Völkisch movement
Encyclopedia
The volkisch movement (original name: Völkische Bewegung) 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". According to the historian James Webb
, 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 "folklore" and "ethnicity"), not to be confused with the Volkssturm
. "Populist", or "popular", in this context would be volkstümlich.
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 ("schillernder Begriff"). 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.
, 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 with many parallels in the writings of William Morris
. "In part this ideology was a revolt against modernity," A. J. Nicholls remarked. 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. Similar feelings were expressed in the US during the 1930s by the populist writers grouped as the Southern Agrarians
.
In addition the völkisch movement, as it evolved, sometimes combined the arcane and esoteric 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
.
, 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.
Yet at the same time, Volk was also used by the international socialist parties in the German lands as a synonym for the proletariat
. 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, then rising throughout the Western world.
George Mosse identified some of the more "respectable" and centrist channels through which these sensibilities flowed: school texts that transmitted a Romantic view of a "pure" Germanic past, the nature-oriented German Youth Movement
, and novels with an ideally ruthless völkisch hero, such as Hermann Löns
' Der Wehrwolf (1910).
Another völkisch movement of the same time was the Tatkreis
.
Not all folkloric societies with connections to Romantic nationalism
were located in Germany. The community of Monte Verità
('Mount Truth') which emerged in 1900 at Ascona
, Switzerland, is described by the Swiss art critic Harald Szeemann as "the southernmost outpost of a far-reaching Nordic lifestyle-reform, that is, alternative movement". It embraced a mix of anarchism
, libertarian communism
and various forms of artistic bohemianism
and neopaganism.
. 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 pseudo-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).
This connection can be overstated, however. According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
an imaginative mythology has grown up around the supposed influence within the Nazi Party of a völkisch group, the Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society
), which was founded on August 17, 1918 by Rudolf von Sebottendorff. Its original name was Studiengruppe für Germanisches Altertum (Study Group for Germanic Antiquity), but it soon started to disseminate anti-republican and anti-Semitic
propaganda. In January 1919 the Thule Society was instrumental in the foundation of the Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei (German Workers' Party, or DAP) which later became the NSDAP (Nazi Party). Thule members that would later join the Nazi Party included Rudolf Hess
, Alfred Rosenberg
, Hans Frank
, Gottfried Feder
, Dietrich Eckart
and Karl Harrer
, but notably not Adolf Hitler who never was a member of the Thule Society. Furthermore the Münchener Beobachter (Munich Observer), owned by Sebottendorff, was the press organ of another small nationalist party and later became the Völkischer Beobachter
(People's Observer).
On the other hand it can be noted that Karl Harrer, the Thule member most directly involved in the creation of the DAP in 1919, was sidelined at the end of the year when Hitler drafted regulations against conspiratorial circles, and the Thule Society was dissolved a few years later (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 150, 221). It had no members from the top echelons of the party and Nazi officials were forbidden any involvement in secret societies. Adolf Hitler was never a member, while Rudolf Hess
and Alfred Rosenberg
were only visiting guests of the Thule Society in the early years before they came to prominence in the Nazi movement (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 149, 201). However, the völkisch circles did hand down one significant legacy: Friedrich Krohn, a Thule member, designed the original version of the Nazi swastika
in 1919.
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
movement, with a romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
focus on folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and the "organic". The term völkisch, meaning "ethnic", derives from the German word Volk (cognate with the English "folk"), corresponding to "people
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
", with connotations in German of "people-powered", "folksy" and "folkloric". According to the historian James Webb
James Webb (historian)
James Charles Napier Webb was a Scottish historian and biographer. He was born in Edinburgh, was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is remembered primarily for two works The Occult Underground and The Occult Establishment. Occult Underground was originally titled Flight from...
, the word also has "overtones of 'nation', 'race' and 'tribe,'… "
The defining idea that the völkisch movement revolved around was that of a Volkstum
Volkstum
The Volkstum is the entire utterances of a Volk or ethnic minority over its lifetime, expressing a "Volkscharakter" this unit had in common...
(lit. "folkdom", probably more precise in meaning would be "folklore" and "ethnicity"), not to be confused with the Volkssturm
Volkssturm
The Volkssturm was a German national militia of the last months of World War II. It was founded on Adolf Hitler's orders on October 18, 1944 and conscripted males between the ages of 16 to 60 years who were not already serving in some military unit as part of a German Home Guard.-Origins and...
. "Populist", or "popular", in this context would be volkstümlich.
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
Conservative Revolutionary movement
The Conservative Revolutionary movement was a German national conservative movement, prominent in the years following the First World War. The Conservative Revolutionary school of thought advocated a "new" conservatism and nationalism that was specifically German, or Prussian in particular...
in Germany. However, like "conservative-revolutionary" or "fascist
Fascist (epithet)
The word fascist is sometimes used to denigrate people, institutions, or groups that would not describe themselves as ideologically fascist, and that may not fall within the formal definition of the word. The Fascist party that developed in Italy in the 1920s rigidly enforced conservative values...
", völkisch is a complex term ("schillernder Begriff"). 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.
Origins in the 19th century
The völkisch movement had its origins in Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
, as it was expressed by early Romantics such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
in his Addresses to the German Nation
Nation
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
published during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, 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
German folklore
German folklore shares many characteristics with Scandinavian folklore and English folklore due to their origins in a common Germanic mythology. It reflects a similar mix of influences: a pre-Christian pantheon and other beings equivalent to those of Norse mythology; magical characters associated...
, local history
Local history
Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context and it often concentrates on the local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history...
and a "back-to-the-land" anti-urban populism with many parallels in the writings of William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
. "In part this ideology was a revolt against modernity," A. J. Nicholls remarked. 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
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
and the "progressive" liberalism of the later 19th century and its urbane materialist banality. Similar feelings were expressed in the US during the 1930s by the populist writers grouped as the Southern Agrarians
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
.
In addition the völkisch movement, as it evolved, sometimes combined the arcane and esoteric aspects of folkloric occultism alongside "racial adoration
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
" and, in some circles, a type of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
linked to exclusionary ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
. The ideas of völkisch movements also included anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, anti-immigration, anti-capitalist and anti-Parliamentarian principles. The völkisch ideas of "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft
Volksgemeinschaft
Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning "people's community". Originally appearing during World War I as Germans rallied behind the war, it derived its popularity as a means to break down elitism and class divides...
) came more and more to exclude Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
.
Before and after World War I
A number of the völkisch-populist movements that had developed during the late 19th century in the German EmpireGerman Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
, under the impress of National Romanticism, were reorganized along propagandistic lines after the German defeat in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, as the word "the people" (Volk) became increasingly politicized as a flag for new forms of ethnic nationalism.
Yet at the same time, Volk was also used by the international socialist parties in the German lands as a synonym for the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
. 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
Ariosophy
Armanism and Ariosophy are the names of ideological systems of an esoteric nature, pioneered by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', meaning wisdom concerning the Aryans, was first coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915 and...
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
Germanenorden
The Germanenorden was a völkisch secret society in early 20th century Germany...
. This latter was a secret society (founded at Berlin in 1912) which required its candidates to prove that they had no "non-Aryan
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
" 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
Summer solstice
The summer solstice occurs exactly when the axial tilt of a planet's semi-axis in a given hemisphere is most inclined towards the star that it orbits. Earth's maximum axial tilt to our star, the Sun, during a solstice is 23° 26'. Though the summer solstice is an instant in time, the term is also...
, an important neopagan
Neopaganism
Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...
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, then rising throughout the Western world.
George Mosse identified some of the more "respectable" and centrist channels through which these sensibilities flowed: school texts that transmitted a Romantic view of a "pure" Germanic past, the nature-oriented German Youth Movement
German Youth Movement
The German Youth Movement is a collective term for a cultural and educational movement that started in 1896. It consists of numerous associations of young people that focus on outdoor activities. The movement included German Scouting and the Wandervogel...
, and novels with an ideally ruthless völkisch hero, such as Hermann Löns
Hermann Löns
Hermann Löns was a German journalist and writer. He is most famous as "The Poet of the Heath" for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors, particularly the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. Löns is well known in Germany for his famous folksongs...
' Der Wehrwolf (1910).
Another völkisch movement of the same time was the Tatkreis
Tatkreis
The Tatkreis, or "Action Circle", was a Völkisch movement which existed during the era of the Weimar Republic. They followed the beliefs of most Völkisch movements but claimed the current republic "corrupt and sterile beyond repair" and called for "freedom and rebirth" in Germany...
.
Not all folkloric societies with connections to Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
were located in Germany. The community of Monte Verità
Monte Verita
Monte Verità is a hill in Ascona , which has served as the site of many different Utopian and cultural events and communities since the beginning of the twentieth century.-History:...
('Mount Truth') which emerged in 1900 at Ascona
Ascona
Ascona is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.It is located on the shore of Lake Maggiore.The town is a popular tourist destination, and holds a yearly jazz festival, the Ascona Jazz Festival....
, Switzerland, is described by the Swiss art critic Harald Szeemann as "the southernmost outpost of a far-reaching Nordic lifestyle-reform, that is, alternative movement". It embraced a mix of anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, libertarian communism
Libertarian communism
Libertarian communism is a theory of libertarianism which advocates the abolition of the state and private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, a direct democracy and self-governance....
and various forms of artistic bohemianism
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
and neopaganism.
Connection with Nazism
The völkisch ideologies were influential in the development of NazismNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. Indeed, Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
publicly asserted in the 1927 Nuremberg rally
Nuremberg Rally
The Nuremberg Rally was the annual rally of the NSDAP in Germany, held from 1923 to 1938. Especially after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, they were large Nazi propaganda events...
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
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
-led German Revolution of 1918–1919, end of the German monarchy). Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
wrote in Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
(My Struggle): "the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are populist (völkisch) and the populist (völkisch) ideas are National-Socialist." Nazi racial pseudo-science was couched in Völkisch terms, as when Eugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942...
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).
This connection can be overstated, however. According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke B.A. , D.Phil. is a professor of Western Esotericism at University of Exeter and author of several books on esoteric traditions....
an imaginative mythology has grown up around the supposed influence within the Nazi Party of a völkisch group, the Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society
Thule Society
The Thule Society , originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum , was a German occultist and völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend...
), which was founded on August 17, 1918 by Rudolf von Sebottendorff. Its original name was Studiengruppe für Germanisches Altertum (Study Group for Germanic Antiquity), but it soon started to disseminate anti-republican and anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
propaganda. In January 1919 the Thule Society was instrumental in the foundation of the Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei (German Workers' Party, or DAP) which later became the NSDAP (Nazi Party). Thule members that would later join the Nazi Party included Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...
, Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
, Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
, Gottfried Feder
Gottfried Feder
Gottfried Feder was an economist and one of the early key members of the Nazi party. He was their economic theoretician. Initially, it was his lecture in 1919 that drew Hitler into the party.- Biography :...
, Dietrich Eckart
Dietrich Eckart
Dietrich Eckart was a German journalist and politician, together with Adolf Hitler one of the early key members of the Nazi Party and a participant of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.-Biography:...
and Karl Harrer
Karl Harrer
Karl Harrer was a German journalist and politician, one of the founding members of the "Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" in 1919, the party that soon would become the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei .Harrer was also a member of the Thule Society, which gave him the task of founding a...
, but notably not Adolf Hitler who never was a member of the Thule Society. Furthermore the Münchener Beobachter (Munich Observer), owned by Sebottendorff, was the press organ of another small nationalist party and later became the Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
(People's Observer).
On the other hand it can be noted that Karl Harrer, the Thule member most directly involved in the creation of the DAP in 1919, was sidelined at the end of the year when Hitler drafted regulations against conspiratorial circles, and the Thule Society was dissolved a few years later (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 150, 221). It had no members from the top echelons of the party and Nazi officials were forbidden any involvement in secret societies. Adolf Hitler was never a member, while Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...
and Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
were only visiting guests of the Thule Society in the early years before they came to prominence in the Nazi movement (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 149, 201). However, the völkisch circles did hand down one significant legacy: Friedrich Krohn, a Thule member, designed the original version of the Nazi swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
in 1919.
See also
- Alldeutscher Verband
- Ethnic groups in Europe
- Guido von ListGuido von ListGuido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List was an Austrian/German poet, journalist, writer, businessman and dealer of leather goods, mountaineer, hiker, dramatist, playwright, and rower, but was most notable as an occultist and völkisch author who is seen as one of the most important...
- Mathilde LudendorffMathilde LudendorffMathilde Friederike Karoline Ludendorff was a German teacher and doctor. She was the second wife of Erich Ludendorff - he was her third husband - as well as a leading figure in the Völkisch movement, where she was known for her esoteric and conspiratorial ideas...
- National Socialism and Occultism
- Neo-völkisch movementsNeo-völkisch movementsNeo-völkisch movements, as defined by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, cover a wide variety of mutually influencing groups of a radically ethnocentric character which have emerged, especially in the English-speaking world, since World War II...
- Nordic race
- Pan-GermanismPan-GermanismPan-Germanism is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as Großdeutschland , where "German-speaking" was taken to include the Low German, Frisian and Dutch-speaking populations of the Low...
- Racial theory
- Sociology of immigrationSociology of immigrationThe sociology of immigration involves the sociological analysis of immigration, particularly with respect to race and ethnicity, social structure, and political policy...
- VolkshalleVolkshalleThe ' , also called ' or ' , was a huge domed monumental building planned by Adolf Hitler and his architect Albert Speer for Germania. The project was never accomplished....