg for the rest of his life.
He retired in 1929 and died of pneumonia eight years later, after he had suffered serious injuries falling some 20 m from a tower.
Persistent but unconfirmed rumors identified this as a suicide attempt.
He is buried in Marburg cemetery.
Otto's most famous work is 'The Idea of the Holy', published first in 1917 as 'Das Heilige - Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen' (The Holy - On the Irrational in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational).
It is one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century, has never gone out of print, and is now available in about 20 languages.
The book defines the concept of the holy as that which is numinous.
Otto explained the numinous as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self".
He coined this new term based on the Latin numen (deity).
This expression is etymologically unrelated to Immanuel Kant's noumenon, a Greek term referring to an unknowable reality underlying all things.
The numinous is a mystery (Latin: mysterium) that is both terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans) at the same time.
It also sets a paradigm for the study of religion that focuses on the need to realize the religious as a non-reducible, original category in its own right.
This paradigm was under much attack between approximately 1950 and 1990 but has made a strong comeback since then, after its phenomenological aspects have become more apparent, and written about by Karl Rahner's presentation of man as a being of transcendence.
Otto left a broad influence on theology and philosophy of religion in the first half of the 20th century.
German-American theologian Paul Tillich acknowledged Otto's influence on him, as did Romanian-American philosopher Mircea Eliade and Otto's most famous German pupil Gustav Mensching (1901–1978) from Bonn University.
Eliade used the concepts from 'The Idea of the Holy' as the starting point for his own 1957 book, 'The Sacred and the Profane'.
Otto was one of the very few modern theologians to whom C. S. Lewis indicates a debt, particularly the idea of the numinous in 'The Problem of Pain'.
Others to acknowledge Otto were, for instance, Martin Heidegger, Leo Strauss, John A. Sanford, Hans-Georg Gadamer (critical in his youth, respectful in his old age), Max Scheler, Ernst Jünger, Joseph Needham and Hans Jonas.
Ideas of Otto have been discussed also by non-Christian theologians, like Eliezer Berkovits.
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*** Helena Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born in the Ukraine in 1831, and after various wanderings and adventures, including marriage, landed in New York in 1873, proclaiming an interest in, and knowledge of, Eastern esoteric doctrines.
There she met Colonel Olcott, and with his assistance founded the Theosophical Society two years later. Its avowed aim was the study of Hidden Wisdom, and unfashionable though this pursuit then was, it still survives today.
In 1878, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott sailed to India, where the Theosophical Society met with unexpected success.
After some years of acclaim, and then a series of scandals involving allegations that Blavatsky's boasted mediumistic powers were fraudulent, she returned to Europe, where she died in 1891.
After her death, the Theosophical Society fell into the hands of Anna Kingsford (see left) and Edward Maitland, but continued to flourish until Annie Besant (see right) and C. W. Leadbeater produced a bogus World Messiah, Krishnamurti, who was eventually moved to repudiate publicly the role thrust upon him.
This brought Theosophy into ridicule, from which it never fully recovered, though even today it has a considerable following.
The Theosophical Society was, and is, of little consequence in itself, and is significant only insofar as it transmitted on a very large scale the doctrines contained in Madame Blavatsky's astonishing books, 'Isis Unveiled' (1877) and 'Die Geheimlehre' (The Secret Doctrine - 1888).
Madame Blavatsky went so far as to claim that the composition of her books was assisted by clairvoyance, and that obscure works and quotations had suddenly appeared in obedience to her needs and desires; that she was familiar with ‘the oldest book in the world', the incalculably ancient 'Stanzas of Dzyan' (see left); and that Hidden Masters were in regular communication with her person.
Needless to say, these claims have been disputed, but whatever the sources of Blavatsky's inspiration, and whatever else she may have been, the woman was not a mere charlatan, for no charlatan could possibly have written her exquisite mystical masterpiece, 'The Voice of The Silence'.
The fact remains that Madame Blavatsky's writings had influence far beyond that which is usually assigned to them.
They challenged Christianity, which Blavatsky loathed, and proclaimed in its stead a Westernised Hinduism, with its attractive doctrines of reincarnation and karma.
They led people to seek alternatives to the Christian religion, and to suspect the existence of non-material occult forces, as mysterious and intangible as electricity, thus preparing the way in the popular mind for future scientific investigation.
However, three assertions in particular demand our attention.
Whereas Nietzsche taught that the Superman is the imminent next stage in human evolution, Blavatsky announced that Supermen already existed, that they were the Hidden Masters who inhabited Central Asia, and that they could be contacted telepathically by those who had been initiated into their mysteries.
Whereas the chemists and physicists taught that there was little more to learn about a universe of matter, Blavatsky insisted that there was much more to learn about a universe of spirit, which could act upon the former.
And whereas biologists taught that man evolved from the apes, Blavatsky proclaimed that there have been four root races prior to our own, which included the ancient civilisations of lost Lemuria and Atlantis, that evolution has been assisted by divine kings from the stars, that the Aryans are the purest of the fifth root race, and, more sinisterly, that the Jews are a degenerate link between the fourth arid fifth root races, and hence are sub-human, a proposition with which Adolf Hitler concurred.
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