Nordic Ideology Between Religion and Scholarship (PDFDrive)

Nordic Ideology between Religion and Scholarship
Civilizations & History

Edited by
Ina Ulrike Paul and Uwe Puschner
Volume 24
Zu Qualitätssicherung und Peer Review Notes on the quality assurance

der vorliegenden Publikation and peer review of this publication
Die Qualität der in dieser Reihe Prior to publication,

erscheinenden Arbeiten wird the quality of the work
vor der Publikation durch published in this series is reviewed
einen Herausgeber der Reihe geprüft. by one of the editors of the series.
Horst Junginger / Andreas Åkerlund (eds.)

Nordic Ideology
between Religion
and Scholarship
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg
This book is published with the generous support from the Torsten and Ragnar
Söderberg Foundations and the Forum for German Studies at Uppsala University.
The photographs on the binding display Herman Wirth during

his expeditions to Sweden in 1935–36 and originate from the
Vitlycke Museum in Tanumshede, West Sweden.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nordic ideology between religion and scholarship / Horst Junginger, Andreas
Åkerlund (eds.). — First edition
pages cm. — (Zivilisationen & Geschichte ; Band 24)
ISBN 978-3-631-64487-4
1. Scandinavianism—History—20th century—Congresses. 2. Nationalism—
Scandinavia—History—20th century—Congresses. 3. Scandinavia—Study and
teaching—Congresses. 4. Cultural awareness—Scandinavia—Congresses. 5.
Mythology, Norse—Congresses. I. Junginger, Horst. II. Åkerlund, Andreas.
DL57.N665 2013
320.54'0948—dc23
2013018777
ISSN 1867-092X
ISBN 978-3-631-64487-4 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-03313-7 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-03313-7
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2013
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH.
Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York ·
Oxford · Warszawa · Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
www.peterlang.de
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg
This book is published with the generous support from the Torsten and Ragnar
Söderberg Foundations and the Forum for German Studies at Uppsala University.
The photographs on the binding display Herman Wirth during

his expeditions to Sweden in 1935–36 and originate from the
Vitlycke Museum in Tanumshede, West Sweden.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nordic ideology between religion and scholarship / Horst Junginger, Andreas
Åkerlund (eds.). — First edition
pages cm. — (Zivilisationen & Geschichte ; Band 24)
ISBN 978-3-631-64487-4
1. Scandinavianism—History—20th century—Congresses. 2. Nationalism—
Scandinavia—History—20th century—Congresses. 3. Scandinavia—Study and
teaching—Congresses. 4. Cultural awareness—Scandinavia—Congresses. 5.
Mythology, Norse—Congresses. I. Junginger, Horst. II. Åkerlund, Andreas.
DL57.N665 2013
320.54'0948—dc23
2013018777
ISSN 1867-092X
ISBN 978-3-631-64487-4 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-03313-7 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-03313-7
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2013
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH.
Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York ·
Oxford · Warszawa · Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
www.peterlang.de
qu’elles se rétrécissaient sous certaines conditions politiques et historiques pour devenir une idéo-
logie du nationalisme chauviniste. Comme les différentes tentatives de systématiser une concep-
tion du monde nordique restaient particulièrement confuses et puisqu’elles dépassaient la pensée
purement associative dans des domaines partiels tout au plus, il était important d’abord de discu-
ter des problèmes d’une définition terminologique et d’aiguiser le regard pour la nature hétéro-
gène du mouvement nordique. C’est seulement l’idée des races qui semblait donner une nouvelle
définition des points communs des peuples nordiques sur une base biologique et anthropolo-
gique, respectivement ce n’était qu’une d’étermination provisoire. Toutefois, il s’est avéré impos-
sible d’objectiver scientifiquement l’idée d’une race nordique et de trouver des critères généraux
aptes à prouver l’appartenance à une communauté de personnes d’origine nordique. Ceci était
valable non seulement pour les sciences naturelles mais aussi pour des matières tels que les philo-
logies germanique, nordique, scandinave, la linguistique et l’étude des folklores, matières qui de-
puis toujours et de manière intensive s’occupaient traditionnellement des sujets nordiques. Des
représentants de la théologie protestante et ceux de la science des religions non confessionnelle
ont contribué encore davantage à la surélévation idéologique de la communauté prétendue d’une
conception du monde des peuples nordiques même si, pour des raisons religieuses, ceux-ci se
combattaient l’un l’autre avec acharnement. Un résultat important qui ressort des articles recueil-
lis dans ces “proceedings”, c’est la conclusion selon laquelle l’apport de ce nouveau paganisme
nationaliste est à considérer mineur que ce qu’on croyait jusqu’ici lors de la diffusion de l’idée
nordique. Les idées d’un Nord, aptes à être instrumentalisées politiquement, se sont répandues de
manière beaucoup plus forte à travers les voies traditionnelles des “lumières”, éducation et poli-
tique culturelle nationales. Ceci se fait observer très bien à l’exemple de l’explorateur non profes-
sionnel nationaliste Herman Wirth qui avait étudié des pétroglyphes de l’âge du bronze en Suède
au milieu des années 1930 pour l’ Ahnenerbe de la SS. À travers une “analyse” correspondante de
ces gravures rupestres, il croyait avoir trouvé des preuves univoques qui démontraient l’unité de
la race nordique. Un manuscrit qui en est ressorti a été joint au présent volume en tant que source
primaire nationaliste pour démontrer le caractère embrouillé de l’“invention” d’une tradition de
l’héritage généalogique selon Wirth. Ces tentatives et beaucoup d’autres tentatives de produire
des conceptions théoriques du Nord démontrent qu’il fallait finir par recourir à nouveau à des
approches préscientifiques d’explication et à des vieux préjugés modèles pour pouvoir faire avan-
cer le projet de créer une identité nationale. Pour cela, l’idée du Nord se déterminait en premier
lieu à travers la négation de ce qui n’est pas nordique. Le judaïsme et le “bolchevisme”, dans une
mesure mineure aussi “le matérialisme et l’impérialisme anglo-américain” ainsi que le catholicisme
de Rome, offraient une collection riche de ressentiments traditionnels qui présentaient une accep-
tation large. Le succès relatif du mouvement nordique s’explique avant tout par ce potentiel posi-
tif de rattachement. Indépendamment du fait de savoir comment on juge la pertinence sociale des
tentatives qu’on a présentées ici pour justifier idéologiquement le Nord, il faut mettre en relief
que l’idée nordique avait servi de légitimer les exigences politiques de domination visant à un
changement des structures du pouvoir en Europe d’une part, mais allant aussi au-delà de l’Europe
d’autre part.
Contents
Introduction
Horst Junginger and Andreas Åkerlund ........................................................................ 1
NOTION AND CONCEPT OF THE NORDIC IDEA
The Notions Völkisch and Nordic: A Conceptual Approximation

Uwe Puschner ..............................................................................................................21
Nordic Ideology in the SS and the SS Ahnenerbe

Horst Junginger ...........................................................................................................39
RELIGION, SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY IN GERMANY AND SWEDEN
The Eddic Myth between Academic and Religious Interpretations

Debora Dusse ..............................................................................................................73
Charisma, Authority and Heil: Walter Baetke and the Chasm of 1945
Bernard Mees ..............................................................................................................87
The Great God’s Oldest Runes

Luitgard Löw ........................................................................................................... 107
“Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden”: A Völkisch Reception of Luther’s

View of the Jews
Anders Gerdmar ...................................................................................................... 133
Völkisch Thought in Sweden: The Manhem Society and the Quest for
National Enlightenment 1934–44
Lena Berggren........................................................................................................... 153
Nordic Studies in National Socialist Germany: A Possible Career Path

for Swedish Academics
Andreas Åkerlund ................................................................................................... 169
VIII Contents
THE MIGRATION OF THE NORDIC IDEA
Sven Hedin and German Scholars: The Cases of Wilhelm A. Unkrig

and Ferdinand Lessing
Hartmut Walravens ................................................................................................. 193
The Holy City of Lhasa: Dreams and Destination for Sven Hedin and
Ernst Schäfer
Isrun Engelhardt ...................................................................................................... 207
The Use of Theories of Religion in Contemporary Asatru

Stefanie v. Schnurbein ............................................................................................... 225
A VÖLKISCH ADDENDUM
Photographs of Wirth’s Excursions to Sweden .......................................................... 247
Summary of “The Great God’s Oldest Runes”. Fimbultý’s Prehistoric

Runes” (Voluspá 60)
Herman Wirth ......................................................................................................... 251
About the authors ............................................................................................................ 281

Introduction:
Nordic Ideology, Religion and Scholarship
Horst Junginger and Andreas Åkerlund
1. The Relevance of the Nordic Myth
Although our modern understanding of the world seems to oppose timeworn ste-
reotypes such as the “North” and proscribed ideologies such as Nordic or völkisch
ones, the Nordic myth is perhaps only hibernating and may be reinvigorated if time
and circumstances allow. In the current financial market crises, many and some-
times tough accusations have been voiced against those lazy people in the southern
parts of Europe who would squander the money of hard working people further to
the north. If they continue with both their incapability and unwillingness to stick to
Northern standards in terms of economy, labour and a less idle attitude toward life,
the only appropriate answer would be to discipline them or possibly show them the
door. And not far below Greece the black abyss lies in waiting to overrun Europe
exploiting its social welfare system and the wreck of its prosperity.
The ideological borderlines of European Nordicism have, quite obviously,
shifted from eastern Communism and western Capitalism towards the south in ge-
ographical as well as in political and religious concerns and are now primarily di-
rected at the spread of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. And again the question
becomes pressing how Europe and the North may attain a defensible coherence by
means of common ideas and values. Since identity formations generally function
better by way of distinction, the fight against everything perceived as dangerous
and hostile usually supersedes all efforts for a positive definition of Europe rapidly.
Ideological unity still seems to be unachievable without an ideological enemy. In
states of tension, intellectuals often fall prey to or even profit from the conceptuali-
sation of otherness, having no qualms about acting against the principles of scien-
tific universalism and the international constitution of scholarship.
Due to the general rejection of everything connected with National Socialism
any new form of Nordicism will, at least in the respectable parts of our societies,
have to take a detour around ordinary forms of nationalism or proto-Nazi ideas.
Therefore, it is little wonder that the political programmes of conservative revolu-
tionaries are undergoing a revival these days and that socio-biological views cen-
tring on a homo europaeus in the tradition of Madison Grant (1865–1937), the influ-
ential anti-miscegenation activist and propagator of a “scientific racism”, are boom-
ing. Beyond that, eugenic and racialist ideas proliferate all over Europe’s far right
and Northern imaginations are bundled into fascist sheaves anew. The European
Declaration of Independence of Anders Behring Breivik (born 1978) is greatly influ-
enced by Madison Grant’s postulation of genetic purity, which Breivik takes as an
2 Horst Junginger and Andreas Åkerlund
ideological tool for the defence of Europe against the Islamic intruders from out-
side and the Marxist adversaries from within.1 Breivik e-mailed his manifesto to
some 1,000 addressees shortly before the Oslo blast and the Utøya massacre on 22
July 2011, many of them members of the Christian right, but also Pagan Odinists.
While Breivik concedes Odinism is part of the nascent movement against the polit-
ical establishment, he strongly emphasised that only a powerful Christian self-
consciousness in the tradition of the Templars would have the power to overthrow
multiculturalism, cultural Marxism and the Islamic threat. Posing the rhetorical
question of whether Odinists could become part of a resistance movement based
on Christian values, he answered in the affirmative: “Even Odinists can fight with
us or by our side as brothers in this fight as long as they accept the founding prin-
ciples of PCCTS, Knights Templar and agree to fight under the cross of the mar-
tyrs.”2 Breivik’s Nordic worldview seeks to transcend a narrow-minded understand-
ing of Christianity into a rightist interconfessionalism, similar to the sorts seen in
the 1930s and 40s.
In his own words, Breivik studied Old Norse mythology and had “a lot of re-
spect for Odinist traditions”, thinking highly of them as an important part of Nor-
wegian culture and identity. He nevertheless left no doubts about his own religious
commitment and the ideological superiority of Christianity compared to Nordic
Paganism:
Odinism is significant for the Nordic countries but it does not have the potency to
unite us against such a devastating force as Islam, cultural Marxism/multiculturalism
and capitalist globalism.3
Only the reinvigoration of a military Christian spirit would avert the ongoing attack
on the occidental way of life. As Europe is at the edge of disaster, immediate ac-
tion, indeed a holy war, would be necessary to prevent its extinction. The Christian
basis of Breivik’s imaginations of the North unfortunately passed widely unheeded
in the public debate and did not attract the scholarly attention it deserves. Since
Christian terrorism is generally conceived as a contradiction in itself, someone like
Breivik appears to be completely alien to the majority. His view of things is there-
fore relegated from a possible option within the mainstream discourse of the radi-
cal right to a state of mental illness. Breivik must be crazy, otherwise he could not
1 Breivik’s manifest 2083: A European Declaration of Independence is to be found all over the web.
It considers 2083 the year when the conservative revolution ought to be completed. Four
hundred years earlier the Great Turkish War, the War of the Holy League initiated by Pope
Innocent XI, had started to expel the Ottoman troops from Europe in 1683. 2083 means
2011 by way of adding 8+3 in the second part of the number.
2 Breivik, A European Declaration of Independence, p. 1360. PCCTS is the abbreviation of Pauperes
Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple
of Solomon (Christian Military Order of the Temple).
3 Ibidem, p. 1361.
Zusammenfassung
Der vorliegende Sammelband beschäftigt sich mit dem Zusammenhang von Religion und Wis-
senschaft bei der Verbreitung völkisch nordischen Denkens in Deutschland und Skandinavien.
Er untersucht, wie sich Vorstellungen vom „Norden“ unter bestimmten politischen und histori-
schen Bedingungen zu einer Ideologie des chauvinistischen Nationalismus verengten. Weil die
verschiedenen Versuche zur Systematisierung einer nordischen Weltanschauung außerordentlich
diffus blieben und allenfalls in Teilbereichen ein rein assoziatives Denken überschritten, kam es
zunächst darauf an, Probleme der terminologischen Abgrenzung anzusprechen und den Blick für
die heterogene Natur der nordischen Bewegung zu schärfen. Erst die Rassenidee schien die Mög-
lichkeit zu eröffnen, das Gemeinsame der nordischen Völker auf biologischer und anthropologi-
scher Grundlage neu bzw. überhaupt erst bestimmen zu können. Allerdings stellte es sich als
unmöglich heraus, den Gedanken einer nordischen Rasse wissenschaftlich zu objektivieren und
allgemeine Kriterien für die Zugehörigkeit zur Gemeinschaft nordischstämmiger Menschen
nachzuweisen. Das galt nicht nur für die Naturwissenschaften, sondern auch für Fächer wie die
Germanistik, Nordistik, Skandinavistik, Sprachwissenschaft und Volkskunde, die sich von jeher
intensiv mit nordischen Themen beschäftigten. Noch stärker trugen Vertreter der evangelischen
Theologie und der nichtkonfessionellen Religionswissenschaft zur ideologischen Überhöhung der
angeblichen Weltanschauungsgemeinschaft der Nordvölker bei, auch wenn sie sich aus religiösen
Gründen gegenseitig erbittert bekämpften. Ein wichtiges Ergebnis der in diesen Proceedings ver-
sammelten Artikel ist die Erkenntnis, dass der Beitrag des völkischen Neuheidentums bei der
Ausbreitung des nordischen Gedankens geringer zu veranschlagen ist als bislang angenommen.
Politisch instrumentalisierbare Vorstellungen vom Norden verbreiteten sich weitaus stärker auf
den herkömmlichen Bahnen der nationalen ‚Aufklärung‘, Erziehung und Kulturpolitik. Das lässt
sich besonders gut an dem völkischen Laienforscher Herman Wirth beobachten, der für das Ah-
nenerbe der SS in der Mitte der 1930er Jahre bronzezeitliche Petroglyphen in Schweden erforsch-
te und glaubte, über eine entsprechende ‚Analyse‘ dieser Felsritzungen, unzweideutige Beweise
für die Einheit der nordischen Rasse gefunden zu haben. Ein daraus hervorgegangenes Manu-
skript wurde diesem Band als völkische Primärquelle beigegeben, um das Verworrene der Wirth-
schen ‚Erfindung‘ einer Tradition des nordischen Ahnenerbes darzulegen. An diesen und vielen
anderen Versuchen einer theoretischen Konzeptionalisierung des Nordens zeigt sich, dass man
letztlich doch wieder auf vorwissenschaftliche Erklärungsansätze und alte Vorurteilsmuster zu-
rückgreifen musste, um das Projekt einer nationalen Identitätsstiftung vorantreiben zu können.
Die Idee des Nordens bestimmte sich deshalb in erster Linie über die Negation des Unnordi-
schen. Das Judentum und der ‚Bolschewismus‘, in geringerem Umfang auch der ‚angloamerikani-
schen Materialismus und Imperialismus‘ sowie der römische Katholizismus, boten ein reiches
Arsenal an herkömmlichen Ressentiments, die eine breite Akzeptanz aufwiesen. Der relative Er-
folg der nordischen Bewegung liegt vor allem in diesem positiven Anknüpfungspotential begrün-
det. Unabhängig davon, wie man die gesellschaftliche Relevanz der hier vorgestellten Versuche
einer ideologischen Begründung des Nordens bewertet, ist zu betonen, dass der nordische Ge-
danke der Legitimation politischer Herrschaftsansprüche diente, die einerseits auf eine Änderung
des europäischen Machtgefüges abzielten, andererseits aber auch über Europa hinausgriffen.
Résumé
Le présent recueil s’occupe du rapport entre religion et science lors de la diffusion d’une pensée
nordique nationaliste en Allemagne et en Scandinavie. Il analyse les idées du “Nord”, telles
servation that the imagination of the North could prosper equally on Pagan as well
as on Christian premises, the religious indistinctness of the Nordic idea required, in
our view, scientific clarification. The revival of Nordic and Old Norse myths was
not restricted to an anti-Christian heathendom, where it served as spiritual funda-
ment of a new Pagan religion. Also within the realm of Christianity, especially
among Lutheran Protestantism and völkisch German Christians, the idea of a Nor-
dic heritage found a firm rooting. Common features in the intersection of Nordic
types of Christianity and Paganism included the deeply ingrained antagonism
against Judaism and Bolshevism in first place. To a lesser extent the imperialism of
the British Empire functioned as political antipode to consolidate the idea of a
Nordic alliance especially in the course of World War I and II. After 1945, the po-
litical post-war constellation compelled a modification of the old enemy images that
were partly abandoned, regenerated or complemented by new spectres of exagger-
ated libertarianism carried to extremes by the hippie subculture.
In addition to the strictly religious parts of the Nordic idea, the aim of the con-
ference was directed at a new scholarly occupation with the North that increased
considerably in the first half of the twentieth century. From a narrow-minded reli-
gious or anti-religious perspective the amalgamation of religion and science looks as
it would be improper or mutual exclusive. On the contrary, however, the correla-
tion between scientific and religious constituents is an indispensable prerequisite
for any successful religion or religious worldview in modern times. Therefore, dis-
ciplines like archaeology, Germanic and Nordic studies, ethnography, folklore stud-
ies, history, prehistory and especially religious studies featured prominently in the
shaping of what counted as “North” and “Nordic”. In search for the inner bonds
of the assumed fellowship of all Nordic men and peoples, a science-based religious
perception turned out to be the crux of the matter. Questions of spiritual kinship
became closely intertwined with questions of biological lineage. Since the natural
and biological sciences totally failed to produce any definitive evidence of a Nordic
race or of hereditary traits of its members, other factors had to constitute the
community of the North and establish a reliable border dividing between Nordic
and un-Nordic. A combination of religious and scientific explanations provided the
ideological basis for the setup of a commonly shared Nordic identity with the final
goal of justifying the supremacy of the North and rationalising a ‘natural’ contradic-
tion between people of Nordic descent and their opponents.
The conference also wanted to shed light on the differences between Scandi-
navia and Germany with regard to the perception of the Old Norse heritage and its
role for the construction and reconstruction of the Nordic Myth. It is obvious that
the use of Old Norse material to forge the nation’s past differed considerably be-
tween the Scandinavian countries, possessing a lot of pre-Christian antiquities, and
Germany, which had no remnants of that time. On both sides of the Baltic, the
“North” was thus perceived and defined in different ways long before the period
treated in this volume. Any comparative approach therefore has to be attentive to
these variations of the same pattern “North” resulting from different historical
Introduction 5
conditions. But Germany and Scandinavia were no strangers to each other since
there has always been an intensive contact over the Baltic Sea. Contact does how-
ever rarely mean equality. At least since the nineteenth century, Germany was an
important, if not the most important, reference point or even role model for Swe-
dish intellectual, military and economic elites. At the same time, German intellectu-
als such as the brothers Grimm showed great interest in Scandinavian pre-Christian
culture, using it as a mythological fountain of youth for the German nation. This
relationship, formulated as a Wahlverwandtschaft (elective affinity) between the “Ger-
manic peoples”, is vital for the understanding of the contributions in this book.
The huge impact of the German academe on the intellectual life in Scandinavia
and the close cultural contacts between the two regions do however raise the ques-
tion of how ideas and ideologies ‘travelled’ between them. This addresses the im-
portant question of intellectual transfer through publications and personal contacts.
The idea of transfer does however mean that both the dislocation and relocation of
ideas always entail reinterpretations, which have to be adapted to new political and
cultural circumstances. Transfer studies concerning the scientific and völkisch Nor-
dicism would not only show patterns of selective reception based in the different
scientific and cultural contexts of Germany and Scandinavia, but also help to prob-
lematise the idea of a shared image of the North on both sides of the Baltic Sea.
The symposium’s main objective was to fathom the ideological principles and
intellectual depth of European Nordicism. Owing to the great number of mytholo-
gems that have gained currency in various subject areas under the umbrella term
“North”, a reflective interdisciplinarity is needed to deal with the iridescent and
multifaceted character of the Nordic idea adequately. It is not easy to apply stable
categories to a rather unstable and frayed topic and develop tenable generalisations
in so doing. Therefore we thought it important to bring together different scholarly
approaches and methodologies to overcome a mere phenomenology of glimmering
ideas and repulsive behaviours characteristic of the völkisch or Nordic movement.
Only if we widen our disciplinary perspective and sharpen our theoretical tools it
will be possible to deal with the ramifications and heterogeneous character of the
Nordic idea. The question of how the situation in Scandinavia coincided or stood
at odds with the German understanding of the North still waits to be answered on
the background of a broad analysis of European politics, religion and culture. As a
matter of course, international cooperation has to be strengthened in the case of a
transnational attempt at a better understanding of Nordic imaginations. Although
history does not repeat itself, the reinvigoration of the North as an ideological ref-
erence point to cluster fears and threats connected with the East, the West or the
South is far from being a purely scientific issue in the world of today. The success
of populist right-wing parties everywhere in Europe and the devastating activities
of terrorist cells and lone fighters in their wake demonstrate the contemporary rele-
vance of the Nordic myth in a blatantly obvious manner.
Five months after the symposium on “Nordic Ideology between Religion and
Scholarship” we held another international congress at the University of Uppsala
from 17–18 January 2011 on “Sven Hedin and His Relationship with Germany: An
Elective Affinity Based on Mutual Sympathies”. Two contributions of that gather-
ing – the one by Isrun Engelhardt and the one by Harmut Walravens – have be-
come part of the present collection of articles. Both conferences arose from a re-
search stay of the German signatory of this preface in Uppsala that resulted from a
generous grant of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. It is my particular
desire to thank the foundation in Stockholm for the bestowal of its esteemed
Humboldt Award that gave me the opportunity for an intensive exchange as schol-
ar in residence at the Department of History at Uppsala University. Many thanks
go to the History Department and the Forum for German Studies (Forum för
Tysklandsstudier) in Uppsala for their logistic backing. The Forum for German Stud-
ies also supported both conferences financially. The main funding however came
from the Swedish Research Council and the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg’s
Foundation. From my German perspective I cannot do otherwise but praise the
dependable and unbureaucratic way in which both institutions allocated their sub-
sidies.
3. Particular Aspects of the Nordic Myth as Presented in this

Volume
The first part of the book provides clarification of what usually figures into the
Nordic idea and ideology. Uwe Puschner starts with an historical survey of the
emerging völkisch movement and the intrusion of its political slogans into the public
discourse in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. He makes clear that
völkisch worldviews were based on certain historical premises and accompanied by
particular linguistic characteristics, distinguishing the literal meaning of the word
“folk” and its derivations from related semantic fields around notions such as eth-
nicism, chauvinism, conservatism, jingoism, nationalism, Nordicism, patriotism,
populism, racism and such like. The well-known impossibility of translating the
German expression völkisch into other languages is caused by the glimmering nature
of the völkisch ideology itself. Even today, scholars are bothered with definitional
problems and try to determine the specific nature of the völkisch concept properly.
Puschner outlines a large part of the relevant literature on various aspects of the
völkisch idea and movement. He brings to mind how difficult it is to achieve appro-
priate generalisations in the complicated habitat where the Nordic mindset evolves.
Particularly in the transition towards “normal” forms of national hyperbole, prob-
lems differentiating the precise meaning of the völkisch or Nordic surplus increase.
Specifying the role of the German paradigm appears therefore as plausible option
to attain a better understanding of the ideological content and function of völkisch
Nordicism in Europe.
Introduction 7
Horst Junginger treats in his article the question of whether the general trend to-
wards a non- or anti-Christian interpretation of the North in the SS and related or-
ganisations was really representative of the situation in National Socialist Germany
as a whole. Contrary to the assumptions of the so-called historiography of the
church struggle, we have in fact no reliable data of the extent of the estrangement
from Christianity and the breadth of the interest in founding a new heathen reli-
gion. None of the various Pagan groups in Germany succeeded in imparting its re-
ligious agenda to the SS or gained any significant influence in the Third Reich.
Quite the reverse, their proverbial and well-kept sectarianism constituted a key ob-
stacle to the forming of a new Nordic religion. In fact, almost all branches of or-
ganised Paganism fell under the surveillance of the SD, the Secret Service of the SS,
being considered a menace to the unification of the German people. Though NS
politicians frequently used the anti-Christian impetus of the völkisch religious move-
ment to put pressure on the churches, Pagans failed to shift National Socialism in
the direction of a Nordic, Germanic, or Indo-Germanic religion. This notwith-
standing, it has to be conceded that a significant part of the SS leadership and a
considerable number of intellectuals sympathetic to organisations such as the Ah-
nenerbe of the SS were in search of a new Nordic worldview encompassing ele-
ments of a Pagan religion. That this kind of religious seeking would have led to
church-like structures, the establishment of a Pagan priesthood and the creative
“invention” of novel gods and dogmas appears to be quite unlikely. Treating the SS
Ahnenerbe, the brain trust of Himmler’s black order, and its activities in terms of a
conventional think tank and not as spearhead of a new Pagan religion, Junginger
pleads for a better distinction between supernatural religions and intermundane
worldviews, with an interesting contact zone in between.
Section two deals with the ideological absorption of intellectuals in Germany
and Sweden who put emphasis on particular aspects of the Nordic myth. Debora
Dusse explores at the beginning how a number of politically and ideologically in-
volved scholars such as Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881–1962), Bernhard Kummer
(1897–1962) and Åke Ohlmarks (1911–84) managed to include the system change
that took place after World War II in their scientific agenda. Following the idea of a
“surplus value” of Eddic literature, Dusse’s starting point is the observation that
academics working on Old Norse material had an explicit or implicit interest in
transcending the aridity of academic scholarship towards worldview issues related
to the demands of one’s own folk and life. Translating and writing commentaries
on the Poetic Edda and the Snorra Edda, as adapting features of Norse mythology to
original literary works, provided these intellectuals with the opportunity to expound
their political views in scientific guise. This occurred in marked contrast to the
marginal importance of the Eddic tradition in scientific contexts (in opposition to
political ones) in previous times when the focus regarding the Old Norse tradition
had been on the Icelandic sagas. The main reason for that bias was the primacy of
the interest in Nordic or Germanic culture, of which religion was only one aspect.
Another reason arose from a different reading of the Eddic texts and the mytholo-
gical value attributed to them regarding their capacity to function as a source for
the resuscitation of an Old Norse religion. The spectrum of interpretations ranged
from the idea of the Edda as a Germanic or Nordic bible of völkisch Pagans to treat-
ing the texts as a strictly literary tradition transmitted in Iceland in Christian times.
Hence Dusse underlines the various ways in which the reception of the Eddas
evolved among philologists, historians of religions as well as in Pagan contexts be-
fore and after 1945.
What happened to the Nordic or völkisch strain within Old Norse studies after
1945? This question is approached by Bernard Mees in his contribution on Walter
Baetke (1884–1978). Professor of history of religion in the Third Reich and of
Nordic philology in the German Democratic Republic at the University of Leipzig,
Baetke is probably best known for his 1942 study Das Heilige im Germanischen. After
the war, Baetke turned more surely to Old Norse mythology, where he continued
developing his prewar reputation as a critic of romantic excess. He moreover
played an important role for the re-shaping of religious studies in both parts of
Germany. Criticised recently for his radical source criticism, Baetke seems to have
adopted a quite transformed attitude toward the studies of Old Germanic Heil after
1945. Yet was does Baetke’s skepticism mean for the modern-day understanding of
Heil in Old Norse and Germanic studies? Did he become a hypercritic after 1945
or was his work from the Nazi period itself tainted by the obvious association of
Königsheil with the Führer cult? Dealing with these kinds of questions, Mees anal-
yses the context of Baetke’s understanding of Heil in light of recent studies of
Germanic antiquity, post-war academic apologetics and influential discourses of
Aryanism, leadership and charisma, which prevailed in the years of the Nazi dicta-
torship. Whereas the fact that Baetke’s political opposition to National Socialism
was grounded on a conservative Christian point of view is beyond question, his
scholarly position regarding Old Norse studies appears more ambivalent and open
to interpretation, as Mees shows.
In the case of the German-Dutch amateur historian Herman Wirth (1885–
1981), his classification as a staunch propagator of National Socialist Germanophil-
ia is unambiguous and leaves little space for reservation. As founding member of
the predecessor organisation of the SS Ahnenerbe and inventor of what he himself
titled Geistesurgeschichte, Wirth can be seen as a paradigmatic model of Germany’s
scientific decline in the time of fascism. The article by Luitgard Löw casts fresh
light on Wirth’s work after his exclusion from the Ahnenerbe in 1938. Already at
the beginning of 1939, Wirth approached the Swedish National Antiquarian Sigurd
Curman (1879–1966) with a treatise on Scandinavian rock art sites that would re-
veal the symbolism of an ancient Indo-Germanic religion. Wirth moreover claimed
that the ideograms he had detected during two expeditions on behalf of the Ahne-
nerbe in Sweden in 1935/6 would be the definite proof of a primeval Nordic civili-
sation, which, however, had been over-layered and partly destroyed by Christianity
Introduction 9
in later times. Wirth’s interpretation of the runic alphabet in particular was intended
to provide material evidence of the high level of civilisation the Germanic forefa-
thers had reached long before the advent of alien traditions such as Jewish Christi-
anity. Wirth occupied himself with all sorts of “Nordic” signs, cultic symbols, writ-
ing systems and iconographic remnants, merging them together without considera-
tion of geography or dating. On the basis of a wide variety of studies, he detected
age-old symbols, myths and narratives, which he used to imaginatively reconstruct a
primeval Indo-Germanic worldview that would have originated from the Arctic
and have gone back to Palaeolithic times. With the handwritten excerpt from a
manuscript titled Den store Gudens äldsta runor (The Great God’s Oldest Runes),
Wirth hoped to convince the Swedish antiquarian Curman to enable his admission
into the Swedish academe. Since the book has not been discovered yet, the sum-
mary preserved by Curman in his archival records in Stockholm is of great signifi-
cance for a better understanding of Wirth’s Nordic völkisch mythology. Given the
importance of Wirth for the völkisch movement as such, we thought it helpful and
reasonable to include an English translation of Wirth’s treatise on The Great God’s
Oldest Runes as addendum at the end of this volume.
Anders Gerdmar is concerned with another vital aspect of völkisch Nordicism
within the Protestant context, that is to say with an explicit Christian form of völ-
kisch antisemitism. It was not only among Pagans, but also among German Chris-
tians that the Jewish people functioned as ideological counter-model against which
almost all positive values could be set against. Gerdmar’s analysis of the Protestant
theologian and Luther specialist Erich Vogelsang (1904–44) reveals how a völkisch
reading of the anti-Jewish statements of the great sixteenth century reformer func-
tioned as religious and political justifications of the Third Reich’s persecution poli-
cy. Studying the precursors of National Socialist exegesis in German Protestant
theology, Gerdmar saw himself confronted with the question how to gauge the
general nature of the relationship between Protestantism and Judaism. The
Protestant faith had been such an important ideological element in German culture
that its anti-Jewish impetus must have had an extraordinary impact on the shaping
and spreading of antisemitic resentments. This holds true for Protestant currents of
all denominational shades but particularly for upright proponents of Lutheran the-
ology. For that reason, Gerdmar focuses on Protestant confessional and enlighten-
ment theology with regard to their common theological roots and stance towards
Judaism. He argues that fundamentals of Protestant theology such as the Law-Gos-
pel distinction not only favoured a dichotomy where Jews represented the negative
side, but that this trace can be found in both of the otherwise divided lines in Ger-
man Protestantism.
Lena Berggren presents the Swedish Manhem Society as one of the most im-
portant Swedish pro-Nazi associations. The society was founded in September
1934 in memory of the scientist and writer Olaus Rudbeck (1630–1702) who had
published a large treatise Atland eller Manhem at the end of the seventeenth century
to prove that Sweden should be regarded as the legendary island Atlantis and, fur-
thermore, as the cradle of civilisation. The main intent of the Manhem Society was
to promote the national cause apart from ordinary party politics by way of a natio-
nal education campaign. During the decade of its existence, some 400 public lec-
tures were held to enlighten the Swedes of their glorious heritage and its responsi-
bilities for the presence. The term ultranationalism used by Berggren describes the
intention of the Manhem Society very well. Its main characteristics were a romanti-
cist nationalism, opposition to Western democracy, political and social elitism, cul-
tural criticism, racism, antisemitism and a particular inclination towards National
Socialist Germany, which increased during World War II. The Nordic ideology of
the Manhem Society lacked the anti-Christian impetus of German Pagans. From
the perspective of its followers and sympathisers, a revival of the Nordic heritage
definitely ought to take place on Christian, i.e. on Protestant grounds. Hence, a re-
curring theme of the society’s agenda was the call for a second reformation and the
emergence of what was named an Evangelical Nordic Faith. The most frequent
theme of these lectures, however, was the subject of race and Judaism presented in
different variations and often intertwined with strands of cultural history and reli-
gion, placing the society in a definite völkisch context.
Using the example of three Swedish lecturers at German universities, Andreas
Åkerlund considers in his paper the question of in what way and in which academic
fields National Socialist Germany was attractive to Swedish scholars in the 1930s
and 40s. It goes without saying that the change of government in Germany that
brought the Nazis to power generated a prolific climate for the intensification of
the existing scientific relations between the two countries. Germany’s isolation in
the aftermath of World War I had prompted politicians and higher education offi-
cials to try to recover and intensify scholarly ties, lest they become entriely discon-
nected from the international developments and lose the leading scientific position
Germany had obtained in the nineteenth century. The appointment of Swedish lec-
turers at German universities has to be understood as part of a general strengthen-
ing of Scandinavian studies, which received a boost after 1933. To adapt them-
selves to the new political situation, several German universities tried to acquire a
Nordic profile by enhancing Old Norse and modern Scandinavian studies. Particu-
lar specialisations selected by these universities for implementation depended not
only on local preconditions but also on the interest and assertiveness of the actors
involved. On the Swedish side a national society for the preservation of Swedish-
ness abroad (Riksföreningen för svenskhetens bevarande i utlandet) assailed the financial,
organisational and ideological consolidation of lectureships in Germany. In combi-
nation with normal forms of establishing academic relations, cultural propaganda
was a matter of particular importance. Interestingly, the Nazi seizure of power did
not alter the mutual appointment of lecturers in Sweden and Germany in principle.
Rather it opened up a creative leeway to negotiate the financial terms and ideologi-
cal arguments for such kind of scientific exchange anew.
Introduction 11
The migration of the Nordic idea in geographical and spiritual regard is the topic of
the third section. Hartmut Walravens’s focus centres upon the relationship between
Sven Hedin (1865–1952) and the German scholars Wilhelm A. Unkrieg (1883–
1956) and Ferdinand Lessing (1882–1961). In both cases it becomes apparent how
important the support of the famous Swede was for the work of these German
scholars. Stemming from a long established friendship between Sweden and Ger-
many, the intellectual companionship survived, in Hedin’s, case three different
forms of government in Germany: monarchy, dictatorship and democracy. Need-
less to say, Hedin’s conduct during the time of National Socialism is of particular
interest for historians although this cannot be understood properly without taking
his basically monarchic orientation into consideration. Unkrieg as well as Lessing
profited very much from their connection with the world-celebrated Swedish ex-
plorer, both financially, because of work done for Hedin, and in terms of enhanced
reputations resulting from the contact with him and his explorations. Hedin bene-
fited equally from these two excellent German orientalists and their knowledge of
the pertaining languages and historical background, which enabled him to utilise
and publish the material of his expeditions to Inner Asia on a sound basis.
Hedin’s fame and public impact depended to a large extent to his magnetic
personality and his organisational talent in preparing, conducting and exploiting his
surveys of formerly uncharted or even unknown parts of the world. Contrary to
possible expectations, Hedin’s cooperation with the two German orientalists shows
little political or ideological content. While Hedin undeniably held Nordic views
and believed in a natural alliance between the two Nordic countries Sweden and
Germany, he more strongly adhered to a traditional antagonism toward Russia and
the Soviet Union. For him, Germany ought to help Sweden overcoming this obsta-
cle in order to return, sooner or later, to the former status of a great power in Eu-
rope that Hedin longed for so eagerly. His journeys to Asia pursued not at least the
objective of strengthening the geopolitical position of Sweden against the un-
Nordic imperialism of the Russians and British. As a staunch Lutheran Protestant,
Hedin remained entirely immune to any Pagan influence whatsoever. Due to that,
his Nordicism was more a sort of conventional nationalism lacking the völkisch bias
by and large.
In her contribution, Isrun Engelhardt approaches two attempts to reach the
Tibetan capital and Holy City of Lhasa, one that had been undertaken by Sven He-
din at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century and one by Ernst
Schäfer (1910–92) in 1938/39. Although the quest for Tibet quickly got tied up
with esoteric and spiritual imaginations, Hedin’s interest in Tibet was fairly devoid
of mythological undercurrents. It was a matter of down-to-earth purposes rather
than of religious fantasies. The Swedish explorer’s thoughts were on geographical
and typographical matters, although he did not forget to promote his personal fame
in so doing. Surely Hedin’s explorations of Inner Asia have to be seen in the con-
text of the so-called Great Game, viz the strategic rivalry for supremacy in Central
Asia between Great Britain and Russia. Hedin succeeded quite well in maintaining
an independent position between the Russian bear and the British lion, as they both
stretched out into the regions east of Russia and north of India. Compared to the
imperialist greed of the British invasion, as manifested so visibly by the Younghus-
band expedition of 1903–4, Hedin’s project was much closer to the interests of the
Tibetan people. He nevertheless did not succeed in reaching the forbidden city of
Lhasa, which had been one of his main goals since the end of the nineteenth centu-
ry. A gifted author and an excellent public relations manager for himself, Hedin
produced a great number of popular travelogues, appearing in many translations
and editions and attracting tremendous interest in Europe. Ernst Schäfer, a young
German zoologist, followed in his steps. The Tibet expedition that Schäfer under-
took in 1938 in connection with the SS Ahnenerbe brought his team to the Tibetan
capital and the famous Potala Palace in January 1939. When Schäfer returned back
to Germany in August 1939, he was met by an enthusiastic reception. In order to
analyse the material he had collected in Tibet, a new branch of the SS Ahnenerbe
for Research on Inner Asia and Expeditions was established under Schäfer’s direc-
torship at the beginning of 1940. Three years later it was transformed into the
“Sven Hedin Reichsinstitut für Innerasienforschung”, which officially opened in
January 1943 in Munich.
The relationship between Schäfer and Hedin personalises the elective affinity
between Sweden and Germany in a remarkable way. It was impossible that under
National Socialist premises the exploration of Tibet could remain politically unin-
volved. Down to the present day, Hedin’s Germanophilic proclivities inflame heat-
ed debates as to how his conduct ought to be assessed. In Germany, the discussion
usually revolves around the Tibet Myth and the question of secret aims the
“Deutsche Tibet-Expedition Ernst Schäfer” might have had. Counter to the many
of esoteric conspiracy theories, more rational interests lay behind Nazi Germany’s
interest in Asia. In terms of geo-strategic interests, a possible attack of India or the
instigation of inner-Indian uprisings promised the weakening of Great Britain at a
sensitive point of its Empire.
Using Asatru groups as example, Stefanie v. Schnurbein deals with the migra-
tion of the Nordic idea into the broader current of New Religious Movements, a
phenomenon that has steadily grown since the 1970s. The term Asatru is a modern
compound of two Old Norse words meaning faith in the deities of the Nordic pan-
theon. Dating back to the völkisch point of departure at the end of the nineteenth
century, the Asatru movement in Europe and North America had an innate affinity
with the political right from the beginning. Contemporary Asatruers resumed the
old völkisch Paganism and tried to revive the religious connection with the German-
ic and Nordic gods. However, at the end of the twentieth century, a profound pro-
cess of religious diversification affected the Asatru movement. It seems only a
small minority of Asatruers with open fascist or racist views are left over. Most of
them nowadays concentrate on individual religiosity and the fulfilment of spiritual
Introduction 13
needs without attaching themselves to any explicitly political agenda. On the other
side of the political spectrum, a small group of leftist Asatru adherents evolved with
the intent of cleansing their religion of any völkisch, racist or fascist contamination.
What all Odinist or Asatru groups still have in common is the antagonism against
Christianity, which continues to be attacked for its dogmatic and unnatural teach-
ings. But Stefanie v. Schnurbein is absolutely right to concede a turning away of
many Asatruers from uncompromising enmity towards a greater indifference in the
recent past. This can be said for Paganism as a whole. Since the influence of Chris-
tianity is steadily decreasing in almost all regards, it has ceased to constitute a seri-
ous threat against which the own religious ambitions have to be pitted. That gen-
eral trend notwithstanding, a number of gateways for the re-entering of anti-
Christian, anti-Jewish and racist positions remain in existence. Especially in the
context of a new emphasis on polytheism, a certain dislike for monotheistic reli-
gions has emerged, opening the door for old-fashioned enemy stereotypes against
Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It does not seem very likely that the general devel-
opment towards a greater pluralisation of the religious landscape in all Western
countries will come to an end in the foreseeable future and give way for the return
of antiquated religious resentments, however.
It was not an easy decision to include a völkisch primary source, Herman Wirth’s
essay Utdrag ur ‘Den store Gudens äldsta runor’, in this volume. Its content is quite cha-
otic and incoherent and the outer design is not much better. In view of the fact that
Wirth’s legacy even today attracts adherents, the danger that his völkisch fantasies
might be taken seriously by kindred souls cannot be dismissed. On the other hand,
Wirth’s handwritten treatise fits almost perfectly to demonstrate with its deliberate
refusal to correspond to the standard requirements of academic learning the dan-
gers emanating from pseudoscience. Creativity, as such, and the unreserved dedica-
tion to a chosen idée fixe do hardly suffice to displace scholarly work with fanciful
ideas for the purpose of establishing a new theory. Hypotheses of that kind must,
sooner or later, end up in the realm of mere fiction. What makes things even worse
is Wirth’s association with National Socialist racism and his temporarily high-level
affiliation with Heinrich Himmler and the SS. Coming forward as a Germanophile
Flemish nationalist even before World War I, Wirth achieved astonishing success
when he published a völkisch bestseller in 1928, his 600-pages volume The Rise of
Mankind. Studies in the Religion, Symbolism and Scripture of the North-Atlantic Race.5 In it
he depicts the idea of a Nordic-Aryan people that would have lived around the At-
lantic Ocean before emigrating to the south after the Atlantis catastrophe. Out-
standing as they were, the descendants of the Nordic race bequeathed their legacy
to the world wherever they settled. As a result, Nordic signs and symbols are to be
found all along the course of their migration movement though Christianity had
destroyed and superimposed itself over a lot of their remnants later on. Wirth de-
5 Herman Wirth, Der Aufgang der Menschheit. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Religion, Symbolik
und Schrift der atlantisch-nordischen Rasse (Jena: Diederichs, 1928, 2nd ed. 1934).
clared a certain mental accordance with the Aryan worldview necessary to really
recognise the Nordic legacy and its value.
With The Rise of Mankind Wirth hoped to start an academic career in Germany.
This, however, did not happen. The University of Marburg where he wanted to
submit it as his habilitation reacted with uncompromising dismissiveness. Hermann
Jacobsohn (1879–1933), the renowned linguist and dean of Marburg’s philosophy
department, reported in his assessment that Wirth was an amateurish layman com-
pletely lacking scientific talent. His imaginative conjectures would place Wirth not
only outside of academic reasoning but of rational thinking as such.6 The Marburg
archaeologist Gero von Merhart (1886–1959) concurred, saying that the university
would expose itself to ridicule incorporating someone like Wirth into its teaching
staff.7 A few years later things turned around for Wirth when he received an ex-
traordinary professorship at the University of Berlin with a monthly income of 700
Reichsmark and without any teaching duties after the Nazis had seized power. At
the same time, the Jewish linguist Jacobsohn got existentially hit by the first anti-
Jewish measurements of the National Socialist government and committed suicide
on 27 April 1933 two days after his dismissal from the University of Marburg.8
Being in a state of excitement during these days, Wirth formulated great plans
to enlarge and institutionalise his projects. He came in contact with a number of
Nazi leaders, which gave him the opportunity to found a new society for the study
of primeval ideas called “Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte, Deutsches
Ahnenerbe” in July 1935. As its president Wirth easily managed a research trip to
Scandinavia as early as that autumn, followed by another in August 1936. The ma-
terial he collected in Sweden formed the basis for a manuscript on The Great God’s
Oldest Runes, of which a summary is published here in English for the first time. But
Wirth’s reputation suffered when he edited the notorious Ura-Linda-Chronik in
1933, which gave rise to heated debates.9 The alleged chronicle of the Friesian
family Over de Linden, however, turned out to be a fake, not the Nordic bible he
trumpeted so vigorously and damaged Wirth’s prestige considerably. Even Heinrich
Himmler, his most influential supporter, was forced to exercise greater caution,
eventually withdrawing his protective hand from him.
During Wirth’s second trip to Sweden, the Reichsführer SS called a meeting at
his private house in Tegernsee at the end of August 1936 to discuss the further
6 Jacobsohn to the Prussian ministry of science and education on 22 November 1929, see
Horst Junginger, “From Buddha to Adolf Hitler. Walther Wüst and the Aryan tradition”, in
idem ed., the Study of Religion Under the Impact of Fascism (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 115.
7 Ibidem.
8 Ibidem, p. 116.
9 Die Ura-Linda-Chronik. Übersetzt und mit einer einführenden geschichtlichen Untersuchung, ed. by Her-
man Wirth (Leipzig: Köhler & Amelang, 1933). The right-wing publisher Burkhart Weecke,
Horn-Bad Meinberg, offers a reprint of this “standard work of Indo-Germanic research” on
demand.
Introduction 15
course of the Ahnenerbe together with the fate of his protégé. Under the pressure
of public criticism, Himmler decided at this time to transform the old Wirth-society
into a scientific brain trust. For that purpose he engaged the young Munich profes-
sor of Indian and Iranian studies Walther Wüst (1901–93). Wüst was charged with
the reorganisation of the Ahnenerbe and took over Wirth’s position. Himmler
moreover instructed the ambitious university professor to supervise Wirth’s work
and writing to avoid further problems. In particular, Wüst was to correct Wirth’s
Odal manuscript – probably the intended book on The Great God’s Oldest Runes –
that even from Himmler’s perspective had to be revised comprehensively.10 Before
this, in March 1936, the old name of the “Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurge-
schichte Deutsches Ahnenerbe” had been abbreviated into “Das Ahnenerbe” to
announce the dissociation from Wirth. In February 1937, Wüst became the new
president and in December 1938 Wirth resigned from the Ahnenerbe entirely.
Quite understandably, Wirth experienced this development as a disaster. At the
very moment when he felt his deepest wishes were coming true, everything was
lost. Being on the edge of despair he sent Curman the excerpt from his treatise on
The Great God’s Oldest Runes in January 1939 with the hope that it might open the
door for a teaching or other position in Sweden. And again he was deeply disap-
pointed by the negative reaction of the national antiquarian in Stockholm. The list
of refusals continued when Wirth futilely tried to resume his habilitation plans in
Germany in the 1940s. Instead of the anticipated breakthrough he had to realise
that even those who would profit most from his insights failed to respond favoura-
bly. Wirth remained the völkisch outsider with weird ideas even beyond the downfall
of National Socialism until the end of his life.
3. Closing Remarks
The occupation with European Nordicism and its various sub-themes has come
into fashion in recent years. Vis-à-vis the problems of Europe developing a senti-
ment of common identity, it should be no surprise that parallel to the European
unification process scholars of different disciplines have reflected on what holds
people together and what divides them. It is equally understandable that the elitism
of Europe’s political leadership provokes opposition and the discontent of certain
segments of the population with regard to European norms and values set up and
represented by a class of privileged politicians. Growing antipathies against Europe
fuel not only the efforts of parties connected with radical right-wing populism but
also of ideological countercurrents among which some take refuge in alternative
models of religious allegiance. This is the context for this volume.
10 Junginger, “From Buddha to Adolf Hitler”, p. 122.

Most articles of these proceedings are concerned with how, under the pressure of
economic and political crises, mythological narratives run high and seek to explain
the otherwise inexplicable by way of a religious ‘rationalisation’. The central focus
of the book is directed towards the meta level of theoretical conceptualisations of
the “North”, although concrete attempts to realise their principles in practice are
inextricably linked with them. Particular emphasis has been put on the overlap of
religion, ideology, science and politics and their mutual penetration. Worldviews are
generally composed of inseparable sets of different elements deriving from these
four and other fields. On closer inspection, even the agendas of political pro-
grammes, established religions and seemingly fixed ideologies turn out to be more a
patchwork of ideas than a well-structured and deliberately canonised scheme. It is a
typical misunderstanding of scholars that their particular disciplinary approach
would be able to “explain things” and enlighten more than a small part of the prob-
lem. For obvious reasons, the scholarly engagement with Nordic ideas and ideolo-
gies has to be based on interdisciplinary oriented research methods in order to as-
sess their meaning and outcome convincingly.
Our conference plans started from the insight that in spite of a deeply en-
trenched antagonism between the two religions, Paganism as well as Christianity
played a significant role in the shaping of European Nordicism. Tackling the reli-
gious justification of a Nordic outlook on life with their inherent criteria, does not
bear much validity. Things are much more complicated and cannot be clarified with
a dichotic model that itself is based on acknowledged or unacknowledged religious
premises. What became clear from our common discussions was that the völkisch or
Nordic movement that came forward in the first half of the twentieth century de-
pended essentially on the combination of religious and scientific elements, or more
accurately on the wish of their followers to catch up with the requirements of a
modern understanding of the world. Neither religion nor science alone was deemed
capable of coping with the needs of modern man. Such holism is particularly char-
acteristic of people who argue against the negative corollaries of intellectualism and
who accuse abstract knowledge of its inability to answer the great questions of life.
It is quite interesting to see here how religion and science are esteemed irreconcila-
ble and mutually dependent on each other at the same time.
These kinds of repugnancies are unconscious reactions to conflicting circum-
stances with which they try to cope. Their inner contradictions signify the failure to
manage and integrate inconsistent experiences. If such problems grow to an over-
whelming seize, solving strategies tend to go beyond the ordinary, referring to
agents and agencies of an extramundane type. In the same way ancient traditions
from time immemorial help to stabilise unstable situations and promise security in
insecure times. Once accepted, Nordic or völkisch worldviews develop their own
dynamics. If they succeed and are generally accepted, criticism from within falls
under the suspicion of betrayal. Disapproval from outside is, on the other hand,
not only unable to get through the ideological armour, its persuasiveness may easily
Introduction 17
be turned into the counterargument that the strength of the enemy makes it neces-
sary to stand together as one. For any difficulties arising, anti-Nordic and anti-völ-
kisch forces are held responsible in a mode of thought that comes close to a con-
ventional conspiracy theory.
In order to understand the significance of European Nordicism in our days,
one should recall the opposite standpoints addressed. They all originate from the
context of the Enlightenment: first and foremost the political doctrine of egalitari-
anism. All other isms in this vein (liberalism, materialism, secularism, feminism, an-
ti-authoritarianism, cosmopolitanism, universalism, multiculturalism, Europeanism
and so forth) contribute to the antithesis that has to be fought against by means of
a national enlightenment and, eventually, by openly violent activities. In positive
regards, very few items can be found that distinguish Nordicist views from tradi-
tional conservative agendas. Probably Europe belongs to them. At any rate, it
would be necessary to better explain on what basis the idea of Europe rests upon in
order to prevent it from scaling up to the top of the Nordic enemy image.
References
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University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Berggren, Lena. “Building a New Society. Ideas on Social Revolution and the Con-
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—. “Completing the Lutheran Reformation: Ultra-nationalism, Christianity and
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Arndt, Astrid et al., eds. Imagologie des Nordens. Kulturelle Konstruktionen von Nördlichkeit
in interdisziplinärer Perspektive. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2004.
Emberland, Terje and Jorunn Sem Fure, eds. Jakten på Germania. Fra nordensvermeri til
SS-arkeologi. Oslo: Humanist forlag, 2009.
Grant, Madison. The Passing of the Great Race, or, The Racial Basis of European History.
New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1916.
Hilson, Mary. The Nordic Model. Scandinavia since 1945. London: Reaktion Books,
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schichte germanischer Religion und zum Problem der Kontinuitätsfrage aus religionswissen-
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Sørensen, Øystein and Bo Stråth, eds. The Cultural Construction of Norden. Oslo et al.:
Scandinavian University Press, 1997.
Sprio, Jonathan P. Defending the Master Race. Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of
Madison Grant. Burlington, Vt.: University of Vermont Press, 2009.
Wirth, Herman. Der Aufgang der Menschheit. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Religion,
Symbolik und Schrift der atlantisch-nordischen Rasse. Jena: Diederichs, 1928.
— ed. Ura-Linda-Chronik. Leipzig: Köhler & Amelang, 1933.
Zernack, Julia. “Nordische Mythen und Edda-Zitate im Dienst von Politik und
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Åkerlund, Andreas. Kulturtransfer och kulturpolitik. Sverige och Tyskland under det tjugonde
århundradet. Uppsala: Swedish Science Press, 2011.
Notion and Concept of the Nordic Idea
The Notions Völkisch and Nordic:
A Conceptual Approximation
Uwe Puschner
Preliminary Note
Ethnic, folkish, national, nationalistic, racial, ethnique, national and raciste are com-
mon English and French translations of the German word völkisch.1 The multiplicity
of interpretations demonstrated by these variant translations points not only to the
difficulty of appropriately translating the term but to the confusion the adjective völ-
kisch has caused for more than a hundred years as well.
Historical Remarks on the Political Slogan
It began in the mid-1870s with the proposal from völkisch language ideologue Her-
mann von Pfister-Schwaighusen that the Latin-rooted word “national” be Germa-
nised to völkisch.2 The use of the word quickly spread, initially throughout the pan-
German environment in Austria, then, at the turn of the century, entering the lan-
guage of German radical nationalism and becoming the sign of a hybrid, integral
nationalism.3 Its assimilation into mainstream German vocabulary and establish-
ment as a political rallying cry set off controversies about the word. Völkisch is, as
an Austrian proponent of the völkisch movement in 1925 stated, the same as nation-
al but somehow something different: “dasselbe wie ‘national’ und doch etwas an-

1 Winfried Baumgart, Wörterbuch historischer und politischer Begriffe des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts.
Deutsch, englisch, französisch (München: Oldenbourg, 2010), p. 531. Modern German-English
and German-French dictionaries normally translate völkisch as “national” or “nationalistic”;
for further examples, see fn. 23.
2 See Uwe Puschner, “Pfister (seit den 1880er Jahren ‘Pfister-Schwaighausen’), Hermann von”
Neue Deutsche Biographie 20 (2001), pp. 338–40. No definitive proof of Pfister-Schwaighusen’s
authorship is available, however it is probable.
3 See Günter Hartung, “Völkische Ideologie”, in Uwe Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch zur ‘völk-
ischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918 (München: Saur, 1996), pp. 22–41 (reprinted in Günter Hartung,
Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge, vol. 1, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2001, pp. 75–
98) and Uwe Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Sprache, Rasse, Reli-
gion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001), pp. 27–9. The term hybrid is
used for the völkisch movement by Stefan Breuer, Grundpositionen der deutschen Rechten 1871–
1945 (Tübingen: Edition diskord, 1999), p. 80. On the integral nationalism from a European
perspective, see Peter Alter, Nationalismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985), pp. 43–56 and
Siegfried Weichlein, Nationalbewegungen und Nationalismus in Europa (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft-
liche Buchgesellschaft, 2006), pp. 98–103.
22 Uwe Puschner
deres”. The words are similar to each other, like different dresses for two different
bodies from the same fabric (“zwei aus demselben Stoff für verschiedene Körper
zugenschnittene Kleider”).4
After the First World War, following initially aesthetic reservations about the
new word from linguists, lively and controversial debates began about the ideologi-
cal horizons of this political word, which is still contentious today. In the 1920s the
question “what does völkisch mean?” was continually posed by the völkisch move-
ment, by their political opponents, as well as by academics and linguists.5 The an-
swers given were extremely diverse. This had several causes:
(1) A significant factor was the both inflationary and resultantly imprecise use
of the term between the wars, as völkisch increasingly became a programmatic slo-
gan for countless different political forces, cultural critiques and literary move-
ments.6
(2) Though the adherents of the völkisch movement sought, for their part, to
distance themselves from these tendencies, even within the movement highly dif-
fering notions of the völkisch ideology existed. In consequence, and with an eye on
the diverging and in part antagonistic conceptions within the movement, it was re-
peatedly urged from within the völkisch ranks that there must be “above all, com-
plete, unconditional clarity about (…) what ‘völkisch’, the ‘völkisch idea’ is”.7 These
hopes of the völkisch ideologues – to give the movement an unmistakeable internal

4 Alfred Krauß, “Völkisch – Wahr und Irrig”, Deutschlands Erneuerung 9 (1925), pp. 395–409
and pp. 465–71, here p. 397 and p. 399.
5 From the völkisch side, see for instance Max Wundt, Was heißt völkisch? (Langensalza: Beyer,
1924), Max Robert Gerstenhauer, Der völkische Gedanke in Vergangenheit und Zukunft (Leipzig:
Armanen-Verlag, 1933), pp. 1–10, N.N., “Was ist deutschvölkisch?”, Thüringer Landes-Zeitung,
14 April 1914, N.N. [possibly Oscar E.G. Stillich], Deutschvölkischer Katechismus 1: Begriff und
Wesen des Völkischen (Leipzig: Oldenbourg, 1929); a critic of the völkisch idea was Julius Gold-
stein, Deutsche Volks-Idee und deutsch-völkische Idee. Eine soziologische Erörterung der Völkischen
Denkart (2nd ed., Berlin: Philo-Verlag, 1928, previously published as a series of essays in Der
Morgen. Monatsschrift des deutschen Judentums 2–3, 1926–27); for a sypmpathetic view of the völk-
isch movement, see Max Hildebert Boehm, Das eigenständige Volk. Volkstheoretische Grundlagen
der Ethnopolitik und Geisteswissenschaften (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1932), esp. pp.
17–23 and pp. 320–21; for an academic treatment of the phenomenon, cf. the following ref-
erences.
6 Martin Broszat, “Die völkische Ideologie und der Nationalsozialismus”, Deutsche Rundschau
84 (1958), p. 56, also Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik
(München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1978, 1st ed. München 1962), pp. 130–34. For
a multilayered application of the term, see the references in Jean Pierre Faye, Totalitäre Spra-
chen, Kritik der narrativen Vernunft. Kritik der narrativen Ökonomie, vol. 1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Ull-
stein, 1977), pp. 197–257, esp. p. 197; for a non-specific, and non-ideological usage of the
word, see the examples given in Hartung, Ideologie, p. 24 and Fritz Schalk, “Bemerkungen
über volkhaft, völkisch und verwandte Wörter”, in Helmut Stimm and Julius Wilhelm, eds.,
Verba et Vocabula. Ernst Gamillscheg zum 80. Geburtstag (München: Fink, 1968), pp. 525–26.
7 Gerstenhauer, Der völkische Gedanke, p. 1.
VIII Contents
THE MIGRATION OF THE NORDIC IDEA
Sven Hedin and German Scholars: The Cases of Wilhelm A. Unkrig

and Ferdinand Lessing
Hartmut Walravens ................................................................................................. 193
The Holy City of Lhasa: Dreams and Destination for Sven Hedin and
Ernst Schäfer
Isrun Engelhardt ...................................................................................................... 207
The Use of Theories of Religion in Contemporary Asatru

Stefanie v. Schnurbein ............................................................................................... 225
A VÖLKISCH ADDENDUM
Photographs of Wirth’s Excursions to Sweden .......................................................... 247
Summary of “The Great God’s Oldest Runes”. Fimbultý’s Prehistoric

Runes” (Voluspá 60)
Herman Wirth ......................................................................................................... 251
About the authors ............................................................................................................ 281

24 Uwe Puschner
and focused on the foundations of its ideological structure.13 In this, they point the
way that leads out of the dilemma and towards a precise usage of the term “völk-
isch” as a political slogan – a use which must stem from the völkisch movement, its
organisations and ideologues, and must concentrate on the elements of the ideolo-
gy.
Völkisch Movement
Völkisch ideology could never be formulated as a systematic ideology binding for

the entire movement.14 This is due to the fragmentation of the völkisch movement.
However there do exist significant fundamental convictions, a “core ethos”,15
shared by members of the völkisch movement – though with variations in the specif-
ic accentuations held by individual segments of the movement, its ideologues and
organisations. This even holds true for the völkisch concept of race, which was con-
strued in divergent ways from biologistic to spiritual notions,16 though the biolo-
gistic variant was dominant. Thus in examining its ideology, not only the völkisch
movement itself but also its structure as a loose network of alliances has to be tak-
en into consideration.17
The völkisch movement taking shape at the turn of the twentieth century was
multiform, both organisationally as well as in terms of its concerns, a collective
movement distinguished occasionally by opposing currents and frequently by rival-
ling groups and ideologues. It was characterised by its diverse, partially overlapping
part-movements – whether principally antisemitic, life-reforming, eugenic, cultural,
esoteric or religious in orientation. Its mainly male, Protestant membership was
predominantly bourgeois, from the old and new middle classes. A further charac-
teristic was the various exchange and demarcation processes, on the one side with

13 Meyers Lexikon, vol. 12 (7th ed., Leipzig 1930), pp. 820–21, Der Große Brockhaus. Handbuch des
Wissens in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 19 (16th ed., Leipzig 1934), p. 650, Der Große Herder. Nachschla-
gewerk für Wissen und Leben, vol. 12 (4th, completely revised ed., Freiburg 1935), col. 416–18.
14 See for this Stefan Breuer, “Von der antisemitischen zur völkischen Bewegung”, Aschkenas.
Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der Juden 15 (2005), p. 501.
15 Ibidem.
16 Breuer, Die Völkischen in Deutschland, p. 46.
17 Cf. Hartung, Ideologie, pp. 32–41, Breuer, Grundpositionen der deutschen Rechten, pp. 80–89 and
pp. 148–55, idem, Ordnung der Ungleichheit – die deutsche Rechte im Widerstreit ihrer Idee, 1871–
1945 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001) and Puschner, Die völkische
Bewegung, pp. 263–84; cf. also Gregor Hufenreuter, Philipp Stauff. Ideologe, Agitator und Organisa-
tor im Netzwerk des wilhelminischen Kaiserreichs. Zur Geschichte des Deutschvölkischen
Schriftstellerverbandes, des Germanen-Ordens und der Guido von List Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Pe-
ter Lang, 2011).
The Notions Völkisch and Nordic 25
the conservative, national and – especially after the First World War – National So-
cialist camps, and on the other with contemporary reform movements.18
From the mid-1890s, membership in the völkisch movement consisted princi-
pally of adherents of antisemitic, cultural-national and pan-German circles, as well
as of the life-reform movements, which goes back to the origins of the völkisch
movement. They can be found: (1) in organised antisemitism; (2) in the Austrian
pan-German movement, which is underestimated as a role model, and which was
closely tied to the völkisch movement;19 (3) in cultural nationalism, particularly in the
nationalist language and writing movement; and (4) in the life-reform movements
which had sprung up since the 1880s as a reaction to the modernisation of industri-
al society. The völkisch movement thus did not have its origins exclusively in the an-
tisemitic movement, nor does it stretch back to the period of early nationalism at
the beginning of the eighteenth century,20 as was repeatedly claimed in the völkisch
construction of its own history, which was, in part, taken up in the research based
on the thesis of the German Sonderweg, the “special path” of German history.21

18 See Uwe Lohalm, Völkischer Radikalismus. Die Geschichte des Deutschvölkischen Schutz- und
Trutzbundes 1919–1923 (Hamburg: Leibniz-Verlag, 1970), Breuer, Grundpositionen der deutschen
Rechten; idem, Ordnung der Ungleichheit, idem, “Gescheiterte Milieubildung. Die Völkischen im
deutschen Kaiserreich”, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 52 (2004), pp. 995–1016, Puschner
et al., eds., Handbuch zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’ and Armin Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in
Deutschland 1918–1932. Ein Handbuch (6th, completely revised and extended ed., Graz: Ares-
Verlag, 2005), pp. 99–114. For the reform movement, see Kai Buchholz et al., eds., Die Le-
bensreform. Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst in der Moderne, 2 vols. (Darmstadt:
Häusser, 2001) and Diethart Kerbs and Jürgen Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbe-
wegungen 1880–1933 (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1998); for the proportion of women in the
völkisch movement, cf. Uwe Puschner, “Völkische Diskurse zum Ideologem ‘Frau’”, in Wal-
ter Schmitz and Clemens Vollnhals, eds., Völkische Bewegung, Konservative Revolution, Nation-
alsozialismus (Dresden: Thelem, 2005), pp. 45–75.
19 See Michael Wladika, Hitlers Vätergeneration. Die Ursprünge des Nationalsozialismus in der k.u.k.
Monarchie (Wien: Böhlau, 2005) and Julia Schmid, Kampf um das Deutschtum. Radikaler National-
ismus in Österreich und dem Deutschen Reich 1890–1914 (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2009).
20 The close systemic relationship between the völkisch movement and antisemitism has recently
been referred to in Breuer, Milieubildung; and idem, Bewegung. In view of the diverse origins
and complexity of the völkisch movement and ideology, Breuer’s explanatory approach seems
to me too narrow; see my line of argument in Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung, pp. 51–66,
summarised in idem, “Anti-Semitism and German Voelkish Ideology”, in: Hubert Cancik
and Uwe Puschner, eds., Antisemitismus, Paganismus, Völkische Religion/Anti-Semitism, Paganism,
Voelkish Religion (München: Saur, 2004), pp. 55–63.
21 For the – hitherto not systematically researched – genesis of the völkisch ideology, see Bern-
hard Giesen et al., “Vom Patriotismus zum völkischen Denken: Intellektuelle als Kon-
strukteure der deutschen Identität”, in Helmut Berding, ed., Nationales Bewußtsein und kollek-
tive Identität. Studien zur Entwicklung des kollektiven Bewußtseins in der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1994), pp. 345–93, Klaus von See, Freiheit und Gemeinschaft. Völkisch-nationales
Denken in Deutschland zwischen Französischer Revolution und Erstem Weltkrieg (Heidelberg: Winter
2001), as well as George L. Mosse, Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Gott. Die völkischen Ursprünge des Na-
26 Uwe Puschner
Völkisch Ideology
The Völkisch ideology corresponded in character to a radical-nationalistic protest

and orientation movement with elements of a secular substitute religion (“Ersatzre-
ligion”).22 It rejected liberal and cosmopolitan values and, based on an all-encom-
passing racial ideology, strove towards the creation of a religion-based people’s – or
rather, racial – community, organised by profession and possessing a Germanic
ideological value system. It also aimed at a central European racial state or pan-
German confederation, which should particularly include Norway and Sweden as
the original Aryan-Germanic “homeland” and human reservoir in the racial-ideolo-
gical sense. The völkisch focus on northern Europe, namely Norway and Sweden,
was motivated by völkisch racial thinking and the assumption that, even if not the
cradle of humankind, it was certainly the original biological, spiritual and cultural
centre of the Germanic or Nordic race.23 This explains on one hand the ideological
endeavours and pseudo-scientific theories of völkisch researchers such as Ludwig
Wilser, Herman Wirth and Hans F.K. Günther and, on the other, the various völ-
kisch initiatives following the First World War in fraternities such as the Germanic
People’s Guild (“Germanen-Gilde”), the Germanic People’s Ring (“Germanen-
Ring”) or the Nordic Ring (“Nordischer Ring”) to establish institutional structures
with and against fellow believers in Scandinavia.24

tionalsozialismus (Königstein/Taunus: Athenäum, 1979) [2nd ed. entitled Die völkische Revolution.
Über die geistigen Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus, Frankfurt a.M.: Hain1991], pp. 1–6 and par-
ticularly Jost Hermand, Der alte Traum vom neuen Reich. Völkische Utopien und Nationalsozialismus
(2nd ed., Weinheim: Athenäum, 1995) for a critique of the problem of continuity.
22 For this problem, see Uwe Puschner, “Weltanschauung und Religion, Religion und Weltan-
schauung. Ideologie und Formen völkischer Religion”, Zeitenblicke 5-1 (2006), online availa-
ble on http://www.zeitenblicke.de/2006/1/Puschner/index_html.
23 Klaus von See, Barbar, Germane, Arier. Die Suche nach der Identität der Deutschen (Heidelberg:
Winter, 1994), Julia Zernack, “Anschauungen vom Norden im deutschen Kaiserreich”, in
Uwe Puschner et al. eds., Handbuch zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918 (München: Saur,
1996), pp. 482–511, Ingo Wiwjorra, “‘Ex oriente lux’ – ‘Ex septentrione lux’. Über den
Widerstreit zweier Identitätsmythen”, in Achim Leube, ed., Prähistorie und Nationalsozialismus.
Die mittel- und osteuropäische Ur- und Frühgeschichtsforschung in den Jahren 1933–1945 (Heidelberg:
Synchron, 2002), pp. 73–106.
24 Regarding these ideological and institutional relations, see Uwe Puschner, “Germanenideo-
logie und völkische Weltanschauung”, in Heinrich Beck et al., eds., Zur Geschichte der Gleichung
‘germanisch – deutsch’. Sprache und Namen, Geschichte und Institutionen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004),
pp. 103–29; for the Wilhelmine and the post-war period, see Nicola Karcher, “Schirmorgan-
isation der Nordischen Bewegung: Der Nordische Ring und seine Repräsentanten”,
Nordeuropaforum (2009), pp. 7–35, Birgitta Almgren et al., “Alfred Rosenberg und die
Nordische Gesellschaft. Der ‘nordische Gedanke’ in Theorie und Praxis”, Nordeuropaforum
(2008), pp. 7–51, Stefan Breuer, “Die ‘Nordische Bewegung’ in der Weimarer Republik”,
Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 57 (2009), pp. 485–509 and idem, “Der Streit um den
‘nordischen Gedanken’ in der völkischen Bewegung”, Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesges-
As far as the völkisch movement and ideology is concerned, the adjective völkisch is
essentially defined in terms of race.25 Völkisch racial ideology constitutes the ideolo-
gical basis. It is underpinned by a range of all the ideologemes of Germanic Volks-
tum (national character) and homeland ideology right up to those of völkisch antise-
mitism and the blueprints for religion.26 In völkisch thinking, race was considered to
be the defining dimension of a people and of individuals. According to the völkisch
view, the past, presence and future of a people could be explained with this racial
dogma inflated by religion. Alongside Social Darwinism and eugenics, völkisch racial
ideology was above all based on the ideas of Gobineau. These grounded on the as-
sumption that Aryans would constitute the highest form of the human race and
that among the Aryans the Germanic or Nordic race ought to be considered the
highest developed and thus the dominant race.
The Germanic ideology flowing from this conviction was one of the pillars of
the völkisch ideological construct. It referred back to older traditions and postulated
a racial hierarchy with the Germanic race at the top, from which all advanced cul-
tures would stem, furthermore positing a genealogical community stretching back
to a dim and distant past. Against this background, the predestination and superior-
ity of the Germanic race was proclaimed. With recourse to the ideologeme of a
“chosen people”27, the Germans were considered its most authentic representa-
tives. But it also formed the basis for a racially-historically legitimated “Lebenswelt”
with a race-specific (“species-specific”) value system and behavioural norms.28 The-

chichte 62 (2010), pp. 1–27; for a focus on National Socialism, see Terje Emberland and Jo-
runn Sem Fure, eds., Jakten på Germania: fra nordensvermeri til SS-arkeologi (Oslo: Humanist For-
lag, 2009).
25 The racial-ideological basis of the term is referred to by Hitler’s biographer Allan Bullock as
well as by French translators of National Socialist literature; Faye, Sprachen, pp. 203–4; by
contrast, the early translators of Mein Kampf used the term “folkish”, see Adolf Hitler, Mein
Kampf, ed. by John Chamberlain et al. (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939), e.g. p. 498.
26 Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung, pp. 49–201; parallel to other völkisch ideologemes, highly di-
vergent interpretations of the concept of race have to be assumed, which “fluctuate between
biologistic and spiritualistic conceptions” (Breuer, “Von der antisemitischen zur völkischen
Bewegung”, p. 523).
27 Hartmut Lehmann, “The Germans as a Chosen People. Old Testament Themes in German
Nationalism”, in idem, “Religion und Religiosität in der Neuzeit. Historische Beiträge”, ed.
by Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen and Otto Ulbricht (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1996), pp. 248–259; also Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples. Sacred Sources of National Identity
(Oxford: University Press, 2003).
28 Puschner, “Germanenideologie” and idem, “Völkische Geschichtsschreibung. Themen, Au-
toren und Wirkungen völkischer Geschichtsideologie”, in Wolfgang Hardtwig and Eberhard
Schütz, eds., Geschichte für Leser. Populäre Geschichtsschreibung in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert
(Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), pp. 294–97; for the genesis and formation, see Klaus von See,
Deutsche Germanen-Ideologie vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum,
1970), idem, Barbar, Germane, Arier. Die Suche nach der Identität der Deutschen (Heidelberg: Win-
ter, 1994), Rainer Kipper, Der Germanenmythos im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Formen und Funktionen
28 Uwe Puschner
se found expression, for example, in male-connoted heroism, in notions of male-

dominant relationships between the sexes and in a decidedly anti-emancipatory
view of women, which reduced the woman to the functions of reproduction, the
roles of mother and wife, and ascribed to her as an emotional being visionary pow-
ers.29
The self-image as racially superior was accompanied in the dualistically-concei-
ved völkisch ideology by a threat from inferior races, which was one of the causes
for the völkisch tendency to war. From this resulted the following notions, which
prevailed to varying, more or less aggressive degrees in the whole völkisch move-
ment: (1) antisemitism; (2) anti-Slavism (which, together with antisemitism after the
First World War included anti-Bolshevism); (3) anti-Romanism (with its manifesta-
tions of anti-clericalism, anti-Catholicism and anti-Jesuitism); and (4) the rejection
of all forms and manifestations of internationalism (such as social democracy, paci-
fism, freemasonry, or the women’s movement).30
Along with the external threat, the völkisch ideology constructed an internal one,
partly self-inflicted through an unhealthy behaviour such as drinking and smoking,
and partly as a result of outside influences of other races and civilisations, leading
to racial miscegenation and an accelerating degeneration of the “Germanic race”
through contemporary transformational processes of industrial society. Under the
slogan of a “German rebirth”, a comprehensive programme of racial renewal was
developed, which concentrated on education31 and covered all aspects of the state,

historischer Selbstthematisierung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), Stefan Arvidsson,
Aryan Idols. Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
2006, Swedish as Ariska idoler. Den indoeuropeiska mytologin som ideologi och vetenskap, Stockhom:
Brutus Östling, 2000) and Ingo Wiwjorra, Der Germanenmythos. Konstruktion einer Weltanschau-
ung in der Altertumsforschung des 19. Jahrhunderts (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft, 2006).
29 See Julia Hornig, “Völkische Frauenbilder”, Ariadne. Forum für Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte
43 (2003), pp. 37–42, Puschner, “Ideologem ‘Frau’”, Ute Planert, Antifeminismus im Kaiser-
reich. Diskurs, soziale Formation und politische Mentalität (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1998) and Christiane Streubel, Radikale Nationalistinnen. Agitation und Programmatik rechter Frau-
en in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2006).
30 In addition to the titles listed in fn. 18, see Werner Bergmann, “Völkischer Antisemitismus”
and Wolfgang Wippermann, “Antislavismus”, both in Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch zur ‘völ-
kischen Bewegung’, pp. 449–63 and pp. 512–24, as well as Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung, pp.
207–14 and Eva-Maria Ziege, Mythische Kohärenz. Diskursanalyse des völkischen Antisemitismus
(Konstanz: UKV Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002).
31 Völkisch conceptions of upbringing were closely connected with the progressive educational
movement; cf. the contributions in Kerbs and Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reform-
bewegungen, pp. 315–424 and Meike Sophia Baader, Erziehung als Erlösung. Transformationen des
Religiösen in der Reformpädagogik (Weinheim: Juventa, 2005). Earlier research concentrated on
adult educational völkisch conceptions and measures; essential in that regard is Justus H. Ul-
bricht, “Völkische Erwachsenenbildung. Intentionen, Programme und Institutionen zwi-
schen Jahrhundertwende und Weimarer Republik”, in Uwe Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch
the society and everyday life, a programme influenced by theorems of positive and
negative eugenics and especially by life-reforming concepts. The völkisch ideal was
the “New Man”, stylised as a “racial aristocrat”32 and distinguished by his geniality
and heroism. Possessing the external attributes that could be seen from a völkisch
perspective among racially-kindred Scandinavians, the “New Man” would be tall,
dolichocephalous (i.e. long headed), blond-haired and blue-eyed.33
The emphasis on nature, “homeland”34 and a natural, physically-oriented way
of life, led to a decidedly anti-urban outlook and to the adoption of conservative
agro-romantic convictions, which had been influenced by the blood and soil ideol-
ogy and which renounced the industrial-Capitalist economic model, trying, with the
help of racial concepts, to turn towards an agrarian-oriented corporate social struc-
ture. This found further expression in demands for a new “Lebensraum”, primarily
for agriculture (especially in central-eastern and eastern Europe) as well as in con-
ceptions of garden cities and in the völkisch settlement movement. The latter was
similarly inspired by Social Darwinist, eugenic and life-reforming models and

zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’, pp. 252–76; cf. also the case study of Bettina Irina Reimers, Die neue
Richtung der Erwachsenenbildung in Thüringen 1919–1933 (Essen: Klartext, 2003) and on the ini-
tiator of the völkisch adult education movement Matthias Piefel, “Bruno Tanzmann. Ein
völkischer Agitator zwischen wilhelminischem Kaiserreich und nationalsozialistischem Füh-
rerstaat”, in Schmitz and Vollnhals, eds. Völkische Bewegung, pp. 255–80. In contrast, the con-
ceptions and initiatives regarding the völkisch schooling of children and the young have been
studied only rudimentarily; some references are to be found in Puschner, Die völkische Bewe-
gung, pp. 136–38 and passim and Stephanie Bohra, Arthur Schulz und die Blätter für deutsche Er-
ziehung. Völkische Vorstellungen von Erziehung und Unterricht im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich (un-
published Master’s thesis Freie Universität Berlin, 2002).
32 Alexandra Gerstner, Rassenadel und Sozialaristokratie. Adelsvorstellungen in der völkischen Bewegung
(1890–1914), 2nd revised ed., (Berlin: Sukultur, 2006) and eadem, Neuer Adel. Aristokratische
Elitekonzeptionen von Intellektuellen zwischen Jahrhundertwende und Nationalsozialismus (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008).
33 See the references in Kerbs and Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen; Buch-
holz et al., eds., Die Lebensreform; Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe, ‘Der neue Mensch’. Körperkultur im
Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumnn, 2004), Maren
Möhring, Marmorleiber. Körperbildung in der deutschen Nacktkultur (1890–1930) (Köln: Böhlau,
2004), with a focus on the völkisch ideology: “Uwe Schneider, Nacktkultur im Kaiserreich”
and Rolf Peter Sieferle, “Rassismus, Rassenhygiene, Menschenzuchtideale”, both in Uwe
Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’, pp. 411–35 and pp. 436–48, Thomas
Adam, “Heinrich Pudor – Lebensreformer, Antisemit und Verleger”, in Mark Lehmstedt
and Andreas Herzog, eds., Das bewegte Buch. Buchwesen und soziale, nationale und kulturelle Bewe-
gungen um 1900 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), pp. 183–96 and Puschner, Die völkische Be-
wegung, pp. 115–23.
34 For this, see the case study by of Kai Detlev Sievers, ‘Kraftwiedergeburt des Reiches’. Joachim Kurd
Niedlich und der völkische Heimatschutz (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007).
30 Uwe Puschner
sought to realise utopias of racial breeding, which, however, were rejected by the
völkisch majority.35
Indebted particularly to Paul de Lagarde and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the
core ideas of the völkisch movement were shaped by an antisemitic, anti-Catholic,
anti-Roman and in some cases decidedly anti-Christian flavoured demand for a
“native” religion, i.e. a religion specific to the nature of one’s own race and peo-
ple.36

35 Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung, pp. 151–65 and pp. 173–201; on the garden city, see Dirk
Schubert, ed., Die Gartenstadtidee zwischen reaktionärer Ideologie und pragmatischer Umsetzung. The-
odor Fritschs völkische Version der Gartenstadt (Dortmund: Irpud, 2004); essential with regard to
the settlement movement is Ulrich Linse, “Völkisch-rassische Siedlungen der Le-
bensreform”, in Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch der ‘völkischen Bewegung’, pp. 397–410; on spe-
cific völkisch settlements, see Christoph Knüppel, ed., Dokumente zur Geschichte der völkischen
Siedlung Heimland bei Rheinsberg (Herford: Selbstverlag, 2002), idem, “‘Vorarbeiten zu einer
geistigen Einheit des deutschen Volkes’: Friedrich Schöll als Leiter der Württembergischen
Bauernhochschule und der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vogelhof”, in Paul Ciupke et al., eds., ‘Er-
ziehung zum deutschen Menschen’. Völkische und nationalkonservative Erwachsenenbildung in der
Weimarer Republik (Essen: Klartext, 2007), pp. 187–216, idem, “Im Lichtkleid auf
märkischem Sand. Die völkische Siedlung Wodanshöhe bei Groß Bademeusel”, Forster Jahr-
buch für Geschichte und Heimatkunde (2011), pp. 73–97 and, affirmatively, Gertrud Kummer,
Klingberg am See. Von Obstbauern und Lebenskünstlern (Lübeck: Weiland, 2003); on racial breed-
ing, see Gregor Hufenreuter, “Zwischen Liebe, Zweck und Zucht. Völkische Ehe-
Vorstellungen am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts”, Ariadne. Forum für Frauen- und Geschlechterges-
chichte 48 (2005), pp. 16–25 and Uwe Puschner, “Mittgart – eine völkische Utopie”, in Klaus
Geus, ed., Literarische Konzepte von einer ‘anderen’ Welt im abendländischen Denken von der Antike bis
zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2011), pp. 155–85; for the life reform movment, see the
contributions in Buchholz et al., eds., Die Lebensreform, pp. 407–15 and Kerbs and Reulecke,
eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen, pp. 227–313.
36 Völkisch religious conceptions are quite well researched, see Justus H. Ulbricht,
“Deutschchristliche und deutschgläubige Gruppen”, in Kerbs and Reulecke, eds., Handbuch
der deutschen Reformbewegungen, pp. 499–511, the contributions in Puschner et al., eds., Hand-
buch zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’, pp. 149–85, Stefanie von Schnurbein and Justus H. Ulbricht,
eds., Völkische Religion und Krisen der Moderne. Entwürfe ‘arteigener’ Glaubenssysteme seit der Jahrhun-
dertwende (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001), Cancik and Puschner, eds., Antisemi-
tismus and with further bibliographical references Puschner, “Weltanschauung und Religion”;
for Lagarde and Chamberlain, see Ulrich Sieg, Deutschlands Prophet. Paul de Lagarde und die Ur-
sprünge des modernen Antisemitismus (München: Hanser, 2007) and Anja Lobenstein-Reich-
mann, Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Zur textlichen Konstruktion einer Weltanschauung. Eine sprach-,
diskurs- und ideologiegeschichtliche Analyse (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008).
Völkisch Religion and Religiousness
Religion must be considered the “Archimedean point” of the völkisch ideology.37

Religion and religiousness constituted the decisive motor forces for völkisch thinking
and action inasmuch as they provided the justification for the racist völkisch ideolog-
ical construct38 (1), asserted the divine chosenness of the German race, being ex-
pressed in racial superiority and manifested in the symbolism of blond hair and
blue eyes as sun and sky (2), and legitimised the claim of the Germanic peoples and
their descendants to global leadership and domination (3).
Conceptions about specific forms of the native religion were as diverse as the dif-
fuse faces of the völkisch movement itself. In contrast to the decided rejection of
Christianity through the so-called Neopagans, who, with reference to Tacitus’ Ger-
mania, the Icelandic Edda traditions and an ideological interpretation of archaeolog-
ical findings (e.g. in Scandinavia), sought to revive alleged Germanic beliefs,39 the
völkisch majority favoured a “Deutschchristentum”, an Aryanised or Germanised
Christianity, emanating from Protestantism but detached from Pauline and Jewish
Old Testament foundations.40
Conclusion
As a hybrid of radical nationalism, the völkisch movement appears to be a confusing

and, on first contact, elusive phenomenon. The heterogeneous nature of the völkisch
idea prevented any consensus in ideological regard, for the völkisch movement as a

37 Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’, p. XIX.
38 For the religious discourse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, see Ulrich Lin-
se, “Säkularisierung oder Neue Religiosität? Zur religiösen Situation in Deutschland um
1900”, Recherches Germaniques 27 (1997), pp. 117–41, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Die Wiederkehr
der Götter. Religion in der modernen Kultur (München: Beck, 2004), esp. pp. 133–78 and, with a
particular emphasis on the völkisch idea, Justus H. Ulbricht, “‘… in einer gottfremden,
prophetenlosen Zeit …’ Aspekte einer Problemgeschichte ‘arteigener’ Religion”, in von
Schnurbein and Ulbricht, eds., Völkische Religion, pp. 9–29; esoteric elements are addressed
by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus (Graz: Stocker,
1997, originally published in English, Wellingborough: Aquarian Press1985) and Black Sun.
Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York: University Press, 2002).
39 On the reception of Tacitus and Edda, see Allan A. Lund, Germanenideologie im Nationalsozi-
alismus. Zur Rezeption der ‘Germania’ des Tacitus im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Heidelberg: Winter, 1995),
Julia Zernack, “Germanische Restauration und Edda-Frömmigkeit”, in Richard Faber, ed.,
Politische Religion – und religiöse Politik (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1997), pp. 143–
60, and the contribution of Debora Dusse in this volume.
40 On this, with extensive literary references, see Uwe Puschner, “Deutschchristentum. Über
christlich-völkische Religiosität”, in Richard Faber and Gesine Palmer, eds., Der Protestantis-
mus. Ideologie, Konfession oder Kultur? (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003), pp. 91–
122.
32 Uwe Puschner
whole but also for its various parts and filiations. Nevertheless, the ideology of this
“community of belief”41 can be described in terms of fundamental structures,
which grounded in racial ideology. Therefore it is possible to differentiate the
movement and its ideology from other ideologically related systems. To do so, a
conceptualisation of the völkisch ideology is required that should address the core
features sketched out above. This is also necessary to compare the German model
with other Nordic countries in Scandinavia and elsewhere.42 For this reason, it is
probably the best to maintain the German term völkisch as none of the translations
is able to describe the full dimensions of the völkisch concept. Rather, they fore-
shorten the ideology, not to say falsify it.
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Introduction:
Nordic Ideology, Religion and Scholarship
Horst Junginger and Andreas Åkerlund
1. The Relevance of the Nordic Myth
Although our modern understanding of the world seems to oppose timeworn ste-
reotypes such as the “North” and proscribed ideologies such as Nordic or völkisch
ones, the Nordic myth is perhaps only hibernating and may be reinvigorated if time
and circumstances allow. In the current financial market crises, many and some-
times tough accusations have been voiced against those lazy people in the southern
parts of Europe who would squander the money of hard working people further to
the north. If they continue with both their incapability and unwillingness to stick to
Northern standards in terms of economy, labour and a less idle attitude toward life,
the only appropriate answer would be to discipline them or possibly show them the
door. And not far below Greece the black abyss lies in waiting to overrun Europe
exploiting its social welfare system and the wreck of its prosperity.
The ideological borderlines of European Nordicism have, quite obviously,
shifted from eastern Communism and western Capitalism towards the south in ge-
ographical as well as in political and religious concerns and are now primarily di-
rected at the spread of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. And again the question
becomes pressing how Europe and the North may attain a defensible coherence by
means of common ideas and values. Since identity formations generally function
better by way of distinction, the fight against everything perceived as dangerous
and hostile usually supersedes all efforts for a positive definition of Europe rapidly.
Ideological unity still seems to be unachievable without an ideological enemy. In
states of tension, intellectuals often fall prey to or even profit from the conceptuali-
sation of otherness, having no qualms about acting against the principles of scien-
tific universalism and the international constitution of scholarship.
Due to the general rejection of everything connected with National Socialism
any new form of Nordicism will, at least in the respectable parts of our societies,
have to take a detour around ordinary forms of nationalism or proto-Nazi ideas.
Therefore, it is little wonder that the political programmes of conservative revolu-
tionaries are undergoing a revival these days and that socio-biological views cen-
tring on a homo europaeus in the tradition of Madison Grant (1865–1937), the influ-
ential anti-miscegenation activist and propagator of a “scientific racism”, are boom-
ing. Beyond that, eugenic and racialist ideas proliferate all over Europe’s far right
and Northern imaginations are bundled into fascist sheaves anew. The European
Declaration of Independence of Anders Behring Breivik (born 1978) is greatly influ-
enced by Madison Grant’s postulation of genetic purity, which Breivik takes as an
ideological tool for the defence of Europe against the Islamic intruders from out-
side and the Marxist adversaries from within.1 Breivik e-mailed his manifesto to
some 1,000 addressees shortly before the Oslo blast and the Utøya massacre on 22
July 2011, many of them members of the Christian right, but also Pagan Odinists.
While Breivik concedes Odinism is part of the nascent movement against the polit-
ical establishment, he strongly emphasised that only a powerful Christian self-
consciousness in the tradition of the Templars would have the power to overthrow
multiculturalism, cultural Marxism and the Islamic threat. Posing the rhetorical
question of whether Odinists could become part of a resistance movement based
on Christian values, he answered in the affirmative: “Even Odinists can fight with
us or by our side as brothers in this fight as long as they accept the founding prin-
ciples of PCCTS, Knights Templar and agree to fight under the cross of the mar-
tyrs.”2 Breivik’s Nordic worldview seeks to transcend a narrow-minded understand-
ing of Christianity into a rightist interconfessionalism, similar to the sorts seen in
the 1930s and 40s.
In his own words, Breivik studied Old Norse mythology and had “a lot of re-
spect for Odinist traditions”, thinking highly of them as an important part of Nor-
wegian culture and identity. He nevertheless left no doubts about his own religious
commitment and the ideological superiority of Christianity compared to Nordic
Paganism:
Odinism is significant for the Nordic countries but it does not have the potency to
unite us against such a devastating force as Islam, cultural Marxism/multiculturalism
and capitalist globalism.3
Only the reinvigoration of a military Christian spirit would avert the ongoing attack
on the occidental way of life. As Europe is at the edge of disaster, immediate ac-
tion, indeed a holy war, would be necessary to prevent its extinction. The Christian
basis of Breivik’s imaginations of the North unfortunately passed widely unheeded
in the public debate and did not attract the scholarly attention it deserves. Since
Christian terrorism is generally conceived as a contradiction in itself, someone like
Breivik appears to be completely alien to the majority. His view of things is there-
fore relegated from a possible option within the mainstream discourse of the radi-
cal right to a state of mental illness. Breivik must be crazy, otherwise he could not
1 Breivik’s manifest 2083: A European Declaration of Independence is to be found all over the web.
It considers 2083 the year when the conservative revolution ought to be completed. Four
hundred years earlier the Great Turkish War, the War of the Holy League initiated by Pope
Innocent XI, had started to expel the Ottoman troops from Europe in 1683. 2083 means
2011 by way of adding 8+3 in the second part of the number.
2 Breivik, A European Declaration of Independence, p. 1360. PCCTS is the abbreviation of Pauperes
Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple
of Solomon (Christian Military Order of the Temple).
3 Ibidem, p. 1361.
Introduction 3
have committed such crimes, such ungodly deeds in opposition to all human values
and Christian tenets.4
On a less dramatic level and far away from religious-based violence, Northern
myths also prevail in our present day culture, where they normally appear in the
form of romantic idealisations of the North. The clearness and naturalness of the
Scandinavian landscape and people are not only cited by the leaflets of tourist
agencies but have found widespread, almost global, acceptance. Scandinavia’s wel-
fare system continues to be appreciated as a symbol of Nordic solidarity and as
model of how a wholesome folk community could and should function. Other ex-
amples may be added to one’s liking. Nothing is wrong with a particular predilec-
tion for Nordic literature, Nordic jazz or Nordic crime movies even if those prefer-
ences come along with an element of resentment toward other forms of film, music
and literature. If we are honest to ourselves, we have to concede that our own
mindset is not always as free of bias as we like to imagine. Individual preferences
for what people like to label “Nordic” should therefore be accepted as unproblem-
atic, but not without question, as it is difficult to differentiate a clear line where the
tolerable inclination ends and the questionable preconceptions start. Well before
the advent of fascism, plenty of myths and illusions connected with the North
flourished all over Europe in various branches of the arts as well as in tourism and
sales promotion without exceedingly adverse effects. But it is quite evident that
economic and political depressions, not to speak of the chaotic aftermath subse-
quent to military conflicts, inevitably generate derogatory prejudices of all sorts and
reinforce the tendency towards aggressive encapsulations or even hatred against
others. To put a stop to violent clashes becomes almost impossible when feelings
have started to run high. Perhaps only education and knowledge acquired long time
in advance may have the necessary countervailing effects when the going gets
tough.
2. The Starting Point of this Volume

The present volume originates from an international symposium on “Nordic Ide-
ology between Religion and Scholarship. Pagan and Christian Imaginations in
Scandinavian-German Scientific Exchange in the First Half of the 20th Century”
that was organised by the authors of this introduction and that took place at the
University of Uppsala from 23–25 August 2010. Participants came from Sweden,
Germany, Finland, Norway and Australia. It was our intention to address with it
the religious and scientific contexts in which the idea of the North evolved into a
mainstay of extreme nationalism not only in National Socialist Germany but also in
a number of pro Nazi-German movements in Scandinavia. Based on the initial ob-
4 It should be noted here that Christian terrorists, unlike Islamic terrorists, are considered to
act in contrast and not in compliance with their religion and holy writ.
servation that the imagination of the North could prosper equally on Pagan as well
as on Christian premises, the religious indistinctness of the Nordic idea required, in
our view, scientific clarification. The revival of Nordic and Old Norse myths was
not restricted to an anti-Christian heathendom, where it served as spiritual funda-
ment of a new Pagan religion. Also within the realm of Christianity, especially
among Lutheran Protestantism and völkisch German Christians, the idea of a Nor-
dic heritage found a firm rooting. Common features in the intersection of Nordic
types of Christianity and Paganism included the deeply ingrained antagonism
against Judaism and Bolshevism in first place. To a lesser extent the imperialism of
the British Empire functioned as political antipode to consolidate the idea of a
Nordic alliance especially in the course of World War I and II. After 1945, the po-
litical post-war constellation compelled a modification of the old enemy images that
were partly abandoned, regenerated or complemented by new spectres of exagger-
ated libertarianism carried to extremes by the hippie subculture.
In addition to the strictly religious parts of the Nordic idea, the aim of the con-
ference was directed at a new scholarly occupation with the North that increased
considerably in the first half of the twentieth century. From a narrow-minded reli-
gious or anti-religious perspective the amalgamation of religion and science looks as
it would be improper or mutual exclusive. On the contrary, however, the correla-
tion between scientific and religious constituents is an indispensable prerequisite
for any successful religion or religious worldview in modern times. Therefore, dis-
ciplines like archaeology, Germanic and Nordic studies, ethnography, folklore stud-
ies, history, prehistory and especially religious studies featured prominently in the
shaping of what counted as “North” and “Nordic”. In search for the inner bonds
of the assumed fellowship of all Nordic men and peoples, a science-based religious
perception turned out to be the crux of the matter. Questions of spiritual kinship
became closely intertwined with questions of biological lineage. Since the natural
and biological sciences totally failed to produce any definitive evidence of a Nordic
race or of hereditary traits of its members, other factors had to constitute the
community of the North and establish a reliable border dividing between Nordic
and un-Nordic. A combination of religious and scientific explanations provided the
ideological basis for the setup of a commonly shared Nordic identity with the final
goal of justifying the supremacy of the North and rationalising a ‘natural’ contradic-
tion between people of Nordic descent and their opponents.
The conference also wanted to shed light on the differences between Scandi-
navia and Germany with regard to the perception of the Old Norse heritage and its
role for the construction and reconstruction of the Nordic Myth. It is obvious that
the use of Old Norse material to forge the nation’s past differed considerably be-
tween the Scandinavian countries, possessing a lot of pre-Christian antiquities, and
Germany, which had no remnants of that time. On both sides of the Baltic, the
“North” was thus perceived and defined in different ways long before the period
treated in this volume. Any comparative approach therefore has to be attentive to
these variations of the same pattern “North” resulting from different historical
Introduction 5
conditions. But Germany and Scandinavia were no strangers to each other since
there has always been an intensive contact over the Baltic Sea. Contact does how-
ever rarely mean equality. At least since the nineteenth century, Germany was an
important, if not the most important, reference point or even role model for Swe-
dish intellectual, military and economic elites. At the same time, German intellectu-
als such as the brothers Grimm showed great interest in Scandinavian pre-Christian
culture, using it as a mythological fountain of youth for the German nation. This
relationship, formulated as a Wahlverwandtschaft (elective affinity) between the “Ger-
manic peoples”, is vital for the understanding of the contributions in this book.
The huge impact of the German academe on the intellectual life in Scandinavia
and the close cultural contacts between the two regions do however raise the ques-
tion of how ideas and ideologies ‘travelled’ between them. This addresses the im-
portant question of intellectual transfer through publications and personal contacts.
The idea of transfer does however mean that both the dislocation and relocation of
ideas always entail reinterpretations, which have to be adapted to new political and
cultural circumstances. Transfer studies concerning the scientific and völkisch Nor-
dicism would not only show patterns of selective reception based in the different
scientific and cultural contexts of Germany and Scandinavia, but also help to prob-
lematise the idea of a shared image of the North on both sides of the Baltic Sea.
The symposium’s main objective was to fathom the ideological principles and
intellectual depth of European Nordicism. Owing to the great number of mytholo-
gems that have gained currency in various subject areas under the umbrella term
“North”, a reflective interdisciplinarity is needed to deal with the iridescent and
multifaceted character of the Nordic idea adequately. It is not easy to apply stable
categories to a rather unstable and frayed topic and develop tenable generalisations
in so doing. Therefore we thought it important to bring together different scholarly
approaches and methodologies to overcome a mere phenomenology of glimmering
ideas and repulsive behaviours characteristic of the völkisch or Nordic movement.
Only if we widen our disciplinary perspective and sharpen our theoretical tools it
will be possible to deal with the ramifications and heterogeneous character of the
Nordic idea. The question of how the situation in Scandinavia coincided or stood
at odds with the German understanding of the North still waits to be answered on
the background of a broad analysis of European politics, religion and culture. As a
matter of course, international cooperation has to be strengthened in the case of a
transnational attempt at a better understanding of Nordic imaginations. Although
history does not repeat itself, the reinvigoration of the North as an ideological ref-
erence point to cluster fears and threats connected with the East, the West or the
South is far from being a purely scientific issue in the world of today. The success
of populist right-wing parties everywhere in Europe and the devastating activities
of terrorist cells and lone fighters in their wake demonstrate the contemporary rele-
vance of the Nordic myth in a blatantly obvious manner.
Five months after the symposium on “Nordic Ideology between Religion and
Scholarship” we held another international congress at the University of Uppsala
from 17–18 January 2011 on “Sven Hedin and His Relationship with Germany: An
Elective Affinity Based on Mutual Sympathies”. Two contributions of that gather-
ing – the one by Isrun Engelhardt and the one by Harmut Walravens – have be-
come part of the present collection of articles. Both conferences arose from a re-
search stay of the German signatory of this preface in Uppsala that resulted from a
generous grant of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. It is my particular
desire to thank the foundation in Stockholm for the bestowal of its esteemed
Humboldt Award that gave me the opportunity for an intensive exchange as schol-
ar in residence at the Department of History at Uppsala University. Many thanks
go to the History Department and the Forum for German Studies (Forum för
Tysklandsstudier) in Uppsala for their logistic backing. The Forum for German Stud-
ies also supported both conferences financially. The main funding however came
from the Swedish Research Council and the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg’s
Foundation. From my German perspective I cannot do otherwise but praise the
dependable and unbureaucratic way in which both institutions allocated their sub-
sidies.
3. Particular Aspects of the Nordic Myth as Presented in this

Volume
The first part of the book provides clarification of what usually figures into the
Nordic idea and ideology. Uwe Puschner starts with an historical survey of the
emerging völkisch movement and the intrusion of its political slogans into the public
discourse in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. He makes clear that
völkisch worldviews were based on certain historical premises and accompanied by
particular linguistic characteristics, distinguishing the literal meaning of the word
“folk” and its derivations from related semantic fields around notions such as eth-
nicism, chauvinism, conservatism, jingoism, nationalism, Nordicism, patriotism,
populism, racism and such like. The well-known impossibility of translating the
German expression völkisch into other languages is caused by the glimmering nature
of the völkisch ideology itself. Even today, scholars are bothered with definitional
problems and try to determine the specific nature of the völkisch concept properly.
Puschner outlines a large part of the relevant literature on various aspects of the
völkisch idea and movement. He brings to mind how difficult it is to achieve appro-
priate generalisations in the complicated habitat where the Nordic mindset evolves.
Particularly in the transition towards “normal” forms of national hyperbole, prob-
lems differentiating the precise meaning of the völkisch or Nordic surplus increase.
Specifying the role of the German paradigm appears therefore as plausible option
to attain a better understanding of the ideological content and function of völkisch
Nordicism in Europe.
Introduction 7
Horst Junginger treats in his article the question of whether the general trend to-
wards a non- or anti-Christian interpretation of the North in the SS and related or-
ganisations was really representative of the situation in National Socialist Germany
as a whole. Contrary to the assumptions of the so-called historiography of the
church struggle, we have in fact no reliable data of the extent of the estrangement
from Christianity and the breadth of the interest in founding a new heathen reli-
gion. None of the various Pagan groups in Germany succeeded in imparting its re-
ligious agenda to the SS or gained any significant influence in the Third Reich.
Quite the reverse, their proverbial and well-kept sectarianism constituted a key ob-
stacle to the forming of a new Nordic religion. In fact, almost all branches of or-
ganised Paganism fell under the surveillance of the SD, the Secret Service of the SS,
being considered a menace to the unification of the German people. Though NS
politicians frequently used the anti-Christian impetus of the völkisch religious move-
ment to put pressure on the churches, Pagans failed to shift National Socialism in
the direction of a Nordic, Germanic, or Indo-Germanic religion. This notwith-
standing, it has to be conceded that a significant part of the SS leadership and a
considerable number of intellectuals sympathetic to organisations such as the Ah-
nenerbe of the SS were in search of a new Nordic worldview encompassing ele-
ments of a Pagan religion. That this kind of religious seeking would have led to
church-like structures, the establishment of a Pagan priesthood and the creative
“invention” of novel gods and dogmas appears to be quite unlikely. Treating the SS
Ahnenerbe, the brain trust of Himmler’s black order, and its activities in terms of a
conventional think tank and not as spearhead of a new Pagan religion, Junginger
pleads for a better distinction between supernatural religions and intermundane
worldviews, with an interesting contact zone in between.
Section two deals with the ideological absorption of intellectuals in Germany
and Sweden who put emphasis on particular aspects of the Nordic myth. Debora
Dusse explores at the beginning how a number of politically and ideologically in-
volved scholars such as Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881–1962), Bernhard Kummer
(1897–1962) and Åke Ohlmarks (1911–84) managed to include the system change
that took place after World War II in their scientific agenda. Following the idea of a
“surplus value” of Eddic literature, Dusse’s starting point is the observation that
academics working on Old Norse material had an explicit or implicit interest in
transcending the aridity of academic scholarship towards worldview issues related
to the demands of one’s own folk and life. Translating and writing commentaries
on the Poetic Edda and the Snorra Edda, as adapting features of Norse mythology to
original literary works, provided these intellectuals with the opportunity to expound
their political views in scientific guise. This occurred in marked contrast to the
marginal importance of the Eddic tradition in scientific contexts (in opposition to
political ones) in previous times when the focus regarding the Old Norse tradition
had been on the Icelandic sagas. The main reason for that bias was the primacy of
the interest in Nordic or Germanic culture, of which religion was only one aspect.
Another reason arose from a different reading of the Eddic texts and the mytholo-
gical value attributed to them regarding their capacity to function as a source for
the resuscitation of an Old Norse religion. The spectrum of interpretations ranged
from the idea of the Edda as a Germanic or Nordic bible of völkisch Pagans to treat-
ing the texts as a strictly literary tradition transmitted in Iceland in Christian times.
Hence Dusse underlines the various ways in which the reception of the Eddas
evolved among philologists, historians of religions as well as in Pagan contexts be-
fore and after 1945.
What happened to the Nordic or völkisch strain within Old Norse studies after
1945? This question is approached by Bernard Mees in his contribution on Walter
Baetke (1884–1978). Professor of history of religion in the Third Reich and of
Nordic philology in the German Democratic Republic at the University of Leipzig,
Baetke is probably best known for his 1942 study Das Heilige im Germanischen. After
the war, Baetke turned more surely to Old Norse mythology, where he continued
developing his prewar reputation as a critic of romantic excess. He moreover
played an important role for the re-shaping of religious studies in both parts of
Germany. Criticised recently for his radical source criticism, Baetke seems to have
adopted a quite transformed attitude toward the studies of Old Germanic Heil after
1945. Yet was does Baetke’s skepticism mean for the modern-day understanding of
Heil in Old Norse and Germanic studies? Did he become a hypercritic after 1945
or was his work from the Nazi period itself tainted by the obvious association of
Königsheil with the Führer cult? Dealing with these kinds of questions, Mees anal-
yses the context of Baetke’s understanding of Heil in light of recent studies of
Germanic antiquity, post-war academic apologetics and influential discourses of
Aryanism, leadership and charisma, which prevailed in the years of the Nazi dicta-
torship. Whereas the fact that Baetke’s political opposition to National Socialism
was grounded on a conservative Christian point of view is beyond question, his
scholarly position regarding Old Norse studies appears more ambivalent and open
to interpretation, as Mees shows.
In the case of the German-Dutch amateur historian Herman Wirth (1885–
1981), his classification as a staunch propagator of National Socialist Germanophil-
ia is unambiguous and leaves little space for reservation. As founding member of
the predecessor organisation of the SS Ahnenerbe and inventor of what he himself
titled Geistesurgeschichte, Wirth can be seen as a paradigmatic model of Germany’s
scientific decline in the time of fascism. The article by Luitgard Löw casts fresh
light on Wirth’s work after his exclusion from the Ahnenerbe in 1938. Already at
the beginning of 1939, Wirth approached the Swedish National Antiquarian Sigurd
Curman (1879–1966) with a treatise on Scandinavian rock art sites that would re-
veal the symbolism of an ancient Indo-Germanic religion. Wirth moreover claimed
that the ideograms he had detected during two expeditions on behalf of the Ahne-
nerbe in Sweden in 1935/6 would be the definite proof of a primeval Nordic civili-
sation, which, however, had been over-layered and partly destroyed by Christianity
Introduction 9
in later times. Wirth’s interpretation of the runic alphabet in particular was intended
to provide material evidence of the high level of civilisation the Germanic forefa-
thers had reached long before the advent of alien traditions such as Jewish Christi-
anity. Wirth occupied himself with all sorts of “Nordic” signs, cultic symbols, writ-
ing systems and iconographic remnants, merging them together without considera-
tion of geography or dating. On the basis of a wide variety of studies, he detected
age-old symbols, myths and narratives, which he used to imaginatively reconstruct a
primeval Indo-Germanic worldview that would have originated from the Arctic
and have gone back to Palaeolithic times. With the handwritten excerpt from a
manuscript titled Den store Gudens äldsta runor (The Great God’s Oldest Runes),
Wirth hoped to convince the Swedish antiquarian Curman to enable his admission
into the Swedish academe. Since the book has not been discovered yet, the sum-
mary preserved by Curman in his archival records in Stockholm is of great signifi-
cance for a better understanding of Wirth’s Nordic völkisch mythology. Given the
importance of Wirth for the völkisch movement as such, we thought it helpful and
reasonable to include an English translation of Wirth’s treatise on The Great God’s
Oldest Runes as addendum at the end of this volume.
Anders Gerdmar is concerned with another vital aspect of völkisch Nordicism
within the Protestant context, that is to say with an explicit Christian form of völ-
kisch antisemitism. It was not only among Pagans, but also among German Chris-
tians that the Jewish people functioned as ideological counter-model against which
almost all positive values could be set against. Gerdmar’s analysis of the Protestant
theologian and Luther specialist Erich Vogelsang (1904–44) reveals how a völkisch
reading of the anti-Jewish statements of the great sixteenth century reformer func-
tioned as religious and political justifications of the Third Reich’s persecution poli-
cy. Studying the precursors of National Socialist exegesis in German Protestant
theology, Gerdmar saw himself confronted with the question how to gauge the
general nature of the relationship between Protestantism and Judaism. The
Protestant faith had been such an important ideological element in German culture
that its anti-Jewish impetus must have had an extraordinary impact on the shaping
and spreading of antisemitic resentments. This holds true for Protestant currents of
all denominational shades but particularly for upright proponents of Lutheran the-
ology. For that reason, Gerdmar focuses on Protestant confessional and enlighten-
ment theology with regard to their common theological roots and stance towards
Judaism. He argues that fundamentals of Protestant theology such as the Law-Gos-
pel distinction not only favoured a dichotomy where Jews represented the negative
side, but that this trace can be found in both of the otherwise divided lines in Ger-
man Protestantism.
Lena Berggren presents the Swedish Manhem Society as one of the most im-
portant Swedish pro-Nazi associations. The society was founded in September
1934 in memory of the scientist and writer Olaus Rudbeck (1630–1702) who had
published a large treatise Atland eller Manhem at the end of the seventeenth century
to prove that Sweden should be regarded as the legendary island Atlantis and, fur-
thermore, as the cradle of civilisation. The main intent of the Manhem Society was
to promote the national cause apart from ordinary party politics by way of a natio-
nal education campaign. During the decade of its existence, some 400 public lec-
tures were held to enlighten the Swedes of their glorious heritage and its responsi-
bilities for the presence. The term ultranationalism used by Berggren describes the
intention of the Manhem Society very well. Its main characteristics were a romanti-
cist nationalism, opposition to Western democracy, political and social elitism, cul-
tural criticism, racism, antisemitism and a particular inclination towards National
Socialist Germany, which increased during World War II. The Nordic ideology of
the Manhem Society lacked the anti-Christian impetus of German Pagans. From
the perspective of its followers and sympathisers, a revival of the Nordic heritage
definitely ought to take place on Christian, i.e. on Protestant grounds. Hence, a re-
curring theme of the society’s agenda was the call for a second reformation and the
emergence of what was named an Evangelical Nordic Faith. The most frequent
theme of these lectures, however, was the subject of race and Judaism presented in
different variations and often intertwined with strands of cultural history and reli-
gion, placing the society in a definite völkisch context.
Using the example of three Swedish lecturers at German universities, Andreas
Åkerlund considers in his paper the question of in what way and in which academic
fields National Socialist Germany was attractive to Swedish scholars in the 1930s
and 40s. It goes without saying that the change of government in Germany that
brought the Nazis to power generated a prolific climate for the intensification of
the existing scientific relations between the two countries. Germany’s isolation in
the aftermath of World War I had prompted politicians and higher education offi-
cials to try to recover and intensify scholarly ties, lest they become entriely discon-
nected from the international developments and lose the leading scientific position
Germany had obtained in the nineteenth century. The appointment of Swedish lec-
turers at German universities has to be understood as part of a general strengthen-
ing of Scandinavian studies, which received a boost after 1933. To adapt them-
selves to the new political situation, several German universities tried to acquire a
Nordic profile by enhancing Old Norse and modern Scandinavian studies. Particu-
lar specialisations selected by these universities for implementation depended not
only on local preconditions but also on the interest and assertiveness of the actors
involved. On the Swedish side a national society for the preservation of Swedish-
ness abroad (Riksföreningen för svenskhetens bevarande i utlandet) assailed the financial,
organisational and ideological consolidation of lectureships in Germany. In combi-
nation with normal forms of establishing academic relations, cultural propaganda
was a matter of particular importance. Interestingly, the Nazi seizure of power did
not alter the mutual appointment of lecturers in Sweden and Germany in principle.
Rather it opened up a creative leeway to negotiate the financial terms and ideologi-
cal arguments for such kind of scientific exchange anew.
Introduction 11
The migration of the Nordic idea in geographical and spiritual regard is the topic of
the third section. Hartmut Walravens’s focus centres upon the relationship between
Sven Hedin (1865–1952) and the German scholars Wilhelm A. Unkrieg (1883–
1956) and Ferdinand Lessing (1882–1961). In both cases it becomes apparent how
important the support of the famous Swede was for the work of these German
scholars. Stemming from a long established friendship between Sweden and Ger-
many, the intellectual companionship survived, in Hedin’s, case three different
forms of government in Germany: monarchy, dictatorship and democracy. Need-
less to say, Hedin’s conduct during the time of National Socialism is of particular
interest for historians although this cannot be understood properly without taking
his basically monarchic orientation into consideration. Unkrieg as well as Lessing
profited very much from their connection with the world-celebrated Swedish ex-
plorer, both financially, because of work done for Hedin, and in terms of enhanced
reputations resulting from the contact with him and his explorations. Hedin bene-
fited equally from these two excellent German orientalists and their knowledge of
the pertaining languages and historical background, which enabled him to utilise
and publish the material of his expeditions to Inner Asia on a sound basis.
Hedin’s fame and public impact depended to a large extent to his magnetic
personality and his organisational talent in preparing, conducting and exploiting his
surveys of formerly uncharted or even unknown parts of the world. Contrary to
possible expectations, Hedin’s cooperation with the two German orientalists shows
little political or ideological content. While Hedin undeniably held Nordic views
and believed in a natural alliance between the two Nordic countries Sweden and
Germany, he more strongly adhered to a traditional antagonism toward Russia and
the Soviet Union. For him, Germany ought to help Sweden overcoming this obsta-
cle in order to return, sooner or later, to the former status of a great power in Eu-
rope that Hedin longed for so eagerly. His journeys to Asia pursued not at least the
objective of strengthening the geopolitical position of Sweden against the un-
Nordic imperialism of the Russians and British. As a staunch Lutheran Protestant,
Hedin remained entirely immune to any Pagan influence whatsoever. Due to that,
his Nordicism was more a sort of conventional nationalism lacking the völkisch bias
by and large.
In her contribution, Isrun Engelhardt approaches two attempts to reach the
Tibetan capital and Holy City of Lhasa, one that had been undertaken by Sven He-
din at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century and one by Ernst
Schäfer (1910–92) in 1938/39. Although the quest for Tibet quickly got tied up
with esoteric and spiritual imaginations, Hedin’s interest in Tibet was fairly devoid
of mythological undercurrents. It was a matter of down-to-earth purposes rather
than of religious fantasies. The Swedish explorer’s thoughts were on geographical
and typographical matters, although he did not forget to promote his personal fame
in so doing. Surely Hedin’s explorations of Inner Asia have to be seen in the con-
text of the so-called Great Game, viz the strategic rivalry for supremacy in Central
Asia between Great Britain and Russia. Hedin succeeded quite well in maintaining
an independent position between the Russian bear and the British lion, as they both
stretched out into the regions east of Russia and north of India. Compared to the
imperialist greed of the British invasion, as manifested so visibly by the Younghus-
band expedition of 1903–4, Hedin’s project was much closer to the interests of the
Tibetan people. He nevertheless did not succeed in reaching the forbidden city of
Lhasa, which had been one of his main goals since the end of the nineteenth centu-
ry. A gifted author and an excellent public relations manager for himself, Hedin
produced a great number of popular travelogues, appearing in many translations
and editions and attracting tremendous interest in Europe. Ernst Schäfer, a young
German zoologist, followed in his steps. The Tibet expedition that Schäfer under-
took in 1938 in connection with the SS Ahnenerbe brought his team to the Tibetan
capital and the famous Potala Palace in January 1939. When Schäfer returned back
to Germany in August 1939, he was met by an enthusiastic reception. In order to
analyse the material he had collected in Tibet, a new branch of the SS Ahnenerbe
for Research on Inner Asia and Expeditions was established under Schäfer’s direc-
torship at the beginning of 1940. Three years later it was transformed into the
“Sven Hedin Reichsinstitut für Innerasienforschung”, which officially opened in
January 1943 in Munich.
The relationship between Schäfer and Hedin personalises the elective affinity
between Sweden and Germany in a remarkable way. It was impossible that under
National Socialist premises the exploration of Tibet could remain politically unin-
volved. Down to the present day, Hedin’s Germanophilic proclivities inflame heat-
ed debates as to how his conduct ought to be assessed. In Germany, the discussion
usually revolves around the Tibet Myth and the question of secret aims the
“Deutsche Tibet-Expedition Ernst Schäfer” might have had. Counter to the many
of esoteric conspiracy theories, more rational interests lay behind Nazi Germany’s
interest in Asia. In terms of geo-strategic interests, a possible attack of India or the
instigation of inner-Indian uprisings promised the weakening of Great Britain at a
sensitive point of its Empire.
Using Asatru groups as example, Stefanie v. Schnurbein deals with the migra-
tion of the Nordic idea into the broader current of New Religious Movements, a
phenomenon that has steadily grown since the 1970s. The term Asatru is a modern
compound of two Old Norse words meaning faith in the deities of the Nordic pan-
theon. Dating back to the völkisch point of departure at the end of the nineteenth
century, the Asatru movement in Europe and North America had an innate affinity
with the political right from the beginning. Contemporary Asatruers resumed the
old völkisch Paganism and tried to revive the religious connection with the German-
ic and Nordic gods. However, at the end of the twentieth century, a profound pro-
cess of religious diversification affected the Asatru movement. It seems only a
small minority of Asatruers with open fascist or racist views are left over. Most of
them nowadays concentrate on individual religiosity and the fulfilment of spiritual
Introduction 13
needs without attaching themselves to any explicitly political agenda. On the other
side of the political spectrum, a small group of leftist Asatru adherents evolved with
the intent of cleansing their religion of any völkisch, racist or fascist contamination.
What all Odinist or Asatru groups still have in common is the antagonism against
Christianity, which continues to be attacked for its dogmatic and unnatural teach-
ings. But Stefanie v. Schnurbein is absolutely right to concede a turning away of
many Asatruers from uncompromising enmity towards a greater indifference in the
recent past. This can be said for Paganism as a whole. Since the influence of Chris-
tianity is steadily decreasing in almost all regards, it has ceased to constitute a seri-
ous threat against which the own religious ambitions have to be pitted. That gen-
eral trend notwithstanding, a number of gateways for the re-entering of anti-
Christian, anti-Jewish and racist positions remain in existence. Especially in the
context of a new emphasis on polytheism, a certain dislike for monotheistic reli-
gions has emerged, opening the door for old-fashioned enemy stereotypes against
Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It does not seem very likely that the general devel-
opment towards a greater pluralisation of the religious landscape in all Western
countries will come to an end in the foreseeable future and give way for the return
of antiquated religious resentments, however.
It was not an easy decision to include a völkisch primary source, Herman Wirth’s
essay Utdrag ur ‘Den store Gudens äldsta runor’, in this volume. Its content is quite cha-
otic and incoherent and the outer design is not much better. In view of the fact that
Wirth’s legacy even today attracts adherents, the danger that his völkisch fantasies
might be taken seriously by kindred souls cannot be dismissed. On the other hand,
Wirth’s handwritten treatise fits almost perfectly to demonstrate with its deliberate
refusal to correspond to the standard requirements of academic learning the dan-
gers emanating from pseudoscience. Creativity, as such, and the unreserved dedica-
tion to a chosen idée fixe do hardly suffice to displace scholarly work with fanciful
ideas for the purpose of establishing a new theory. Hypotheses of that kind must,
sooner or later, end up in the realm of mere fiction. What makes things even worse
is Wirth’s association with National Socialist racism and his temporarily high-level
affiliation with Heinrich Himmler and the SS. Coming forward as a Germanophile
Flemish nationalist even before World War I, Wirth achieved astonishing success
when he published a völkisch bestseller in 1928, his 600-pages volume The Rise of
Mankind. Studies in the Religion, Symbolism and Scripture of the North-Atlantic Race.5 In it
he depicts the idea of a Nordic-Aryan people that would have lived around the At-
lantic Ocean before emigrating to the south after the Atlantis catastrophe. Out-
standing as they were, the descendants of the Nordic race bequeathed their legacy
to the world wherever they settled. As a result, Nordic signs and symbols are to be
found all along the course of their migration movement though Christianity had
destroyed and superimposed itself over a lot of their remnants later on. Wirth de-
5 Herman Wirth, Der Aufgang der Menschheit. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Religion, Symbolik
und Schrift der atlantisch-nordischen Rasse (Jena: Diederichs, 1928, 2nd ed. 1934).
clared a certain mental accordance with the Aryan worldview necessary to really
recognise the Nordic legacy and its value.
With The Rise of Mankind Wirth hoped to start an academic career in Germany.
This, however, did not happen. The University of Marburg where he wanted to
submit it as his habilitation reacted with uncompromising dismissiveness. Hermann
Jacobsohn (1879–1933), the renowned linguist and dean of Marburg’s philosophy
department, reported in his assessment that Wirth was an amateurish layman com-
pletely lacking scientific talent. His imaginative conjectures would place Wirth not
only outside of academic reasoning but of rational thinking as such.6 The Marburg
archaeologist Gero von Merhart (1886–1959) concurred, saying that the university
would expose itself to ridicule incorporating someone like Wirth into its teaching
staff.7 A few years later things turned around for Wirth when he received an ex-
traordinary professorship at the University of Berlin with a monthly income of 700
Reichsmark and without any teaching duties after the Nazis had seized power. At
the same time, the Jewish linguist Jacobsohn got existentially hit by the first anti-
Jewish measurements of the National Socialist government and committed suicide
on 27 April 1933 two days after his dismissal from the University of Marburg.8
Being in a state of excitement during these days, Wirth formulated great plans
to enlarge and institutionalise his projects. He came in contact with a number of
Nazi leaders, which gave him the opportunity to found a new society for the study
of primeval ideas called “Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte, Deutsches
Ahnenerbe” in July 1935. As its president Wirth easily managed a research trip to
Scandinavia as early as that autumn, followed by another in August 1936. The ma-
terial he collected in Sweden formed the basis for a manuscript on The Great God’s
Oldest Runes, of which a summary is published here in English for the first time. But
Wirth’s reputation suffered when he edited the notorious Ura-Linda-Chronik in
1933, which gave rise to heated debates.9 The alleged chronicle of the Friesian
family Over de Linden, however, turned out to be a fake, not the Nordic bible he
trumpeted so vigorously and damaged Wirth’s prestige considerably. Even Heinrich
Himmler, his most influential supporter, was forced to exercise greater caution,
eventually withdrawing his protective hand from him.
During Wirth’s second trip to Sweden, the Reichsführer SS called a meeting at
his private house in Tegernsee at the end of August 1936 to discuss the further
6 Jacobsohn to the Prussian ministry of science and education on 22 November 1929, see
Horst Junginger, “From Buddha to Adolf Hitler. Walther Wüst and the Aryan tradition”, in
idem ed., the Study of Religion Under the Impact of Fascism (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 115.
7 Ibidem.
8 Ibidem, p. 116.
9 Die Ura-Linda-Chronik. Übersetzt und mit einer einführenden geschichtlichen Untersuchung, ed. by Her-
man Wirth (Leipzig: Köhler & Amelang, 1933). The right-wing publisher Burkhart Weecke,
Horn-Bad Meinberg, offers a reprint of this “standard work of Indo-Germanic research” on
demand.
Introduction 15
course of the Ahnenerbe together with the fate of his protégé. Under the pressure
of public criticism, Himmler decided at this time to transform the old Wirth-society
into a scientific brain trust. For that purpose he engaged the young Munich profes-
sor of Indian and Iranian studies Walther Wüst (1901–93). Wüst was charged with
the reorganisation of the Ahnenerbe and took over Wirth’s position. Himmler
moreover instructed the ambitious university professor to supervise Wirth’s work
and writing to avoid further problems. In particular, Wüst was to correct Wirth’s
Odal manuscript – probably the intended book on The Great God’s Oldest Runes –
that even from Himmler’s perspective had to be revised comprehensively.10 Before
this, in March 1936, the old name of the “Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurge-
schichte Deutsches Ahnenerbe” had been abbreviated into “Das Ahnenerbe” to
announce the dissociation from Wirth. In February 1937, Wüst became the new
president and in December 1938 Wirth resigned from the Ahnenerbe entirely.
Quite understandably, Wirth experienced this development as a disaster. At the
very moment when he felt his deepest wishes were coming true, everything was
lost. Being on the edge of despair he sent Curman the excerpt from his treatise on
The Great God’s Oldest Runes in January 1939 with the hope that it might open the
door for a teaching or other position in Sweden. And again he was deeply disap-
pointed by the negative reaction of the national antiquarian in Stockholm. The list
of refusals continued when Wirth futilely tried to resume his habilitation plans in
Germany in the 1940s. Instead of the anticipated breakthrough he had to realise
that even those who would profit most from his insights failed to respond favoura-
bly. Wirth remained the völkisch outsider with weird ideas even beyond the downfall
of National Socialism until the end of his life.
3. Closing Remarks
The occupation with European Nordicism and its various sub-themes has come
into fashion in recent years. Vis-à-vis the problems of Europe developing a senti-
ment of common identity, it should be no surprise that parallel to the European
unification process scholars of different disciplines have reflected on what holds
people together and what divides them. It is equally understandable that the elitism
of Europe’s political leadership provokes opposition and the discontent of certain
segments of the population with regard to European norms and values set up and
represented by a class of privileged politicians. Growing antipathies against Europe
fuel not only the efforts of parties connected with radical right-wing populism but
also of ideological countercurrents among which some take refuge in alternative
models of religious allegiance. This is the context for this volume.
10 Junginger, “From Buddha to Adolf Hitler”, p. 122.

Most articles of these proceedings are concerned with how, under the pressure of
economic and political crises, mythological narratives run high and seek to explain
the otherwise inexplicable by way of a religious ‘rationalisation’. The central focus
of the book is directed towards the meta level of theoretical conceptualisations of
the “North”, although concrete attempts to realise their principles in practice are
inextricably linked with them. Particular emphasis has been put on the overlap of
religion, ideology, science and politics and their mutual penetration. Worldviews are
generally composed of inseparable sets of different elements deriving from these
four and other fields. On closer inspection, even the agendas of political pro-
grammes, established religions and seemingly fixed ideologies turn out to be more a
patchwork of ideas than a well-structured and deliberately canonised scheme. It is a
typical misunderstanding of scholars that their particular disciplinary approach
would be able to “explain things” and enlighten more than a small part of the prob-
lem. For obvious reasons, the scholarly engagement with Nordic ideas and ideolo-
gies has to be based on interdisciplinary oriented research methods in order to as-
sess their meaning and outcome convincingly.
Our conference plans started from the insight that in spite of a deeply en-
trenched antagonism between the two religions, Paganism as well as Christianity
played a significant role in the shaping of European Nordicism. Tackling the reli-
gious justification of a Nordic outlook on life with their inherent criteria, does not
bear much validity. Things are much more complicated and cannot be clarified with
a dichotic model that itself is based on acknowledged or unacknowledged religious
premises. What became clear from our common discussions was that the völkisch or
Nordic movement that came forward in the first half of the twentieth century de-
pended essentially on the combination of religious and scientific elements, or more
accurately on the wish of their followers to catch up with the requirements of a
modern understanding of the world. Neither religion nor science alone was deemed
capable of coping with the needs of modern man. Such holism is particularly char-
acteristic of people who argue against the negative corollaries of intellectualism and
who accuse abstract knowledge of its inability to answer the great questions of life.
It is quite interesting to see here how religion and science are esteemed irreconcila-
ble and mutually dependent on each other at the same time.
These kinds of repugnancies are unconscious reactions to conflicting circum-
stances with which they try to cope. Their inner contradictions signify the failure to
manage and integrate inconsistent experiences. If such problems grow to an over-
whelming seize, solving strategies tend to go beyond the ordinary, referring to
agents and agencies of an extramundane type. In the same way ancient traditions
from time immemorial help to stabilise unstable situations and promise security in
insecure times. Once accepted, Nordic or völkisch worldviews develop their own
dynamics. If they succeed and are generally accepted, criticism from within falls
under the suspicion of betrayal. Disapproval from outside is, on the other hand,
not only unable to get through the ideological armour, its persuasiveness may easily
Introduction 17
be turned into the counterargument that the strength of the enemy makes it neces-
sary to stand together as one. For any difficulties arising, anti-Nordic and anti-völ-
kisch forces are held responsible in a mode of thought that comes close to a con-
ventional conspiracy theory.
In order to understand the significance of European Nordicism in our days,
one should recall the opposite standpoints addressed. They all originate from the
context of the Enlightenment: first and foremost the political doctrine of egalitari-
anism. All other isms in this vein (liberalism, materialism, secularism, feminism, an-
ti-authoritarianism, cosmopolitanism, universalism, multiculturalism, Europeanism
and so forth) contribute to the antithesis that has to be fought against by means of
a national enlightenment and, eventually, by openly violent activities. In positive
regards, very few items can be found that distinguish Nordicist views from tradi-
tional conservative agendas. Probably Europe belongs to them. At any rate, it
would be necessary to better explain on what basis the idea of Europe rests upon in
order to prevent it from scaling up to the top of the Nordic enemy image.
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Notion and Concept of the Nordic Idea
Nordic Ideology in the SS and the SS Ahnenerbe 57
prevent Himmler and the Ahnenerbe from sliding into the vortex of völkish sectari-
anism with its manifold figments of a Nordic imagination running to leaf.
Generally, one can say that the religious character of the Ahnenerbe is a fiction
of later times. The major part of the Ahnenerbe work was directed towards the
ideological substantiation of the political purposes of National Socialism. Its reli-
gious undercurrents, though existing, failed to surface and determine the Ahne-
nerbe agenda. Even the belief in the strength and heritage of the Nordic race was
not particularly religious, but served the old German wish to dominate Europe.
Another question is of how to evaluate the success of the Ahnenerbe quest for ide-
ological hegemony within the Third Reich. The wishful thinking of figures like
Wirth and Wiligut can hardly be taken as proof of the Pagan background of the
Ahnenerbe, the SS or of National Socialism as such. It is quite evident that the Ah-
nenerbe efforts to attain a prerogative of interpreting the proper meaning and con-
sequences of the ideology of National Socialism were unsuccessful. Instead of sur-
mounting the polycratic system of power and ideology characterising Nazi Germa-
ny, the Ahnenerbe contributed to its augmentation. Other institutions within the
scope of the universities or the NSDAP succeeded pretty well in denying the Ah-
nenerbe demand for interpretational sovereignty. At the end of the war, most of its
projects had come to a halt except for the military scientific research. While the
general impact of the Ahnenerbe had been downplayed before the appearance of
Kater’s dissertation in 1974, its influence is considerably exaggerated in our days.
This particularly holds true for a non-scholarly occupation with the occult back-
ground and esoteric meaning of the Ahnenerbe.
Building on earlier publications, which address the ‘secret history’ of the Third
Reich, a whole genre of Nazi occultism with books, films, games etc., has emerged
in the recent past, a significant portion of which deal with the Ahnenerbe and its
assumed clandestine setting. Noteworthy examples are the video games Return to
Castle Wolfenstein, a first-person shooter released in 2001 that refers to the occult
forces of the Ahnenerbe and includes an actor with the name Karl Villigut, and Un-
charted 2: Among Thieves from 2009, an action-adventure video game featuring Ernst
Schäfer’s Tibet expedition. The anime First Squad: The Moment of Truth is a Russian-
Japanese coproduction, also from 2009, directing the supernatural powers of the
Ahnenerbe and its efforts to raise an army of crusaders from the Order of the Sa-
cred Cross.35 The popular role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, which had its 30th anni-
versary in 2011, deals with magical capacities fostered by the Ahnenerbe. Neofolk
bands such as Blood Axis (Michael Moynihan, Annabel Lee) draw on elements of
the Ahnenerbe ideology to frame their production. The Austrian martial or post-
industrial band Allerseelen (Gerhard Petak) uses the black sun of the Wewelsburg as
cover emblem and poems of Karl Maria Wiligut as textual basis for its songs. An-
other CD of Allerseelen with the title “Neuschwaben” has its focus on the German
35 An anime is a Japanese animated film or style of motion-picture animation.

58 Horst Junginger
Antarctic expedition to New Swabia in 1938/39. Many other patterns of an omni-

present Nazi mysticism could be added. Particularly the new media provide a fertile
environment for these kinds of fantasies. Being new in form, they share, however,
constitutive elements of older conspiracy theories that succeeded to outlive the de-
feat of National Socialism.
Attempts to illuminate the supposed esoteric or occult background of National
Socialism have become very popular but usually lack historical and scientific
grounding. Instead of explaining the spiritual underground of Nazism, they just re-
count earlier guesswork without omitting the chance to enrich old with new fanta-
sies contingent upon one’s personal taste. In addition to mere religious and histori-
cal speculations, many of these self-appointed experts act from a certain sympathy
for the political system involved. This holds particularly true for the “Ahnenerbe in
fiction” genre. While such a bearing fits quite well to Wiligut’s, Wirth’s and other
völkisch luminaries’ religious ideas, it is worse than useless, in fact wholly detri-
mental, to a scientific study of their real meaning and impact. Serious scholars
probably shy away from delving into the fantastic worlds created by the theoreti-
cians of the heathen fringe, knowing that an equally strenuous and boring work is
awaiting them. And on the level of later rehash, things are deteriorating even more.
Thus National Socialist Paganism and its muddy subsoil tend to attract the fascina-
tion of like-minded people rather than scholarly interests.
4. The General Irrelevance of Paganism
Vain Hope
With the National Socialist takeover of power, Pagan hopes for more influence and
a greater share mushroomed. For the first time ever Pagans thought to have good
reason to expect an end of their marginalisation and becoming a valuable, hopefully
even a vital, element of the National Socialist revolution that had been set in mo-
tion. To their painful experience none of the anticipations erupting in 1933 came
true. There was no single institution or governmental department, which allowed a
Pagan influence to spread. The Ministry of Science and Education rejected all Pa-
gan ambitions of getting involved in matters of school and higher education.36 In
spite of minor successes at the federal state level, Pagan teaching and teachers con-
tinued to be barred from the educational system. Other ministries, but also the
NSDAP and the SS, proved to be immune against the wish of Pagan groups to in-
36 Acting in line with his superior Bernhard Rust (1883–1945), Eugen Mattiat (1901–76), a
Protestant theologian in charge with the humanities from 1934–37, repelled all Pagan at-
tempts to gain a foothold in educational matters. See Horst Junginger, “Religionswissen-
schaft”, in Jürgen Elvert and Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora, eds., Kulturwissenschaften und Nationalsozi-
alismus (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008), pp. 61–63.
filtrate them as well. The overwhelming majority of Germans displayed not only a
firm reservation but were more often than not uncompromisingly dismissive of Pa-
ganism and its proselytization endeavours. Membership figures of Pagan organisa-
tions remained extremely low. It was only because of their assertive propaganda
that some of the Nordic, Germanic or other heathen associations were apprehend-
ed in public.
The early breakdown of the German Faith Movement provides convincing ev-
idence that, even under favourite circumstances, Pagans failed to expand their in-
fluence on a larger scale. They were even unable to attain ideological coherence in
their own ranks and unite more than a part of its spectrum. On these grounds it
proved hopeless to draw level with the churches and become a force to be reck-
oned with. In fact, Paganism remained the outsider phenomenon it had been all
along, without the least prospect of parity with its Christian opponents. To ac-
knowledge this simple truth should, however, not delude us into underrating the
religious altercations that affected National Socialist Germany. The founding of the
German Faith Movement can be seen as a significant expression of religious
change, showing that it was indeed possible to fuse parts of the Pagan awakening.
It depends on perspective, how the meaning of the word “significant” is assessed at
this point.
As Pagans saw it, the Christian primacy in Germany had not only suffered a
heavy setback but was on the edge of being overthrown. It could be only a matter
of time before they would supersede and take the place of their adversaries. The
representatives of the church conversely overstated the impact of Paganism. With
the aggressive evangelism and vile demeanour of its representatives in mind, they
accused Pagans not only of their anti-Christian propaganda, but of corrupting mor-
al standards and of undermining the ethical foundations of state and society on the
whole. On that basis it is hardly possible to achieve a sound estimation of the real
influence of völkisch Paganism. Both accounts show great deficits and consequently
entail biased judgments. The real situation had little to do with the soaring dreams
of Pagans and the agitation of the churches against them. Putting ideology aside, it
is beyond question that Paganism continued to be a negligible seize from the very
beginning until the very end of the Nazi reign. The notoriety of its existence did
not result from factual evidence, but from the ideological uproar its propagators
and adversaries brought about. Historical scholarship has the task to objectify these
turbulences and put them into perspective.
Statistical Evidence
Basic statistical data evince that Pagans miserably failed to reach more than a tiny
part of the population with their ideas of a Nordic or Indo-Germanic religion. The
population censuses of 16 June 1933 and 17 May 1939 display practically no differ-
ence regarding their size. The general distribution of 95 per cent Christians and 5
60 Horst Junginger
per cent non-Christians did not change either. In 1933, 95.2 per cent of an overall
population of 65.2 millions belonged to a Christian church. The remaining 4.8 per
cent consisted of Jews (0.8), unbelievers without any religious affiliation (3.7), peo-
ple making no statement (0.1) and 0.2 per cent or 153,152 persons believing in an-
other than the Christian or Jewish religion.37 The greatest change from 1933 to
1939 concerned the Jews who suffered bisection from 0.8 to 0.4 per cent, owing to
an increasing policy of expulsion. Six years after the Nazis had seized power, the
heathen fringe was still confined to a small subgroup within the small group of
about 5 per cent of people not affiliated with either the Protestant or Catholic
churches. The chart on the following page clearly illustrates that Christians contin-
ued to form the absolute majority of the now roughly 80 million residents of the
German Reich.38
During the war, the ratio shifted even further to the benefit of the churches.
Because the territories occupied by the German Wehrmacht had an overwhelming
Christian preponderance, the percentage of Pagans decreased correspondingly. A
Catholic compendium published in 1943 noticed with great satisfaction that among
the now 96 million inhabitants of “Groß-Deutschland” 48 millions were Catholics
and only 45 million Protestants. Adding Alsace-Lorraine, Luxembourg and the
“Generalgouvernement” with alone 9 million Catholics to the balance, the alterca-
tion would have been even more perceivable.39 The Catholic statisticians expected
the total size of all Christians to reach 105 million people in the near future, among
them 59 million Catholics and 46 million Protestants, which meant that Catholics
then would have succeeded to outnumber Protestants. Speaking of the Christian
share in Germany or Greater Germany respectively, involves numbers at the level
of 75 million prior and 100 million during World War II. Pagans, on the other
hand, barely exceeded a few thousands with an unambiguous tendency towards de-
clining. With them, evidently, waging war would have been impossible.
37 See for the 1933 figures the official Statistik des Deutschen Reiches, vol. 451-3 (Berlin: Verlag für
Sozialpolitik, Wirtschaft und Statistik, 1936), p. 3/7. For the whole German Reich only 34
groups with an Aryan or Germanic orientation are listed in the appendix (ibidem, p. 3/73);
most of them did, if at all, not exceed a few hundred members.
38 The numbers originate from the official census report published in Statistisches Reichsamt,
ed., Wirtschaft und Statistik 9-1 (1939), p. 173.
39 Kirchliches Handbuch für das katholische Deutschland, vol. 22 (Köln: J. P. Bachem, 1943), p. 158f.
The religious distribution of the German population

according to the census of 17 May 1939
Persons altogether Figures Percentages
Members of a church, religious associa-

tion or a worldview community on reli- 75,393,799 95.0
gious grounds
Namely:
Members of the Protestant 42,636,218 53.7
churches and denominations
Members of the Roman Catholic 31,943,932 40.3
Church
Other Christians 419,612 0.5
Jews 307,614 0.4

Members of other non-Christian
religious associations and world-
86,423 0.1
view communities on religious
grounds
God believing 2,745,893 3.5
Irreligious 1,208,005 1.5
Without statement 27,584 0.0
Total population 79,375,281 100.0
The religious distribution of the German population

according to the census of 17 May 1939, per cent
'#!%
!#!%
Protestants
&'#"% Catholics
!"#$%
Non-Christians
Other Christians
62 Horst Junginger
The general division of Christians and non-Christians

according to the census of 17 May 1939, per cent
$#$%
&'()*+,-*%
./-0&'()*+,-*%
!"#$%
If we have a closer look at the 5.5 per cent or 4,347,935 people outside the church-
es as of May 1939, this segment mainly consisted of nonbelievers, Jews, other non-
Christians and a new group of god believers, namely Germans who regarded them-
selves as “gottgläubig” (god believing) in a general sense. While the proportional
distribution of Christians and non-Christians at a ratio of 95:5 per cent remained
basically constant, within the group of non-Christians a noticeable fluctuation oc-
curred. In June 1933, the census had revealed 2.7 million or 3.7 per cent Germans
without any religious affiliation who were called “Gemeinschaftslose”, people
without a religious community. According to the statistical records, most of them
The distribution of the 5.5 per cent non-Christians
'$
!"#$
!"#$
!$
("#$
($
%"#$
%"#$
%$
&"'$
&"#$ &"%$
&$
)*+$,-./-0/12$ 344-./2/*56$ 7-86$ 9:;-4$4-./2/*16$$
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Nordic Ideology in the SS and the SS Ahnenerbe
Horst Junginger
1. The Historiography of the Church Struggle and its Misrepresen-

tations
The conceptual framework of the so-called historiography of the church struggle

has shaped the scholarly occupation with the religious development in the Third
Reich to a large extent. Two fallacious equations in particular affected the post-war
debate even within secular historical scholarship. The first was the identification of
National Socialism with National Socialist Paganism. In the continuation of the
former quarrels between church and state over the impact of a number of measures
taken against church interests, the Nazi regime appeared from a certain perspective
as political fulfilment of the worst of an anti-Christian heathendom aiming to anni-
hilate Christianity in Germany as a whole. Secondly, many if not most studies writ-
ten in the context of the church struggle supported the opinion that Christianity, its
doctrines and essential meaning, had been the only relevant counterforce in that
battle between the forces of light and darkness. This widespread idea of a deadly
combat between two antagonistic worldviews entailed a fairly distorted picture of
the German history of religions after 1933. Its simplistic bipolarity disregarded im-
portant overlaps and eliminated intermediary elements from the great many bilat-
eral relations that were in place. Any potential ideological permeability between
Christianity and National Socialism was contested and common features between
both them and between Christianity and Paganism were belittled or categorically
denied.
While the church struggle paradigm has been largely abandoned with regard to
Protestantism and Catholicism – consider just the works of Manfred Gailus and
Doris Bergen for the Protestant and the ones of Olaf Blaschke and Kevin Spicer
for the Catholic side1 – it is in full force when it comes to Paganism. With very little
factual evidence, much guessing and conjecturing prevail over earnest studies on
Pagan groups and individuals, on their beliefs and rites. An overview of the frag-
mented field of organised and non-organised Paganism is still far beyond reach.
With the exception of three dissertations by Ulrich Nanko, Hiroshi Kubota and
Schaul Baumann, no one has undertaken comparable efforts to shed light on the
1 Cf. Manfred Gailus, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur nationalsozialistischen

Durchdringung des Sozialmilieus in Berlin (Köln: Böhlau, 2001), Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross. The
German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1996), Olaf Blaschke, Katholizismus und Antisemitismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997) and Kevin Spicer, Hitler’s Priests. Catholic Clergy and National So-
cialism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008).
40 Horst Junginger
German Faith Movement, viz the biggest and most significant Pagan association in
National Socialist Germany.2 Who knows much about its composition, its short life
and early death? Who has worked on those Pagan groups separate from or in op-
position to the German Faith Movement?3 We still have to draw on the doctoral
dissertation of Heinz Bartsch, written under the supervision of Hans Freyer and
Arnold Gehlen at the University of Leipzig in 1938, to achieve a large part of relia-
ble data.4 Though Bartsch was an outspoken Pagan National Socialist, his study
does contain important information about the inner development and organisa-
tional forms of Paganism in Germany. The early and influential post-war account
of Hans Buchheim was based on a Christian assumption that the German nation
was hit by a deep spiritual crisis, a crisis that he associated to the demise of the
church and the defiance of Christian values.5 Therefore Buchheim regarded völkisch
Paganism as the ideological spearhead of National Socialism, commissioned with
the task of substituting a wicked counter-religion for Christianity, for ethics and
morality as such.
Buchheim’s biased view neglected not only the dynamics of political adaption
processes all religions are subject to, but also the plenty of possible responses to
the challenge of modernity taking shape in, at the fringe, or outside of the estab-
lished churches. The false identification of religion with Christianity and of Christi-
anity with the church, which dominates the historical narrative to a great extent,
underrates vital aspects of ordinary people’s religious life and conduct irrespective
of and very often in contrast to ecclesiastical doctrines. Long before the rise of Na-
tional Socialism many Germans had developed their own understanding of Chris-
tian morals and did not hesitate to disobey, openly or in secret, the claims of the
church hierarchy. Large numbers of workers and intellectuals refused further alle-
giance to what they considered outdated teachings and dogmas. Although church
2 Ulrich Nanko, Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung. Eine historische und soziologische Untersuchung (Mar-
burg: Diagonal, 1993), Hiroshi Kubota, Religionswissenschaftliche Religiosität und Religionsgründung.
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer im Kontext des freien Protestantismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2005), Schaul
Baumann, Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung und ihr Gründer Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881–1962)
(Marburg: Diagonal, 2005).
3 An exception is only the Ludendorff movement, see Bettina Amm, Die Ludendorff-Bewegung.
Vom nationalistischen Kampfbund zur völkischen Weltanschauungssekte (Hamburg: Verlag ad Fontes,
2006), eadem, “Die Ludendorff-Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus – Annäherung und
Abgrenzungsversuche”, Uwe Puschner and Clemens Vollnhals, eds., Die völkisch-religiöse Bewe-
gung im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Beziehungs- und Konfliktgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2012), pp. 127–48 and Frank Schnoor, Mathilde Ludendorff und das Christentum. Eine
radikale völkische Position in der Weimarer Republik und des NS Staates (Egelsbach: Hänsel-Ho-
henhausen, 2001).
4 Heinz Bartsch, Die Wirklichkeitsmacht der Allgemeinen Deutschen Glaubensbewegung der Gegenwart
(Breslau: Ludwig, 1938). The book was reprinted by a right wing publisher seven decades
later (Toppenstedt: Uwe Berg Verlag, 2007).
5 Hans Buchheim, Glaubenskrise im Dritten Reich. Drei Kapitel nationalsozialistischer Religionspolitik
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlangsanstalt, 1953).
membership never fell below approximately 95 per cent of the German population
throughout the first half of the twentieth century, an increasing number of nominal
Christians alienated themselves from the religion of their childhood. But only a tiny
minority went so far as to join one of the Pagan groups in consequence. Therefore
the National Socialist assumption of power did not lead to the revival of Paganism
that its leaders had yearned for so heavily. Instead of a Pagan upsurge, Germany
initially experienced a powerful reinvigoration of Christianity and the re-entry of
many of those who had left the church previously. The tremendous upswing of
Christian confessions in 1933 rested upon ideological correspondence in various
regard. The strong response to atheism, materialism and “cultural Bolshevism” as
well as the wiping out of “filth and trash” in all sectors of the society met the ap-
proval of the church leadership. Except for the parties of the left, no other adver-
sary attracted more attention than the Jews. Standing in a long tradition of Chris-
tian anti-Judaism, the Protestant as well as the Catholic church subscribed whole-
heartedly to the fight against the “Jewish threat”. Even when church and state in-
terests diverged in the mid-thirties, the hostility to Communism and Judaism re-
mained strong, and reached a mortal level with the beginning of World War II.
In our days, no serious historian would question the wide range of agreement
between church and state, and hosts of excellent studies have outlined the multiple
ties between the National Socialist government and the established churches. That
this relationship cooled down in the second half of the 1930s is also a common-
place of historical scholarship, though controversies persist over what the status of
Christianity presumably would have been after a military success of the German
troops. While detailed examinations have generated a balanced and differentiated
picture of Protestantism and Catholicism, Paganism has not been treated with the
scholarly rigor it deserves – neither by secular nor church historians nor scholars of
religion. It is probably no exaggeration to say that Nazi Germany’s non-Christian
history of religions has remained one of the few riddles left unresolved in the histo-
riography of National Socialism.
2. The Relevance of Paganism
We should not be surprised in light of this situation that both the SS and the Ah-
nenerbe of the SS are commonly seen as agencies of an anti-Christian heathendom
that would have sought to destroy the church and to establish a neo- or Indo-Ger-
manic form of Paganism as the Third Reich’s new state religion instead. Only the
lost war would have prevented the “final solution of the church question” from
being executed. Although arguments of that kind are wide spread, they are false and
misleading in several respects. First they follow the specious idea that Paganism
would have been a somehow authorised ideology, the religious extension of Na-
tional Socialism so to speak. But Paganism never received official support at any
42 Horst Junginger
time whatsoever. Then they try to assert that Christianity was about to be persecut-
ed in a way comparable to the German Jews, perhaps not factually, but at least in
the imagined consequence of a military victory of the German troops. On that ac-
count the churches are able to evade accusations of complicity, changing from the
side of the culprits to that of the victims. Accordingly, Paganism is held responsible
for the crimes of the Nazi regime. Even the holocaust then develops into a result
of the Pagan struggle against Christianity.6
Without diminishing the pro-Nazi, racist and antisemitic conduct of many if
not most Pagans, it is nonetheless necessary to repudiate the general propensity for
their demonisation and to emphasise that Paganism never enjoyed a formal backing
of government. On the contrary, the heathenish sectarianism of its various factions
was not only considered a threat to the unity of the German folk, but also to the
respectability of National Socialism and its claim to constitute a scientific world-
view rather than a spiritual reform programme. With only a few exceptions, the
Nazi leadership harboured no doubts that Paganism, given free play, would endan-
ger the ideological consensus of the nation and therefore minimise its prospect of
winning the next war, which was in course of secret preparation since 1936. Pagan
organisations profited very little from the increasing frictions between National So-
cialist authorities and the Christian churches. While Hitler’s assumption of power
triggered off exuberant hopes among Pagans, the subsequent disenchantment
reached its peak in September 1939 with the beginning of World War II, when any
criticism of Christianity had to be abandoned for the sake of a new party truce
deemed imperative for the victory over the enemies.
The German Faith Movement as Centre of Organised Paganism
The German Faith Movement started its short life on the famous Wartburg Castle
near Eisenach on 29–30 July 1933. Some ten communities and around 170 individ-
uals came together to deliberate on the possibility of a religious awakening outside
of Christianity and the established churches.7 Not all of them were decided Pagans
or adhered to a völkisch or Nordic worldview. A great number belonged to the camp
of liberal Christians being dissatisfied with the restoration of the old association of
throne and altar as it had made so visible the Concordat with the Catholic church
6 This is a core idea of Karla Poewe’s New Religions and the Nazis (New York: Routledge, 2006).
To rid Germany of Jewish Christianity would have been the central goal of Pagan Nazism:
“By blaming anti-Semitism on Christianity, scholars have badly misled their readers. (…) Ra-
ther it was neo-pagans both within and without the church who had an intense dislike of
Christianity precisely because it is Semitic.” Ibidem, p. 14. Poewe’s arguments that “being
against Christianity” was the “most authentic and deepest form of anti-Semitism”, and that
German Christians “were not Christians but pagans” due to their essentially anti-Christian
antisemitism (p. 7f.), turns history upside down and holds Paganism liable for the centuries-
old Christian hostility towards Jews.
7 See for the meeting, Nanko, Die deutsche Glaubensbwegung, pp. 143ff.
44 Horst Junginger
worst crime possible. On these grounds its mere existence bore witness to the
falsehood of the Christian truth claim.8
Their political accordance with National Socialism notwithstanding, Pagans
had to accept the regime’s pro church policy at the beginning. The famous para-
graph 24 of the party programme advocating a “positive Christianity” without com-
mitment to a particular confession was an insurmountable obstacle for everybody
in contradiction to the established churches. Whatever meaning might be attached
to the idea of a positive Christianity, it could in no way constitute a part of Pagan-
ism that defined itself by its antagonism towards Christianity and the Christian
churches. For that reason alone, Pagans such as Jakob Wilhelm Hauer were de-
terred from joining the NSDAP, viz a party advocating positive Christian values.
Parts of the so-called old-völkisch wing of the Pagan movement consequently ad-
dressed reproaches to the Nazi leadership of maintaining close relations with the
churches and their non-Nordic worldview.
At Whitsun 1934, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutsche Glaubensbwegung went
from a confederation of Pagan groups and individuals to a genuine religion. For the
discussion of ideological and organisational issues a second convention was ar-
ranged ten months after the Eisenach gathering in the village Scharzfeld in the
southern Harz region north of Eisenach from 18–21 May. On Whitsunday, some
500 people participated in a religious ceremony that was held in front of a cave
previously used as “stone church” by the Nordungen group. Again the community
was caught by a strong communal spirit and sense of togetherness. All separating
problems were deferred and the urgent necessity of a religious unity caught hold of
the attendants. At the end of the meeting, each individual group decided to dissolve
in order to give way to a new religion called Deutsche Glaubensbewegung on Whit-
monday. For a second time the Tübingen indologist and religious studies scholar
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer was proclaimed the Führer of the German Faith Movement.
As founder and editor of the journal Deutscher Glaube, he had become widely known
and was recognised as one of the most prominent Pagan intellectuals in Germany.
In the months that followed the inception of the German Faith Movement, a
plethora of activities were launched to press ahead and attract attention. Hauer
gave a speech at the famous Berlin Sportpalast with more than 20.000 listeners on
26 April 1935. In it, he blamed the Christian churches for the worldview quarrels of
the day. Not Paganism, but the Church was responsible for the fierce rowing that
irritated the German public. Its time would expire in the near future and Paganism
would take the place Christianity held before. Whereas the German Faith Move-
ment experienced a considerable growth at this time, the figures forwarded to the
authorities were nevertheless extremely exaggerated and nothing but wishful think-
ing. It is a well known fact in the study of religion that new religious movements
8 I have dealt with the dependence of Christianity on the Jewish bloodshed in Horst Jungin-
ger, Die Verwissenschaftlichung der ‘Judenfrage’ im Nationalsozialismus (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftli-
che Buchgesellschaft, 2011), especially p. 41 and p. 413.
46 Horst Junginger
had a prominent place in the party programme opposing his Pagan understanding
of life fundamentally.11 As Führer of the German Faith Movement he got in touch
with the SS and the secret police already in 1934. Various currents of the free-
thought movement had approached him with the wish to affiliate themselves with
the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutsche Glaubensbewegung, which promised to afford a
safe haven for people with deviant views. Many religious free thinkers were former
adherents of the Social Democrats and attached to one of their sub-organisations.
Their possible integration into the German Faith Movement understandably raised
issues, and they urged Hauer to enter into negotiations with the authorities con-
cerned.
It has to be added here that the development of the “Freireligiöse Bewegung”
in the Nazi era is quite intricate. Irrespective of their general inclination towards the
political left, a number of religious humanists hoped to survive by way of adapta-
tion to the new system after 1933, while others made ideological concessions up to
the degree of alignment. A few of them detected an ideological consensus with the
‘socialist’ elements of National Socialism.12 Generally, the German Faith Movement
appeared to be a place of refuge that could preserve them from persecution. Thus
the adjustment strategy of religious freethinkers turned into a total disaster and be-
came the prelude of a broad range of suppressive measures. In the intermediary
phase of attraction and repulsion Hauer had to bargain with the responsible per-
sons in the secret service on how to determine the valuable elements among the
religious humanists and how to oust the others. He repeatedly met with Heinrich
Himmler (1900–45) and Reinhard Heydrich (1904–42) to discuss the problem.
Werner Best (1903–89), the ambitious SS and police leader in the wake of these
two, had been chosen to enter the German Faith Movement where he acted as a
kind of liaison officer. Hauer’s first personal encounter with Himmler and Heyd-
rich took place on 17 April 1934 in Munich and soon later he joined the SS and the
SD by handshake with both.13 The former Christian missionary to India and Prot-
estant vicar subsequently became a useful informant and collaborator in various
respects. Hauer not only placed information and material to the disposal of the se-
cret police, he participated in the brutal oppression of religious dissenters as well.
Eventually, he got wrapped in criminal conduct and took an active part in the sup-
pression of the anthroposophical movement.14
11 For Hauer’s affiliation with National Socialist organisations, see Horst Junginger, Von der
philologischen zur völkischen Religionswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999), pp. 124–44.
12 See Horst Junginger, “Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung als ideologisches Zentrum der völ-
kisch-religiösen Bewegung”, in Uwe Puschner and Clemens Vollnhals, eds., Die völkisch-reli-
giöse Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), pp. 88–96
(65–102). It goes without saying that the non-religious parts of the German free thinkers
were persecuted from the very beginning.
13 Junginger, Von der philologischen zur völkischen Religionswissenschaft, p. 135.
14 Ibidem, pp. 197–215.
The Eddic Myth between Academic
and Religious Interpretations
Debora Dusse
1. Preliminary Note
The reception of the Eddic myth in the twentieth century has left its mark in litera-
ture, music, art, scholarship, propaganda and so on. One phenomenon catches the
eye in the context of Nordic ideology1: In the academic reception one finds sec-
ondary fields of endeavour documenting an interest in the subject, which goes be-
yond a research interest in the narrower sense and has religious as well as ideologi-
cal connotations. In this context, one can speak of a “surplus value” of the Eddic
literature in the time of Nordic ideology.
Even before the twentieth century, there are examples of academic authors,
such as the German expert of legal history Felix Dahn (1834–1912), who used the
Old Norse tradition in his academic research as well as for literary, religious and
political purposes. Dahn turned to the Eddic myth with his most well-known work,
his historical novel Ein Kampf um Rom (1867), and in some religiously themed writ-
ing, such as Skalden-Kunst (1882), and when he was engaged with the propaganda of
the nationalistic German movement in the Habsburger Reich.
Some academics in the first half of the twentieth century who worked in the
field of the Germanic and the Old Norse tradition and were concerned with Nor-
dic ideology show similar tendencies in their use of the Eddic myth in their scholar-
ship and political activity. Like Felix Dahn, who fought for the German nation in
the nineteenth century, they demonstrate the special value which the Eddic tradi-
tion had because of its mythological nature and its imagined connection to ideas of
the Nordic, the Germanic and the German.
I will try to verify the idea of a “surplus value” of the Eddic literature in the
time of Nordic ideology using three examples: First, the Indo-Germanic philologist
Hermann Güntert, who wrote literary works about Eddic topics in addition to his
academic publications; second, the Old Norse and religious studies scholar Bern-
hard Kummer; and third Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. Further explanation could be done
with scholars such as Åke Ohlmarks, as well as numerous others. These scholars
are of particular interest because their relevant publications show that the Eddic li-
terature, especially the Poetic Edda, constituted a spiritual refuge for former protag-
onists of Nordic ideology after 1945, when they were marginalised in the academic
and publishing world. In this light, a religious subtext becomes evident in the re-
1 For Nordic ideology, cf. Hans-Jürgen Lutzhöft, Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920–
1940 (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1971).
vinced SS soldier had no problems doing his daily Bible reading during his training
in the SS barracks München-Freimann. Franz Schönhuber (1923–2005), the found-
er and chairman of the German right-wing party “Die Republikaner”, made a simi-
lar case when he described the punishment of an SS instructor for his animosities
against him as a devoted Catholic Waffen-SS member.22
Far from being an expression of religious tolerance, Himmler’s SS directives
were signs of an increasing margin for Pagan and Nordic ideas in Germany. They
indicated a better chance for Pagan groups of all shades to come to the fore. Pa-
gans used the opportunity to engage themselves in the SS and related organisations.
On the other hand, although they reinforced their position there, Pagans generally
remained on the fringe of the society. While they were accepted as normal mem-
bers in National Socialist organisations, they were still unable to assume responsi-
bility and occupy eminent positions if they persisted to act out their faith resolutely.
3. The Ahnenerbe of the SS
The Formative Phase
In July 1935, Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth and a number of other völkisch
minded National Socialists founded the “Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschich-
te”, a society for the study of something that could be called the history of primor-
dial ideas. This private association turned into the notorious Ahnenerbe of the SS
later on. The additive “ur” was the invention of Herman Wirth, who used the pre-
fix to indicate that the Nordic race was spiritually rooted in prehistoric times, which
would be, however, only comprehensible by the “Ursymbolforschung” he had de-
veloped. Studying the pictorial, figurative and linguistic symbols as well as other
remnants of the assumed primeval religion of the Nordic peoples, Wirth ‘detected’
genetic correlations between all of their members from time immemorial to the
present. The Netherlands-born Wirth was a hopeless romantic, whom the twist of
fortune afforded the opportunity to become a prominent völkisch intellectual for
some time. From the National Socialist government Wirth expected backing and
patronage of his ideas. He had enough self-confidence to feel that destiny had dele-
gated to him the task of pointing the German people towards a bright future.
While Wirth unhesitatingly grasped at National Socialist race studies to corroborate
his thoughts, he first and foremost remained a völkisch visionary with predominantly
spiritual goals, consecrating his entire life to the spreading of his ur-symbolic find-
ings without considering the consequences for his or the life of his family. His
symbol or emblem studies were religious motivated and never quite at home in a
on the SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger (1896–1975) I rendered to Mr. Duppel. Ber-

ger was the founder of the Waffen-SS and one of the closest associates of Himmler.
22 Franz Schönhuber, Ich war dabei (München: Albert Langen, 1981), pp. 49–50.
The Eddic Myth between Academic and Religious Interpretations 75
shows (not least in the selection of the title Kultur und Religion der Germanen) that it
was possible to switch from a national point of view to a general Germanic (and
Nordic) one without difficulty. The historical dimensions could be easily put aside.
For scholarship, this meant the Eddas could not only be a subject of Old Norse
and religious studies’ research but could also become important for other disci-
plines as well.
Beyond the ideological reception in the context of Nordic ideology, the reli-
gious reception is important. Since the beginning of the construction of völkisch re-
ligion in the Austrian region in the 1880s, and later on in Germany from the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, Eddic literature was significant to Paganism. In this
context, the Eddas were interpreted as holy texts and hence of religious value. This
was not undisputed, however. Exponents of both positions can be found, as in the
examples of Andreas Heusler and Otto Höfler.
One example of such an approach is Karl Konrad, who translated the Snorra
Edda and drafted an Eddic liturgy, using the Edda as religious texts in the form of
articles.3 But different opinions can also be found in the religious field: Even
though the inclusion of texts from the Poetic Edda in later editions of Wilhelm
Schwaner’s Germanen-Bibel4 classified those texts as “holy scriptures of Germanic
nations”, in Pagan groups there was some dispute over the significance of such
texts.
The reason for the controversial position of the Edda and the vulnerability of a
religious reception of the Edda is due to the fact that a reference to an ancient reli-
gion like the so-called Germanic one was, itself, understood as problematic. If one
referred too strongly to Nordic myths, one was easily accused of “Wotanism”, an
accusation, which had hung in the air since the times of Dahn. A solution for this
was the interpretation of Eddic myths as symbols or “Sinnbilder”, referred to by
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer among others:
We have no intention of awakening the old gods to life; we know perfectly well that
they will never emerge from their twilight, and that each new age must mold its own re-
ligious forms. If we mention here and there the old Teutonic deities, they serve only as
symbols, just as the classical deities have been used as symbols in art and poetry since
the Renaissance; and the reason is the same in both cases: they express ideals which we
3 Die Edda des Snorri Sturluson (Snorra-Edda oder erzählende Edda). Aus dem Altnordischen von
Karl Konrad (Mühlhausen/Thüringen: Urquell-Verlag Erich Röth, 1926), idem, Germanische
Religion: Ein Leitfaden zu ihrer Erneuerung (Mühlhausen/Thüringen: Urquell-Verlag Erich Röth,
1926) and idem, “Kann uns die Edda Religionsbuch werden?”, in Upland 2, vol. 1 (1912), pp.
11–4, and vol. 2, pp. 24–9.
4 Wilhelm Schwaner, Germanen-Bibel: Aus heiligen Schriften germanischer Völker, 1st ed. (Berlin-
Schlachtensee: Volkserzieher-Verlag, 1904).
52 Horst Junginger
Six months earlier, Wüst had given a detailed report about the actual state of affairs
declaring that the Ahnenerbe, which had started with five divisions in 1935, now
consisted of twenty departments and seventy-two collaborators, a number that
doubled by the end of the war.25 A great part of the Ahnenerbe research had a tra-
ditional academic or philological-historical orientation. There was no single institute
mandated with religious tasks, although a particular branch on the spiritual roots of
the Indo-Germanic or Aryan race existed. It was headed by Otto Huth (1906–98),
an early follower of Herman Wirth, who did his habilitation under Jakob Wilhelm
Hauer at the University of Tübingen in 1938.26 As member of a circle occupied
with the work of the German philosopher and psychologist Ludwig Klages (1872–
1956), Huth belonged to the working community of the German Faith Movement
for a short period of time. When I visited him in the mid-1990s, he strongly em-
phasised the scientific context of his Ahnenerbe affiliation. Understandable as such
an opinion was, it inverted the truth, seeking to obscure the political and ideological
dimensions of his commitment. However, Huth’s work for the Ahnenerbe appar-
ently lacked a concrete religious agenda.
Ahnenerbe Activities: From Ideology towards Crime
The Ahnenerbe constitution of 1937 proclaimed three main objectives: First, to

explore the space, spirit and deed of the Indo-Germans, second, to spread relevant
research findings among the German people and, third, to activate all fellow Ger-
mans to participate in these endeavours.27 Any concentration on or even mention
of specific religious goals is absent. Central to the Ahnenerbe programme was, by
contrast, the development of a scientific worldview that had two primary functions:
to obtain general acceptance as ideological centre of National Socialism and to be
used for the worldview training of SS members in an analogous form to the efforts
of the Amt Rosenberg for the NSDAP. Such being the case, Himmler tried to infil-
trate the university system and to affect the Third Reichs’s cultural policy with a
race-based völkisch conception of history to be worked out by the Ahnenerbe. In-
stead of rather absurd research plans such as the World Ice Theory of the Austrian
engineer Hanns Hörbiger (1860–1931), the search for gold in German rivers, the
breeding of frost-resistant horses or a Germanic system of birth control, other en-
deavours came to the fore. The execution of explorations, in particular, gained
25 A diagram of the various Ahnenerbe departments as of 1943/44 is to be found in ibidem, p.

142.
26 For Huth, see Horst Junginger, Von der philologischen zur völkischen Religionswissenschaft, pp. 248-
268 and idem, “Huth, Otto” in Ingo Haar and Michael Fahlbusch, eds., Handbuch der völki-
schen Wissenschaften (München: Saur, 2008), pp. 246–49.
27 See Michael H. Kater, Das ‘Ahnenerbe’ der SS 1935–1945. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Drit-
ten Reiches (München: Oldenbourg, 1997, 1st German edition 1974), p. 85 and the introduc-
tion to the NS 21 inventory of the German Federal Archives: www.bundesarchiv.de.
dic themes as they are found in German-speaking areas, above all in Pagan con-
texts, since the late nineteenth century. One example of this is the publication of
the Hessian Karl Engelhard, who became the poet of the völkisch-religious faith
movement before World War I with his opus. The poetic treatment of Eddic topics
in this setting was, on the one hand, characterised by formal borrowing. The Old
Norse alliteration, for example, was usually conveyed into the German speech
form. Moreover, one can frequently come across well-known quotations, often in a
slightly modified form. Finally, the characteristic prophetic style of the Völuspá was
often adopted as a model, which bestowed a mystic-religious sound upon the po-
ems.
With his Wieland der Schmied,10 the author stands within a tradition beginning
with Richard Wagner’s nationalistic interpretation of the material in his Wielandt der
Schmiedt from 1849 and in the text Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft from 1850. The mate-
rial is essentially based on the Eddic poem Völundarkviða. The poem tells the tragic
story of the captured smith Völundr, a “Germanic” Prometheus taking awful re-
venge upon his tormentor King Níðuðr by killing his sons and raping his daughter.
In the end, Völundr frees himself and flies away. This material is the liberation tale
par excellence in the context of German national and religious discourses in the
first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, the Wagnerian tradition is
picked up again and again. The fact that Wayland the Smith symbolised the Ger-
man nation according to Wagner and his influential drama was accepted in many
cases and obtained a particular vigour, above all in dramatic art, not least in the Pa-
gan “Weihespiel” tradition. This is seen, for example, in Ludwig Fahrenkrog’s Wö-
lund from 1914. Above all during the Nazi regime the material had a significant re-
naissance and in the mid-1930s some dramas were written and one of these was
Güntert’s.11
Bernhard Kummer
The Old Norse and religious studies scholar Bernhard Kummer (1897–1962) also
composed literary works later on, after publishing his disputed opus Midgards Unter-
gang in 1927.12 His poems have never been published,13 but the voluminous histori-
10 Hermann Güntert, Wieland der Schmied: Ein germanisches Sagenspiel in drei Aufzügen (Heidelberg:
Carl Winter, 1936).
11 Cf. Stefan Bub, “Künstlerrache. Richard Wagners Umprägung germanischer Sagenstoffe am
Beispiel von ‘Wieland der Schmied’”, in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literatu-
ren 235 (1998), pp. 45–7.
12 Bernhard Kummer, Midgards Untergang: Germanischer Kult und Glaube in den letzten heidnischen
Jahrhunderten (Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1927). For Kummer, see Fritz Heinrich, “Bernhard Kummer
(1897–1962). The Study of Religions Between Religious Devotion for the Ancient Germans,
Political Agitation, and Academic Habitus” in Junginger, ed., The Study of Religion under the Im-
pact of Fascism, pp. 229–62.
56 Horst Junginger
In April 1934, the Austrian mystic was appointed SS Standartenführer and achieved
the rank of a SS Brigadeführer in September 1936 two years later. During that time,
Wiligut was adopted as a kind of a spiritual advisor to Himmler who let him live
out his ideas to a certain degree. Best-known is probably the famous “Totenkopf-
ring”, the death’s head ring of the SS, designed by Wiligut with runic elements as
insignia of the old Germanic legacy. Every recipient received an accompanying let-
ter from Himmler, demanding loyalty to the Führer and the duty of its bearer to
sacrifice his life for the community if necessary.33 Originating from his private stud-
ies, Wiligut discovered ample evidence of the truth and meaning of the Irminic be-
lief. He also influenced the rebuilding of the Wewelsburg castle that, according to
his wishes, were to be transformed into an order-castle and ceremonial focus of the
SS.34 But Wiligut’s ideas never materialised. The assumption of the Wewelsburg as a
spiritual centre of the SS is a modern myth without substance, although it is preva-
lent in esoteric and neo-Nazi circles. In a similar way, the famous Externsteine, an
impressive rock formation in the Teutoburg Forest near Detmold, attracts the fan-
tasies of like-minded people. Despite great efforts, no proof has been ever found to
give evidence for its alleged function as pre-Christian centre of a Nordic or Pagan
religion. In November 1938, Himmler learned that Wiligut had spent several years
in a psychiatric hospital in Salzburg, diagnosed with megalomania and schizophre-
nia. This knowledge determined Wiligut’s influence in the Ahnenerbe. While his
drawback in August 1939 was justified with age and poor health to the outside, the
dismissal actually resulted from mental disorder and alcohol abuse.
Wiligut’s views were even more bizarre than those of Wirth, though they
showed similarities in form and content. The rivalry between them led to mutual
criticism and the disparagement of their respective teachings. Wiligut alias Weisthor
can in no way be regarded as characteristic of or relevant to the Ahnenerbe scheme.
His religious thoughts proved to be still less generalisable than Wirth’s. Certainly
Himmler had a particular taste for the belief system and religious rites of the old
Germans, the Indo-Germans or the Aryans. Yet he exercised constraint in that re-
gard and was never so imprudent to crusade for this predilection too offensively.
He would have exposed himself to ridicule if someone like Wiligut would have
been identified with him or if the Ahnenerbe would have applied for a funding for
his Irministic nonsense. On that account, Wüst turned out to be the right person to
33 Himmler’s order dated 10 April 1934. See for its wording, Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler.
Eine Biographie (München: Siedler Verlag, 2008), p. 298 and p. 850.
34 Cf. Jan Erik Schulte, ed., Die SS, Himmler und die Wewelsburg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009), in
partiular Daniela Siepe, “Die Rolle der Wewelsburg in der phantastischen Literatur, in Eso-
terik und Rechtsextremismus nach 1945” (pp. 488–512) as well as Karl Hüser, Wewelsburg
1933-1945. Kult- und Terrorstätte der SS. Eine Dokumentation (Paderborn: Verlag Bonifatious
Druckerei, 2nd ed. 1987) and the excellent catalogue of the permanent exhibition of the We-
welsburg District Museum: Wulff E. Brebeck et al., eds., Endzeitkämpfer. Ideologie und Terror
der SS. Begleitbuch zur Dauerausstellung in Wewelsburg (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2012).
Helgi Hundingsbani, is the first text of the heroic lays of the Codex Regius of the
Poetic Edda and shows some textual parallels to the Völuspá, the prophecy poem
from the beginning of the Edda. This builds a bridge between the beginning of the
world until its own and its god’s decay, and the Ragnarök ends in the resurgence of
a new world. Kummer emphasises the Pagan-religious position of the Völuspá and
updates the poem explicitly against the background of the experience of his own
times:
The constant question concerning the feelings and understanding of the first listeners to
these songs on the border between heathendom and Christianity (…) has been guiding
me. It directed me to the experience and the aim which the poets had in the times of
the Vikings and the break of the belief and gives, as I suppose, a new and fruitful direc-
tion to the interpretation of the Edda, a confirmed and historical based foundation.
With such a historical connection with the dawn of the gods thousand years ago, the
venerable text which starts with the concussive Ragnarök poem could have a new and
direct meaning for the understanding of our own days and for the interpretation of the
destiny of the occidental peoples between fears and hopes of our time.16
Kummer emphasised the historical value for the present during his work on the
Eddic poetry – here focusing on the subject of the turn of an era, too, after the end
of National Socialism – in the volume Brünhild und Ragnarök from 1950.17 To
Kummer, the idea of Ragnarök turns out to be an adequate myth not only regard-
ing the interpretation of the present. His sources lead him to the conclusion that
psychological distress appearing in times of crisis – for example the times of the
change of faith in the North in his opinion – can cause artistic and especially liter-
ary productivity.18 He views the revelation of psychological distress as a key to in-
terpretation. In this case, drawing a parallel between Kummer’s point of view and
his own literary activities suggests itself.
(Völuspá). Text, Übersetzung, Erläuterungen. Exkurse und religionsgeschichtliche Ergänzungen (Zeven:

Verlag der Forschungsfragen unserer Zeit, 1961).
16 “Die stete Frage nach dem Empfinden und Verstehen der einstigen ersten Hörer dieser Lie-
der auf der Schwelle der Zeit zwischen Heidentum und Christentum (…) hat mich geleitet.
Sie führte auf das Erlebnis und die Absicht der Dichter in Wikingersturm und Glaubens-
bruch und gibt, wie ich glaube, der Edda-Deutung eine neue, fruchtbare Richtung, eine fes-
tere, historisch fundierte Grundlage. Mit solcher Zeitbezogenheit zur Götterdämmerung vor
1000 Jahren gewänne der ehrwürdige Text, der mit dem erschütternden Ragnarökgedicht
beginnt, auch eine neue, unmittelbare Bedeutung für das Verständnis unserer eigenen Tage
und für die Deutung des abendländischen Völkerschicksals zwischen Furcht und Hoffnung
unserer Zeit.” Kummer, Die Lieder des Codex Regius, vol. 1, pp. 7–8; translation mine.
17 Bernhard Kummer, Brünhild und Ragnarök: Die Gestaltung der isländischen Brünhilddichtung aus dem
Erlebnis des Glaubenswechsels (Lübeck: Schiller, 1950).
18 Ibidem, p. 6 and p. 12.
filtrate them as well. The overwhelming majority of Germans displayed not only a
firm reservation but were more often than not uncompromisingly dismissive of Pa-
ganism and its proselytization endeavours. Membership figures of Pagan organisa-
tions remained extremely low. It was only because of their assertive propaganda
that some of the Nordic, Germanic or other heathen associations were apprehend-
ed in public.
The early breakdown of the German Faith Movement provides convincing ev-
idence that, even under favourite circumstances, Pagans failed to expand their in-
fluence on a larger scale. They were even unable to attain ideological coherence in
their own ranks and unite more than a part of its spectrum. On these grounds it
proved hopeless to draw level with the churches and become a force to be reck-
oned with. In fact, Paganism remained the outsider phenomenon it had been all
along, without the least prospect of parity with its Christian opponents. To ac-
knowledge this simple truth should, however, not delude us into underrating the
religious altercations that affected National Socialist Germany. The founding of the
German Faith Movement can be seen as a significant expression of religious
change, showing that it was indeed possible to fuse parts of the Pagan awakening.
It depends on perspective, how the meaning of the word “significant” is assessed at
this point.
As Pagans saw it, the Christian primacy in Germany had not only suffered a
heavy setback but was on the edge of being overthrown. It could be only a matter
of time before they would supersede and take the place of their adversaries. The
representatives of the church conversely overstated the impact of Paganism. With
the aggressive evangelism and vile demeanour of its representatives in mind, they
accused Pagans not only of their anti-Christian propaganda, but of corrupting mor-
al standards and of undermining the ethical foundations of state and society on the
whole. On that basis it is hardly possible to achieve a sound estimation of the real
influence of völkisch Paganism. Both accounts show great deficits and consequently
entail biased judgments. The real situation had little to do with the soaring dreams
of Pagans and the agitation of the churches against them. Putting ideology aside, it
is beyond question that Paganism continued to be a negligible seize from the very
beginning until the very end of the Nazi reign. The notoriety of its existence did
not result from factual evidence, but from the ideological uproar its propagators
and adversaries brought about. Historical scholarship has the task to objectify these
turbulences and put them into perspective.
Statistical Evidence
Basic statistical data evince that Pagans miserably failed to reach more than a tiny
part of the population with their ideas of a Nordic or Indo-Germanic religion. The
population censuses of 16 June 1933 and 17 May 1939 display practically no differ-
ence regarding their size. The general distribution of 95 per cent Christians and 5
scholar or specialist in the field of Old Norse, nor in Germanic religious history,
but he had close colleagues whose expertise he could draw upon. Felix Genzmer
(1878–1959), the former Tübingen professor of law, lecturer, and Edda translator,23
as well as the Old Norse and religious studies scholar Bernhard Kummer have to
be mentioned in this context. Genzmer’s famous two-volume Edda translation
with its characteristic account of the Old Norse alliteration was published in a se-
ries with saga translations (Thule. Altnordische Dichtung und Prosa) by the Eugen Die-
derichs publishing house. It was widely received in scholarship, art, music, litera-
ture, and propaganda.24 Hauer quoted this translation several times and counted it
among the “classical works of German literature”.25 Furthermore, he involved his
Tübingen colleague Genzmer in a religion seminar course as well as in a lecture se-
ries dealing with “Death and Immortality in Indo-Germanic Faith and Thought” in
1944–45. He was still working together with Genzmer in his final years, and
Genzmer supported him in his work on the Völuspá commentary.26
Hauer’s standard way of dealing with the Eddic tradition can be seen in his use
of a Völuspá quotation in a text first drafted as an address for a morning ceremony
at the annual conference of the “Freie Akademie” at Burg Ludwigstein in 1959 and
later published under the title “Der Mensch im Schicksal”. The theme of the ad-
dress is the concept of tragic destiny triggered by the sensation of fear of a threat,
itself triggered by the development of atomic weapons in the Cold War era.27 Hauer
sets the destructive power of nuclear bombs against the concept of the creative
power of man (p. 366). He concludes with the desire that man, threatened by this,
will acquire the capacity from a “primal creative power” to create a new world, and
he quotes the verse Völuspá 61 in Felix Genzmer’s translation: “Daß es den Men-
schen geschehe wie den ‘Ratern’ nach Ragnarök in der Völuspa: Wieder werden /
Die wundersamen / Goldnen Tafeln / Im Grase sich finden, / Die vor Urtagen /
23 For Genzmer’s academic career, cf. Carsten Wilms, “Genzmer, Felix”, in Christoph König,
ed., Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950, vol. 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 550–52.
24 The most well-known is the second volume with translations of the mythological poems, cf.
Edda. Zweiter Band: Götterdichtung und Spruchdichtung. Übertragen von Felix Genzmer. Mit Einleitung
und Anmerkungen von Andreas Heusler (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1920). For the reception of
Genzmer’s translation in propagandistic contexts, see Julia Zernack, “Nordische Mythen
und Edda-Zitate im Dienst von Politik und Propaganda”, in Katja Schulz, ed., Eddische Götter
und Helden – Milieus und Medien ihrer Rezeption. Eddic Gods and Heroes – The Milieux and Media of
Their Reception (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011), pp. 143–85.
25 Cf. Dierks, Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, p. 481.
26 Cf. Junginger, Von der philologischen zur völkischen Religionswissenschaft, p. 238 and note 22, pp.
327–28. Genzmer also participated in Hauer’s project “Lebensmächte und Wesen des Indo-
germanentums”, which was part of the ‘Indo-Germanistic’ program of the “Kriegseinsatz
der Geisteswissenschaften” (ibidem, pp. 235–36).
27 Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, “Der Mensch im Schicksal”, in idem, Verfall oder Neugeburt der Religi-
on?, p. 370.
82 Debora Dusse
Ihr eigen waren” (pp. 370-71, quotation p. 371).28 With this accentuation, Hauer
replicates a Völuspá interpretation he had developed earlier, i.e. he interprets the
Eddic song as a religious-historical proof that “Nordic man” is aware of the end of
his gods, but that this end will be followed by a change into new religious forms.
Therefore, he considers the concept of a creative element as the centre of “Ger-
manic-German” faith:
This freedom, largeness and aplomb in the struggle for the religious thoughtforms
which distinguish Germanic-German view of god so extreme from the oriental has
deep foundation. Their root is the immovable belief in an eternal creating-present god.
This is the meaning of Ragnarök.29
The concept of the world’s fundamental principles as becoming and passing away,
of creation and destruction, which Hauer claimed to recognise in the Old Norse
tradition, are frequently marked by the idea of eternal change in his texts, which
Hauer found in religious Hindu scripts as well. In addition to such combinations or
superpositions with other religious concepts, what is striking in Hauer’s interpreta-
tion of Eddic tradition is that it is influenced by the idea that religious experience is,
above all, dominated by the symbolic character of religious concepts and actions.30
Hauer’s strong interest especially in the Völuspá is, on the one hand, due to the
popularity, the artistic quality, and the special position of the poem in the Eddic
poetry. On the other hand, such an interest is typical for the importance, which was
attached to the concepts of fate in general and a Germanic concept of a faith in
destiny in particular in the first half of the twentieth century. This affected both
scholarship and the broad public. In an aside, Hauer refers to the more general re-
ception in his essay “Der Mensch im Schicksal”, mentioning the “colossal painting”
Schicksal by the völkisch painter Ludwig Fahrenkrog (1867–1952) from 1917.31 It de-
picts human bodies floating in wave formations towered over by a headless horse-
man. It was internationally disseminated as a postcard.
28 “That it will happen to the people like it did to the gods after Ragnarök in Völuspá: There
afterwards will be found in the grass / the wonderful golden chequers, / those which they
possessed in the ancient times.” The translation of Völuspá 61 is taken from The Poetic Edda.
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Carolyne Larrington (Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), p. 12. The term “Rater” refers to Völuspá 6 where the gods were de-
scribed as “regin” (rulers).
29 “Diese Freiheit, Weite und Gelassenheit im Ringen um religiöse Gestaltwerdung, die germa-
nisch-deutsche Gottschau so radikal von morgenländischer unterscheidet, ist tief gegründet.
Ihre Wurzel ist der unerschütterliche Glaube an den ewig schaffend-gegenwärtigen Gott.
Das ist der Sinn von Ragnarök.” Hauer, Deutsche Gottschau, pp. 201–2, quotation p. 202;
translation mine.
30 Cf. also Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, “Der Symbolcharakter der religiösen Erlebnisse und Gestal-
tungen und ihr Verhältnis zu Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit der Religion”, in idem, Verfall oder
Neugeburt der Religion?, p. 188.
31 Hauer, “Der Mensch im Schicksal,” p. 366.
The concept of the fateful determination of human life, a tragedy of life and the
possibilities man has for dealing with it first came into the focus of the “Ger-
manenkunde” in the context of thinking about the losses of World War I. It be-
came a central object of Germanic religious research in the 1930s and 1940s, in ad-
dition to the subject of the Christianisation.32 Finally it served as a concept after
1945 to link the horrors of National Socialism and World War II to a transcenden-
tal concept, thus releasing it from the course of history and the issue of individual
human guilt. Thus, it turned into an integral metaphor for coping, repression, and
justification. The widespread occupation with the Völuspá should be seen in this
far-reaching context. With its eschatological subject, this text could obviously con-
tribute to a perspectivation of experiences of German and European history in the
first half of the twentieth century. Additionally, however, it also provided links for
hopes for the future with a vision of a new earth emerging after the Ragnarök, the
apocalypse, and the demise of the gods.
So it is no coincidence that Hauer dealt extensively with the Völuspá in his later
years, just like Bernhard Kummer, and prepared a publication which provided a
commentary and an interpretation of the text in addition to the translations by
Genzmer and Kummer.33 Another example of Hauer’s preoccupation with the
texts of the Eddic songs in his later life is the publication Der deutsche Born.34 It is an
anthology, similar to Wilhelm Schwaner’s Germanen-Bibel after the turn of the centu-
ry, which was intended as a “Hausbuch für Besinnung und Feier”.35 The volume, which
is organised by subject, includes excerpts from many songs of gods and heroes of
the Edda and from other Old Norse texts in various sections which are dedicated
to the topic of fate. Examples include, in addition to the Völuspá, the Hávamál, Hel-
gakviða Hundingsbana I and Hamðismál.
Hauer’s lifelong fascination with the Edda is clearly marked by private, philo-
sophical and spiritual interests. Even more than Bernhard Kummer, who, despite
all ideological implications, normally spoke from the position of the expert scholar
in his dealing with the Old Norse tradition, the religious search is more evident in
Hauer, shining through his interpretations of the Edda as a witness to a Nordic or
Germanic faith and whose alleged symbolic assets renders it effective for the crea-
tion of a German faith.
32 Cf. for the importance of the topic of fate, Debora Dusse, “Grundzüge der Erforschung
germanischer Religion in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus”, in Uwe Puschner and Clemens
Vollnhals, eds., Die völkisch-religiöse Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Beziehungs- und Konflikt-
geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), pp. 417–35.
33 Hauer had published a preliminary study in 1944 under the title “Der Glaube der Völuspá”:
Deutscher Glaube 7–9 (1944), pp. 88–99.
34 Jakob Wilhelm and Annie Hauer, Der deutsche Born, vol. 5: Die ewigen Fragen (München: Tür-
mer Verlag, 1953).
35 Ibid., p. 5.
84 Debora Dusse
4. Concluding Remarks
The examples of reception mentioned above show the “surplus value” the Eddic
myth could have for scholars. The Eddic literature was not the focus of much re-
search in the first half of the twentieth century. Because of that, the work on the
Edda by scholars who were connected with Nordic ideology is especially signifi-
cant. It demonstrates the value these mythological texts had for those scholars in
how the myths easily could be transformed into religious and ideological contexts.
On the one hand, it was discussed in academic and religious circles whether the
Eddas could be understood as religious texts and whether they should be perceived
as medieval or Germanic. However, on the other hand, the poems of gods and he-
roes became a resource of myths and symbols which could be used for the under-
standing of the present in a way that set historical events into a mythological frame,
as is seen in the case of Völuspá.
We are dealing here with an important religious undercurrent that has certainly
been a driving force in connection with the Nordic ideology and which has been
able to serve as its spiritual home after 1945. In this connection, classical philologi-
cal genres such as commentaries, editions and translations are obviously particularly
appropriate for scholars and intellectuals. As reasons for this, one can assume, they
gave researchers who were transferred to the situation of private scholars the op-
portunity to continue their scholarly work. But they also allowed them to maintain
a distance from the subject due to the academic form. Finally, in this way, one
could compose texts, which could not be criticised directly and were suitable for
publication. This preoccupation with Eddic literature shows, in any case, that it
constituted a spiritual place of refuge in the times after 1945 and suggests a similar
role for the previous times.
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—. “Der Symbolcharakter der religiösen Erlebnisse und Gestaltungen und ihr
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Charisma, Authority and Heil:
Walter Baetke and the Chasm of 1945
Bernard Mees
Coming to grips with the National Socialist pasts of many of the key German and
Austrian contributors to Old Germanic studies has often proved a difficult ex-
perience for former students and colleagues of professors who lived through the
dictatorship. Many assessments of such figures take on personalised and moralising
overtones, setting such questions beyond and apart from those typical of in-
tellectual history more generally. Responses and assessments of academic reactions
to Nazism can encompass a broad spectrum, ranging from apologies and rebuttals
to insinuation and slander – from the circuitous and forgetful to parrhesia. Where
reservations regarding the dirtying of disciplinary nests and the threat of legal
redress have given way, particularly since the 1990s, to more considered and honest
reappraisals, not all Germanists whose careers bridged the period from the 1930s
into the post-war era are simply to be categorised as “tainted”, “fellow-travellers”
or “conscientious objectors”. A particular case in point is represented by the career
of the University of Leipzig professor of history of religions and later of Old
Norse, Walter Baetke (1884–1978).1
Baetke is notable in that he lived in both German dictatorships – that of the
National Socialists and also of the post-war Socialist Unity Party (SED). Carrying a
considerable amount of ideological baggage, Baetke was one of the few politically
engaged Germanists of the 1930s to hold on to a position in the German Demo-
cratic Republic (GDR). Never going as far as, say, Hans Kuhn (whose Nazi Party
membership card from 1937 has him literally living in Wodanstraße), Baetke was,
nonetheless, scarcely a political cleanskin in 1945. While Kuhn fled his chair at
Berlin after the war (taking up instead a position at Kiel), Baetke was able to
succeed Kuhn to the professorial post which the latter had given up at Leipzig in
1941 in order to assume a position in Berlin. Kuhn’s predecessor at the University
of Berlin had been Gustav Neckel, an outspoken conservative who had been
forced into retirement in light of the machinations of Bernhard Kummer, a mem-
1 Cf. Kurt Rudolph, Geschichte und Probleme der Religionswissenschaft (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 368–
80, Fritz Heinrich, “Empirische Religionsforschung und religionswissenschaftliche Reflex-
ion: Walter Baetke als religionswissenschaftlicher Lehrer Kurt Rudolphs”, in Rainer Flasche
et al., eds., Religionswissenschaft in Konsequenz. Beiträge im Anschluss an Impulse von Kurt Rudolph
(Münster: LIT, 2000), pp. 149–62, Kurt Rudolph and Fritz Heinrich, “Walter Baetke (1884–
1978)”, Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 9 (2001), pp. 169–84 and Kurt Rudolph, “Baetke,
Walter Hugo Hermann”, in Christoph König, ed., Internationales Germanistenlexikon: 1800–
1950, 3 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 75–7.
88 Bernard Mees
ber of the SA who had written his laudatory dissertation on Old Norse religiosity at
Leipzig in the 1920s.2
Baetke had already held a chair at Leipzig before Kuhn’s departure, one he had
assumed in 1936. That was the year before Kuhn had himself come to Leipzig to
succeed Konstantin Reichardt, a Russian-born Nordicist who had fled Nazi Ger-
many protesting the political pressure he had been subjected to since 1933. Rei-
chardt was treated by many of his colleagues as a prima donna after the fact, but he
had been pressured by his “next-door neighbour”, the Germanist (and Nazi free-
masonry expert) André Jolles, to become involved in pro-regime activities, such as
appearing at public events and on the radio.3 Baetke’s arrival at Leipzig had been an
equally political affair, albeit of a different kind.
Much as Kuhn’s career benefited greatly from the academic intrigues typical of
1930s Germany, Baetke also arrived at Leipzig after a political struggle. Baetke was
one of the many doctoral graduates who had been unable to secure a tenured
teaching position in the 1910s and ’20s, but who, with the rise of the National
Socialists, had managed to obtain an association and later a lectureship with the
University of Greifswald. In 1935, the Faculty of Theology at Leipzig began a
search for a successor to the late Hans Haas, a long-serving professor of history of
religions, an orientalist and faculty dean. Baetke’s name soon emerged as a pre-
ferred candidate. His main competitor was Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, the University of
Tübingen indologist and controversial head of the neo-Pagan German Faith Move-
ment. Much as members of the conservative German archaeological establishment
had managed to exclude the Erich von Däniken-like figure of Herman Wirth from
being considered as a replacement for the late prehistorian Max Ebert in Berlin,
Baetke, who had no formal qualification in the history of religions, was promoted
as a more suitable candidate at Leipzig than the radical religionist (and clearly better
qualified) Hauer.4
Jahrhunderten (Leipzig: E. Pfeiffer, 1927), Klaus von See and Julia Zernack, Germanistik und
Politik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Zwei Fallstudien: Hermann Schneider und Gustav Neckel
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2004), pp. 113–208, Bernard Mees, The Science of the Swastika (Bu-
dapest: Central European University Press, 2008), pp. 120ff., Fritz Heinrich, “Bernhard
Kummer (1897–1962): The Study of Religions between Religious Devotion for the Ancient
Germans, Political Agitation, and Academic Habitus”, in Horst Junginger, ed., The Study of
Religion under the Impact of Fascism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2008), pp. 229–62.
3 Walter Thys, “Inleiding”, in idem, ed., André Jolles (1874–1946): ‘gebildeter Vagant’; brieven en
documenten (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000), pp. 1–6, Mees, Science of the
Swastika, pp. 173–74.
4 Kurt Rudolph, “Leipzig und die Religionswissenschaft”, Numen 9 (1962), pp. 64–7, Ingo
Wiwjorra, “Herman Wirth – Ein gescheiterter Ideologe zwischen ‘Ahnenerbe’ und Atlantis”,
in Barbara Danckwortt et al., eds., Historische Rassismusforschung: Ideologen, Täter, Opfer
(Hamburg: Argument, 1995), pp. 91–112, Horst Junginger, Von der philologischen zur völkischen
Religionswissenschaft: das Fach Religionswissenschaft an der Universität Tübingen von der Mitte des 19.
Jahrhundert bis zum Ende des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1999), pp. 179–80, Fritz Hein-
Charisma, Authority and Heil 89
To many scholars at the time, Hauer represented the academic equivalent of a

Guido (von) List – a nationalist neo-Pagan romantic – and hence could not be con-
sidered a suitable candidate for a chair in history of religions. The Viennese mystic
List had established a tradition in radical nationalist circles (variously called “Ario-
sophic” or “Armanist”) of Odin worshippers and other kinds of new religionists
who enthused about Pagan Germanic antiquity and held up its “spirit” as a model
for national renewal.5 List had had his counterparts in German literary circles, in
local historical societies and even academia – and this fringe had become more
influential when more and more patriotically minded German professors began, in
the 1920s, to see that their work could be viewed as a very active contribution to a
national re-awakening. Although such figures often bemoaned the amateurism,
mysticism and speculative excesses of the Lists (and later the Hauers too), they
formed the vanguard of a new movement within the Germanist community that
had already begun to marginalise dissident voices (such as the Jewish Germanist
Sigmund Feist) in the late 1920s.6 Although only relatively newly established in the
discipline of history of religions, Baetke was clearly a member of the antiquity-
enthusing academic right, but he was equally also an outspoken critic of the more
extreme (and less properly academic) expressions of the movement for a Germanic
renewal in 1930s Germany.7
Baetke was somewhat older, however, than most members of the “lost”
generation of German university graduates of the 1920s. His first post, as a
secondary-school teacher in Stettin, was taken in the years before the Great War,
and from 1913–35 he had served as the director of studies of a technical college in
Rügen. His doctorate from the University of Halle was taken in early modern
English literature, his teaching position at Greifswald in the history of religions a
reflection of an interest in Old Germanic mythology which he had gained in the
1920s.8 Eugen Mogk, the professor of Old Norse at Leipzig from 1893–1925, had
been one of the leading German interpreters of early Germanic religion and
rich, Die deutsche Religionswissenschaft und der Nationalsozialismus: Eine ideologiekritische und religions-
wissenschaftliche Untersuchung (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2002), pp. 274–75, Mees, Science of the
Swastika, p. 155.
5 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany
1890–1935 (Wellingborough: Aquarian, 1985), Mees, Science of the Swastika, pp. 60ff.
6 Ruth Römer, “Sigmund Feist: Deutscher, Germanist, Jude”, Muttersprache 91 (1981), pp.
249–308, Mees, Science of the Swastika, pp. 175–77.
7 Bernard Mees, “Hitler and ‘Germanentum’”, Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2004), pp.
255–70, idem, “‘Germanische Sturmflut’: From the Old Norse Twilight to the Fascist New
Dawn”, Studia Neophilologica 78 (2006), pp. 184–98.
8 Walter Baetke, Kindergestalten bei den Zeitgenossen und Nachfolgern Shakespeares (Halle: A. Kaem-
merer, 1908).
90 Bernard Mees
mythology.9 Yet, having a specialist in Old Germanic studies taking a chair in a

theology faculty seemed very strange. Baetke’s hiring was made possible by the
political situation, his (largely self-taught) speciality in Old Germanic studies clearly
marking him out as a key contributor to the academic Germanentum or “Germa-
nicness” movement of the day.
After all, Baetke had been politically active before his appointment as a
member of the German National People’s Party (DNVP) from 1926–32 and it was
clear that he held an intellectual debt to the National Socialist spring. Indeed, his
hiring had come not long after the dismissal of the Jewish sociologist of religion
Joachim Wach from the Leipzig philosophy faculty (whose advocation of
empiricism in his 1924 professional thesis Baetke is often claimed to have been
influenced by).10 Yet Baetke is perhaps most interesting among the many academic
conservatives of the day for the manner in which his political affiliations can be
seen reflected in his scholarship. Unlike with the Nazi academic show ponies, such
as the SS’s Otto Höfler (a prominent member of the Vienna school of folklore
studies), it is hard to tease the political out of Baetke’s work. Moreover, his
engagement with conservative ideological discourses is particularly notable given
that he joined the SED in 1946 as a social democrat (the same year he was also
granted an honorary Leipzig doctorate in theology), his post-war academic work
taking on a quite different political character, if not always tone.
Baetke’s best-known book today is undoubtedly his Dictionary of Old Norse
Literary Prose, currently in its eighth edition, the result of a project he undertook
after his retirement in the 1960s in the GDR.11 Yet, in the 1930s, Baetke was far
better known for his work with Eugen Diederichs’s “Thule” translations of Old
Norse literature and Baetke’s similar publications with the equally neo-conservative
Hanseatic Publishing House.12 Baetke had developed a career as a populariser of
Old Icelandic literature in the 1920s, a contributor to the “Germanic resurgence”
9 Eugen Mogk, Germanische Mythologie (Leipzig: G.J. Göschen, 1906), idem, Germanische Reli-
gionsgeschichte und Mythologie (2nd ed., Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1921), Mees, Science of the Swa-
stika, p. 86.
10 Joachim Wach, Religionswissenschaft: Prolegomena zu ihrer wissenschaftstheoretischen Grundlegung
(Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1924), Rudolph, “Leipzig und die Religionswissenschaft”, pp. 62–3,
Steven M. Wasserstrom, “The Master-Interpreter: Notes on the German Career of Joachim
Wach (1922–1935)”, in Christian K. Wedemeyer and Wendy Doniger, eds., Hermeneutics,
Politics, and the History of Religions: The Contested Legacies of Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 21–51.
11 Walter Baetke, Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,
1965–68; 8th ed. 2008).
12 Gary D. Starck, Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890–1933 (Cha-
pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), Siegfried Lokatis, Hanseatisches Verlagsan-
stalt: Politisches Buchmarketing im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Frankfurt a.M.: Buchhändler-Vereinigung,
1992), Irmgard Heidler, Der Verleger Eugen Diederichs und seine Welt (1896–1930) (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1998).
represented in the academic Germanentum movement of the day.13 His particular

interest in Old Germanic religion first came to prominence, however, with his
criticisms of neo-Paganism; a proud and active Lutheran, Baetke began to publish
on Old Germanic religion and its relationship to Christianity only in the early
1930s.
Hence, Baetke began his 1930s academic career as a patriotic, Germanist critic
of the more colourful and romantic arm of the Germanentum movement represented
by Kummer, Wirth and Hauer. His short 1933 study of Characteristics of Germanic
Religion and Christianity was published in de Gruyter’s “Way of the Church” series
and was followed the next year by a longer work on the Nature and Belief of the
Germanic Peoples for the Hanseatic Publishing House, a work which criticises the
contributions of Kummer and Wirth.14 His Christianity and Religion, a 1934 pamphlet
published by the Christian Periodicals Association’s Kranz Press, was more surely
aimed at Hauer and his German Faith Movement, the Tübingen indologist being
regarded as one of the most dangerous outsiders of the day by many in the
Germanist establishment (even including many of its more outspoken National
Socialist members).15 It is this background, perhaps most cogently expressed in his
1944 collection of essays From the Spirit and Inheritance of Thule, that made Baetke
appear so suitable for the position at Leipzig.16 He was a conservative, a nationalist,
and a noted contributor to the neo-romantic literary scene which saw in the rise of
German fascism. But he was not a member of the antiquity-enthusing nationalist
fringe criticised by Hitler in Mein Kampf, a radical pseudo-academic Grub Street
which, moreover, was kept at arms length by most members of the Germanist
establishment even at proudly National Socialist institutions such as the University
of Leipzig.17
Unlike many of the other Leipzig faculty, Baetke was not a signatory to 1933’s
Vow of Allegiance of German academics to Hitler (which had culminated in a public
acclamation at the Alberthalle in Leipzig in November of that year), but then in
13 Walter Baetke, Glum, der Totschläger (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1923), idem, Die
Schwurbrüder (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1924), idem, Die Geschichten von den Or-
kaden, Dänemark und der Jomsburg (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1924), idem, Havards Rache (Hamburg:
Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1925), idem, Thords Pflegesohn (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlags-
anstalt, 1927), idem, Islands Besiedlung und älteste Geschichte (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1928), idem,
Geschichten vom Sturlungengeschlecht (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1930).
14 Walter Baetke, Arteigene germanische Religion und Christentum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1933),
idem, Art und Glaube der Germanen (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934).
15 Walter Baetke, Christentum und germanische Religion (Berlin: Kranz, 1934), Karla Poewe and
Irving Hexham, “Jakob Wilhelm Hauer’s New Religion and National Socialism”, Journal of
Contemporary Religion 20 (2005), pp. 195–215, Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis (New
York: Routledge, 2006).
16 Walter Baetke, Vom Geist und Erbe Thules: Aufsätze zur nordischen und deutschen Geistes- und Glau-
bensgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1944).
17 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), pp.
326–27, Mees, “Hitler and Germanentum”, pp. 257–61.
92 Bernard Mees
1933 he was still yet to find his first university position.18 Scholars such as Kuhn,
who, in 1933, was still an untenured lecturer at Marburg, had happily signed up,
while many other conservative Germanists (such as Reichardt, who had also been
involved with Diederichs’s “Thule” series) demurred. Yet Baetke’s most important
contribution to the history of religions was not his excoriation of figures such as
Kummer, Wirth and Hauer or even his 1937 study The Religion of the Germanic Peoples
according to the Original Sources but his 1942 study of Holiness in Germanic which made
Baetke’s reputation as an original and important contributor to Old Germanic reli-
gious studies.19
Baetke’s 1942 book, the preface of which is dated to the February of that year,
is remarkable, however, for the timing of its appearance. Published by J.C.B. Mohr
(Paul Siebeck) in Tübingen, it was Baetke’s first major academic study with a recog-
nised scholarly publishing house. Appearing the year after the German invasion of
the Soviet Union, it was to be Mohr’s last offering in Old Germanic studies until
after the war – indeed Mohr was better known at the time for its law and philoso-
phy catalogue, Baetke’s book being only one of six monographs issued by J.C.B.
Mohr in 1942 to have found their way into the catalogue of the German National
Library today. Mohr had published Hauer’s Religion and Race in 1941 and seems to
have considered the publication of Baetke’s work a matter of comparable
importance.20
Yet Baetke’s study is not written as if it were a work which is overtly influenced
by political ideology. Its first section is, instead, an insightful review of the concept
and theorising of “holiness” in early-twentieth-century studies of religion. Baetke’s
first footnote cites Émile Durkheim and his Elementary Forms of Religious Life, hardly
a National Socialist favourite, and although he then moves on to considerations of
holiness by contemporary academic proponents of Nazism such as Hermann
Güntert and the Dutch Nordicist Jan de Vries, Baetke’s treatment of previous
scholarship seems even-handed rather than ideological.21 He grounds his concep-
tual understanding principally in Durkheim’s sociology of religion and a critique of
Rudolf Otto’s famous 1917 work on the numinous.22 Baetke’s main concern in the
18 Arthur Göpfert et al., Bekenntnis der Professoren an den deutschen Universitäten und Hochschulen zu
Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat (Dresden: W. Limpert, 1933), pp. 129ff.
19 Walter Baetke, Die Religion der Germanen in Quellenzeugnissen (Frankfurt a.M.: Moritz Diester-
weg, 1937), idem, Das Heilige im Germanischen (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1942).
20 Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, Religion und Rasse (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1941 = Jahresbände der Wis-
senschaftlichen Akademie der NSD-Dozentenbundes 1, 1937–39), pp. 177–225.
21 Émile Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse: le systeme totemique en Australie (Paris:
Felix Alcan, 1912), Baetke, Das Heilige im Germanischen, pp. 1–2.
22 Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum
Rationalen (Breslau: Trewendt und Granier, 1917), Baetke, Das Heilige im Germanischen, pp.
8ff., and cf. Gregory D. Alles, “Introduction”, in Rudolf Otto, Autobiographical and Social
Essays, ed. Gregory D. Alles (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), pp. 34–6, Todd A. Gooch,
The Numinous and Modernity: An Interpretation of Rudolf Otto’s Philosophy of Religion (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 2000), pp. 3–4 and Dirk Johannsen, Das Numinose als kulturwissenschaftliche Katego-
first section of his book is to consider Old Germanic notions of holiness in terms
of the major empirical studies of classical and other forms of religion of his day,
even taking the time to pillory Hauer for his (apparent) misunderstanding of key
issues in the task.23 Nonetheless, as Baetke admits at the end of the first part of his
study, his main contribution in Holiness in Germanic will be to undertake a Wörter und
Sachen analysis of the employment of terms for holiness in the Old Germanic
linguistic tradition.
The first Wörter und Sachen studies were produced by the brothers Grimm, but a
new call had gone out in 1909 to German and Austrian linguists and philologists to
re-engage with the relationship of language to culture. The Wörter und Sachen
approach to historical semantics was championed especially by the pioneering
Austrian psychological linguist and Indo-Europeanist Rudolf Meringer, who had
founded a journal that year with the same name, but which by the 1930s had taken
on clearly National Socialist overtones.24 Most of the key figures in the Wörter und
Sachen movement by the 1930s had become outspoken Nazis who clearly saw their
work as a service to the nation. As such, it comes as little surprise to find that the
second part of Baetke’s key 1942 study begins with a reference to Höfler’s
wretchedly politicised University of Vienna professional thesis, which Diesterweg’s
had published in 1934 as Secret Cultic Leagues of the Germanic Peoples.25
Holiness in Germanic is largely a very technical study of the way in which holiness
is referenced and described in the Old Germanic languages, Baetke’s material
ranging from assessments of Wulfila’s translation of the Bible into Gothic, to Old
High German monastic sources, runic inscriptions, and Old Icelandic literary
evidence. Baetke focuses particularly on two terms which have typically come to
indicate holiness in the Germanic languages, one represented by the Gothic term
rie: Norwegische Sagenwelt in religionswissenschaftlicher Deutung (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2008),

pp. 46–52.
23 Baetke, Das Heilige im Germanischen, p. 29, n. 1.
24 Rudolf Meringer, “Wörter und Sachen”, Indogermanische Forschungen 16 (1904), pp. 101–96,
Wörter und Sachen: Kulturhistorische Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Sachforschung/Zeitschrift für
indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft, Volksforschung und Kulturgeschichte 1–35 (Heidelberg: Carl
Winter, 1909–1944), Dorothee Heller, Wörter und Sachen: Grundlagen einer Historiographie der
Fachsprachenforschung (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1998), Christopher M. Hutton, Linguistics and
the Third Reich: Mother-tongue Fascism, Race and the Science of Language (London: Routledge,
1999), pp. 37–9, Mees, Science of the Swastika, p. 95.
25 Otto Höfler, Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (Frankfurt a.M.: Moritz Diesterweg, 1934),
Klaus von See, “Politische Männerbunde-Ideologie von der wilhelmischen Zeit bis zum Na-
tionalsozialismus”, in Gisela Völger and Karin von Welck, eds., Männerbünde, Männerbande:
Zur Rolle des Mannes im Kulturvergleich, 2 vols (Cologne: City of Cologne, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 93–
102 [= a revised version in idem, Barbar, Germane, Arier: Die Suche nach der Identität der
Deutschen (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1994), pp. 319–42], Stefanie von Schnurbein, “Geheime
kultische Männerbünde bei den Germanen”, in Völger and von Welck, eds., Männerbünde,
vol. 2, pp. 97–102, Mees, “‘Germanische Sturmflut’”, pp. 188ff. and idem, Science of the
Swastika, pp. 90ff.
94 Bernard Mees
weihs (thus German Weihnachten, ‘Christmas’, literally the ‘holy nights’), the other by
Gothic hailags (a cognate of the English word holy). Baetke argues that the two
terms originally represented two different (and complementary) kinds of Germanic
holiness: the first the holiness associated with ritual (cf. the Latin cognate victima,
‘sacrificial victim’), the other with the grace or good luck that the Old Germanic
gods could offer to the fortunate (cf. English hale and health, German Heil).26 Three
quarters of the book comprise a close philological analysis of the use of these two
terms and their cognates in the various medieval Germanic languages, Baetke’s
linguistically predicated “slow reading” of his sources representing a classic
example of 1940s Wörter und Sachen scholarship.
Baetke argues that the linguistic tradition in which this dualism is most clearly
(and originally) preserved, however, is that of medieval Germany.27 According to
him, early German monastic sources preserve more reliable indications of the
original state of Germanic Pagan holiness than do the Old Norse linguistic
employments he describes, even better than those of the chronologically much
earlier runic inscriptions from Scandinavia. Baetke does not engage in the same
manner with the relevant early English material, his comparative German-Norse
analysis, complemented by Wulfilian Gothic, representing a form of Germanising
of the Old Norse tradition that was common in continental scholarship at the time.
Nonetheless the book not only represents a triumph of historical semantic studies,
it also represents a vindication of the mainstream claims of the Germanentum move-
ment – not only was the need for Germanic resurgence most strongly felt at the
time on German (rather than Scandinavian) soil, it was in a linguistic analysis of
early German (rather than Nordic) sources in which Baetke’s semantic dualism
could be seen represented most clearly. Rather than more culturally archaic and
more Pagan – as the older Norse sources are usually assumed to be – for Baetke, it
was the writings of German Christians, writing about early Christian things, in
which the original conceptualisation of Old Germanic holiness was most faithfully
preserved. In the Old Scandinavian North, a considerable bowdlerising of the
notion of weihs had apparently occurred under the influence of Christianity – and
the often pre-Christian runic evidence, so Baetke proclaimed, was simply too un-
clear to be assessed with any confidence.28 Baetke’s work represented not just a
triumph of philological patience and will, it was also a supremely nationalist under-
taking.
Unexpectedly enough, Baetke’s dualistic understanding of Old Germanic holi-
ness has subsequently been very well received. With Claude Lévi-Strauss’s intro-
duction of structural binarism to anthropology in the 1950s,29 later specialists have
tended to agree with Baetke. Émile Benveniste, in his magisterial 1969 Wörter und
26 Baetke, Das Heilige im Germanischen, pp. 55–68.

27 Ibidem, pp. 165–96.
28 Ibidem, pp. 202–4.
29 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon, 1958).
Sachen survey of Indo-European language and society, even developed Baetke’s

fundamental scheme further, the leading French linguist (whose brother Henri had
perished at Auschwitz) expanding the dualism seen by Baetke from a German and
Germanic level to an Indo-European one – Benveniste argued that an essential
binary distinction of the consecrated or ritually marked off to the fructifying and
healing powers of divinity represents an inheritance not only of early Germanic
culture, but also of Indic, Iranian, Greek and Roman religious tradition.30 More
recent work in Old Norse studies, particularly on the runic testaments from pre-
Christian Scandinavia seen as so unreliable by Baetke, has tended to support Baet-
ke’s basic argument (albeit shorn of his nationalistic claim).31 Baetke’s 1942 work
has remained a Wörter und Sachen classic even despite the evident political aspect
which supported its original production.
Baetke seems to have represented a milder version of a scholar such as
Güntert. With Güntert, his nationalism and support of National Socialism clearly
enlivened his philological work, even if he had to face his own battles in the late
1930s as the SS, in the figure of the Ahnenerbe’s Walther Wüst, cannibalised the
journal that was founded by Meringer, eventually sidelining Güntert (Meringer’s
successor) as its editor.32 But unlike Güntert (who died in 1948), Baetke’s career
blossomed after the war as he forsook his former intellectual allegiance to the
mainstream of German reaction, and instead joined the socialist cause.
Serving as dean of his faculty from 1948–50 and awarded the GDR’s Order of
Patriotic Merit in 1959 after his retirement, Baetke became a leading member of the
new East German academic establishment after the war. His devoted former
student Kurt Rudolph records that Baetke did not politicise his lectures, however,
not filling them and his scholarship with Marxist rhetoric or other socialistic
flourishes as was common in the works of other GDR scholars at the time.33
Indeed, Baetke now became in word and deed a critic not only of basely ideolo-
gised right-wing scholarship, but even of the many excesses that had characterised
30 Émile Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indoeuropéennes, 2 vols. (Paris: Minuit, 1969), vol.
2, pp. 179–207 and cf. Thomas L. Markey, “Germanic Terms for Temple and Cult”, in
Evelyn Sherabon Firchow et al., eds., Studies for Einar Haugen, Presented by Friends and Colleagues
(The Hague: Mouton, 1972), p. 375, Julien Ries, “L’apport de Régis Boyer à l’étude du sacré
dans la religion des anciens Germains et Scandinaves”, in Claude Lecouteux, ed., Hugur:
Mélanges d’histoire, de littérature et de mythologie offerts à Régis Boyer pour son 65e anniversaire (Paris:
Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997), pp. 233–36 and Dennis H. Green, Language
and History in the Early Germanic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.
360–61.
31 Bernard Mees, “Alu and hale”, Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 5 (2009), pp.
107–31.
32 Mees, Science of the Swastika, p. 196. On Güntert, see also Bruce Lincoln, “Hermann Güntert
in the 1930s: Heidelberg, Politics, and the Study of Germanic/Indogermanic Religion”, in
Junginger, ed., Study of Religions under the Impact of Fascism, pp. 179–204.
33 Rudolf and Heinrich, “Walter Baetke”, p. 182.
96 Bernard Mees
the more mainstream reflections of the Germanentum movement of which he had

formerly been such a solid part. Most of Baetke’s post-war works even eschew the
description “Germanic” as he became more strictly focused on the Nordic world
and retreated from studying the philology of medieval Germany.
Perhaps Baetke’s most telling work of post-war scholarship is represented by
his 1958 return to the matter of Germanic holiness – or at least to a key aspect of
Old Germanic Heil that he had not properly studied in his 1942 book. In 1958 and
1962, he gave two addresses to the Saxon Academy of Sciences on the theme of
sacral kingship, i.e. the tradition of ascribing the power of Heil to Old Germanic
kings. Baetke’s resultant book, published in 1964 as Yngvi and the Ynglings, starts
(again) with a reference to Höfler, but also to the Scandinavian scholars Vilhelm
Grønbech and Otto von Friesen.34 In 1934, von Friesen had published a seminal
study of the ascription of divine or fatalistic standing to Swedish kings in the
medieval Norse Ynglinga Saga and Grønbech’s similarly groundbreaking study of
Old Norse religion from 1909 had been translated into German at the behest of
Höfler in 1937 as a seminal contribution to understandings of Old Germanic Heil.35
This theory of an Old Germanic tradition of attributing the power of Heil to kings
(as well as gods) had come into especial prominence in the 1950s, particularly in
terms of a long study by Höfler (who had passed through West German de-Nazifi-
cation, like Kuhn, mostly unscathed) of what he saw as evidence for sacral kingship
in the difficult poetic sequence preserved on the early medieval Swedish Rök rune-
stone.36 Enthusiasts of the notion of royal Heil such as Höfler had praised the
concept in terms of how it contrasted with democratic authority, and clearly under-
stood its medieval effect as being comparable to that produced by the leadership
cult which surrounded Hitler. Professor of Swedish at the University of Uppsala,
von Friesen had long been influential in the Germanentum movement, Höfler having
taught at Uppsala in the late 1920s along with several other scholars with similar
political leanings.37 Grønbech and von Friesen had developed upon the Pacific
Islander notion of mana, first brought to the attention of scholars of religion in the
late nineteenth century, and introduced it to Old Germanic studies, whence the
more politicised of the Germanist fraternity had become so excited about its rele-
vance to understanding the imagined historical roots of the key political discourses
of their own day.
34 Walter Baetke, Yngvi und die Ynglinger: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung über das nordische ‘Sakral-
königtum’ (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964).
35 Otto von Friesen, “Har det nordiska kungadömet sakralt ursprung?”, Saga och Sed (1932–34)
pp. 15–34, Wilhelm Grönbech, Kultur und Religion der Germanen, trans. Ellen Hoffmeyer, 2
vols. (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1937–39).
36 Otto Höfler, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum I: Der Runenstein von Rök und die germanische Individual-
weihe (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1952).
37 Bruce D. Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999), p. 126, Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, trans. Sonia Wichmann (Chica-
go: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 209ff.
In 1955, at the Eighth International Congress for the History of Religions in Rome,
however, the Swedish historian Åke V. Ström had delivered a paper which seemed
to indicate to Baetke that the notion of an Old Germanic sacral kingship was
threatening to become an academic dogma.38 Höfler and Kummer (the latter of
whom had been unable to regain a position after being dismissed from his post at
Jena at the end of the war) had presented at the conference on sacral kingship in
Rome too, but as an expert in all things holy in Germanic, Baetke disagreed,
dismissing the concept as it was promoted by his West German counterparts as a
Christianised construct.39 In 1956, Baetke published a key analysis of Old Norse
literary production which portrayed it as essentially Christian, the representations of
Paganism found in such sources stylised and fictional, the products of clerical
imaginations.40 His addresses on the Heil of Old Germanic kings to the Saxon
Academy of Sciences in 1958 and ’62 developed this theme further, the 1964
monographic publication of his lectures presenting a searing critique of the notion.
Baetke’s book traces the twentieth-century development of the concept of Old
Germanic sacral kingship and assesses the philological evidence for it in early
Nordic sources, which he dismisses as fantastic and unreliable. He subsequently
disparages the contemporary efforts of continuators of the sacral-kingship tradition
such as Höfler and the University of Münster medievalist Karl Hauck. The main
author that Baetke invokes in his swingeing attack on Höfler and his colleagues is
Marc Bloch and Bloch’s study of the medieval Rois thaumaturges from 1924.41 Rather
than citing Marx or Lenin as his main methodological inspiration, Baetke preferred
to promote the analysis of sacral kingship advanced by the Marxist co-founder of
the French Annales School of medieval studies.
Bloch, a member of the French resistance who had been killed by the Gestapo
in 1944, saw the ascription of healing powers to medieval French and English kings
as essentially a Christian development, based on attributes associated with saints
and Old Testament prophets. Baetke, in turn, explains the emergence of a tradition
of sacral kingship in medieval Norse sources as a sign of Christian thematic
influence in these works, not as indications of the existence of a genuine inherited
Old Germanic tradition. Baetke assesses evidence such as early runic inscriptions
and, characteristically, in a direct repudiation of von Friesen and his many Scan-
dinavian successors, dismisses it as too poorly understood to be employed as
38 Åke V. Ström, “The King God and his Connection with Sacrifice in Old Norse Religion”, in
The Sacral Kingship: Contributions to the Central Theme of the VIIIth International Congress for the
History of Religion, Rome, April, 1955 (Leiden: Brill, 1959), pp. 702–15.
39 Otto Höfler, “Der Sakralcharakter des germanischen Königtums”, in The Sacral Kingship, pp.
664–701 and Bernhard Kummer, “Ein Lebensbeispiel zur Frage nach Ursprung und Fort-
wirkung demokratischen und sakralen Königtums in Skandinavien”, in ibidem, pp. 716–34.
40 Walter Baetke, Über die Entstehung der Isländersagas (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1956).
41 Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges: étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particu-
lièrement en France et en Angleterre (Strasbourg: Istra, 1924), Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: A Life in
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
98 Bernard Mees
reliable.42 Baetke’s critique is so searching and so dismissive of Scandinavian scho-

larship, Olof Sundqvist in his recent review of the whole Germanic sacral kingship
genre, decries Baetke’s approach as too “radical”.43 Although Sundqvist provides
no real response to Baetke’s arguments (which, regarding the runic evidence, at
least, are not accepted by most experts) and seems to accept that there is something
wrong with the received sacral-kingship tradition (to which he nevertheless still
accords), Baetke’s work has evidently only succeeded in finding a quite limited
acceptance among Nordicists today.44
That is not to say that the notion of an Old Germanic sacral kingship has not
continued to prove quite controversial. Sundqvist’s book represents mostly a
descriptive rather than analytical work and there remain many critics of the sacral-
kingship thesis in Old Germanic studies today. The matter still provided the occa-
sion for public exchanges between Höfler and several of his critics as late as the
1970s, and many more recent scholars have voiced similar concerns, particularly
given the decidedly 1930s associations that the notion that Old Germanic kings
may have been thought to have had supernatural powers necessarily brings to a
consideration of German scholarship from the time.45
After all, the whole notion that Nazism represents a “political religion” imme-
diately brings to mind the pomp and hysteria of the Nuremberg rallies, and other
often less public aspects of the leadership cult which surrounded Hitler.46 Max
Weber used the example of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, as the
epitome of his notion of charismatic authority in his Economy and Society, but Hitler
42 Baetke, Yngvi, pp. 26–38.

43 Olaf Sundqvist, Freyr’s Offspring: Rulers and Religion in Ancient Svea Society (Uppsala: Uppsala
University, 2002), p. 31.
44 Olaf Sundqvist, “Runology and History of Religions: Some Critical Implications of the De-
bate on the Stentoften Inscription”, Blandade runstudier 2 (Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska
språk, 1997), pp. 135–74, Bernard Mees, “The Stentoften Dedication and Sacral Kingship”,
Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 140 (2011), pp. 281-305.
45 Klaus von See, Kontinuitätstheorie und Sakraltheorie in der Germanenforschung: Antwort an Otto
Höfler (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1972), Rory McTurk, “Sacral Kingship in Ancient Scandi-
navia”, Saga-book 19 (1975–76), pp. 139–69, idem, “Scandinavian Sacral Kingship Revisited”,
Saga-book 24 (1994), pp. 19–32, Walther Kienast, “Germanische Treue und ‘Königsheil’”,
Historische Zeitschrift 227 (1978), pp. 265–324, Daniel G. Russo, “Sacral Kingship in Early
Medieval Europe: The Germanic Tradition” (Dissertation, University of New Hampshire,
1978), Eva Picard, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum? Quellenkritische Studien zur Germania des Tacitus
und zur altnordischen Überlieferung (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1991), Franz-Reiner Erkens, “Sa-
kralkönigtum und sakrales Königtum: Anmerkungen und Hinweise”, in idem, ed., Das früh-
mittelalterliche Königtum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), pp. 2–4.
46 Eric Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1939), Richard Steig-
mann-Gall, Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), idem, “Nazism and the Revival of Political Religion Theory”, Totali-
tarian Movements and Political Religions 5 (2004), pp. 376–96, Milan Babík, “Nazism as a Secular
Religion”, History and Theory 45 (2006), pp. 375–96.
is often considered a better example of such a figure by many scholars today.47

Charisma was an essential and very obvious part of the political culture of the
1930s – and the studies of the cults of charismatic kings (and their associated Heil)
by scholars such as Höfler in the 1950s reflected a form of ideological Germanic
thought which clearly represented a continuation of pre-war Germanentum theori-
sing. Höfler’s legacy was one of the less palatable aspects of Old Germanic philolo-
gy after 1945. Baetke’s attempt to combat the romanticism he clearly saw at work
in such scholarship in a study which invokes so centrally the contribution of the
most important Marxist medievalist of the pre-war period does, however, make
Yngvi and the Ynglings an ideological tract, even if the book does not cite a single po-
litical theorist or make any direct reference to Nazism.
Baetke’s 1964 study represents a wholesale repudiation of a genre of politicised
discourse in Old Germanic studies that first emerged in the early 1900s but which
had since developed into its own ideological formation, an ideology and discursive
formation of Old Germanic charisma and kingship.48 Heil had constituted both a
term of address (cf. English hail!) and a reference to divine favour (hale, holy) already
in Old Germanic times, but the word had become even more pregnant with ideolo-
gical meaning under the National Socialists. Weber’s notion of charismatic authori-
ty has clearly religious roots and with the development of Weberian charisma into
the transformational leadership theory of James MacGregor Burns, which still re-
presents a canonical theory in leadership studies today, the political discourses of
Heil within Old Germanic studies might be seen as directly linked with the anti-
democratic thought encapsulated in the Nazi “leadership principle”.49 After all,
Höfler and Kummer made it particularly clear that the Heil of early medieval kings
represented ideological competition to the idea of Old Germanic agrarian democra-
cy. There was obviously something very politically unrepentant about the sacral-
kingship debates which raged within Old Germanic studies during the 1960s and
’70s.
Indeed, Old Germanic studies in Germany in the 1950s and ’60s was riven bet-
ween two schools: the progressive and the obstinate. Höfler represented a conti-
nuation of the unreformed extremes of 1930s scholarship to some, but also the
very promise such scholarship might still offer to others. Younger figures such as
Hauck, who followed in the Höflerite tradition, were typically scholars who had
come of age academically during the dictatorship but were unwilling to pursue a
47 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and
Claus Wittich, trans. Ephraim Fischoff et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978),
p. 242, Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon,
1987), Michel Dobry, “Hitler, Charisma and Structure: Reflections on Historical Methodo-
logy”, Politics, Religion and Ideology 7 (2006), pp. 157–71.
48 Cf. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavi-
stock, 1972), pp. 31–9.
49 James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), Martin Riesebrodt,
“Charisma in Max Weber’s Sociology of Religion”, Religion 29 (1999), pp. 1–14.
100 Bernard Mees
reformation of their discipline along the lines championed by Baetke in the ’50s. As
the scholarship of figures such as Bloch came to represent the canon of medieval
studies in the 1960s and beyond, as universities increasingly became bastions of
academic socialism, a work such as Baetke’s Yngvi and the Ynglings no longer seemed
quite so radical. Taken in light of his earlier study of Holiness in Germanic (which is
only cited once in the whole of Baetke’s 1964 work), however, the change seems
quite abrupt and intellectually uncharacteristic of a man who had previously prided
himself so obviously on his own contribution to the pre-war Germanic resurgence.
Baetke was one of the first German Nordicists to reject the romantic preten-
sions of scholars such as Otto, Kummer, Wirth and Hauer. He was a quintessential
empiricist who had no time for what he considered unwarranted speculation. Yet it
remains a strange kind of intellectual history that heroises someone who proved so
academically successful under both German dictatorships, first as a critic of Ger-
manist excess that was publicly skewered at the time even by many card-carrying
Nazis and then, later, as a bitter opponent of post-war academic romanticism. The
“radical source critic” of Sundqvist’s rather diffident assessment of Old Norse sa-
cral kingship evidently thought himself a stern critic of basely politicised academic
distortion. But his own scholarship, often oppositional and overwrought as it
sometimes is, was clearly also enabled by political circumstance – like Kuhn, Baetke
lived in his own version of a metaphorical Wodanstraße in the 1920s and ’30s. That
Baetke specialised in a field that was so suggestively amenable to ideologised fancy
meant that a certain amount of pointed boundary setting would seem to have been
essential. Yet, unlike Reichardt or Feist, Baetke was never forced into emigration –
even to an “inner” one; his matter and method drank only too deeply of the accep-
ted conservative consensus of the day.50 Drawn to his studies of the Old Germanic
past initially in terms of an illiberal sense of patriotism, Baetke used the opportu-
nities he was afforded quite successfully, hailed later in his life as an academic hero
(the subject of two East German Festschriften – one posthumous) rather than the
conservative-turned-socialist ideological changeling that he might rather more
empirically be admitted to have been.51
Any scholar who lived through those times had to tread a difficult path, but it
is surely overstating Baetke’s role in the 1930s to paint him as an implacable
opponent of Nazism. As Richard Steigmann-Gall has demonstrated so clearly, Nazi
Germany was ideologically Protestant, not a neo-Pagan state, figures such as Hauer
and Wirth representing a political extreme, not the fascist mainstream. If Nazism
50 Cf. Reinhold Grimm, “In the Thicket of ‘Inner Emigration’”, in Neil H. Donahue and Doris
Kirchner, eds., Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–
1945 (New York: Berghahn, 2003), pp. 27–45.
51 Kurt Rudolph et al., eds., Festschrift Walter Baetke, dargebracht zu seinem 80, Geburtstag am 28.
März 1964 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1964), Ernst Walter and Hartmut Mittelstädt, eds., Altnordistik:
Vielfalt und Einheit. Erinnerungsband für Walter Baetke (1884–1978) (Weimar: Böhlau, 1989),
and cf. also Walter Baetke, Kleine Schriften: Geschichte, Recht und Religion im germanischen Schrift-
tum, ed. Kurt Rudolph and Ernst Walter (Weimar: Böhlau, 1973).
can validly be seen as a secularised, political religion, then being an outspoken

defender of Lutheranism and the German empirical tradition was far from
incompatible with National Socialism. Baetke’s actions speak louder than his later
words, his dalliance with right-wing publishers and the associated movement for
Germanic resurgence in the 1920s representing a truer testimony of his original
intellectual standing than do his altercations with radical religionists in his search to
establish a supremely empirical scholarship of Old Germanic religious studies. His
later publications presented under another kind of dictatorship often seem to have
become so sceptical and socialist he has developed something of a reputation as a
methodological extremist among latter-day experts in the Old Germanic field.
Rather than a cranky hyper-critic, as he has sometimes been portrayed, however,
Baetke was reacting against what he saw as an unrepentantly ideologised form of
German antiquarian studies which had survived the war, his conversion to the
politics of Durkheim and Bloch only serving to sharpen his critical apparatus. Ra-
ther than remain trapped in the dreamy world of the literary neo-romanticism that
he had formerly been enmeshed in, Baetke increasingly came to have no time for
those who had proven unable to leave the Germanentum-enthusing of the pre-war
period behind and for this became a reforming hero for more than just historians
of religion working in the GDR.
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The Great God’s Oldest Runes
Luitgard Löw
Introduction
Compared to his popularity in the 1930s, Herman Wirth (1885–1981) remains fairly
unknown today. Only in the last years has he received some interest from acade-
mics, due to his important role as the initiator of the SS organisation Ahnenerbe
and the fact he was one of the “scholars” of Heinrich Himmler (1900–45).1 With
his studies, though, he was also influential to laymen’s understanding of runes and
symbols, even outside Germany.2 He also participated in the matriarchate discus-
sion. Even though his name is not often mentioned any more, Wirth’s ideas still
live on in esoteric thought, detectable among those who speculate on Atlantis, Ger-
manic religion, rock carvings and runes.3
Wirth apparently only left a small autobiography, published in 1960,4 from
which to deduce his thinking. He may not have imagined anyone would be interes-
ted in his work after his death and we will probably never know the real extent of
his private collection and archive, which must have been quite large as Wirth was
working and collecting all his life. The largest part is probably lost. The few traces
he left in official papers, letters and documents are scattered over more than four
countries.
A number of instructive papers and letters are preserved in the Antiquarian-
topographical Archives (Antikvarisk-topografiska arkivet, ATA) in Stockholm, be-
longing to the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet), however.
Most interesting is Wirth’s small handwritten treatise entitled Utdrag ur ‘Den store
Gudens äldsta runor’. ‘Fimbultýs fornar rúnar’ (Voluspá 60), dating to 1938 or early 1939.5
1 See Heather Pringle, The Master Plan. Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust (New York: Hyperi-
on, 2007) and Bernard Mees, The Science of the Swastika (Budapest: Central European Univer-
sity Press, 2008), pp. 135ff.
2 See Ulrich Nußbeck, Karl Theodor Weigel und das Göttinger Sinnbildarchiv. Eine Karriere im Dritten
Reich (Göttingen: Schmerse, 1993), pp. 28–33, Ingo Wiwjorra, “Herman Wirth. Ein geschei-
terter Ideologe zwischen ‘Ahnenerbe’ und Atlantis”, in Barbara Danckwortt et al., eds., His-
torische Rassismusforschung: Ideologen, Täter, Opfer (Hamburg: Argument, 1995), pp. 91–112 as
well as Björn Andersson, Runor, magi, ideologi – en idéhistorisk studie (Umeå: Swedish Science
Press, 1995), p. 151f. and Maja Hagerman, Det rena landet. Om konsten att uppfinna sina förfäder
(Borgå: Prisma, 2006), pp. 95ff.
3 Luitgard Löw, “Völkische Deutungen prähistorischer Sinnbilder. Herman Wirth und sein
Umfeld”, in Uwe Puschner and Georg Ulrich Großmann, eds., Völkisch und national. Zur Ak-
tualität alter Denkmuster im 21. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
2009), pp. 214–32.
4 Herman Wirth, Um den Ursinn des Menschseins (Wien: Volkstum-Verlag, 1960).
5 An English translation of it is published for the first time as appendix of this book.
108 Luitgard Löw
It functioned as a synopsis of his study Des großen Gottes älteste Runen (The Great
God’s Oldest Runes), which supposedly comprised some 700 pages and was to
function as door-opener for an academic career either in Germany or in Sweden,
either in the form of a habilitation or a docentship.6
During the 1930s, Wirth was a much-discussed private scholar in Germany. He
regarded himself as the founder of a new science called “Geistesurgeschichte”, a
History of Primeval Thoughts. Wirth believed the Nordic race originated in the
Polar Region, where it grew to be an advanced civilisation. These early Nordics had
to leave their homeland because of climate change, which led to a change in the
poles and ultimately made the Nordic race leave their place of origin and spread all
over the world. The idea of a Nordic migration, which would have taken place over
thousands of years, was viewed somewhat sceptically in academia, but Wirth en-
joyed some popularity among the general public.
Wirth’s Position between the Völkisch and the Life Reform

Movement
The theories, work and aim of Wirth’s life are located at the crossing of the paths
of the völkisch and life reform movements. His whole life, Wirth was a staunch
opponent of modernity and anything that involved technical progress, materialism,
rationalism, positivism, the natural sciences and enlightenment. He was a strong
critic of urban living and saw signs of deterioration in “‘step’-shoving, fashionably
dressed, utterly material, rotting in body and soul, big-city man of culture of our
time, to whom all the spiritual worth of nature, as well as all expression of feelings
of the divine experience in the so-called arts is nothing anymore but a thrill”.7
The völkisch movement had developed in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, carrying nineteenth century cultural prejudices into twentieth century political
discourse. It was a powerful cultural force, which united ethnocentric populism
with natural mysticism and a critical response to modernity, and became a Germa-
nic utopian ideal after the First World War, built upon the picture of antiquity
developed by populists and scholars.8 The German cult of the Volk can be traced
back to the days of Herder, but in it’s popular form, it was expressed even by the
German philologist and mythologist Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), who not only
6 A Habilitation is the highest academic qualification in Germany and usually depends on a

book-length habilitation thesis. The successful candidate achieves the title of a Privatdozent
and the right to teach, the Venia legendi. Until recently, a habilitation functioned as inevitable
requirement for a full professorship or a university chair in Germany. In Sweden a person
with an academic qualification similar to the habilitation is called docent.
7 Herman Wirth, Der Aufgang der Menschheit (Jena: Diederichs, 1928), p. 9, translation mine.
8 Cf. Uwe Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918 (München: Saur,
1996).
The Great God’s Oldest Runes 109
claimed that language and nation was indissolubly connected, but also propagated a
romantic view of the “folk soul” as an organically grown, natural form of identity.9
After 1900, the völkisch movement grouped all thought into the categories nation,
folk und race. This was slightly more limited than, though related to, the antisemitic
ideologies, which ranked races into hierarchies and awarded the Nordic race the
claim to the chief spot in the racial hierarchy. The use of swastikas and runes kept
the ideal of pre-Christian Germany alive and even led to neo-Paganism, based on
the reconstruction of practices from a Nordic-Germanic Bronze and Iron Age.
Wirth’s research, based on studies on symbols and languages, centred around the
question of the origin of all culture, attempting to detect buried traditions and
values, with the aim of resurrecting their meaning and establishing a new con-
sciousness with these ideas.
“Life reform” was a mental movement, which first emerged at the end of the
nineteenth century and used central catchwords like “body”, “soul”, “life” and “life
praxis”, “a way of life close to nature”, “vegetarian”, “nutrition”, “reform food”,
“reform clothes”, “natural welfare procedures” etc. and thus reacted to phenomena
like progressive industrialisation, environmental pollution and urbanisation. There
were branches in aesthetics, religion, philosophy, science and in the emancipation
movement.10 Neither movement was organised, but there was a significant ideologi-
cal overlap, and many individuals were involved with both.
A good example of Wirth’s engagement with both movements is his concept
of the Odal rune. This symbol, built of two circles linked with a line, was, he
declared, a rune that was suppressed by the Catholic Church during Christianisa-
tion. In Wirth’s theory, the Odal implied terms like dirt, homeland, entity and pro-
perty of clunia – concepts that were to be found in the blood and soil ideology of
the leading Nazi and later Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture, Richard Walther
Darré (1895–1953). Wirth also contributed key phrases like “back to one’s own
soil” to the discussions within the settlement or back-to-nature movement.
Wirth believed there was an arctic primeval religion that was an ancient, ma-
triarchal lay-religion composed of a trinity-like order, of God the Father, Mother
Earth, and Son of God as saviour who appeared with the sun. The connection
between nature, sun, Mother Earth and the superiority of the Nordic as the
Germanic race reflects the longing for spirituality, salvation or meaning during the
Weimar Republic.
Wirth insisted on a healthy lifestyle even for his family and the other members
living under his roof, even his assistants. An overdrawn description of his living
circumstances in 1932 gives scurrilous impressions, but also shows that he was
9 Silke Meyer and Guido Sprenger, “Der Blick auf die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie. Sehen
als Körpertechnik zwischen Wahrnehmung und Deutung”, in Silke Meyer and Armin
Owzar, ed., Disziplinen der Anthropologie (Münster: Waxmann, 2001), p. 205f.
10 See Kai Buchholz et al., eds., Die Lebensreform. Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst
um 1900, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Häusser, 2001).
110 Luitgard Löw
accepted with a wink because of his charismatic and charming personality, which
fascinated those around him.11 Wirth designed reform clothes for himself and his
wife, maintained a paradigmatic vegetarianism, dominated by fruits and crudités,
avoided vinegar, coffee and alcohol, insisted on homeopathic treatment, did his
daily gymnastics and practised breathing exercises.12 He was convinced that his way
of living was the reason for his long, vital and active life.13 Wirth died at the age of
95, one year after publishing his last book Europäische Urreligion (European Primeval
Religion).14
Biographical Beginnings
Herman Felix Wirth was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands on 8 May 1885. His
father’s side of the family originated in Rheinpfalz, Germany, and his mother came
from the Netherlands. Wirth studied German studies, Dutch philology, history, and
music at the universities of Utrecht and Leipzig. He earned his degree in ethnology
(Folklore studies) in 1910 under John Meier (1864–1953), writing a thesis entitled
Der Untergang des niederländischen Volksliedes (The Fall of the Dutch Folksong).15
Due to his strong identification with Germany, Wirth voluntarily joined the
German army in 1914 as a “devotee of the greater Netherlander belief”.16 However,
by the end of the year, he was transferred from the military service to the German
civil administration in Belgium. While in Gent in 1915, he became part of the Fle-
mish independence movement, sympathising with the most radical group involved
in a separation from the French-speaking Walloons, the “Jung-Flamen”.17 By the
middle of 1916, Wirth returned to Berlin, and on 21 December 1916 he was gran-
ted the title of a titular professor for Netherlander philology at the University of
Berlin, most likely in honour of his work during the war.18 In the same year he got
married to his second wife Margarethe Schmitt (1890–1978), daughter of the pain-
ter Eugen Vital-Schmitt (1858–1935). Having returned to the Netherlands, Wirth
worked as a teacher and founded a youth movement group along the lines of the
Wandervogel movement in 1920. Probably his wife had inspired him to do that.
11 See for instance Friedrich Hielscher, Fünfzig Jahre unter Deutschen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1954),
pp. 288–93.
12 Cf. the letter of Herman Wirth to Gustav Schlyter on 8 March 1941, Regional State Archive
Lund, LLA 30112, vol. A: 51.
13 Günter-Joachim Neumann, Meine Begegnung mit Herman Wirth (private copy, 2007).
14 Herman Wirth Roeper Bosch, Europäische Urreligion und die Externsteine (Wien: Volkstum-Ver-
lag, 1980).
15 Idem, Der Untergang des niederländischen Volksliedes (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1911).
16 Idem, Der Aufgang der Menschheit (Jena: Diederichs, 1928), p. 15.
17 Ingo Wiwjorra, Herman Wirth. Leben und Werk (Berlin: unpublished Magister thesis 1988), pp.
7ff.
18 Ibidem, p. 8.
Accompanied by his wife, Wirth and this group travelled through the country
playing folk music on traditional instruments and performing theatre. In 1924, the
couple moved to Marburg where Wirth became a member of the NSDAP a year
later. Probably due to the fact that he accepted Jewish sponsoring money, he
withdrew in 1926. Later he declared that he had wanted to be a part of the National
Socialist movement as an outsider, and that he had informed Hitler personally of
his position.
In the mid-twenties Wirth settled for the life of a private scholar. This was
made possible through influential and wealthy friends who supported the father of
four children. His earnings were almost never sufficient. The funds went directly to
his research, while his family mostly had to live in modest circumstances. The
money was generously given by sponsors like Mathilde Merck (1864–1958), a lea-
ding figure in the völkisch movement and wealthy widow of Willy Merck, associate
of the Merck company Darmstadt, one of the foremost international chemical-
pharmaceutical companies. Another generous sponsor was Eugen Diederichs
(1867–1930), who was willing to publish Wirth’s first large work Der Aufgang der
Menschheit (The Ascent of Mankind) in 1928; the heavy folio edition was priced at
42 Reichsmark and the linen edition at 48 Reichsmark.19 A second edition of the
book was printed in 1934. Wirth found another important sponsor in Ludwig
Roselius (1874–1943), producer of the decaffeinated coffee brand “Kaffee Hag”
and one of the richest men in Germany. Between 1929 and 1931, the Atlantis
house was built as a part of famous Böttcherstrasse in Bremen, which was tho-
roughly influenced by Wirth’s vision of the mythical continent.20
With the purpose of spreading his views and collecting money for his research,
Wirth established a society named after himself, the “Herman Wirth Gesellschaft”.
Wirth’s theories were aimed at a general audience in the main, while scholars
usually dismissed his work as speculative. In 1931, the geologist and prehistorian
Fritz Wiegers (1875–1955) published a collection of scholarly articles with argu-
ments against Wirth’s thought.21 However, the philosopher Alfred Baeumler
(1887–1968), who later became head of the department of science in the “Amt
Rosenberg”, issued a series of rebutting articles one year later in support of Wirth’s
theories.22
In that time, Wirth turned towards National Socialism with renewed force,
19 Cf. Justus H. Ulbricht, “‘Meine Seele sehnt sich nach Sichtbarkeit deutschen Wesens.’ Welt-
anschauung und Verlagsprogramm von Eugen Diederichs im Spannungsfeld zwischen Neo-
romantik und ‘Konservativer Revolution’”, in Gangolf Hübinger, ed., Versammlungsort moder-
ner Geister. Der Eugen Diederichs Verlag – Aufbruch ins Jahrhundert der Extreme (München: Die-
derichs, 1996), pp. 335–76.
20 Cf. Arn Strohmeyer, Parsifal in Bremen. Richard Wagner, Ludwig Roselius und die Böttcherstraße
(Weimar: VDG, 2002).
21 Fritz Wiegers, ed., Herman Wirth und die deutsche Wissenschaft (München: Lehmann, 1932).
22 Alfred Baeumler, ed., Was bedeutet Herman Wirth für die Wissenschaft? (Leipzig: Köhler und
Amelang, 1932).
112 Luitgard Löw
striving to make a contribution of his own to the ideological foundations of the NS

movement.23 By the spring of 1932, he relocated to Mecklenburg, where the local
NSDAP-branch of the provincial government pushed for the creation of a teaching
position in German Prehistory for him at the University of Rostock. Moreover,
there were plans to establish a “Forschungsanstalt für Geistesurgeschichte” (Re-
search Centre for the History of Primeval Thought) to exhibit Wirth’s findings. Be-
sides that, Wirth developed a life reform concept he called “Deutsche Volks-Hoch-
schulsiedlung” (German People’s Academy Settlement),24 which he attempted to
live and work out together with his family, his assistants and co-workers in a
community. Protests from the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Rostock
brought the plans to nought. Therefore Wirth moved to Berlin in the autumn of
1933.
First Successes
Wirth had a good rapport with the media and became well known even outside of
Germany. The Swedish prehistorian Nils Åberg (1888–1957) discussed Wirth and
his work in the archaeological journal Fornvännen, comparing his world-spanning re-
search with the Swedish polymath Olaus Rudbeck (1630–1702). Rudbeck had writ-
ten a 3000-page treatise in four volumes called Atland eller Manheim to prove that
Sweden, in fact, was the fabulous Atlantis and the cradle of all civilisation.25 Åberg
had listened to a lecture by Wirth in Germany, describing him later on as orator
who was sincere and filled by the faith in his own mission (“ärligt och uppfylld av
tron på sin egen mission”), a wizard in the crisis-torn and collapsing Weimar Re-
public. Like in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Little Match Girl, Wirth
dreamed of a happier future:
Caught in these fantastic imaginations of golden ages and purity of race, of Nordic ex-
pansion and Nordic genetic substance, maybe they dreamed again of a racially pure and
noble species, of a coming power and greatness for Germany’s plagued people. Maybe
then they forgot the factories, their big-city culture and their unemployed millions, and
instead maybe they dreamt of blowing wheatfields in the plains of Ukraine and prospe-
rous farming villages under the swastika flag.26
23 Herman Wirth, Was heißt deutsch? Ein urgeistesgeschichtlicher Rückblick zur Sebstbesinnung und
Selbstbestimmung (Jena: Diederichs, 1931).
24 N.N., “Herman Wirths ‘Deutsche Volks-Hochschulsiedlung’”, Rostocker Universitätszeitung (10
May 1932), pp. 6–7.
25 Gunnar Eriksson, Rudbeck 1630–1702. Liv, lärdom, dröm i barockens Sverige (Stockholm: Atlan-
tis, 2002).
26 “Fångna i dessa fantastiska föreställningar om guldålder och renrasighet, om nordiska expan-
sioner och norsk arvssubstans, drömde de kanske åter om ett rasrent och ädelt släkte, om
framtida makt och storhet för Tysklands pinade folk. De glömde då kanske bort fabriker
In May 1933, Wirth opened his first exhibition in Berlin named “Der Heilbringer.
Von Thule bis Galiläa und von Galiläa bis Thule” (The Savior: From Thule til
Galilee and from Galilee til Thule). He started his preparations with a public appeal
for a collection of symbolic shaped bread, symbolic pastry, cake-pans, waffle irons
and their imprints, drafted by his assistant Wolfram Sievers (1905–48).27 The
opening speech was held by the founder and publisher of the antisemitic tabloid
Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher (1885–1946).28 Wirth had also invited Hitler, but the
Führer declined.29 In the exhibition Wirth showed a great variety of objects from
his researches: archaeological findings, ethnological everyday objects, clothing and
jewellery. In all these artefacts he had discovered symbols and abstract signs of the
Nordic people. However, the catalogue of more than thousand exhibition pieces
contained just a few originals. The overwhelming number of samples consisted of
plaster castings, models, copies, photographs or drawings. In fact, the authenticity
of the objects did not matter; it was their symbolic meaning that mattered:
The way of life of our forefathers was so distinctively alive that they, in cult as well as in
life, made no difference between the material entity and its manufactured likeness.
Therefore they did not hesitate to display either the thing or its copy in the Tree of Life,
in the May tree, in the life branch, or in the prick, or to let it shine in its likeness like the
rock carvings of the Bronze Age.30
The Heilbringer-exhibition was also presented in the Atlantis-house in Bremen in

connection with the first “Nordic Thing”, an international meeting of Nordic en-
thusiasts organised by Ludwig Roselius.31 Even though Wirth’s lecture led to pro-
och storstadskultur och sina arbetslösas millioner, de drömde kanske i stället om vajande sä-
desfält på Ukrainas slätter och blomstrande bondebyer under hakkorsflaggan.” Nils Åberg,
“Herman Wirth. En germansk kulturprofet”, Fornvännen. Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Re-
search 28 (1933), p. 249, translation mine.
27 Cf. Wolfram Sievers, “Aufruf zur Sammlung von Gebildbroten, sinnbildlichen Gebäckarten,
Kuchenformen, Kucheneisen und deren Abdrücke oder Abgüsse” from 12 January 1933,
Mecklenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, 5.12-7/1 Nr. 1267.
28 Strohmeyer, Parsifal in Bremen, p. 139.
29 See the letter of the Reichskanzlei to MacLean on 9 March 1933, Federal Archives Berlin, R
43/II/334.
30 “Diese ihre Lebensform war bei unseren Vorfahren so lebhaft ausgeprägt, daß sie im Kult
und auch wohl im Leben keinen Unterschied machten zwischen dem stofflichen Ding und
seinem gefertigten Abbild, und so zögerten sie nicht, bald das Ding als Bild selber zu geben
im Lebensbaum, im Maibaum, im Lebenszweig oder im Stecken, bald es als Abbild auf-
leuchten zu lassen, wie auf den bronzezeitlichen Felsbildern.” Quoted from Anneliese Jonas,
“Die volkskundliche Lehrschau der Universität Heidelberg – eine Schöpfung Eugen Fehr-
les”, in Ferdinand Herrmann and Wolfgang Treutlein, eds., Brauch und Sinnbild, Eugen Fehrle
zum 60. Geburtstag (Karlsruhe: Südwestdeutsche Druck-und Verlagsgesellschaft, 1940) pp.
15–6.
31 Cf. Ludwig Roselius, ed., Erstes Nordisches Thing. Veröffentlichungen der ‘Väterkunde’ (Bremen:
Angelsachsen-Verlag, 1933). Wirth spoke in Bremen on “Die Religion der Megalith-Kultur
114 Luitgard Löw
tests among the pre-historians present, his appearance and the exhibition had a
strong public appeal.32 A second exhibition by Wirth with the title “Der Lebens-
baum im germanischen Brauchtum” (The Tree of Life in Germanic Traditions)
opened two years later in May 1935 in cooperation with the Reichsnährstand, a
governmental body in Germany in charge of regulating the production of food.33
Heinrich Himmler gave a speech there, which was aired live in the national radio
programme.34 Later, the Reichsführer SS bought nearly 2000 objects of the exhi-
bition for 9,000 Reichsmark from his private coffer.35
In spite of scholarly criticism, Wirth was given an associate professorship at the
University of Berlin by Bernhard Rust (1883–1945) in 1933. In so doing, the newly
appointed Prussian Minister of Science, Art and Education snubbed a great num-
ber of academics, above all the chairman of the society of German pre-historians,
Bolko Freiherr von Richthofen (1899–1983).36 Rust provided Wirth, who was re-
garded as a “Schützling der Bewegung”, a protégé of the NS-movement at that
time, with a plot of land near Potsdam where he could establish an open air-muse-
um.37 But when Wirth published a German version of the Oera Lind Book, a work
he claimed to be the chronicle of the Friesian family Over de Linden, a scandal en-
sued.38 The Oera Linda Book was by no means the genuine source of a Nordic
primeval religion but a fanciful mixture of history, mythology and religion compiled
und die Entwicklung der abendländischen Schrift” [The religion of the megalith culture and
the development of the occidental writing system] and Nils Åberg on “Beziehungen Skandi-
naviens zu Deutschland in der Völkerwanderungszeit” [Scandinavia’s relations with Germa-
ny during the migration period]. This meeting was attended by 150 German and foreign par-
ticipants. While the scientiensts left the room during Wirth’s talk, the lay audience was exci-
ted.
32 Strohmeyer, Parsifal in Bremen, p. 137.
33 Letter of Herman Wirth to Ludwig Roselius on 22 February 1935, Federal Archives Berlin,
BDC B 284, Roselius.
34 See Wirth’s “Auszug aus der Übertragung des Rundfunks von der Eröffnung der Ausstel-
lung ‘Der Lebensbaum im germanischen Brauchtum’”, Federal Archives Berlin, BDC B 315,
Wirth.
35 See the sales contract between Himmler and Wirth as well as the letter of Bruno Galke to
the Ahnenerbe on 2 February 1936, Federal Archives Berlin, NS 21, vol. 27.
36 Cf. the letter of the Prussian Ministry to Wirth on 14 October 1933 as well as the letter of
Bolko von Richthofen to Rust’s staff member Hans Achelis on 20 November 1933, Federal
Archives Berlin, REM A 0114 Wirth.
37 Letter of Herman Wirth to Ludwig Roselius on 27 November 1933, Federal Archives Berlin,
BDC B 284, Roselius.
38 Herman Wirth, Die Ura-Linda-Chronik. Übersetzt und mit einer einführenden geschichtlichen Untersu-
chung (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1933); cf. also Theodor Steche, “Die Ura-Linda-Chronik
altgermanisch oder gefälscht?”, Völkischer Beobachter (11 January 1934) and Sönje Storm, “Die
öffentliche Aussprache über Herman Wirths Ura-Linda-Chronik in Berlin (1934)”, in Birgit-
ta Almgren, ed., Bilder des Nordens in der Germanistik 1929–1945 (Huddinge: Södertörns Hög-
skola, 2002), pp. 79–98.
in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Wirth thought it to be a Pagan counter-

narrative older than and superior to the Old Testament. Leading Nazi officials such
as Heinrich Himmler and the blood and soil ideologist and Reich Minister of Food
and Agriculture Richard Walter Darré did not harbour doubts about the scholarly
standards of Wirth’s research methods, but it ruined Wirth’s reputation in the aca-
demic world.39
During the Summer of 1933, Wirth designed a programme he called “Deut-
sches Ahnenerbe” (German Ancestral Heritage) and in early 1934 he made several
submissions to the future Reich Minister of Science and Education Bernhard Rust
to get financial backing for the programme.40 He also began discussions with other
members of the Nazi leadership, such as Himmler and Darré. Wirth impressed the
Reichsführer SS and they quickly discerned their convictions were quite similar,
being opposed to modernity and united in their cultural pessimism. Himmler had
been interested in mythological literature, occultism and völkisch esotericism since
his youth. Now he could hope to explore these things in more depth, assumedly
with help from the sciences.
Wirth felt his plans were coming true when he met six like-minded persons,
among them Himmler, Darré and officials from the Reichsnährstand on 1 July
1935 to found the “Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte Deutsches Ahnen-
erbe”, the Society for the Study of Primeval Ideas, under the slogan of Germany’s
ancestral heritage. Wirth was the driving force behind the undertaking and became
president and head of the first department for the Science of Symbols and
Characters, the “Pflegstätte für Schrift- und Sinnbildkunde”. Himmler functioned
as chairman of the board. For the position of the society’s secretary, Wirth
suggested Wolfram Sievers, his former personal secretary and assistant in the days
of Bad Doberan. Sievers quickly advanced to a “Reichsgeschäftsführer”, becoming
an executive director of the Ahnenerbe. This Nordic think tank was initially
designed to assist Wirth’s research with the following aims: 1) to research space,
spirit and deeds of the Nordic and Indo-Germanic peoples, 2) to integrate the
expected findings into the life of the German folk, 3) to call every fellow German
to join the endeavour.41
Just a month after the founding of the Ahnenerbe, in August 1935, Wirth in-
formed Himmler of his departure for a research journey to Sweden, funded by
39 Michael H. Kater, Das ‘Ahnenerbe’ der SS 1935–1945. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten
Reiches (München: Oldenbourg, 1997, 1st German edition 1974), p. 26.
40 See the letter of Herman Wirth to Ludwig Roselius on 20 June 1934 (Federal Archives Ber-
lin, BDC 284, Roselius) and of Wolfram Sievers to Bruno Galke on 1 April 1936 (ibidem,
NS 21, vol. 27).
41 See for instance the Ahnenerbe constitution from 1937 (n.d.), in Federal Archives Berlin,
NS 21, vol. 77.
116 Luitgard Löw
private sponsors and the German Research Foundation.42 To keep the costs low,
Wirth and his companion, the SS-man and sculptor Wilhelm Kottenrodt (1904-81),
travelled with a tent. Their intention was to obtain casts of Swedish rock carvings.43
The two men produced 113 plaster casts with a total area of 180 m2 during their
stay in Sweden. In February 1936 Wirth presented a film about his research journey
to Himmler at his home in Marburg, which was so successful he received permis-
sion to conduct a second trip to Scandinavia. The expedition team was to consist of
six participants. The travel route led over Bornholm and Sweden to Norway and up
to the polar circle, to Rødøy, back to Sweden and then, via Denmark, back to
Germany.44 The costs were estimated at 12,590.76 Reichsmark and covered by the
German Research Foundation and SS funds. Again Wirth focussed mainly on the
casting of rock carvings. According to his own statement, a total of 380 m2 of
plaster casts was produced during the two trips to Scandinavia.45 Wirth’s two expe-
ditions in 1935 and 1936 can be seen as the highpoint of his Ahnenerbe career. He
was always a controversial figure and had to defend himself constantly against
attacks.46 Scholarly protests against his pseudoscience, his inability to lead others
and his incompetence in managing money weighed heavily on him. Nonetheless,
Himmler remained loyal to Wirth until the end of the war, even he thought of him
as a very idiosyncratic and complicated person.47 Since Wirth had undertaken
scientific tasks in his personal staff (Persönlicher Stab) by his own orders, Himmler
hesitated to drop Wirth.48
However, Wirth’s Ahnenerbe career ended in December 1938 with his dis-
placement. The ultimate reason of his expulsion from the Ahnenerbe was a shift in
the organisation away from laymen-research towards academic scholarship.49 Con-
trary to his public popularity, Wirth had always been rejected by the learned society
and had never succeeded in becoming part of the academe in Germany. His
successor Walther Wüst (1901–93), a prominent specialist in Iranian and Indian
studies and a leading Nazi intellectual, obstructed together with the general secre-
tary of the Ahnenerbe Wolfram Sievers his attempts to get a professorship from
42 See Wirth’s letter to Himmler on 25 August 1935, Federal Archives Berlin, BDC B 315,
Wirth.
43 See Wirth’s “Bericht über die erste Hällristningar-Expedition des ‘Deutschen Ahnenerbes’”
from 14 July 1936, Archives of the Vitlycke Museum, Tanum.
44 See Wirth’s “Bericht über die zweite Hällristningar-Expedition des ‘Deutschen Ahenerbes’,
Berlin 1936” to be found in the Archives of the Swedish National Heritage Board, ATA,
Ämbetsarkivet 3, 1923–76.
45 Ibidem, p. 11.
46 See for instance the letter of Wolfram Sievers to Franz Platz on 26 November 1935, Federal
Archives Berlin, BDC B 315, Wirth.
47 Letter of Karl Wolff to Walter Schultze on 7 December 1938, ibidem.
48 Letter of Heinrich Himmler to Otto Wacker on 28 September 1937, Federal Archives Ber-
lin, REM A0114, Wirth.
49 See Kater, Das ‘Ahnenerbe’ der SS, pp. 58ff.
the Reich Ministry of Science and Education, despite Himmler’s pledge.50 Wirth
had to abandon his hopes for a university chair and never succeeded to gain reco-
gnition from the academic world.
Symbols all over the World
According to his biographical details, Wirth began recording symbols in 1921 while
working in the Netherlands. At first, Frisian gable decorations kindled his in-
terests.51 Quickly he turned to other regions for prehistoric and historic sources of
symbols. He occupied himself with all sorts of writing systems and iconographic
remnants, viewing them comparatively, without consideration of their respective
space and time. Wirth came to the conclusion that, despite wide variation in loca-
tion and date, symbols had always appeared in similar forms, which had to be un-
derstood as indication of a common starting point and original source. He believed
that symbols were the key to the oldest sources of both scripts and religion. Since
these symbols were also found in Palaeolithic cave paintings, Wirth considered
them “primeval scripts” expressing a “primeval religion” with a heliolatry based on
cosmological grounds. Referring to runes and runic characters, he expanded history
backwards all the way to prehistory. Under the determinant of race, Wirth
constructed a line of continuity from a time immemorial to the present. The
Germanic tribes would have preserved the primeval religion longest. As evidence,
he pointed to the high cultic position of women in the Germanic society together
with their ability for clairvoyance. During the migration period, this primeval belief
was suppressed by “Wodanistic kings”, causing women to lose the respect of their
men. Only within secluded groups could the old beliefs survive. For Wirth, the
Matron Cult in ancient Germania, Eastern Gaul, and Northern Italy, later in Scot-
land, Friesia, Southern Spain and Rome, was not only a myth but the worship of
holy women that had survived in the woods, protected by the Germanic folk who
kept the old religion. After the Christianisation period, those female figures lived
on in narratives about white virgins, Mother Hulda or the three Catholic saints,
Katharina, Margarethe, and Barbara.
With these ideas Wirth fit in among völkisch visionaries such as Ludwig Wilser
(1850–1923), Willy Pastor (1867–1933) or Guido von List (1848–1919). However,
Wirth tried to keep his distance, especially from List, declaring his mystical findings
to be a “Massenunsinn”, a huge nonsense.52 The fundamentals of his own broadly
defined system of symbols consisted of motifs he found among Northern rock car-
vings. The Bronze Age rock carvings of South- and Westsweden, in particular, had
50 Letter of (prename unknown) Wohltat to Rudolf Mentzel on 25 September 1939, Federal

Archives Berlin, REM A 0114, Wirth.
51 Herman Wirth, Um den Ursinn des Menschseins, p. 44f.
52 Idem, Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1936), p. 3.
118 Luitgard Löw
an important function for the völkisch movement in connection with the old Ger-
manic myths built up on the Edda, the Sagas and the Germania written by the
Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (56–101). Those texts were not regarded as
literary sources, but as historical documents of an Aryan-Germanic race.53
The broad spectrum of völkisch ideologues included precursors, allies and com-
petitors for Wirth, as well as laymen and scholars who published in journals like
Mannus or the Jahrbuch für prähistorische und ethnographische Kunst, redacted by the pre-
historian and art historian Herbert Kühn (1895–1980). Until today this field
between science and pseudoscience is sparely revised. The enormous interest of
völkisch groups in rock carvings and in the appearance and activities of the charis-
matic Wirth caused a bad reputation for this important archaeological source, their
documentation and research for a long time. This image deviated not before new
approaches came up within prehistory at the end of the twentieth century.
The Hope for a New Career in Sweden
In January 1939, immediately after his dismissal from the Ahnenerbe, Wirth tried to
establish a new career in Sweden with his study Des großen Gottes älteste Runen (Fimbu-
lýs fornar rúnar, Voluspá 60). He was convinced his ideas would cause the Swedish
academe to receive him and his new discipline with open arms.54 Wirth, moreover,
expected Sweedish acclaim would lead to positive results in Germany, raising his
reputation with Himmler and in the German public’s eye.
Wirth’s studies attracted a great deal of interest in Sweden. In the course of his
second trip in 1936, he was invited by the ethnologist Åke Campbell (1891–1957)
and the narratologist Sven Liljeblad (1899–2000) to give a lecture to the Society of
Ethnology (Ethnologiska förening) of Uppsala.55 This gave Wirth the impression
that his interpretation of history would fall on a fertile ground, resulting in a serious
consideration of his work. In the absence of a budget and foreign exchange, Wirth
was unable to undertake research projects at his own expense and was forced to
approach Swedish institutions.56 Already in December 1937 he had unsuccessfully
applied for the position of a lecturer at the University of Gothenburg, submitting
the unpublished manuscript “Pinnkalender, pinnkompass och den nordiska män-
niskans urreligion” (Calendar, Compass and the Nordic Men’s Primeval Religion).57
53 Uwe Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Sprache – Rasse – Religion.
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001), p. 83.
54 Letter of Herman Wirth to Gustav Schlyter on 23 August 1938, Regional State Archive
Lund, LLA/30112, A:48.
55 Wirth to Schlyter on 3 October 1936, ibidem, A:45.
56 See the letter of Wolfram Sievers to Herman Wirth on 8 August 1938, Federal Archives Ber-
lin, BDC B 315, Wirth.
57 Unknown sender to Håkan Fernholm on 27 December [1937], collection Wiwjorra.
Since 1937, Wirth had the luck to employ a Swedish assistant, Anders Håkan Fern-
holm (1904–90) from Ystad, whose task was to expand and intensify the Ahnener-
be relations with Sweden. Fernholm was engaged in racial discussions and since
1929 a member of the circles round Birger Furugård (1887–1961), a main figure of
the extreme Swedish right. In 1932, Fernholm stood for a seat in the Swedish par-
liament on behalf of the Svenska Nationalsocialistiska Partiet SNSP, but lost.58
Fernholm stayed in Germany until January 1939, returning home after Wirth’s dis-
missal from the Ahnenerbe. Shortly after his arrival in Sweden, Fernholm contacted
the head of the Swedish National Heritage Board, Sigurd Curman (1879–1966), to
personally present a short outline of Wirth’s not yet finished manuscript Des großen
Gottes älteste Runen (Fimbultýs fornar rúnar, Voluspá 60).59 In it Wirth wanted not only
to summarise the results of his two expeditions to Scandinavia in 1935–36 but also
to underline his research as a pioneering feat in the study of rock carvings.
Sigurd Curman, a widely acknowledged professor of architectural history,
played an important role in the preservation of Sweden’s cultural heritage during
the first half of the twentieth century. He was appointed national antiquarian in
1923 and held this position until his retirement in 1946. In that time, Curman
succeeded in building up an effective organisation, laying the foundation for mo-
dern heritage management.60 Curman had mixed experiences with Wirth and his
trips to Sweden. While Wirth needed official permission to make plaster casts, he
had problems restoring the sites of rock carvings after his work. Besides objecting
to his work methods, Curman objected also to Wirth’s function as representative of
Himmler’s Ahnenerbe. A visit in Curman’s office in autumn 1936 did not improve
relations.
Wirth’s handwritten manuscript gave Curman a much better insight into the
work of the German researcher who was proud of his innovative approach to do-
cumenting rock carvings with plaster casts. In his eyes, older techniques such as
drawings or photographs, both those with and without marking the petroglyphs
with chalk – methods used by early researcher of rock carvings such as Carl Georg
Brunius (1792–1869), an art historian, theologian and classical scholar, or the Da-
nish artist and art master Carl Lauritz Baltzer (1845–1917) – would never have re-
vealed important details. Based on his own methods and interpretation, Wirth was
sure he could contribute new perspectives to Palaeolithic epigraphy and the study
of symbolic cult forms. He saw himself in the tradition of the famous Swedish
archaeologist Oscar Almgren (1869–1945), whose findings he hoped to complete.
58 Cf. Jan Samuelsson, “Toabesök avslöjade den tyske nazistens bluff”, Sydsvenskan (29 March
2008), pp. 8–9, online available on http://www.bostream.nu/jannesamuelsson/sjobo/sjo-
bonazister.htm (last access on 31 October 2011).
59 Letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Curman on 24 January 1939, Archives of the Swedish
National Heritage Board, ATA, Ämbetsarkivet 3.
60 See Richard Pettersson, Fädernesland och framtidsland. Sigurd Curman och kulturminnesvårdens eta-
blering (Umeå: Institutionen för historiska studier vid Umeå universitet, 2001).
120 Luitgard Löw
Almgren’s book on the cult and religion as expressed in Swedish rock carvings
during the Stone and Bronze ages, published in Swedish in 1926-27, became a
classic even in Germany.61 The renowned Swedish archaeologist created a reliable
guideline for the understanding of rock carvings, which is still used today.
Practically, Wirth was supported by his close friend Gustav Schlyter (1885–
1941), a high ranking magistrate at the city of Helsingborg. Schlyter, who adored
Hitler and cherished his illusion of National Socialist Germany, cultivated wide-
spread relations with Swedish politicians and artists. He was the right man to help
Wirth get into contact with the University of Lund. Wirth asked Schlyter to send
commendatory letters to the professor for classical studies and archaeology, Nils
Martin P:sson Nilsson (1874–1967) and the ethnologist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow
(1878–1952). Approaching the Danish ethnologist Axel Olrik (1864–1917) turned
out to be impossible, because Olrik had died long before.62 Nilsson answered rapid-
ly that rock carvings were not in his field and that he did not feel competent to
judge Wirth’s research.63 Wirth tried also to build relations with Norwegian scho-
lars. He contacted Ingrid Skancke (1889–1955), the wife of Ragnar Skancke (1890–
1948), a professor of electrical engineering and member of the Norwegian Acade-
my of Science and Letters.64 Wirth asked her to send a copy of his examination on
The Great God’s Oldest Runes to the head of the Collection of National Antiquities
(Oldsaksamling) in Oslo, Anton Wilhelm Brøgger (1884–1951).65 Brøgger, who had
met Wirth during unpleasant circumstances during his second trip in 1936 in Oslo,
refused.66
But Wirth was more interested in establishing himself at a Swedish university
where he wanted to demonstrate his skills as a serious researcher. Already in Janu-
ary 1939 he sent a twelve-page letter to Sigurd Curman to explain the results of his
studies of Swedish rock carvings. He wrote:
Scandinavian rock art sites are the cult-symbolic codification of the Indo-Germanic pri-
meval religion being preserved in written form in the older and oldest Vedic texts. I
61 Oscar Almgren, Hällristningar och kultbruk: bidrag till belysning av de nordiska bronsåldersristningar-
nas innebörd (Stockholm: Kungl. vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademiens handlingar.
Del 35, 1926–27), in German: Oscar Almgren, Nordische Felszeichnungen als religiöse Urkunden.
Translated by Sigrid Vrancken (Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg, 1934).
62 Letter of Herman Wirth to Gustav Schlyter on 19 March 1939, Regional State Archive
Lund, LLA/30112, A:49.
63 Letter of Martin P:sson Nilsson to Herman Wirth on 27 March 1939, ibidem.
64 Ragnar Skancke was appointed Minister for Church and Educational Affairs after the occu-
pation of Norway. Put on trial for treason, he received the death penalty in 1946 and was
executed in 1948.
65 Letter of Anton Wilhelm Brøgger to Ingrid Skancke on 23 May 1939, Oldsaksamling Oslo,
Inkomne brev, kopibok 1939.
66 Letter of Herman Wirth to Anton Wilhelm Brøgger on 31 May 1939, ibidem. In 1941 and
1942 Brøgger was imprisoned twice by the German occupation regime.
have compared and underlayed selected passages of them with rock carvings for the
first time.67
A second letter from Wirth to Curman, written in Swedish, was delivered by Fern-
holm personally in the spring of 1939 together with four volumes of the pictorial
supplement to Wirth’s treatise, which still was not finished. Wirth asked Curman
for the installation of a commission that would prove the scientific value of his
findings. He wanted it to be headed by the archaeologist Oscar Almgren and
include other authorities such as the classical scholar Martin P:sson Nilsson, the
two ethnologists Sven Liljeblad (1899–2000) and Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1878–
1952), the professor of German studies and runology Adolf Gotthard Noreen
(1854–1925), the professor of linguistics and runology Ivar Artur Lindquist (1895–
1985) and Elias Wessén (1889–1981), also a linguist and expert for Scandinavian
languages. With the support of such an outstanding committee, Wirth hoped to get
his studies published and then use his habilitation as starting point for a university
career in Sweden.68
Despite all of his personal reservations, Curman reacted collegially and sent
Wirth’s work to Ernst Manker (1893–1972), a leading ethnographic researcher of
the Sámi people and their material culture. Manker worked through the “spiral ne-
bulous” theories of Wirth, summarising his impression that his concoction would
belong to the same category as Olaf Rudbeck’s Atlantica.69 In the meantime, Wirth
completed his manuscript Des großen Gottes älteste Runen (Fimbultýs fornar rúnar. Volus-
pá 60) and sent it to Curman.70 Curman reacted with a disapproving letter pointing
out that there would be no money for Wirth, neither for a publication of his work
nor for a professorship in symbol studies at any university in Sweden. Swedish re-
searchers would have started their own projects to document rock carvings:
Certainly you will understand that it would be somehow insulting to our national fee-
lings if our historical monuments were to be published by foreigners. Of course we like
to do this by ourselves. But it is no question that we will cooperate with others in scho-
larly regard. New expeditions will not be permitted in the near future.71
67 “Die skandinavischen Hällristningar sind die kultsymbolischen Kodifizierung der indoger-

manischen Urreligion, wie sie in den älteren und ältesten vedischen Texten in schriftlicher
Überlieferung erhalten sind. Diese ausgewählten Textstellen werden von mir erstmalig den
Hällristningar gegenübergestellt, ihnen untergelegt.” Letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Cur-
man on 12 January 1939, Archives of the Swedish National Heritage Board, ATA, Ämbets-
arkiv 3. Wirth used the Swedish word “hällristningar” for rock carvings. “Hällristningar” was
a quite common term especially in German lay literature in the 1920s and 1930s.
68 Letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Curman on 12 January 1939, ibidem.
69 Letter of Ernst Manker to Sigurd Curman on 11 February 1939, Archives of the Swedish
National Heritage Board, ATA, Ämbetsarkivet 3.
70 Letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Curman on 5 April 1939, ibidem.
71 “Sie werden sicher verstehen, dass es unserem Nationalgefühl etwas beleidigend wäre, wenn
unsere Geschichtsdenkmäler von Fremden müssten herausgegeben werden. Wir wünschen
122 Luitgard Löw
Curman’s reaction was moderate in tone but left no doubts about the pointlessness
of Wirth’s proposal. “If your are offended by my letter”, he wrote, “please consider
that it is my duty to give you an open and frank response so that you do not feel
duped.”72
Wirth did not consider accepting this answer. On the contrary, he forged new
plans, not without serious consequences. Wirth decided his family should split up:
His sons agreed to interrupt their studies and start working in factories; his wife
and the two daughters would work as servants so that he, the father, would be able
to establish himself from nothing in the North. Wirth felt that he would finally get
the recognition he deserved. Against Curman’s refusal Wirth expected that he
would be offered the opportunity to work with a group of Swedish researchers to
investigate Scandinavian rock carvings. Far from abandoning the hope of a future
in Sweden, Wirth pushed on with his habilitation plans, asking Curman to intervene
at the University of Stockholm for a teaching assignment in the “history of prime-
val religion”.73 Since Wirth blinded himself to the facts and increasingly grated on
Curman’s nerves, the Swede was forced to use plainer language about Wirth’s bad
record in the Swedish academe:
Your scholarly reputation in corresponding circles in Scandinavia is not of that kind

that you are welcomed in any scientific institute as a collaborator. (…) You have been
exceedingly intrusive and you did not keep your promises.74
Nevertheless, Curman sent Wirth’s manuscript to Elias Wessén who said he had no
time to examine it. Curman wanted also Nils Åberg to judge Wirth’s work. Åberg
regarded it from a historico-cultural perspective, saying that, in his eyes, it would be
a typical document of the research produced in National Socialist Germany. He
considered Wirth a dreaming idealist, an interesting “Schwarmgeist”. The reader of
Wirth’s treatise would get the impression of a chaotic absent-mindedness at the
beginning. But a closer consideration would reveal the clutter to be held together in
a quite skilful way.75 Åberg believed that Wirth had fallen into disgrace in Germany
es natürlich selbst zu machen. Für wissenschaftliche Zwecke werden wir natürlich gern mit
anderen zusammenarbeiten. Neue Expeditionen werden in der nächsten Zeit nicht gestat-
tet.” German written letter of Curman to Wirth on 4 May 1939, ibidem.
72 “Wenn mein Brief Ihnen nicht angenehm ist, bitte ich Sie doch zu bedenken, dass es meine
Pflicht gewesen ist, Ihnen ein offenes, ehrliches Antwort [sic, L.L.] zu geben, damit Sie nicht
hinter das Licht geführt würden.” Ibidem.
73 Letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Curman on 20 May 1939, Archives of the Swedish Na-
tional Heritage Board, ATA, Ämbetsarkivet 3.
74 “Ihr wissenschaftlicher Ruf in den betreffenden Kreisen Skandinaviens ist nicht der Art,
dass Sie als Mitarbeiter in irgend einem wissenschaftlichen Institut willkommen sind. (…) Sie
sind ungeheuer aufdringlich gewesen und Ihre Versprechungen haben Sie nicht gehalten.”
Sigurd Curman to Herman Wirth on 3 June 1939, ibidem.
75 Letter of Nils Åberg to Sigurd Curman on 5 June 1939, ibidem.
due to his imaginative speculations. Even if he was celebrated by some National

Socialist functionaries at the beginning, he would sooner or later bring the Nazi re-
gime into discredit both at home and abroad. Ture Johnsson Arne (1879–1965), a
leading archaeologist at the Swedish Academy of Sciences, accepted Curman’s
request to examine Wirth’s treatise with reluctance. Having read it, he asked how
Wirth could know what he claimed and how he might be able to adduce reasons?
Since Arne could not find much evidence in Wirth’s interpretation of rock carvings
and runes, he advised Curman against the treatise. Going further, he even called it
material for psychopathologists.
The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 forced Wirth to realise that
his hopes for a scientific future in Sweden had come to an end. He received a last
letter from Curman who enclosed two copies of his manuscript and a portfolio of
photographs in January 1940. Curman finished his consignment with the words:
“Quo vadis, Germania?”.76 Even a dreamer like Wirth who had been ignorant of
the political conditions in Germany, now recognised that his aim of establishing
himself at a Swedish university would be pointless during the war.77 But he did not
give up the plan to move to Sweden in order to start a research project on his own
account. In March 1940, he planned a new trip to Sweden. Just a few days before
the German assault on Denmark and Norway in April, he wrote to Gustav Schlyter
to express his happy feelings that Scandinavia had escaped war thus far.78
Due to the fact that Curman returned the manuscript back to Wirth, no copy
of it has been handed down. Curman only kept the small handwritten extract Utdrag
ur ‘Den store Gudens äldsta runor’. ‘Fimbultýs fornar rúnar’ (Voluspá 60) in Stockholm,
perhaps because of its oddity. For that reason the summarising treatise remained in
Curman’s papers in the National Board of Antiquities in Stockholm and – appa-
rently – is the only one of Wirth’s numerous manuscripts that has been preserved
in a public archive, accessible to scholarly research.
The Outline of the Treatise
The small treatise of fifty-one handwritten pages was the summary of Wirth’s much
bigger habilitation manuscript, which either got lost or lies in private hands. Wirth’s
synopsis has never been published, although it appears to be an excellent com-
pendium of his opinion about a primeval Nordic culture. A closer examination of it
allows conclusions about his unpublished book Des großen Gottes älteste Runen. Ge-
schichte der Religion der nordischen Felszeichnungen, ihrer Kultinstitutionen und ihrer Dauerüber-
lieferung im germanischen Volksglauben und Brauchtum bis zur Gegenwart – roughly to be
76 Sigurd Curman to Herman Wirth on 28 January 1940, ibidem.

77 Letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Curman on 31 January 1940, ibidem.
78 “Gudskelov, att det nu är fred i norden!” Letter of Herman Wirth to Gustav Schlyter on 17
March 1940, Regional State Archive Lund, LLA/30112, A:49.
124 Luitgard Löw
translated as The Great God’s Oldest Runes. History of the Religion of the Nordic
Rock Carvings, their Cult Institutions and Persisting Lore in Germanic Folk
Religion and Customs until the Present – that should have documented the results
of his two expeditions in 1935 and 1936. With the heading Des großen Gottes älteste
Runen, the great God’s oldest runes, Wirth referred to old Norse mythology, that is
to the Voluspá, stanza 60:
Again the Æsir | on Itha Plein meet,

and speak of the mighty | Mithgarth-Worm-
again go over | the great world-doom,
and Fimbultýr’s | unfathomed runes.79
Wirth considered the runes as a holy script and the motifs and symbols he detected
on Swedish rock art sites as the earliest script types. This reasoning allowed him to
draw a direct line from the rock carvings to the runic alphabet and to symbols
carved on rune-rods or to icons decorating peasant household items in the
nineteenth century. Wirth was convinced that the ideograms he had found in Scan-
dinavia would be primeval types of an old European alphabet. He told Curman at
the beginning of 1939 that these ideograms of rock carvings ought to be under-
stood as prototypes of the old European alphabets. Therefore the runic characters
of the old Germans should be seen as direct offspring of the symbolic representa-
tions displayed by rock art sites in the North.80
Wirth’s extract, entitled Utdrag ur ‘Den store Gudens äldsta runor’. ‘Fimbultýs fornar
rúnar’ (Voluspá 60), highlighted the importance of petroglyphs for his symbol con-
ception as primeval script and codification of an age-old Indo-Germanic religion.
Only with plaster casts of rock carvings, coloured to their natural appearance and
illuminated with strong sidelights, would it be possible to display their genuine and
complete meaning.81 This particular way of proceeding enabled Wirth to come to
fundamentally new insights in the field of cultic symbols and Palaeolithic epigraphy.
The ideograms of Scandinavian rock carvings especially were witness to an old In-
do-Aryan primeval homeland located between the Northern and Baltic See. To ex-
plain these rock-carvings, Wirth compared them with old texts from the Vedas, us-
ing the Indian nationalist and social reformer Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) as
reference point. In 1903, Tilak had published a work on The Arctic Home in the Ve-
79 The Poetic Edda. Translated with Introduction and Explanatory Notes by Lee M. Hollander (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 12.
80 “(…) diese Ideogramme der Hällristningar sind Urtypen der alteuropäischen Alphabete: die
germanische Runenschrift stammt in geradezu unmittelbarer Linie von den Urrunensymbo-
len der Hällristningar ab”. Letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Curman on 12 January 1939,
Archives of the Swedish National Heritage Board, ATA, Ämbetsarkivet 3.
81 See the undated letter of Herman Wirth to Sigurd Curman from January 1939, Archives of
the Swedish National Heritage Board, ATA, Ämbetsarkivet 3.
das, in which he developed the theory of an Arctic Aryan homeland.82 Originally

situated in the Arctic region, the Aryans once set off towards the south, splitting
into two branches. One went to India while the other moved to Europe. In the co-
lonial situation in India, Tilak was interested in the Vedas as spiritual means ena-
bling India to gain independence from the British. He regarded religion as powerful
force to press the nascent national movement forward. Wirth adopted Tilak’s views
regarding the age and location of the Aryan people and assigned it to his own sym-
bol theory. Moreover, similarities he found between the old-Indian and old-Norse
reckoning of time lead Wirth to develop a cosmic calendar system.83
In this cosmic calendar system, circular symbols like discs or wheel crosses, a
widespread motif in the imagery of the rock carvings, had a central function. For
Wirth, they pictured the time, denoting the four seasons of a year as well as the
voyage of the sun through the seasons. The cosmic wheel circles would line out
human life with birth, death and reincarnation. Wirth interpreted it as a symbol for
the winter solstice and jul (Christmas), as a kind of formula dating back to the late
Stone Age. An important specimen of these wheel symbols was detected by Wirth
in the rock carvings of Kalleby-Långemur. He also found circular imagery among
the symbols displayed by runic calendars. Runic calendars, in Sweden and Norway
called primstavar, were important pieces of evidence for him. Usually carved in
wood, bone or horn, or written on parchment, they were sometimes created in the
form of rings, discs or sticks. Runic calendars were used during the Middle Ages up
to the sixteenth and seventeenth century and were based on the nineteen-year Me-
tonic cycle of the moon. They normally consisted of horizontal lines with symbols.
Important days were the solstices, equinoxes, the days of saints and Christian
feasts. With the Neolithic rune disc from Fossum, Wirth thought he had found an
early example of these calendars.84 It was one of his favourite rock carvings. The
Fossum panel with rock carvings is 15 m wide and 3 m high and situated in Tanum
close to the Vitlycke rock. The carving contains twenty-five male figures, twenty
boats, animals and cup marks. The plate is generally regarded as a symbol for the
sun.85 The signs surrounding this sun-disc were commonly accepted as protuber-
ances, while Thomas B. Larsson regards them as anthropomorphic, perhaps as
worshipper.86
82 Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Being also a New Key to the Interpretation of
many Vedic Texts and Legends (Bombay: Ramchandra Govind & Son, 1903).
83 See for example Wirth’s Aufgang der Menschheit, pp. 69ff.
84 Wirth, Die heilige Urschrift der Menschheit, plate 285.
85 John Coles, Bilder från forntiden: en guide till hällristningar och andra fornminnen i norra Bohuslän.
(Uddevalla: Bohusläns museum, 1994), p. 55.
86 “As we today have no means to understand the grammar of the symbol language of the
Bronze Age it is impossible to fully comprehend such details – we have to be content with a
theoretical and empirical grounded discussion.” Thomas B. Larsson, Materiell kultur och religiö-
sa symboler. Mesopotamien, Anatolien och Skandinavien under det andra förkristna årtusendet (Umeå:
Nyheternas Tryckeri KB, 1997), pp. 80-86.
126 Luitgard Löw
Wirth interpreted the disc of Fossum as a pre-runic chronometry, as a calendar

plate, surrounded by symbols and “holy, prerunic scripts”.87 On page 34 of Den store
Gudens äldsta runor Wirth explains his script system as referring to the course of the
year. Wirth interpreted one of the symbols as an axe splitting the year in a summer
and a winter half. In his view, the wheel symbolised the Son of God in combina-
tion with the solar year. Wirth did not hesitate to interpret the Fossum calendar-
plate as a Neolithic variety of a Nordic rune-rod and an excellent example for a
Nordic line of continuity through millennia.88 Wirth counted also the cup marks to
this group of circular symbols. He regarded them as runic symbols for the odil, the
udal-law. This law, the Norwegian odelsrett or the Swedish odal, is an ancient
Scandinavian allodial title that still exists in Scandinavia and in Scotland. According
to Wirth, the odil-symbol was the so-called “missing rune” which the Vatican sup-
pressed during the Christianisation period.
True to his völkisch ideas, Wirth considered the odal or odil to be a symbol for
the breath, life and spirit of God holding sway over the native land.89 The odal
stood for free soil, for one’s own land, for free peasants with extended families, for
a clan, and for the death promising reincarnation in the tribe. The odal concept had
a high standing, even a religious meaning in Wirth’s view. To possess one’s own
soil was seen by him as a decisive step for the creation of a new society. Only with
the odal would it be possible for rootless metropolitans to return to Mother Earth,
to leave the materialistic life-style and practise a frugal, spiritual life.90 Wirth not
only found the odal-symbol used in cup-marks but discovered it also in the North
European Germanic peasant culture up to the nineteenth century. In his eyes the
odal-rune derived from an older petroglyph, viz. from the so-called year-rune. No
wonder that the wheel-cross, with or without spokes, could only be found in the
North.
Wirth’s reasoning, as expressed in his treatise Des großen Gottes älteste Runen, can
be summarised as follows: The Scandinavian rock carvings are cult symbolic codifi-
cations of an Indo-Germanic primeval religion (Urreligion), similar to those written
in the Vedas. Wirth claimed to be the first who had compared the sacred Vedic
texts of India with the motifs to be found on Scandinavian rock carvings. He
interpreted these Nordic ideograms as symbols of an order structuring the world,
the space, the year and time as part of a primeval Indo-Germanic religion. In
Wirth’s view, the imagery of Nordic rock carving was a primeval type of an old-Eu-
ropean alphabet. The runic characters would have descended directly from that
point of departure. Scandinavian runic calendars would contain them up to the
87 Wirth, Die heilige Urschrift der Menschheit, p. 612f.

88 Ibidem.
89 See for example Herman Wirth, “Die ältesten Odal-Urkunden des germanischen Bauern”,
Odal. Monatsschrift für Blut und Boden 4 (1936), pp. 882–90.
90 See for example Wirth, Die heilige Urschrift der Menschheit, p. 59 and p. 528 as well as Was heißt
deutsch?, pp. 44–9.
eighteenth century. Wirth concluded there was, therefore, a line of continuity from
the time and religion of Nordic rock carvings to a living Germanic peasant cult up
to Christian periods. However, Christianity could not fully destroy that cultural
heritage. The Edda would continue to contain mythological motifs of the old be-
lief.
Concluding Remarks
Wirth’s attempts to establish a new career in Sweden after his resignation from the
Ahnenerbe failed. Neither did his vision of a researcher’s life in commission of the
Swedish National Heritage Board come true, nor could he achieve a lectureship or
carve out a university career in Sweden. His activities for the SS Ahnenerbe, his
support by leading Nazi figures and his rude conduct during the two expeditions in
1935 and 1936 were still well known. The seriousness of his scholarly work re-
mained highly controversial and undermined his plans to gain a foothold in the
Swedish academe.
Four years after the end of World War II, Wirth resumed his efforts to take up
residence in Sweden in February 1949. Between 1945 and 1947, he had spent two
years in an internment camp. After his denazification, the family first moved to the
Netherlands, before Wirth decided to settle down in Lund under the maiden name
of his mother, that is as “Prof. Felix Roeper Bosch”. Again he sought contact to
the Swedish National Heritage Board in order to get subsidies for a new survey of
the calender-plate of Fossum. Wirth explained to Curman’s successor, Martin
Olsson (1886–1981), his plans for a big fieldwork project on rock carvings all over
Scandinavia. For its implementation, he needed funding from the Swedish state.91
He also planned the foundation of a museum either in the fortress Carlsten on the
small island Marstrand or in the Bohus fortress high up over the town of Kungälv
close to Gothenburg.92 Wirth drafted an exhibition called “Helgafell. Det europeis-
ka hällristningsmuseet för urreligionens historia” (Holy Mountain. The European
Museum of Rock Carvings for the History of Primeval Religion), intended to
display his collections and function as a preliminary stage for his museum plans.
Olsson, who did not know his predecessor’s contention with Wirth in the
beginning, arranged for an examination of the buildings by the responsible
authorities. However, the two fortresses were in ruins, and not suitable for a
museum.93 Wirth also proposed the transport of the Ahnenerbe collection of
plaster casts from Berlin to Sweden, but he could not raise enough money. After all
91 See the Letter of Herman Wirth to Martin Olsson on 13 February 1949, Archives of the
Swedish National Heritage Board, Ämbetsarkivet 3.
92 Letter of [prename unknown] Tell to E. Lundberg on 31 August 1948, ibidem.
93 Letter of the National Heritage Board to Herman Wirth on 10 September 1948, Archives of
the Swedish National Heritage Board, Ämbetsarkivet 3.
128 Luitgard Löw
these fruitless activities, Wirth finally realised that he never would achieve the
support of the Swedish National Heritage Board or of other persons or institutions
in Sweden to continue his research. He moved back to Marburg in 1954, where he
continued with his studies and gathered a small circle of adherents.
As an old man Wirth attracted attention one last time. In 1980, the Ministry of
Education of Rhineland-Palatine considered establishing a museum for Wirth and
asked Karl-Josef Narr (1921–2009), professor of pre- and early history at the Uni-
versity of Münster, to evaluate a possible state furtherance of the then 94-year-old
Wirth and his work.94 While these plans appeared to be promising at the beginning,
they were put to a rapid end after the press got wind of them. When Wirth died in
1981, none of the big aims of his life had been realised. He did not succeed in esta-
blishing a museum for his growing collection of copies, plaster casts, drawings and
photos. Nor was he ever accepted as a serious scholar with a reliable theory of the
history of primeval thoughts. His collection was dissolved and scattered. After his
death, Wirth fell quickly into oblivion. While his thoughts were still rejected in the
learned world, they are kept alive in small circles and associations like “Ur-Europa”,
the former Herman-Wirth-society95, the “Walter-Machalett-Kreis”, the “Kult-Ur-
Institut” or the “Gesellschaft für vergleichende Felsbildforschung”96. Especially for
visitors, enthusiasts and lay researchers from Germany, Swedish rock art sites
remain attractive.
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“Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden”: A völkisch
Reception of Luther’s View of the Jews
Anders Gerdmar
Religious Legitimation of Antisemitism
In his discussion of the role of religion for legitimating societal change, sociologist
Peter L. Berger notes that a religion “legitimates social institutions by bestowing
upon them an ultimately valid ontological status, that is, by locating them within a
sacred and cosmic frame of reference”.1 The ideological cocktail of a society, which
would serve as such as legitimation, differs with the country, its history, and the
ideas and traditions, which make up the ideological warp of its culture. Those who
seek to change or restructure society have to introduce new ideas and need to find
ways to legitimate them. Where there are religious or other thought systems, estab-
lishing institutions’ ontological status, those who would wield power and achieve
political success need to connect with such values, or create new ones. The latter,
of course, is a long and complicated process. It may well be easier to win over the
guardians of the existing thought system in a given society, the priests, the proph-
ets, and, in Northern European Protestant context, the theological professors. Of-
ten these were important authorities in the Protestant society as well as in the
church, and since they were the ones who educate the local ministers, their influ-
ence extended to parishes throughout Germany.
During National Socialism, Germany was a predominantly Protestant society
with the Roman Catholic population quite densely concentrated to certain, limited
areas. Protestants made up 62.7 per cent of the country, Catholics 32.5 per cent. In
that Protestant society Martin Luther was a key figure.
There are two key areas of political interest where Luther could be invoked as
an authority, one is the teaching of two kingdoms, the Zwei-Reiche-Lehre, the other
his view of the Jews. These are related, however, since theological views of societal
action in relation to the Jews were dependent on how the theologians viewed the
1 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy. Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Dou-
bleday, 1967), p. 33. The title of Uwe Simon-Netto’s book Luther als Wegbereiter Hitlers? Zur
Geschichte eines Vorurteils (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1993) promises more than it
actually deals with the question and is of little help for answering the question. However, a
thorough and fairly recent discussion is found in Peter von der Osten-Sacken, Martin Luther
und die Juden. Neu untersucht anhand von Anton Margarithas ‘Der gantz Jüdisch glaub’ (1530/31)
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002). The present discussion makes no claim to be exhaustive, but
to look at how one theologian receives and furthers some of Luther’s statements about Jews
and Judaism.
134 Anders Gerdmar
mandate of the state. Luther-inspired theology here served as legitimation for the
state, people, and social order, as God-ordained “orders of creation”.2
In 1933, prominent Luther scholar Erich Paul Friedrich Vogelsang (1904–44)
published the pamphlet Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, Luther’s struggle against the
Jews.3 Vogelsang was the son of a Lutheran Pietist minister and was influenced by
this background. During his theological studies in Berlin, Tübingen and Göttingen,
he was especially influenced by Emanuel Hirsch, who then was teaching Church
History, and the Luther-specialist Karl Holl.4 Holl was the standard-bearer of the
so-called ‘Luther Renaissance’ and pioneered a new, strictly historical reading of
Luther, attempting to recover the reformer from later layers of interpretation. In-
deed, Luther had already been used by many movements during the preceding 400
years.5 Karl Holl’s lecture on Luther’s understanding of religion (“Was verstand Lu-
ther unter Religion?”) at the Luther quadricentennial in 1917 marked the shift into
the Luther Renaissance,6 the core of which was a programme to thoroughly re-
examine Luther’s texts. Vogelsang became another important participant in this
programme. Several of his works were pathbreaking: Die Anfänge von Luthers Chris-
tologie (The Beginnings of Luther’s Christology, dissertation 1928), Luthers Torgauer
Predigt von Jesu Christo (Luther’s Torgau Sermon on Christ, habilitation 1931), and
the fascinating little book on the crucified Christ, Der angefochtene Christus bei Luther
(1932). Vogelsang also wrote an important work on Luther’s mysticism.
Hence, when Vogelsang turns to the issue of Luther’s struggle against the Jews,
this is not done by any amateur, but by a noted Luther scholar of the early twen-
tieth century. It is however, also being done by a Nazi who had joined the NSDAP
in April 1933. His book on Luther’s fight against the Jews is devoted to Hitler’s
Reichsbischof, Ludwig Müller.7 This was a declaration of allegiance by Vogelsang.
The Reichsbischof Friedrich von Bodelschwingh had been pressured to resign, and
2 A ‘Third Reich’ interpretation of the two-kingdom doctrine is especially elaborated in the

work of the Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus, see Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hit-
ler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985),
pp. 79–119 and Althaus’ Theologie der Ordnungen, published in 1934 (2nd enl. ed. Gütersloh:
Bertelsmann, 1935).
3 Erich Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden (Tübingen: Mohr, 1933).
4 For this and the biographical notes, see Jens Wolff, “Vogelsang, Erich Paul Friedrich (1904–
1944),” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon 17 (2000), cols. 1507–21.
5 See Karl Kupisch, “The ‘Luther Renaissance’”, Journal of Contemporary History 2–4 (1967), pp.
39–41.
6 Karl Holl, Was verstand Luther unter Religion? (Tübingen: Mohr, 1917).
7 Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden originated from a public lecture and was published as volume
168 of the Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet der Theologie und Re-
ligionsgeschichte.
Luther’s View of the Jews 135
the NSDAP’s choice, Ludwig Müller, took his place on 21 September 1933, a sig-
nificant moment in the early phase of the so-called Kirchenkampf. 8
The events in Germany after the Machtübernahme is also the context of Vogel-
sang’s discussion of Luther. On 1 April 1933, the boycott against the Jews had be-
gun, and what was called the Jewish Question or Jewish Problem (“Judenfrage”)
was high on the political agenda. Vogelsang himself refers to the Aryan paragraph,
claiming the inner right of the German defence against the alleged “atrocity and
boycott agitation of World Jewry from Warsaw to Chicago”.9 Vogelsang does not
refer to the boycott led by Hitler, but to the worldwide protests against the anti-
Jewish policy of Nazi Germany. Here Vogelsang also talks about the necessity of
antisemitism (“unser volksnotwendiger Antisemitismus”) for the German people.10
The title of this publication already shows Vogelsang’s point of view: Luther is
struggling against the Jews. What he tried to undertake in the book was to question
some dominant readings of Luther. Particularly in the case of the Jewish author Dr.
Reinhold Lewin, a rabbi, Vogelsang rejected the interpretation to stand in contrast
with Luther’s own views.11 In 1911, Lewin wrote that Luther went from indiffer-
ence to the Jews (until 1521) to a hope for their conversion (1523), then to the re-
cognition that this would not be the case (1524–36), and finally to a vehement cri-
ticism of the Jews at the end of his life (1542–43). As the Protestant theologian and
prominent Luther biographer Adolf Hausrath phrased it: Luther belonged to the
many that began as philo-Semites to end as antisemites. “This verdict is wrong”,
Vogelsang forcefully contends.12
Arguing that Luther had not originally been indifferent to the Jews, Vogelsang
refers to Luther’s comments on Jews as early as 1513.13 Vogelsang refuses to differ-
entiate between the young and the old Luther as well as to use the terms philo- and
8 For a background of the Kirchenkampf, see Marikje Smid, Deutscher Protestantismus und Judentum
1932/1933 (München: Kaiser, 1990).
9 Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 6.
10 Ibidem.
11 “Daß allerdings Reinhold Lewin als Rabbiner trotz versuchter Objektivität und wissen-
schaftlicher Methode von dem eigentlichen Anliegen Luthers kaum etwas erfassen konnte,
dürfte nicht verwunderlich sein. Um so mehr wundert man sich über die Anerkennung, die
Lewins Darstellung bis heute, auch bei evangelischen Theologen, gefunden hat.” Ibidem, pp.
8–9.
12 “Dieses Urteil ist falsch. Luther hat nicht mit einer Periode der Gleichgültigkeit, auch nicht
als Philosemit begonnen.” Ibid., p. 7–8 with reference to Adolf Hausrath’s wiedly read book
Luthers Leben, vol. 2 (1st. ed., Berlin: Grote, 1904), p. 442.
13 One example is a glossa in Luther’s lecture over Psalm LXVII (Weimarer Lutherausgabe [here-
after: WA] 3, 389, 40): “It is the deceit of the demons. First charge the devil, who lives in
them, since the council of the Jews is raging against the apostles.” And Psalm LXXVI (WA
3, 548, 21): “The humility, the presecution and the judgement and condemnation he suffered
makes the Jews not recognise him, since they do not expect the Messiah to be like that, but
only live in glory, power and strength.” For help with the Latin, I am indebted to Drs.
Georg Stenborg and Josef Eskhult.
136 Anders Gerdmar
anti-Semite. Even his “Judenkampfschriften” from 1542–43 ended with a prayer

for the Jews, Vogelsang contends.14 He also notes that Luther never supported the
brutal Medieval pogroms against Jews.15 Vogelsang’s main idea is that the “Jewish
Problem” to Luther neither is a social nor only a racial problem. It is a “Christus-
frage”, a Christ-question:
For Luther, the Jewish problem first and foremost is the Christ question. Besides and between it is
for him also, and even more: a socioethical, a völkisch and a national-political ques-
tion.16
Vogelsang does not seem to recognise that his own 1933 questions were not Lu-
ther’s. Vogelsang claims a völkisch thinking, but is projecting his ideas back on Lu-
ther. The Wittenberg professor is lifted out of his own time, and “Luther’s struggle
against the Jews” from 1543 becomes a direct political intervention into 1933.
Vogelsang repeatedly contends that the question of Christ is the overarching
one in Luther’s work, regarding it as being the centre of Luther’s theology. As Lu-
ther wrote, “In my heart only this article reigns: The belief in Christ from whom,
through whom and to whom all my theological thoughts are flowing back and
forth.”17 To Vogelsang this is especially relevant for the “Jewish Problem”, which
from the beginning to the end centres on Christ.
But what does Vogelsang mean by the idea that all is centred on Christ? He an-
swers by referring to how Luther uses the words of judgment from Matt 23:37–9:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets (…). How often would I have ga-
thered your children together (…) and you would not. Behold, your house is forsa-
ken and desolate (…)” and the reply of the Jews: “His blood be on us and on our
children!” (Matt 27:25). This compilation is, however, not taken from the gospel
itself, but Vogelsang puts together the two texts. To him, both quotations not only
refer to Jerusalem or the group of people present at the trial of Jesus, but to Jews at
any time. Even more importantly, when Vogelsang thinks of Christ and the Jews,

15 This point of course raises questions about how to understand some of his sayings in Von
den Juden und ihre Lügen, 1543, to which I will return later.
16 “Für Luther ist die Judenfrage zuerst und zuletzt die Christusfrage. Daneben und dazwischen ist sie
auch für ihn noch sehr viel mehr: eine sozialethische, eine völkische, eine staatspolitische
Frage.” Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 9, italics in the original; translation mine.
See also p. 32 where he summarises that the “Jewish Problem” would never be a race ques-
tion alone. Note that I am translating the term “Judenfrage” with “Jewish Problem”, see
Anders Gerdmar, Roots of Theological Antisemitism. German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from
Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), p. 8.
17 “In meinem Herz regiert dieser einzige Artikel: der Glaube an Christus, aus dem, durch den
und zu dem all meine theologischen Gedanken Tag und Nacht hin- und herfließen.” Vogel-
sang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 9 with reference to Luther, WA 40, I, 33, 7.
he thinks of judgement, and it is no exaggeration to say that, for him, the central
issue of his dealing with Jews and Judaism is God’s judgement.
This is how Vogelsang presents the main issue of the “Jewish Problem”: It is
that the Jews killed the prophets, and this decides their destiny. Further, the destiny
of all peoples has to do with their relationship to Jesus, Vogelsang contends, but
this is especially the case with the destiny of the Jewish people. The question of
Christ is, even more urgent to the Jews, due to their special history, and what is an-
ticipated in the Old Testament.18 To Vogelsang’s mind, the way the Jews rejected
Jesus is special:
‘He came to his property and his own people did not receive him.’ He was and still is
outcast as a ‘seducer and false prophet’. They rail him as the cursed one, the ‘Thola’, i.e.
the hanged one. But ‘whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces’ (Matth
21:44). This is the baffling curse upon the Jewish people since centuries, in fact a self-
accursedness. Upon Christ, the stumbling stone, over whom they stumbled, they be-
came smashed, quashed and dispersed. And because to this day they deny the Christ
God, they ‘for ever anew stir up their fathers’ sin by their stubborn heart, and for that
reason remain damned Jews once and forever’.”19
Vogelsang here uses New Testament references that are common in antisemitic
rhetorics.20 Sandwiching together quotes from Luther, the New Testament and his
own reflections, Vogelsang makes it difficult to distinguish between his ideas and
Luther’s. Since Vogelsang chooses from Luther’s vast material, he has the privilege
to have Luther say what fits his own views. In the quote above, Vogelsang wants to
show that the Jews of New Testament times rejected Jesus, and that they therefore
have been subjected to times of sufferings. The biblical imagery is sharp and brutal:
The Jews are rejecting and mocking Jesus as the crucified, but they are in turn
smashed against the stone Jesus, crushed and scattered. There is a curse over the
Jewish people. Vogelsang clarifies that this does not only pertain to historical or
New Testament Jews, but is speaking in present tense. The Jews still deny Jesus and
therefore they continually activate the sins of their fathers.

19 “‘Er kam in sein Eigentum und und die Seinen nahmen ihn nicht auf.’ Er wurde und wird
bis heute von seinem Volk als ein ‘Verführer und falscher Prophet’ verstoßen. Sie lästern ihn
als den Verfluchten, den ‘Thola’, d.i. den Gehängten. Aber ‘wer auf diesen Stein fället, den
wird er zermalmen’ (Matth. 21, 44). Das ist der rätselhafte Fluch über dem jüdischen Volk
seit Jahrhunderten: in Wahrheit eine Selbstverfluchung. An Christus, dem Stein des Ansto-
ßes, sind sie zerschellt, zermalmt, zerstreut. Und weil sie bis auf den heutigen Tag diesen
Christus Gottes leugnen, ‘erregen sie immerdar aufs Neue ihrer Väter Sünde durch ihr ver-
stockt Herz und bleiben also immerdar verdammte Juden’.” Ibidem, p. 10.
20 It is for example similar, partly very similar, to the argument in Gerhard Kittel, “Neutesta-
mentliche Gedanken zur Judenfrage” (Allgemeine Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, 29 Sep-
tember, 1933, cols. 903–7) from the same year. Vogelsang also refers to Kittels book Die Ju-
denfrage (2nd. enl. ed., Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1933), Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 6., note 1.
138 Anders Gerdmar
In the political situation of German Jews in 1933, references to Jews being smashed
and crushed must be placed in the context of the political measures taken by the
National Socialist government after the Machtübernahme, for example the boycott of
the Jews. When Vogelsang puts contemporary Jews into this biblical-Lutheran the-
ological framework, that which is befalling the Jews in 1933, is given divine legiti-
mation. That this is Luther’s perspective is also clear from how Vogelsang contin-
ues. Several times he contrasts his position to liberalism, which seems to be his
main enemy. He argues that liberals are wrong about racial destiny, because “the
reality of a people is based on its history and not on pure reason”.21 Vogelsang’s
view is teleologically directed towards salvation: The history of a people is not a
mere description of what happened, but is connected to a certain salvation history
– the things God has decided for the people. Again the discussion is similar to that
in Kittel’s article.22 God’s history includes trajectories determined for each people.
This destiny makes the suffering of the Jews a necessary consequence of their
stance towards Jesus Christ, who is “the turning point in the history of Judaism”.23
According to Vogelsang’s interpretation of Luther, however, this only works nega-
tively. The crucifixion is a constant offence and curse to Judaism, and the one who
denies and curses Jesus is denied by the Father, Vogelsang says, quoting Luther.24
Thus, when Vogelsang says that the “Jewish Problem” is centred around
Christ, this pertains to the negative social and political consequences of their rejec-
tion of Christ, putting the Jews under an everlasting curse. Exegetically there are
many problems in Vogelsang’s argument above. The text from Matt 21:44 about
how the people falling on the stone will be crushed is, firstly, more often than not
rejected as a later addition without support in the best manuscripts.25 Secondly
there is no textual support for regarding the text as addressed to Jews in general,
21 “Jeder nach Vernünftigkeit messende aufgeklärte Liberalismus wird diese Geschichtsdeu-

tung des jüdischen Schicksals als Unvernunft ablehnen: daß durch ein Geschichtsereignis,
das da heißt Jesus Christus, ein Volksschicksal entschieden sein soll. Aber die Wirklichkeit
eines Volkes baut sich nun einmal aus seiner Geschichte und nicht aus reiner Vernunft auf.”
Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 10.
22 According to God’s history, calamity must come upon Israel. It must not be denied, because
this, too, is biblical, and “we do nothing pious by denying this calamity”, Kittel, “Neutesta-
mentliche Gedanken zur Judenfrage”, p. 904.
23 “Jesus Christus ist der Wendepunkt in der Geschichte des Judentums.” Vogelsang, Luthers
Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 11.
24 “Wer nun den Jesum von Nazareth, Marien der Jungfrauen Sohn, leugnet, lästert, flucht, der
leugnet, lästert, flucht auch Gott den Vater selbst, der Himmel und Erden geschaffen hat.
Solches tun aber die Juden.” Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 11, referring to WA
53, 531, 21–3.
25 See e.g., Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14–28 (Dallas: Word Books, 1995, World Biblical Com-
mentary 33B), p. 623. On the other hand, his including of this text is supported by the
prominent professor of New Testament studies in Tübingen, Gerhard Kittel, and his book
Die Judenfrage.
78 Debora Dusse
cal novel Der Königsweg des Sverrir Unasson. Ein Lebensbild aus Norwegens Vergangenheit
from 1953 takes up the Old Norse topic of the Sverris saga. Kummer’s novel about
the Norwegian King Sverrir (1184–1202) was released by the publishing house Ver-
lag Hohe Warte. Above all, Sverrir’s position as an outsider and his enmity towards
parts of the church might have interested Kummer. Even though he viewed Sverrir
as a Christian on the one hand, he describes him as someone who is culturally still
connected to the paganism of the Eddic poems. The publishing house belonged to
the Ludendorff movement and the subject of the novel marked the Pagan environ-
ment in which Kummer was engaged after. Kummer describes the retrieval of his
copy of the Sverris saga after the war as a moment of awakening, giving him power
in the time after 1945. At Christmas 1952 he wrote:
One day in April 1945 – as a soldier in the disbanding German army – I delivered a
volume of the Old Icelandic Sverris saga that I had preserved carefully in my luggage in
trust to a peasant woman in a hidden dell. When I retrieved my book after having
crossed the chaos of those times, for me it became a symbol of the fact that stars of
great humanity, lodestars of constancy exist which do not decay, and that in their sign
that what we ever intentioned well and wanted could be begun anew and be pursued to
a purer success. Thus grows out of the love of the departed and the awareness of their
failings and its shame, a more pure and aspired idea of man of the future.14
The idea of a turn of an era being remembered here is the central moment in the
reception of Eddic literature among scholars committed to a völkisch or German
faith. Thus, it is no coincidence that Kummer addresses himself to the Helgi poems
and the Völuspá in his two fragmentary volumes of commentary on the Poetic Edda,
released in 1959 and 1961.15 The first Helgi poem, the Helgakviða Hundingsbana I on
13 Cf. Rudolf Stöwesand, Ein Eigener und Besonderer. Meinem Freunde Bernhard Kummer 21.1.1897–
1.12.1962 zum Gedächtnis (Zeven: Verlag der Forschungsfragen unserer Zeit, 1963 [reprint of
Forschungsfragen unserer Zeit 10, 1–2 (1964)], pp. 3–11, here p. 10.
14 “An einem Apriltag des Jahres 1945 gab ich – ein Soldat im sich auflösenden deutschen
Heer – den sorgsam im Gepäck bewahrten Band der altisländischen ‘Sverrissaga’ bei einer
deutschen Bäuerin in einem versteckten Waldtal in Verwahrung. Als ich mein Buch dann
nach dem Durchschreiten des Chaos jener Zeit wiederfand, war es mir ein Symbol dafür,
daß es Sterne großen Menschentumes, Leitsterne der Treue gibt, die nicht vergehen, und
daß in ihrem Zeichen das jemals von uns gut Gemeinte und Gewollte stets neu begonnen
und zu reinerem Gelingen fortgeführt werden darf und soll. So wächst aus Liebe zum Ver-
gangenen und auch aus der Erkenntnis ihrer Schwächen, ihrer Schande, der Zukunft reine-
res, erstrebtes Menschenbild.” Bernhard Kummer, Der Königsweg des Sverrir Unasson: Ein Le-
bensbild aus Norwegens Vergangenheit (Pähl: Verlag Hohe Warte, 1953), preface; translation mi-
ne.
15 Bernhard Kummer, Die Lieder des Codex Regius (Edda) und verwandte Denkmäler. Band II: Helden-
dichtung. Erster Teil: Die Dichtung von Helgi und der Walküre. Text, Übersetzung, Erläuterungen
(Zeven: Verlag der Forschungsfragen unserer Zeit, 1959) and idem, Die Lieder des Codex Regi-
us (Edda) und verwandte Denkmäler. Band I: Mythische Dichtung. Erster Teil: Die Schau der Seherin
140 Anders Gerdmar
sion of the Jews is necessary as a clarification of volks-political concepts. Luther

should be heard not only for theological questions, Vogelsang contends.32 Rather,
Luther’s sixteenth century comments on Jews and Judaism are relevant for present
day Germany. Seemingly Luther’s ideas about the Jews were still alive among the
German people. To take one example, as late as 1914, Luther’s views of Jews and
Judaism, including the burning of synagogues and exile of all Jews could be pre-
sented without comment or repudiation in a volume for the German home by the
prominent Luther expert and editor of the Weimar-edition of Luther’s works,
Georg Buchwald.33 A question which remains to be answered is what such theology
and instruction for the people meant to the picture of the Jews for the German
people.
Applying Von den Juden und ihren Lügen in 1933 Germany
Naturally, as a Luther specialist, Vogelsang had a very good grip on Luther’s wri-
tings on Jews and Judaism. Therefore it is difficult to disprove his reading without
an extensive analysis of Luther’s work. Obviously, Vogelsang may only be quoting
what supports his own views. However, the main part of his discussion pertains to
Luther’s most infamous text “On the Jews and Their Lies”, Von den Juden und ihren
Lügen, written in 1543, and there is no doubt about the antisemitic content of that.
He introduces this long section with the brief summarisation that “the light of Je-
sus Christ blinds them; therefore Jesus himself calls them ‘blind fools’ (Matt
23:17ff.): a blindness, which has several consequences”.34 Then he goes on to pre-
sent Luther’s views of the Jews in seven points. To begin with, Vogelsang argues
that the Jews themselves insist on the importance of their blood and descent, and
are boasting with it before God, which, according to Luther, is a diabolic arro-
gance.35 But Vogelsang reads contemporary ideas into Luther’s text, making a völ-
kisch reading; with the nineteenth and early twentieth century development in racist
theories of blood and descent, which carry new meanings. Even though, Vogelsang
operates inside Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms, where things in the nature,
e.g. race, have no meaning in relationship to God, to Vogelsang racial differences
are not unimportant in the earthly kingdom. They are necessary to the rule:
32 Ibidem, p. 6.
33 Georg Buchwald, Doktor Martin Luther. Ein Lebensbild für das deutsche Haus (2nd ed. Leipzig:
Teubner, 1914), pp. 480–82. The Weimar-edition of Luther’s works spans over more than
100 years, with the first volumes published in 1883 and the last in 2009, totalling 121 vo-
lumes. This one of the largest editions of the works of one single author is available in book
form as D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimarer Ausgabe [WA], 1883–2009), but also in digital
form on http://luther.chadwyck.com/.
35 WA 53, 421, 37–422, 1: “Aber fur Gott daher zu tretten und sich rhuemen, wie es so Eddel,
Hoch, Reich fur andern Menschen sey, Das ist eine teufelische Hoffart.”
Humans, peoples and races therefore are not all – as reckoned by the rationalism of the
philo-Semites – equally valuable and equal with respect to nobility, prudence, talent,
and power. But all these distinctions and differences in value make no difference in
light of eternity although they were to be taken very seriously for the völkisch life,
which is incomprehensible to Jews and many an anti-Semite (…).36
Here Vogelsang takes a middle way: He disagrees with some Jews and antisemites
that Jewish descent makes a difference in eternity. That Jews were not religiously
disqualified qua Jews was the position of many confessional Christians, who were
defending so-called “Jewish Christians” and their pastors.37 It is also worth noting
that Vogelsang takes a stand against some antisemites, which was typical of many
educated Germans who, for example, did not support pogroms or street violence,
even though they had an antisemitic ideology. On the other hand, he agrees with
those who see race and ethnicity as part of the created order, with higher and lesser
peoples.38 Whereas in Lutheran theology the earthly kingdom pertains to life in the
state, business and family, protecting people from sin with earthly and ‘political’
methods,39 a völkisch reading of Luther adds people and race as part of the natural
order. According to Vogelsang, these have different values. By ranging Volk and
race into the divinely ordained earthly kingdom, Vogelsang gives a Lutheran, and
ultimately, divine sanction to the divisions which had gained such enormous im-
portance with the rise of National Socialism.
Vogelsang goes on to quote the next point in Luther’s Von den Juden und ihren
Lügen: The Jews are proud of their circumcision, even though this is not exclusive
to them. They are also proud of the law and the temple and they have distorted the
law into legalism. In Vogelsang’s view, the central point for Luther is that the Jew-
36 “Die Menschen und Völker und Rassen sind also nicht – wie der Rationalismus der Philose-
miten meint – alle gleich wertvoll, gleich an Adel, and Klugheit, an Begabung, an Kraft.
Aber alle diese für das völkische Leben sehr ernst zu nehmenden Unterschiede und Wertun-
terschiede machen doch – was wiederum die Juden und mancher Antisemit nicht versteht –
keinen Unterschied im Lichte der Ewigkeit (…).” Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p.
12. For the theology of the natural orders as formulated by Paul Althaus, see Althaus, Theolo-
gie der Ordnungen, p. 9.
37 For this, see Gerdmar, Roots of Theological Antisemitism, pp. 281–82.
38 For a similar position, see another great Luther scholar, Paul Althaus. In the expert opinion
which he and Werner Elert gave regarding the Aryan legislation on 25 September 1933 it is
stated that race is part of the god-given orders, that the boundedness of the church to the
Volkstum makes it important to appreciate ethnicity as a factor, and that the Jews cannot be
regarded part of the German people. Being a biological-historical matter, the relationship be-
tween Germanness and Jewishness must be dealt with by the state. But the church can nei-
ther have Jewish ministers, which would seriously hinder the mission of the church to the
German people. The writers suggest that having Jewish ministers should be an exception.
The expert opinion is quoted in extenso in Tanja Hetzer, ‘Deutsche Stunde’. Volksgemeinschaft
und Antisemitismus in der politischen Theologie bei Althaus (München: Allitera Verlag, 2009, pp.
251–56).
39 Gustaf Wingren, Luthers lära om kallelsen (2nd ed., Lund: Gleerups, 1948), pp. 12–46.
142 Anders Gerdmar
ish hope for a Messiah has failed. The Jews hoped for a Messiah who would give
them global dominance forever, and fortune, wealth, honour, a real “Schlaraffen-
land”, a land of milk and honey. The imagery used by Luther is denigrating. He
compares Jews with cows and dogs, ascribing to them the wish to have a Messiah,
who would “fill their stinking stomachs”.40 Vogelsang’s reading adds to this by re-
lating it to the present discourse about the Jews: “From here comes the terribly
tough claim to world dominion of Judaism: with money, power and happiness as
goal.”41 As negative towards the Jews as Luther is, in the passage quoted he does
not talk of any Jewish aspirations to dominate the world. This is part of Vogel-
sang’s völkish reception of Luther’s text, which itself was part of the contemporary
antisemitic description of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Luther’s next point of criticism is the rabbinic interpretation of the bible,
which, according to Vogelsang, Luther holds to be entirely wrong, and he also
quotes Luther’s view on usury,42 referring to his saying that that Jews do not need
to keep an oath to non-Jews or are free to steal from the Goyim.43 Here Vogelsang
complains that the editors of the Weimar edition of Luther’s works had not fol-
lowed up on Luther’s quotations from the Talmud.44
The diaspora and the inward destruction of Judaism is Vogelsang’s last point.
This inward destruction of the Jewish people especially means that “his own peo-
ple” has crucified Jesus Christ.45 While Luther speaks more generally of the Jews
who never find a home, Vogelsang’s furthering of the ancient myth of the “Wande-
ring Jew” is directly related to the current discussion on Judaism in Germany:
This (that the Jews are wandering around without knowing how long they will enjoy
peace, AG) is meant by the folk myth of the ‘eternal Jew’, viz., the personalised and
40 “Sie [the Jews] erhoffen noch immer einen ‘fleischlichen’ Messias, der dem jüdischen Volk
die ewige Herrschaft und Glück, Reichtum, Ehre, ‘ein rechtes Schlaraffenland’ bringen soll.
Daher der unheimliche zähe Weltherrschaftsanspruch des Judenums: auf Geld und Macht
und Glück zielend.” Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 14, referring to Luther, WA
54, 544, 16–19: “Nach solchem Messia fragen die Jueden und Tuercken nichts, Und was sol
er jnen? Sie muessen einen haben aus Schlauraffen Land, der jenen den stinckenden Bauch
settige, und sterbe sampt jnen dahin wie eine Kue oder Hund.”
42 Ibidem.
43 Ibidem, p. 15. There is no reference to Luther’s works to this point in Vogelsang’s text, but
the idea is prevalent in antisemitic discourse of this time. For a parallel in Gerhard Kittel’s
production, see Kittel, “Die Behandlung des Nichtjuden nach dem Talmud”, Archiv für Juden-
fragen. Schriften zur geistigen Überwindung des Judentums (1943), pp. 7–17. The Archiv für Judenfragen
was a journal published by the “Antisemitische Aktion” of the Propaganda Ministry.
44 The Weimarer Ausgabe is the complete critical edition of Luther’s works in original language,
consisting of more than 120 volumes.
restlessly roaming about bad consciousness. Every attempt to escape and each ‘emanci-
pation’ from their own fate is destined to fail.46
Thus Vogelsang regards the Jews as determined to homelessness, seeing emancipa-

tion as an impossibility both socially and theologically, and only as an attempt to
escape.47 The power of the devil must be behind the blindness of the Jewish people
and therefore God’s wrath is over them, Vogelsang continues, claiming the support
of Luther.48 However, Vogelsang’s main enemy is once more liberalism and its at-
tempt to join Christian Enlightenment and Judaism together in a common Vernunft-
religion. Those liberals would never understand that from a biblical view, Jews and
Judaism could only be understood as under a “curse, blindness, wrath and God’s
judgement”. The liberals will
consign the hidden connection of World Jewry with power, money, blood and destiny
to the realms of legends unable to grasp that with the Jewish Problem in the German
revolution of 1933 a world-historic question had become visible that had been ob-
scured for 150 years.49
When Vogelsang refers to the emancipation of the Jews as part of the Enlighten-
ment, his contemporary antisemitic attitudes are evident: There is a “World Juda-
ism”, which was not a concept used by Luther, and a stress on race. Likewise,
‘blood’ is only present in Vogelsang’s völkisch reading. Now there is a Jewish conspi-
racy where power, money and also blood are involved. The liberals do not see the
unseen conspiratorial powers at work – actually they have helped to conceal them –
nor do they understand the huge importance of the German revolution for solving
the “Jewish Problem”.
However, the Jews are not the only enemies of the cross of Christ, even
though they remain the main pattern for hypocrisy and wrongdoing.50 Vogelsang
46 “Das meint der Volksmythos vom ‘ewigen Juden’, d.h. von dem personifizierten ruhlos um-
hergetriebenen bösen Gewissen. Jeder Fluchtversuch, jede “Emancipation’’ aus diesem eige-
nen Schicksal ist vergeblich.” Ibidem, p. 16.
47 This is also in line with Gerhard Kittel, who sees emancipation as fundamentally wrong for
the Jews and who suggests that they should live in a ghetto-like existence, see Gerdmar,
Roots of Theological Antisemitism, pp. 511–13.
48 Vogelsang, Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden, p. 16–7.
49 “Der liberale Mensch wird auch den unsichtbaren Macht- und Geld- und Bluts- und Schick-
salszusammenhang des Weltjudentums in den Bereich der Legende verweisen und nicht be-
greifen, das mit der Judenfrage in der deutschen Revolution 1933 eine hundertundfünfzig
Jahre lang verschleierte welthistorische Frage wieder sichtbar geworden ist.” Ibidem, p. 18.
50 “Die Juden sind wirklich die Feinde des Kreuzes Christi, davon ist nichts fortzudeuten, aber
die Halbchristen und Namenchristen sind die dreimal schlimmeren Feinde des Kreuzes
Christi. Die Juden sind der Typus des Blutsdünkels vor Gott, der Verachtung anderer Völ-
ker, der Selbstgerechtigkeit, des Eigensinns und der Unbußfertigkeit, aber weit ärger ist der
144 Anders Gerdmar
takes the opportunity of attacking his enemies in the liberal theological camp. The-
se are three times worse than the Jews being even more arrogant, self-righteous,
and impertinent. What is then, according to Vogelsang, Luther’s solution to the
“Jewish Problem”? The real solution would be a solution to the question of Christ
for all of the Jewish people:
Abandoning their longing for world dominance, their ‘carnal’ hope for the Messiah,
their Rabbinic scriptual interpretation and their tempelless synagogal service in one land,
the Jews from all over the world ought to return to a state of their own, to one law and
a living language and a new religious service.51
However, Luther never believed in this, says Vogelsang. But to Luther, “Judaism as
a whole, as people and as destiny, remains the open wound of the body of human-
kind until the end of all things, remains the embodied offence in relation to the
cross, remains the visible finger of God’s wrath in human history.”52 The picture of
the Jews is dark indeed, and this is, according to Vogelsang, Luther’s answer to the
“Jewish Problem”. To Vogelsang, the question now is how German Christians
should live with “Jewish ways of thinking and education, Jewish worship and Jew-
ish jurisdiction, custom, legality, Jewish views of money, work and life”.53
In answer to this, Vogelsang first contends that Luther did not believe in the
missions to the Jews nor that Judaism as a body would be saved.54 Secondly, a di-
vision of Jews and Christians became important to Luther “for the sake of the in-
ner life of the church”. Vogelsang worries about “the Jewish poison” that threatens
to penetrate Christianity mentioning the kabbala, amulets, rabbinic exegesis, lega-
lism etc. Vogelsang also mentions parallels between these Jewish things, which Lu-
ther opposes and the Schwärmer, the religious enthusiasts of his time. Vogelsang
summarises Luther’s “practical-ecclesiastical solution” to the “Jewish Problem”,
which
does definitely not mean any understanding or accommodation (‘assimilation’) or any

friendly recognisance (…). The only thing for the church is to acknowledge the com-
pletely different essence of the synagogue, the discerning of their spirits and a decisive
christlich verbrämte Eigensinn und Blutsdünkel vor Gott, die uneingestandene Selbstgerech-
tigkeit und Unbußfertigkeit.” Ibidem, p. 19.
51 “Das Judentum aus aller Welt Enden müßte unter Aufgabe seiner Weltherrschaftsideen und
seiner ‘fleischlichen’ Messiashoffnung, unter Aufgabe seiner rabbinischen Schriftauslegung
und des tempellosen synagogalen Gottesdienstes in ein Land, zu einem eigenen Staat, zu
einem Recht und einer lebendigen Sprache und einem neuen Gottesdienst zurückkehren!”
Ibidem, p. 20.
52 “Das Judentum als Ganzes, als Volk, als Schicksal bleibt die offene Wunde am Körper der
Menschheit bis zum Ende aller Dinge, bleibt das verkörperte Ärgernis am Kreuz, bleibt der
sichtbare Gottesfinger des Zornes in der Menschheitsgeschichte.” Ibidem, p. 20–1.
53 Ibidem, p. 21.
54 Ibidem, pp. 21–3.
defence against the inner disintegration which comes from the Jewish mentality, against
all Judaisation and ‘Judenzen’.55

Moreover, Vogelsang applies Luther’s views on Jews and Judaism to the political
circumstances in Germany, saying that Luther did not believe in assimilation de-
spite the fact that assimilation is a modern concept.
Luther was also used to legitimate one of the proposed solutions to the “Jewish
Problem” in National Socialist Germany, the separation from, and struggle against
the Jews. Luther’s views from the 1600s, and Vogelsang’s from 1933 are floating
together into something where both Germany and Jews and Judaism are seen in an
ahistorical, essentialist way. Still in 1933, Luther’s words are sounding, commenting
on what is essentially Jewish and essentially German. Vogelsang’s position regard-
ing assimilation and separation equals Gerhard Kittel’s, who in his book Die Juden-
frage, sees apartheid as the solution to the “Jewish question”, even though Vogel-
sang rather would see all Jews exiled.56
Luther’s Political Conclusions: Burning of Synagogues and

Expulsion
According to Vogelsang, Luther, without any fear of going beyond his mandate as a
theological teacher, comments on concrete political measures, while maintaining
the distinction between the spiritual and political kingdoms. Luther knows that only
the political authorities have the mandate to regulate Jewish social life, but the pur-
pose of Luther’s writings against the Jews is to sharpen the conscience and give di-
rect advise to the authorities.57
Vogelsang concludes that Luther was not afraid to draw political consequences
of his theological views, and shows Luther commenting on two areas, work and
usury, giving sharp and brutal judgements of the alleged Jewish unwillingness to
work, and their usury. The Jews do not wish to do any real work, and they are only
55 “Luthers praktisch-kirchliche Lösung der ‘Judenfrage’ heißt also keineswegs ‘Verständigung’

oder Angleichung (‘Assimilation’) oder freundliche Anerkenntnis, ‘daß auch der jüdischen
Religion neben der christlichen ein göttliches Daseinsrecht, eine besondere Gabe und Aufga-
be im Geistesleben der Menschheit (heute noch) verliehen ist’. Für die Kirche gilt nur Aner-
kenntnis des gänzlich verschiedenen Wesensgrundes der Synagoge, Scheidung der Geister
und entschiedener Abwerhkampf gegenüber der inneren Zersetzung durch jüdische Art, ge-
genüber allem ‘Judaisieren’ und ‘Judenzen’.” Ibid., p. 25, emphasis in the original. Vogelsang
refers here to the idea of religious tolerance as expressed by Eduard Lamparter, Das Judentum
in seinr kultur- und religionsgeschichtlichen Erscheinung (Gotha: Klotz, 1928), p. 294.
56 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 13 and p. 40; cf. Gerdmar, Roots of Theological Antisemitism, pp. 460–63.
For Vogelsang’s view, see below.
Helgi Hundingsbani, is the first text of the heroic lays of the Codex Regius of the
Poetic Edda and shows some textual parallels to the Völuspá, the prophecy poem
from the beginning of the Edda. This builds a bridge between the beginning of the
world until its own and its god’s decay, and the Ragnarök ends in the resurgence of
a new world. Kummer emphasises the Pagan-religious position of the Völuspá and
updates the poem explicitly against the background of the experience of his own
times:
The constant question concerning the feelings and understanding of the first listeners to
these songs on the border between heathendom and Christianity (…) has been guiding
me. It directed me to the experience and the aim which the poets had in the times of
the Vikings and the break of the belief and gives, as I suppose, a new and fruitful direc-
tion to the interpretation of the Edda, a confirmed and historical based foundation.
With such a historical connection with the dawn of the gods thousand years ago, the
venerable text which starts with the concussive Ragnarök poem could have a new and
direct meaning for the understanding of our own days and for the interpretation of the
destiny of the occidental peoples between fears and hopes of our time.16
Kummer emphasised the historical value for the present during his work on the
Eddic poetry – here focusing on the subject of the turn of an era, too, after the end
of National Socialism – in the volume Brünhild und Ragnarök from 1950.17 To
Kummer, the idea of Ragnarök turns out to be an adequate myth not only regard-
ing the interpretation of the present. His sources lead him to the conclusion that
psychological distress appearing in times of crisis – for example the times of the
change of faith in the North in his opinion – can cause artistic and especially liter-
ary productivity.18 He views the revelation of psychological distress as a key to in-
terpretation. In this case, drawing a parallel between Kummer’s point of view and
his own literary activities suggests itself.
(Völuspá). Text, Übersetzung, Erläuterungen. Exkurse und religionsgeschichtliche Ergänzungen (Zeven:

Verlag der Forschungsfragen unserer Zeit, 1961).
16 “Die stete Frage nach dem Empfinden und Verstehen der einstigen ersten Hörer dieser Lie-
der auf der Schwelle der Zeit zwischen Heidentum und Christentum (…) hat mich geleitet.
Sie führte auf das Erlebnis und die Absicht der Dichter in Wikingersturm und Glaubens-
bruch und gibt, wie ich glaube, der Edda-Deutung eine neue, fruchtbare Richtung, eine fes-
tere, historisch fundierte Grundlage. Mit solcher Zeitbezogenheit zur Götterdämmerung vor
1000 Jahren gewänne der ehrwürdige Text, der mit dem erschütternden Ragnarökgedicht
beginnt, auch eine neue, unmittelbare Bedeutung für das Verständnis unserer eigenen Tage
und für die Deutung des abendländischen Völkerschicksals zwischen Furcht und Hoffnung
unserer Zeit.” Kummer, Die Lieder des Codex Regius, vol. 1, pp. 7–8; translation mine.
17 Bernhard Kummer, Brünhild und Ragnarök: Die Gestaltung der isländischen Brünhilddichtung aus dem
Erlebnis des Glaubenswechsels (Lübeck: Schiller, 1950).
18 Ibidem, p. 6 and p. 12.
Quoting a full page from Luther’s Von der Juden und ihren Lügen with his sharpest as-
saults against Jews, Vogelsang here not only intends to inform his readers of Lu-
ther’s views. In the 1933 context, these words get a new, frightening relevance, es-
pecially when we see them in the rear-view mirror. “It is a sharp mercy that I wish
and ask that our superior lords should wield against these wretched people”, Luther
says,63 and Vogelsang agrees that in a larger perspective this sharpness is the most
merciful.64 Neither does he blame Luther for the instruction to burn the syna-
gogues nor the other measures. Instead the usus politicus legis, the state’s political use
of the law is at work. The mandate of the state is to protect the pious and to defend
them against the evil.65 Vogelsang uses the Lutheran dichotomy of usus theologicus
and usus politicus through which the state gets a divine legitimation for his political
acts,66 and Luther’s text is now interpreted in the current racial-political context.
Whether he likes it or not, from his grave Luther comes out to support the political
strategies of National Socialist Germany. The reading of Von den Juden und ihren
Lügen does not indicate that Luther necessarily would find the measures taken 1933
to be wrong. Instead his advice to the princes gives legitimacy to the current
measures against Jews, as not only having Luther’s approval, but ultimately divine
legitimation.

Luther and Race
In Germany the “Jewish Problem” had predominantly become a racial issue, Vo-
gelsang contends, asking whether Luther’s struggle against the Jews was already in-
fluenced by völkisch and racial categories.67 Vogelsang’s answer is yes: Luther had a
dislike for foreigners on the basis of German nationalism and his folk-oriented
standpoint. To support this, Vogelsang presents a range of arguments, anachronis-
tically constructing Luther as having something close to a modern racial thinking:
Luther criticised non-Germans for speaking Rotwelsch (gibberish), he compared
Jews in their foreignness with vagrants and gypsies, and for Luther the blood of the
Jews had become unclean as a result of their miscegenation in the the diaspora.68
However, Luther did not consider the risk of the German blood to be polluted by
Jewish blood, Vogelsang contends.
As for baptisms of Jews, Luther did respect honest baptisms even though most
of the cases on which Luther comments were regarded as hypocritical, Vogelsang
63 WA 53, 541, 25–6.

65 Ibidem, p. 30.
66 See the discussion in Althaus, Theologie der Ordnungen, p. 19. and in von der Osten-Sacken,
Martin Luther und die Juden, pp. 231–32.
68 Ibidem, p. 31.
148 Anders Gerdmar
contends. Luther took the honest Christian Jews most seriously, but never counted
them “to the German church”, them being “guests and friends in our (German) gen-
tile church, however at home in the Jewish church”. Also in other ways Luther re-
ferred to German traits and used them against the Jews. To Luther, what is Ger-
man and Christian is almost inseparable, Vogelsang contends: “precisely the inner
unification and molding together of Germanness and Christianity is the strength of
Luther”.69
However, Vogelsang takes a stand against going too far in reading Luther in
modern racial categories. The “Jewish Problem” is to Luther never a merely racial
problem, it is a matter of religion, ultimately about the relationship to Christ.70 On
the other hand, by putting Luther’s thought in völkisch-racial categories, Vogelsang
recruits Luther for his modern position. Making the “Jewish Problem” a religious
problem does not soften the position against the Jews in Vogelsang’s argumen-
tation. It rather gives the racial measures an even stronger legitimation. That it is a
Christusfrage does not refer to religious matters such as conversion and theology, but
to the judgement over the Jews, that is, that the blood of Jesus comes over the
Jews.
Luther as Legitimator of Oppression
The scope of this study is not primarily to ascertain whether Luther held völkisch
and racist views – indeed that would be anachronistic, since these terms belong to
other times and circumstances – but to see how Vogelsang uses Luther’s texts. This
is not meant as a defence of Luther’s own views, saying that Vogelsang is reading
Luther against Luther. Rather, there is sufficient evidence to show Luther did hold
strongly anti-Jewish and perhaps antisemitic views from his early days to his last.71
Curiously, in this regard the antisemitic interpretation of Luther offered by Vogel-
sang may be less inclined to whitewash Luther than more apologetic readings. For
it takes no sophisticated commentaries to show that Von den Juden und ihren Lügen is
an anti-Jewish and antisemitic text of the highest rank. Luther clearly argues that
Jews, qua Jews, have certain negative essential characteristics and should therefore
be systematically persecuted and oppressed.
69 Ibidem.
70 “Einer vom Religiösen losgelösten, rein völkischen oder rein rassischen Betrachtungsweise
wird man bei Luther nicht begegnen. Auch die Judenfrage ist für ihn niemals nur eine Ras-
senfrage. Anfang und Ende seiner Gedanken ist Christus.” Ibidem, p. 32.
71 A reading of his Lecture on the Psalms shows that this is the case already in 1513 when Luther
indicates that the Jews killed Jesus, e.g. in his commentary to Pss 94:20; 109:17, to only men-
tion a few. See also C. Bernd Sucher, Luthers Stellung zu den Juden. Eine Interpretation aus germa-
nistischer Sicht (Nieuwkoop: de Graaf, 1977), p. 46. Von der Osten-Sacken, Martin Luther und
die Juden, p. 69 is talking about “The Psalms as a Christian textbook in enmity towards Jews”,
and shows that Luther from the outset had a strong polemics against Jews.
As is often done with authoritative religious texts, Vogelsang’s reading of Luther

objectivates his sayings, elevating them ‘above’ and out of their specific historical
situation into the German 1933 context. In the words of Peter L. Berger, religion
or similar ideological forces “legitimate social institutions by bestowing upon them
an ultimately valid ontological status, that is, by locating them within a sacred and
cosmic frame of reference”.72 For this purpose, Luther was the perfect choice: The
authority of the German reformer made him a key carrier of German and
Protestant values, exactly what was needed when National Socialist theologians and
propagandists were constructing the ideological building with which should be able
to deal with the “Jewish Problem”. Using Luther’s words, Vogelsang could “prove”
that the Jews were the enemies and murderers of Christ, that they indeed were idle
usurers and enemies of the German people. Vogelsang’s völkisch reading of Luther
came handy to National Socialism in its attempt to create a society where Jews were
at best constitutionally marginalised, at worst physically eradicated. And such physi-
cal apartheid, expulsion or eradication presupposed an ideological one, provided by
Luther and his modern interpreter Vogelsang.
Luther and the Crystal Night 1938
Texts written by theological professors are not innocent, and when their thoughts
are implemented in ordinary church life, theology can positively or negatively shape
history. Just after the so-called Crystal Night, when synagogues all over Germany
still were burning, the Landesbischof in Thüringen, Martin Sasse, wrote in his pam-
phlet Martin Luther über die Juden: Weg mit ihnen! (Martin Luther about the Jews: away
with them!): “On the 10th of November 1938, on Luthers birthday, the synagogues
in Germany are burning”.73
Sasse’s pamphlet is 16 pages and my copy has the addendum “60.–100. Tau-
send”, meaning that it most certainly had great public impact. Sasse does not say
much himself, letting Luther speak, predominantly from Von den Juden und ihren Lü-
gen. The bishop does not regret that the synagogues are burning – to the contrary:
On 10 November, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues in Germany are burning. The

power of the Jews in the economic field is ultimately broken by the German people in
the new Germany in expiation of the killing of the attaché vom Rath by Jewish hand,
thus crowning the fight of the Führer ordained by God for the entire liberation of our
72 Berger, The Sacred Canopy, p. 33.

73 Martin Sasse, Martin Luther über die Juden: Weg mit ihnen! (Freiburg: Sturmhut Verlag, 1938), p.
2. The text is dated 23 November 1938. This is noted by Günther B. Ginzel, “Martin Lu-
ther: ‘Kronzeuge des Antisemitismus’” in Heinz Kremers, ed., Die Juden und Martin Luther.
Martin Luther und die Juden. Geschichte, Wirkungsgeschichte, Herausforderung (Neukirchen-Fluyn:
Neukirchner Verlag, 1985), p. 207.
150 Anders Gerdmar
people. (…) In this hour the voice of a man must be heard who (…) became the grea-
test antisemite of his time.74
Sasse seems to see the burning of the synagogues on Luther’s birthday as a divine
appointment, regarding the action by the German SA, SS and the mobs as neces-
sary to break the alleged power of the Jews. In this writing, as Sasse says, “Luther
will speak to us in his own words”, holding Luther’s voice to be more powerful
than that of friends of Jews and scribes who no longer know about Luther’s stand
– the latter probably takes a shot at liberal theology.75
Sasse could have hardly found a stronger rhetorical force than Luther’s own
words in blaming the Jews and then telling what Luther demands.76 Luther’s first
point is referred to in the subheading: “Away with the synagogues! Away with the
Jews!” Sasse also repeats the seven demands which end Luther’s writing from 1543
quoted above, beginning with the saying that God’s sharp mercy requires setting
the synagogues and schools of the Jews on fire.77
By this, the Landesbischof in the “Wartburgstadt” Eisenach only demonstrates
that the events in close-by “Lutherstadt” Erfurt on the ninth and tenth of Novem-
ber were no accident, when on the even to Luther’s birthday the magnificent syna-
gogue was burnt to the ground. Unusually, but practically enough, the firecorps had
been called to the place before the fire. Why? To protect the surrounding buildings
while the synagogue was burning down! The day after, the whole town marched
with torches for the traditional Martinsfest, on Luther’s birthday celebrating Martin
of Tours and Martin Luther.78
Of course we cannot know what Luther himself would have thought of this –
even though no one can deny his very practical and down-to-earth advise to “Burn
their synagogues!” For theology professors can very well be ‘armchair antisemites’
such as Gerhard Kittel, who was a critic of “Radauantisemitismus”, street anti-
semitism, at the same time as he through his writings legitimated antisemitic poli-
cies.79 What is written in the most pious book of the theology professor, and then
spoken in the pulpit by bishops and ministers, however, may become lethal when
74 “Am 10. November, an Luthers Geburtstag, brennen in Deutschland die Synagogen. Vom
deutschen Volke wird zur Sühne für die Ermordung des Gesandschaftsrates vom Rath
durch Judenhand die Macht der Juden auf wirtschaftlichem Gebiete im neuen Deutschland
endgültig gebrochen und damit der gottesgesegnete Kampf des Führers zur völligen Be-
freiung unseres Volkes gekrönt. (…) In dieser Stunde muß die Stimme des Mannes gehört
werden, der (…) der größte Antisemit seiner Zeit geworden ist.” Sasse, Martin Luther über die
Juden, p. 2.
75 Ibidem.
76 Ibidem, pp. 3–8 and pp. 9–15.
77 Ibidem, p. 9.
78 Olaf Zucht, “Die Feuerwehr hatte den Brand zu schützen”, in Birgit Vogt, ed., Pogrom in Er-
furt. Beiträge gegen das Vergessen (Erfurt: Kontakt in Krisen e.V.: 1998), pp. 7–10.
79 See Gerdmar, Roots of Theological Antisemitism, p. 506.
legitimating a political action like that in Erfurt and all of Germany on the eve to
Luther’s birthday. Theological arguments from the sixteenth century, revived by the
specialists of the Luther renaissance, were reforged into a synthesis with the völkisch
racist ideology of National Socialism. On a greater scale than Luther would have
found possible, his thoroughly unethical – and indeed un-Christian – words be-
came political reality, and not only for the synagogues in Erfurt and numerous oth-
er places. Hundreds of Jews in Erfurt were taken directly to nearby Buchenwald, as
antisemitism went into a new more radical phase.
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—. Die Judenfrage. 2nd enl. ed., Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1933.
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Puschner, Uwe. “Völkisch. Plädoyer für einen ‘engen’ Begriff”. In Paul Ciupke et
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80 Debora Dusse
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer
The blending of a religious and academic interest in Germanic religion and its ref-
erences are even stronger in Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881–1962) than they are in
Bernhard Kummer. In Hauer’s presentations, papers and lectures, a life spent deal-
ing with the Eddic tradition is discernible.19 It began in his private life, became part
of his academic work and finally ended with his work on a commentary on Völuspá
after 1945 dealing with the Edda. He completed the commentary in 1961.20
Hauer recounts in his biographical “Skizzen aus meinem Leben” that he has al-
ready read Eddic texts in a prose adaptation at an early age, reporting a scene from
his childhood which he later compared to the mythological concept of the Norns.21
Even though his later religious research was initially influenced by indology, he also
turned to the traditions of the Germanic peoples in the context of the concept of
an Indo-Germanic or Indo-Aryan religious history. This, on the one hand, was re-
lated to his academic work. On the other hand, his publications were addressed to
the larger public. These included texts pertaining to the religious efforts of the
German Faith Movement in creating a “German faith” distinct from Catholicism
and Protestantism in the times of National Socialism. One example of this is Hau-
er’s consideration of the references of a “Germanic-German” faith, which, accord-
ing to him, belonged to the “Indo-Germanic-Nordic topsoil” of the “German
faith”. These relicts also included the Eddic tradition. As in his other publications,
he attributed central significance to the Völuspá and the Ragnarök concept in the
volume Deutsche Gottschau, which was dedicated to “the fighters for a German faith”
and included a greeting to “related peoples”.22 Hauer’s personal, academic and reli-
gious-political interests in the Edda were closely intertwined and can hardly be ana-
lytically separated. Moreover, his publications and courses never served merely aca-
demic objectives but often religious-ideological purposes at the same time.
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer’s extensive knowledge of the Eddic tradition and its use
in religiously hued contexts becomes apparent in many of his texts. He was no
19 For the lectures, cf. Horst Junginger, Von der philologischen zur völkischen Religionswissenschaft:
Das Fach Religionswissenschaft an der Universität Tübingen von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum
Ende des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999), pp. 317–28 and for the publi-
cations, Margarethe Dierks, Jakob Wilhelm Hauer 1881–1962: Leben, Werk, Wirkung. Mit einer
Personalbibliographie (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1986), pp. 450–82 as well as Jakob Wil-
helm Hauer, Verfall oder Neugeburt der Religion? Ein Symposion über Menschsein, Glauben und Un-
glauben (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1961), pp. 371–75.
20 Cf. Dierks, Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, pp. 480–81 and p. 469.
21 Wilhelm Hauer, “Skizzen aus meinem Leben. Vorbemerkungen”, “Skizzen aus meinem Le-
ben. 1. Der Wurzelboden” and “Skizzen aus meinem Leben. 4. Das Christentum”, in Deut-
scher Glaube 1 (1935), p. 9, 2 (1935), p. 55 and 6 (1935), p. 253. Cf. also Dierks, Jakob Wilhelm
Hauer, p. 27.
22 Idem, Deutsche Gottschau: Grundzüge eines Deutschen Glaubens, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: Karl Gutbrod
Verlag, 1935), p. 3 and pp. 197–202.
154 Lena Berggren
they did indeed share some basic values and opinions with each other, ideas which
were considered the basis for what among its adherents was commonly known as
the “national cause” and which bound them together in what was self-labelled the
“National Movement”. This national cause can be seen as consisting of seven
points: first, a strong integral/romanticist nationalism; second a clear anti-democra-
tic stance; third, political and social elitism; fourth, a strong critique of contempo-
rary society as decadent and materialist; fifth, racism and antisemitism; sixth, great
admiration for Germany in general and Nazi Germany in particular; and finally a
strong support for Germany in the war.2 This programme can also, to use a more
universal term than “nationalist cause”, which is limited specifically to the Swedish
interwar context, be labelled “ultra-nationalist”.
I have elsewhere argued that the term ultra-nationalism successfully can be
used as a blanket-term denoting a number of interrelated ideological forms which
are united through a general anti-democratic position as well as a far-reaching na-
tionalism which, according to Roger Griffin, “‘go beyond’ and hence reject, any-
thing compatible with liberal institutions or with the tradition of Enlightenment hu-
manism which underpins them”.3 To Griffin’s definition of the term it is helpful to
add that an ultra-nationalist position, apart from being anti-liberal and anti-demo-
cratic, also contains a drive not only to safe-guard national interests but also to per-
ceive national unity as the founding basis of state formation and, in doing so, in-
volves a strong racist potentiality.4 In the Swedish case, this racist potentiality is ful-
ly developed throughout most of the national movement, including the Manhem
Society.
The ideological foundations of the Manhem Society fit within this definition of
ultra-nationalism, and there are also signs suggesting that the society contained
strong völkisch strands. The notion of völkisch thought is not easily defined, partly
because the term traditionally has been used to describe the rather diverse variety
of nationalist, racist and antisemitic groupings and organisations that flourished in
Wilhelmine Germany and that some scholars have labelled proto-Nazi.5 According
to Uwe Puschner, the core of völkisch ideology can, however, be summarised by the
2 Lena Berggren, Nationell upplysning: Drag i den svenska antisemitismens idéhistoria (Stockholm:
Carlssons, 1999), p. 73.
3 Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 37.
4 Lena Berggren, “Building a New Society. Ideas on Social Revolution and the Conception of
the People’s Community in Interwar Swedish Fascism”, Ideas in History 2 (2007), pp. 115–41;
eadem, “Den svenska mellankrigsfascismen – ett ointressant marginalfenomen eller ett
viktigt forskningsobjekt?”, Historisk Tidskrift 122 (2002), pp. 427–44.
5 For a thorough account of the varied shapes of this loosely knit movement in Wilhelmine
Germany, see Uwe Puschner et al., eds., Handbuch zur ‘völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918 (Mu-
nich: Saur, 1999).
Völkisch Thought in Sweden: The Manhem Society 155
core concepts of language, race and religion, which are bound together through a
romanticist and heavily traditionalist version of nationalism.6
The völkisch tradition was carried forward by the likes of writers such as Joseph
Arthur de Gobineau, often considered the ‘founding father’ of the movement in
Germany, Paul de Lagarde, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, and, in particular, Houston
Stewart Chamberlain. The movement should be seen as cultural or intellectual ra-
ther than political, even though its core beliefs could be, and after the First World
War indeed also were, transformed into a political programme. A large part of the
movement laid heavy stress on the religious aspect of national identity, and religion
and race were frequently merged into the ideal of the Germanic warrior, pure in
blood and spirit, self-sacrificing and respectful of tradition and history. Contrasting
with this ideal was often the negative stereotype of the treacherous and cunning
Jew, thus incorporating what Saul Friedländer has labelled “redemptive antisemi-
tism” into the package.7
The strong fascist tendency and, perhaps more importantly, the Manhem Soci-
ety’s very favourable position towards Nazi Germany are quite fortunate from a
source perspective, since for these reasons the Swedish Secret Police kept a close
eye on the society. Since the bulk of the society’s activities took the form of public
lectures and events, things were made quite easy for the Secret Police and police
informants were regularly present during these events. The written reports of these
informants together with written accounts of lectures and other events that were
frequently published in journals and newsletters with close ties to the society give
unique insights into not only what was presented during the lectures themselves,
but also what was discussed and who took part in the discussions, which of the so-
ciety’s prominent members were present, the size of the audience, and if there were
any disturbances or occurrences out of the ordinary.
The following analysis of the society’s political views is primarily based on the
society’s more constitutional texts from the time of the founding of the society as
well as the contents of the lectures delivered by the society’s more frequent lectur-
ers.8 Informant reports and other material from the archives of the Secret Police
such as transcripts from police interrogations, mail and telephone surveillance and
internal police memos concerning the society’s key members and activists have also
been used as important sources, as well as published manuscripts of the lectures.
6 Uwe Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Sprache, Rasse, Religion
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001).
7 I have elsewhere expanded on the merging of race and religion in the writings of Houston
Stewart Chamberlain. See Lena Berggren, “Ras och religion. Om Houston Stewart Cham-
berlains världsåskådning i ‘Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts’”, Historisk
Tidskrift 116 (1996), pp. 92–119. On the notion of ‘redemptive antisemitism’, see further
Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (Lon-
don: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997).
8 It can safely be assumed that the views of these were pretty much representative of the soci-
ety – otherwise they wouldn’t have been used so frequently.
156 Lena Berggren
The latter material has been complemented by pamphlets and books written by the
people in question. These pamphlets were usually published by the society’s foun-
der Carl Ernfrid Carlberg through his publishing house Svea Rike, and can thus be
connected to the society that way as well.
The Founding Father – Carl Ernfrid Carlberg
The society was officially led by a board that was headed by a chairman, but power
over the society was ultimately left in the hands of its founder and secretary, Carl
Ernfrid Carlberg (1889–1962). Carlberg came from a wealthy, upper-middle class
Stockholm family that had made its fortune through property development, and he
was brought up in accordance with the conservative value system that dominated
this class of modern industrialists around the turn of the century. This value system
was marked by Christian morals, respect for king, church and nation, a constant
strive toward higher levels of cultural refinement and knowledge (what in Germany
was known as Bildung), and a high level of industriousness.
Carlberg was educated in some of the best schools in Stockholm, and in 1912
he received an engineering degree from the prestigious Chalmers School of Tech-
nology in Gothenburg. He then moved on to studies in ethics, pedagogy and litera-
ture at Uppsala University and the Stockholm School for Higher Education. Paral-
lel to his studies, he also pursued a military career. In 1910 he was made an officer
in the reserve corps and held that position until 1922. Carlberg was also a keen
gymnast during his youth, and in 1912 participated in the Swedish team that won
an Olympic gold medal in troop gymnastics at the Stockholm Olympic Games. He
kept up his interest for gymnastics throughout his life and in 1933 he donated a
large mansion estate on the island of Värmdö in the Stockholm archipelago to the
Swedish Gymnastics Federation in order for it to be used as a school by the associ-
ation.
Money was never a problem during Carlberg’s childhood and youth, and when
his father died in 1933, he inherited a financially solid property development busi-
ness that owned and managed a substantial number of properties, quite a few of
which were situated in the more fashionable and expensive areas of Stockholm.
The depression in the early 1930s seems to have had very little impact on the com-
pany, and Carlberg remained financially solvent throughout his life. He became one
of the more prominent financiers of Swedish ultra-nationalism, and the Manhem
Society resided in one of Carlberg’s properties, together with Carlberg’s publishing
firm and book shop Svea Rike.
Carlberg entertained frequent and close relations with different representatives
of Nazi Germany. He was a recurrent guest at the German embassy in Stockholm
throughout the war, travelled extensively to Nazi Germany and was involved in
putting together a “nationalist” list of ministers for a Swedish puppet government
that would be ready to step in in case of a German occupation of Sweden. He also

helped promote a recruitment campaign for the Waffen-SS in Stockholm in August
1939, functioned as the official representative of the Völkischer Beobachter in Sweden,
and was responsible for the Swedish edition of the German propaganda journal
Signal in 1941–45. Carlberg was also involved in organising escape routes through
Sweden to Latin America for fleeing Nazis after the war, and was closely monitored
by the Swedish Secret Police throughout his life.9
Carlberg’s gymnastic interest can be seen shining through when, in 1928, he
started the publication of the journal Gymn, which was soon followed by the found-
ing of the Gymnic Association which, as the journal promoted what was called the
‘gymnic ideals’, viz. the conviction that gymnastic body movements not only en-
hanced physical health but also mental health and, eventually, the general health of
the nation. The Association had as its motto, “Health-Character-Beauty”. In the
first issue of the journal, the mission of the Gymnic Association was expressed
thus:
If Western society is to avoid perishment by physical, ethical and aesthetical slackness, a

clean sweep in front of every man’s door is a necessity. Crudity, selfishness and perver-
sity needs to be pulled out of the foundations on which we strive to build a new future.
From the healthy bodies, the clear minds and the good hearts, spiritual springs must
burst from the ground. The men and women, who have dedicated themselves to the
founding idea of this journal, will to the limit of their ability show the way forward.10
The content of the journal was not, in the beginning, tarnished by antisemitism,
racialism or ultra-nationalist ideas, but these themes began to pervade the journal in
1930. Early in 1931, Carlberg wrote an article entitled “The protection of the Nor-
dic race. A few thoughts on a question of vital importance to the people”. This ar-
ticle decidedly set a new course for Carlberg, since it was the first time that he ex-
plicitly addressed the issue of race. The matter of defending the Nordic race was
now also connected to the survival of the traditional peasant community and its
culture in a Blood and Soil tradition. The article ends:
During millennia of arduous Kulturkampf, generation by generation, the Swedish race

and the Swedish blood has been ennobled and cleansed of injurious hereditary charac-
teristics, primitive instincts, criminal leniencies, betrayal, hatred and urges to kill, torture
and oppress other peoples, in short been cleansed from the calamitous characteristics
that signifies biologically inferior races. May we therefore carefully avoid mixing our
pure Swedish blood with that of more or less impure strangers. Let us not irresponsibly
waste the most precious heritage from deceased Nordic fathers.11
9 Berggren, Nationell upplysning, pp. 228–30.

10 “Några ord som anmälan”, Gymn 1928:1, quoted from Berggren, Nationell upplysning, p. 233.
11 “Nordiskt rasskydd. Några tankar kring nationens livsfråga”, Gymn 1931:1, quoted from
Berggren, Nationell upplysning, p. 241.
158 Lena Berggren
In hindsight, this article can be seen as an important turning-point for both Carl-
berg and the journal. In 1931 and 1932, the journal made a clearly discernible shift
away from earlier Hellenic ideals in favour of Nordic ideals, the number of articles
addressing race issues increased steadily and so did the number of ads promoting
National Socialist publications, German and Swedish alike. Even if Carlberg never
openly became a member of any of the Swedish fascist parties, it is nevertheless
clear that his opinions shifted in this direction in the early 1930’s. And even if some
of the ideals that were prevalent within the Gymnic Association still lingered on
during the first years within the Manhem Society, it is however clear that this or-
ganisation was, from the start, meant to become something different.
Popular Education and Ultra-Nationalist Liaison
The Manhem Society was founded 17 September 1934, and was disbanded ten
years later, in December 1944. The founding day was deliberately chosen to com-
memorate the anniversary of the seventeenth-century Swedish naturalist and phi-
losopher Olaus Rudbeck (1630–1702), who was also perceived as the foremost in-
terpreter of what was commonly known as the Geatish myth, in which Sweden was
depicted as the scion of Atlantis and glorified as the world’s first and foremost
great power. The society saw itself as a bulwark for this tradition, and consequently
the aim of the society became “to promote genuinely Swedish and Nordic cultiva-
tion, above all popular education on scientific ground in accordance with Nordic
ethical spirit and cooperation in the same spirit with other bodies of spiritual culti-
vation within the country”.12
The statutes of the society were signed by 184 people, the majority of these be-
longing to the upper and upper-middle classes, with an over-representation of aca-
demics and high-ranking officers. This indicates that the society was dominated by
people from influential social strata, something which is also confirmed in a report
by the Secret Police in 1940, and in a contemporary account by the political jour-
nalist Holger Carlsson, who kept close tabs on the national movement during the
1930s and 1940s.13 The society was based in Stockholm, and even if its member-
ship probably never exceeded 400 members, the geographical concentration, the
social status and the activist fervour of most of its members nevertheless rendered
it quite influential in its time.14
12 Quote taken from Berggren, Nationell upplysning, p 187.

13 Holger Carlsson, Nazismen i Sverige. Ett varningsord (Stockholm: Trots Allt!, 1942), pp. 112–14
and a classified police report from the archives of the Swedish Secret Police quoted in Berg-
gren, Nationell upplysning, p. 189.
14 There are also indications that the society recruited new members solely on the recommen-
dation of old members, and that the society prided itself on being a small and exclusive or-
ganisation. See further Berggren, Nationell upplysning, p. 190, note 1.
Apart from promoting national culture, the Manhem Society had two self-declared
vocations. First and foremost, the society devoted itself to popular education on
ultra-nationalist principles, and through these activities reaching a much wider au-
dience than its own membership. Secondly, it wanted to create common grounds
for all the different groups within the loosely knit national movement where dis-
cussion and, ultimately, some kind of unity could be obtained, and in that sense the
society could be seen as a liaison central for the national movement in the Stock-
holm area.
This focus on popular education was quite commonplace in Sweden from the
late nineteenth century onwards, and all political movements had their own organi-
sations for this. Popular education was considered a vital part of the democratisa-
tion process, and within the labour movement especially it was designed as a tool
for enlarging political influence through practical training for the working class, giv-
ing them the skills necessary for responsible participation in the political process.
Popular education thus became a means of transforming the working class from an
uneducated mass into responsible citizens. According to the Manhem Society as
well as to the rest of the national movement, the established bodies of popular edu-
cation, especially those of the labour movement, were deeply flawed since they did
not acknowledge the importance of the national heritage and the national cause (as
it was perceived from an ultra-nationalist ideological perspective). Consequently,
the Manhem Society was founded as an ultra-nationalist alternative to the Workers’
Educational Association (Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund, ABF), a point about which
they were outspoken.
During its 10 years of existence, the society arranged just over 400 public lec-
tures engaging around 100 lecturers. Up until 1943, when the number of lectures
dropped drastically, the society usually arranged two lectures per week, except dur-
ing the summer months. For the duration of this period, the audience averaged 75–
100 people, but some of the more popular reoccurring lecturers, such as Holger
Möllman-Palmgren, Rütger Essén and Per Engdahl, could draw a crowd of 300
people or more. When looking at the lectures delivered between September 1935
and December 1936 for instance, 77 per cent of the lecturers had a university di-
ploma of some kind and 13 out of a total of 28 lecturers during this period had
higher academic titles (licentiate degree, PhD, assistant and full professor).15
From 1940 onwards, the society also started screening films on a larger scale.
From March 1941 onwards, this was organised through what was called the Stock-
holm Film Studio, which was officially independent from the society, but whose
ties to the society were very strong. The screened films were supposed to have
been cleared by the Swedish film censorship board, but this was not always the
case. Most films seem to have been provided through the German tourist office
and the German information bureau in Stockholm, and were usually German mov-
15 Berggren, Nationell upplysning, p. 333, note 1. In this context it can also be added that 57.5 per
cent of the board members of the society in 1934–42 had academic titles.
160 Lena Berggren
ies that for some reason or other (usually due to the propagandistic theme of the
film) were not screened in Swedish cinemas. There were newsreels produced by the
German film company UFA and “documentaries” like the notorious antisemitic
propaganda film, The Eternal Jew, which was screened in January 1942.16
The second mission of the society was to function as an open forum for dis-
cussions as well as to serve as a unifying force for the Swedish national movement
as a whole. It was quite successful at operating as a discussion forum. Within the
society were leading members from the radical right Swedish National Federation,
the indigenous fascist New-Swedish movement, the Nazi National Socialist Work-
ers Party/the Swedish Socialist Coalition (NSAP/SSS)17 and a number of smaller
fascist and ultra-nationalist organisations. The society also attracted individuals that
were quite influential within the national movement, notably Holger Möllman-
Palmgren, an art historian and museologist who in 1936–45 edited the Gothen-
burg-based independent ultra-nationalist paper “Liberated Sweden” (Sverige Fritt),
which frequently published manuscripts of lectures held by the society. Besides
“Liberated Sweden”, the society also had close ties to the independent publications
“The Daily Echo” (Dagens Eko) and “The National Chronicle” (Nationell Krönika),
which were published from 1940–42.18
The attempts at uniting at least parts of the national movement that the society
was involved with were less successful, and when the society in the spring of 1943
engaged in a close cooperation with the New-Swedish organisation Swedish Oppo-
sition, many of its old activists that belonged to other organisations within the na-
tional movement left the society. Around the same time, the number of public lec-
tures dropped drastically, and during its last year and a half the society did not show
much activity at all.
16 Classified material, the archives of the Swedish Secret Police.

17 The party changed its name in 1938. See further Lena Berggren, “Swedish fascism – why bo-
ther?”, Journal of Contemporary History 37 (2002), pp. 395–417. It should however be noted
that those people who were active within the SSS as well as the Manhem Society almost
without exception belonged to the more traditionalist and overtly racist and antisemitic wing
of the party.
18 Both publications were most probably financed by people from the Manhem circle and both
were edited by Axel O:son Molund, who was well known within the society. The publica-
tions were, however, quite different from each other. Dagens Eko had a tabloid character,
was vehemently antisemitic and very aggressive in its pro-German propaganda, whereas Na-
tionell Krönika had a much more moderate tone and sophisticated lay-out. It appears they
were meant to complement each other but aimed at different audiences.
The Manhem Society and Nazi Germany
The Manhem Society looked upon Nazi Germany very favourably, and, according
to an evaluation by the Swedish Secret Police in 1940, it was actually considered to
be a more significant threat to state security than the Nazi Swedish Socialist Coali-
tion. According to the Secret Police, this was due to the high social status of the
society’s members, the fact that quite a few of them considered themselves disad-
vantaged by the democratic state and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that the
society was vehemently pro-German and entertained good relations with Nazi rep-
resentatives in Sweden.19
In 1935, the society was invited to the annual congress of the German Nordi-
sche Gesellschaft in Lübeck. The invitation was the result of society founder Carl
Ernfrid Carlberg’s efforts trying to establish an official cooperation between the
Manhem Society and the Nordische Gesellschaft, given the similarities between the
two organisations. The cooperation was, however, discouraged by the German le-
gation in Stockholm, which characterised the Manhem Society as an “honourable
but slightly dilettantish organisation”, and since the society accommodated a num-
ber of members with a slightly tarnished political reputation. Official cooperation
could also, according to the legation, prove detrimental to both parties as it could
easily be seen as a blatant attempt on Germany’s side to interfere with internal
Swedish affairs. It was thus decided that the common cause would be better served
if the society stayed independent. Instead, the Nordische Gesellschaft established
contacts with the National Association Sweden-Germany, which was considered
less dilettantish and politically tarnished.20
When Hitler celebrated his 50th birthday in April 1939, the society was present
in Berlin to deliver a birthday present from the Manhem Society, the National As-
sociation Sweden-Germany and some pro-Nazi individuals. The gift was a bronze
statuette of the Swedish king Charles XII and was accompanied by a homage that
stated:
Swedish men and women, who in the German leader and Chancellor Adolf Hitler see
the saviour of Europe, would like to express their deeply felt honour and gratitude. To
this greeting we attach a reminder of our great king Charles XII, who in his determined
struggle was inspired by the same spirit which we as Swedes also see in your historic
mission for the founding of a Greater Germany and the safe-guarding of Europe.21
The pro-Nazi stance of the society became more prominent during the war, and
the society was, for instance, one of the few organisations within the Swedish na-
19 Classified material, the archives of the Swedish Secret Police.

20 Åke Thulstrup, Med lock och pock. Tyska försök att påverka svensk opinion 1933–1945 (Stockholm:
Bonnier, 1962), pp. 36–7.
21 Karl N A Nilsson, Svensk överklassnazism 1930–1945 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1996), pp. 147–
48.
162 Lena Berggren
tional movement that gave its unreserved support to the Norwegian NS regime and
its leader Vidkun Quisling, a regime that was branded as treasonable by the radical
right Swedish National Federation, the New-Swedish Movement and the more rad-
ical wing of the Nazi SSS. This development seems to have scared many of the so-
ciety’s more moderately pro-German and nationalist activists away in the early 40s,
leaving only the most dedicated followers during the last years prior to the final
demise of the society in the autumn of 1944.
Foundational Ideas
The name of the Manhem Society was chosen carefully and with thought. Literally
translated, Manhem means “the home of man”, and it was first used in Old Norse
mythology as an alternative term for Sviðjod, a name for Sweden. This usage of the
word Manhem reoccurs in idealist, mythological and nationalist contexts from the
seventeenth century onwards, and the twentieth century society also had a much
admired forerunner in the early nineteenth century romanticist Manhem Associa-
tion whose main purpose was to educate its members in Old Norse mythology, his-
tory and literature.
According to Carl Ernfrid Carlberg, the Manhem Society was an association
striving for a “Gothic-Gymnic renaissance”. Therefore the concept of “Manhem”
was to be understood as “the origin of Man on earth; the stronghold of light and
liberty; the earthly home of truth; the bridge between the distant past and the pre-
sent; the dream of the primacy of the people’s original home; the demand for stat-
ure and purge [and] the word of will and victory”.22 This quote is an indication that
the society was indeed firmly rooted in a romanticist nationalist tradition that had
flourished during the first half of the nineteenth century and which, in particular,
nurtured a passion for the Old Norse roots of the Swedish Volksgeist, culture and
virtues as well as a fascination with Old Norse mythology and religion. This Old
Norse heritage also became an important part of the Manhem Society’s parapher-
nalia and can be seen, for instance, in the society’s emblem, consisting of a rune
stone flanked by two Viking ships and the motto “Faith – Strength – Honour”
written in Swedish above the Rune stone.
This romanticist and “culturalist” heritage was quite prevalent, especially during
the society’s first years when different forms of cultural events formed an im-
portant part of the society’s activities. On a regular basis, during its first years of
existence, the society held so-called Gothic Feasts, public cultural events with song
and music, lyrical recitations, dancing, gymnastics performances and so on, all in a
folkloristic and “national” spirit. The society also had a choir, a theatre group and
study circles for the development of a number of cultural skills such as folk danc-
22 Carl Ernfrid Carlberg, Mera ljus! Riktlinjer för Samfundet Manhem (Stockholm: Svea Rike
[1934]), pp. 3-4.
ing. In addition, the society purchased and displayed a large number of what was
considered to be representative and morally cultivating artworks with Old Norse
and romantic motifs. It also granted artistic scholarships to artists working in the
spirit of the society.
This far, much of what has been said about the Manhem Society could easily
have been accommodated within Carlberg’s earlier enterprise, the Gymnic Associa-
tion as well, but the society’s statutes also contained racist views and Blood and Soil
rhetoric that would have been harder to make space for within the confines of the
Gymnic Association. On the issue of race it was, for instance, stated:
The discovery of our times of the spirit of the Nordic race is ground-breaking. It in-
volves a new philosophy of life that should become a blessing to all mankind. This new
truth must now be safeguarded and made fruit-bearing. This does not equal ‘race hatred’
or ‘persecution’ of non-Nordic people. It is on the contrary an important and inevitable
step in the development toward an enhanced understanding for other peoples.23
The spirit of the Nordic race and the quality of the race was also seen as closely
connected to the historic living conditions of the Swedish peasantry and this notion
of the important connection between blood and soil was further saturated with re-
ligious connotations:
In short: the natural disposition of the Swede is Nordic. This is an organic state of af-
fairs given through blood and soil, a law of nature that no one can violate without caus-
ing damage. (…) There is in actual fact an indigenous culture, organically grown from
blood and soil, which we, Swedes of eldest peasant stock, claim in favour of what the
internationalist materialist bring to the foreground. There exists a genuine Nordic spir-
ituality, a natural ethical sense, anchored in the Swedish Volksgeist, grown from the
same Aryan foundations as the high teachings of Christ as well as it’s [the teachings of
Christ] evident precursor.24
Religion and Race
Within the society, the issue of religion was most frequently addressed by the priest
and secondary grammar school teacher Nils Hannerz (1866–1951) and by the soci-
ety’s chairman, Ernst Bernhard Almquist (1852–1946).25 Hannerz also functioned
as the society’s “Keeper of religion” during its first years of existence. He also
wrote and spoke extensively on the subject. The linchpin of Hannerz’ religious
23 Manhem. Opolitiskt samfund för svenskhetens bevarande i Sverige. Stiftelseurkund fastställd den 17 sept.
1934 (Stockholm: [Svea Rike], [1935], p. 20.
24 Ibidem, p. 21.
25 The following is primarily based on Lena Berggren, “Completing the Lutheran Reformation:
Ultranationalism, Christianity and the Possibility of ‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Sweden”,
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8 (2007), pp. 303–14.
164 Lena Berggren
views can be placed within the tradition of the mystery of race that, in Germany,
was advocated by, for instance, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and, later, Alfred
Rosenberg. In short, Hannerz argued that the ability for “genuine” religious insight
was connected to one’s racial character and that the quest for a religious renais-
sance on racial terms was an essential part of a political renewal of society since re-
ligion provided society with ethical norms.
A recurring theme throughout both Hannerz’ and Almquist’s writings and the
society’s agenda at large was thus a calling for what can be described as a second
reformation that would lead to the creation of an ‘Evangelical Nordic Faith’. In or-
der for this to happen, modern liberal and Capitalist society needed to be eradicat-
ed, according to Hannerz “since the urge to make even the forms of Faith perma-
nent is close at hand in the golden era of urban culture, [a process] through which
the world of Faith will petrify and the life of the Spirit will be smothered”.26
The concept of an Evangelical Nordic Faith can be said to balance on a very
fine line between Christianity proper and the notion of a syncretistic Germanic
Faith advocated by, for instance, Rosenberg. To be sure, Hannerz’ thoughts on re-
ligion contained syncretistic features, but he was nevertheless firm in the conviction
that the core of the Evangelical Nordic Faith was Christian. God was perceived as
one and the same throughout history, and this one and only God was Christian, all
other perceptions of God considered blasphemous. Following this argument, he
held the conviction that the ancient religious customs of the Germanic tribes, in-
cluding the Scandinavian Old-Norse Asatru, were examples of a pious Christian
spirit preceding the birth of Christianity proper.
This only becomes possible if one takes into account that Hannerz, like most
of his peers within the tradition of the mystery of race, presumes that only people
of Germanic or Nordic race have the ability for religious, i.e. Christian, spiritual in-
sight. This line of argument also implies that the forerunners of Christianity were
not the Jews, but the seemingly Pagan Germanic tribes, which also gives the argu-
ment an antisemitic twist. Hannerz came to the conclusion that the second refor-
mation, which would complete the strivings of the great reformer Martin Luther, in
order to be successful, needed to thoroughly revise the New Testament and total
abandonment of the Old Testament texts. Following the argument of the German
Protestant theologian Hermann Mandel (1882–1946), Hannerz also asserts that in
order to accomplish this, the clergy not only needed to have a thorough knowledge
of Christian theology and exegetics, but also had to be experienced in the areas of
“Nordic history and religion, Nordic thought and contemporary science”.27
Hannerz was convinced that, for the ancient Germanic and Nordic tribes, it
was a religious duty to preserve racial purity, which implies that the doctrine of the
purity of the blood was handed down to the chosen people (i.e. the Germanic and
26 Nils Hannerz, Den levande Gudens ord (Stockholm: Svea Rike, 1934), p. 3. All the following
quotes from Hannerz are translated from Swedish by the present author.
27 Hannerz, Den levande Gudens ord, p. 31.
Nordic peoples) by God. Thus, racial thought was given strong legitimisation as a
commandment – racial eugenics was a Christian duty. Consequently, Hannerz ar-
gued in favour of freedom of religion and opposed all forms of Christian mission-
ary work, since true salvation was in effect impossible for non-Germanic peoples.
Missionising would thus only introduce non-Germanic peoples to a system of Faith
that was against their own racial nature, preventing them from developing their
own natural potential. All ecumenical strivings were consequently also discarded.
Hannerz did not dwell in any detail on Christian orthodoxy, but was, on the
other hand, very clear on Catholicism. Catholicism was seen as dogmatic and rigid,
as a threat to the evolution of Evangelical Nordic Faith, and as wanting nothing but
to “develop a Jesuit blind obedience under the auspices of humility and a loving
affection for the less fortunate, but serves in reality a greedy hierarchy”.28 Catholi-
cism was also seen as vehicle for “materialist individualism”, which was also seen as
inherently Jewish, and Hannerz thus consequently implies that Catholicism is, in
essence, a Jewish invention.
Worth noting is that the conception of individualism varied depending on con-
text. In the Germanic/Nordic case, individualism was perceived positively since it
enabled the individual to develop his or her full potential. In the context of Cathol-
icism, “Jewish materialism”, liberalism, democracy and modernity, on the other
hand, individualism was perceived negatively as a destructive, egoistic force in soci-
ety. This had to do with the conception of individualism as among Germanic and
Nordic peoples by nature, due to their racial character, being connected to virtues
such as heroism, self-sacrifice and dutifulness, whereas the opposite ultimately rest-
ed on self-interest and greed, resulting in a dichotomy between altruistic and egois-
tic individualism that was motivated racially as well as religiously. Hannerz also ar-
gued that “Germanic” altruistic individualism is firmly rooted in the tradition of
plight ethics, whereas “Jewish” egoistic individualism is rooted in consequence eth-
ics. Thus, plight ethics, with a racial twist, is considered superior to consequence
ethics, and Hannerz also underlined the importance of plight ethics as a corner-
stone of the Evangelical Nordic Faith.29
The Manhem Society and the Jews
From the start, an essential aim of the Manhem Society was to function as a com-
mon ground where relatively open discussions on patriotic and ultra-nationalist is-
sues could be held on a more philosophical and abstract level, regardless of current
politics and party bickering. A further goal was that these discussions should result
in at least partial unification between the different parties, e.g. via joint election
campaigning. These ambitions were not very successful when it came to actual col-
28 Hannerz, Den levande Gudens ord, p. 13.

166 Lena Berggren
laboration on an organisational level. On the more ideological level of debate and

exchange of ideas though, the society’s ambitions were crowned with success.
Although the number of its members most likely never exceeded 400, the soci-
ety became one of the most important forums for ideological debate within the
Swedish ultra-national movement. It can thus be characterised as perhaps the fore-
most platform for intellectual and ideological development and refinement of Swe-
dish fascism and ultra-nationalism during the late 1930s and early 1940s, especially
in the Stockholm area.
This can be illustrated by the fact that throughout the society’s existence, more
traditionalist and völkisch ideas that emphasised the need for an elitist, inner, cultural
revival of the “Nordic spirit” could co-exist with outspoken, politically activist, Na-
zism which emphasised the need for mass support and the revolutionary, often vio-
lent, struggle against political (including racial) enemies of the cause. Interestingly
enough, this principal sub-divide within the society affected the perception of anti-
semitism within the society.
The most salient feature of the debate within the society was the emphasis on
the fundamental importance of race in the formation of a new society, whether
from a more traditional or radical perspective. Race was perceived as the founda-
tion on which national culture, history, religion, ethics and politics rested – or, ra-
ther, on which it should rest according to the society. Increasingly, the issue of race
also became a question of a perceived state of opposition on all levels between the
racially pure, culturally, ethically and religiously advanced Nordic race, and the ego-
istic and destructive Capitalist-materialist culture that ultimately was connected to
the Jews. The neutralisation of Jewish influence on a political, cultural and racial
level thus constituted the essential precondition for the creation of the new society
for the vast majority of the society’s leading figures and lecturers, both outspoken
fascists and others.
The issue of race and the danger posed by the so-called ‘Jewish World Con-
spiracy’ was, curiously enough, barely emphasised in the statutes of the society.
Here, emphasis was rather put on the preservation and glorification of traditional
Swedish national culture and a reactionary longing for a reconstruction of lost val-
ues. It can, however, be noted that there was a considerable discrepancy between
the statutes and what was actually preached from the pulpit in the lecture hall of
the society. The most frequent theme of the lectures from the beginning in 1934 to
1942, when the development of the war came into focus, was the issue of race, with
a dominant element of antisemitism.30
There are, however, two phases discernible in the antisemitic propaganda of
the society’s lectures. During the first two years, 1934–36, there was a clear tenden-
cy towards viewing the Jewish menace primarily as cultural and religious. From
1936 onwards, more emphasis was put on the racial implications of the “Jewish

82 Debora Dusse
Ihr eigen waren” (pp. 370-71, quotation p. 371).28 With this accentuation, Hauer
replicates a Völuspá interpretation he had developed earlier, i.e. he interprets the
Eddic song as a religious-historical proof that “Nordic man” is aware of the end of
his gods, but that this end will be followed by a change into new religious forms.
Therefore, he considers the concept of a creative element as the centre of “Ger-
manic-German” faith:
This freedom, largeness and aplomb in the struggle for the religious thoughtforms
which distinguish Germanic-German view of god so extreme from the oriental has
deep foundation. Their root is the immovable belief in an eternal creating-present god.
This is the meaning of Ragnarök.29
The concept of the world’s fundamental principles as becoming and passing away,
of creation and destruction, which Hauer claimed to recognise in the Old Norse
tradition, are frequently marked by the idea of eternal change in his texts, which
Hauer found in religious Hindu scripts as well. In addition to such combinations or
superpositions with other religious concepts, what is striking in Hauer’s interpreta-
tion of Eddic tradition is that it is influenced by the idea that religious experience is,
above all, dominated by the symbolic character of religious concepts and actions.30
Hauer’s strong interest especially in the Völuspá is, on the one hand, due to the
popularity, the artistic quality, and the special position of the poem in the Eddic
poetry. On the other hand, such an interest is typical for the importance, which was
attached to the concepts of fate in general and a Germanic concept of a faith in
destiny in particular in the first half of the twentieth century. This affected both
scholarship and the broad public. In an aside, Hauer refers to the more general re-
ception in his essay “Der Mensch im Schicksal”, mentioning the “colossal painting”
Schicksal by the völkisch painter Ludwig Fahrenkrog (1867–1952) from 1917.31 It de-
picts human bodies floating in wave formations towered over by a headless horse-
man. It was internationally disseminated as a postcard.
28 “That it will happen to the people like it did to the gods after Ragnarök in Völuspá: There
afterwards will be found in the grass / the wonderful golden chequers, / those which they
possessed in the ancient times.” The translation of Völuspá 61 is taken from The Poetic Edda.
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Carolyne Larrington (Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), p. 12. The term “Rater” refers to Völuspá 6 where the gods were de-
scribed as “regin” (rulers).
29 “Diese Freiheit, Weite und Gelassenheit im Ringen um religiöse Gestaltwerdung, die germa-
nisch-deutsche Gottschau so radikal von morgenländischer unterscheidet, ist tief gegründet.
Ihre Wurzel ist der unerschütterliche Glaube an den ewig schaffend-gegenwärtigen Gott.
Das ist der Sinn von Ragnarök.” Hauer, Deutsche Gottschau, pp. 201–2, quotation p. 202;
translation mine.
30 Cf. also Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, “Der Symbolcharakter der religiösen Erlebnisse und Gestal-
tungen und ihr Verhältnis zu Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit der Religion”, in idem, Verfall oder
Neugeburt der Religion?, p. 188.
31 Hauer, “Der Mensch im Schicksal,” p. 366.
168 Lena Berggren
Carlberg, Carl Ernfrid. “Nordiskt rasskydd. Nagra tankar kring nations livsfraga”.
Gymn 1931, p. 1.
—. Mera ljus! Riktlinjer för Samfundet Manhem. Stockholm: Svea Rike [1934], pp. 3–
4.
Carlsson, Holger. Nazismen i Sverige. Ett varningsord. Stockholm: Trots Allt!, 1942.
Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–
1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
Griffin, Roger. The Nature of Fascism. London: Routledge, 1993.
Hannerz, Nils. Den levande Gudens ord. Stockholm: Svea Rike, 1934.
Manhem. Opolitiskt samfund för svenskhetens bevarande i Sverige. Stiftelseurkund fastställd den
17 sept. 1934. Stockholm: [Svea Rike], [1935].
Nilsson, Karl N A. Svensk överklassnazism 1930–1945. Stockholm: Carlssons, 1996.
Puschner, Uwe, Walter Schmitz et al., eds. Handbuch zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–
1918. Munich: Saur, 1999.
Puschner, Uwe. Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Sprache, Rasse, Reli-
gion. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001.
Thulstrup, Åke. Med lock och pock. Tyska försök att påverka svensk opinion 1933–1945.
Stockholm: Bonnier, 1962.
Nordic Studies in National Socialist Germany:
A Possible Career Path for Swedish Academics
Andreas Åkerlund
The Swedish scholar Åke Ohlmarks was one of the active academics in the for-
mation of the institute for comparative religion at the University of Greifswald in
1944. In an article dealing with the founding of the institute, Fritz Heinrich sug-
gested that Ohlmarks took advantage of the “special opportunities” existing for
Scandinavian scholars in the Third Reich.1 Although not said directly, Heinrich
considered the fact that Ohlmarks was Swedish as well as the fact that his research
was located in the field of Old Norse religion to be helpful for his career. I have, in
a previous article, analysed Ohlmarks’ career and the political and scientific circles
he moved in during the National Socialist dictatorship, and concluded Heinrich was
correct, his Swedishness and his research interests helped him gain the post of di-
rector of the short-lived institute in Greifswald.2
The case of Åke Ohlmarks, however, raises the question of whether his short
career was an exception, or if there were similar examples of Swedish academics
pursuing a career in National Socialist Germany. The answer is yes. In this article I
will compare Åke Ohlmarks with two other Swedish academics: Alexander Mutén
and Stig Wikander. The main similarity between these three is that they all lectured
on the Swedish language at a German university. Unlike other lecturers during the
same time however, they engaged in activities outside the normal academic work
and received positions not held by any other Swedish lecturer in Germany. In this
article two questions are to be answered. First: Which were the factors in National
Socialist Germany giving these three lecturers a career outside the ordinary? Or –
posed in another way: What were the interests in National Socialist Germany pro-
moting these Swedish academics and how are these interests to be explained? The
second question concerns the lecturers themselves: Why were Swedish academics
interested in these careers in the National Socialist dictatorship? In comparing the
three cases and answering these two questions it may be possible to address larger
themes such as the relationship between the German academic study of Scandina-
via and National Socialism and the continuity of the Swedish-German academic
relationships from the Weimar Republic in the National Socialist dictatorship.
1 Fritz Heinrich, “Das religionswissenschaftliche Institut der Ernst Moritz Arndt-Universität

Greifswald 1944–1945”, Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 5 (1997), p. 215.
2 Andreas Åkerlund, “Åke Ohlmarks in the Third Reich. A Scientific Career between Adap-
tation, Cooperation and Ignorance”, in Horst Junginger, ed., The Study of Religion under the Im-
pact of Fascism (Leiden: Brill 2008), pp. 553–74.
170 Andreas Åkerlund
This article is divided into three parts. The first part consists of a short description
of the academic field of Nordic studies in Germany and especially of the develop-
ment of the position as language lecturer. Part two consists of three short descrip-
tions of the careers of Mutén, Wikander and Ohlmarks respectively. The third part
is the actual comparison in which I will analyse the political and scientific context
of the three careers before turning to the question of continuity and change.
The Academic Context – Nordic Studies and the Position of a

Lecturer
The academic study of the Scandinavian countries as well as a general interest in

the North has a long tradition in Germany. Old Norse Studies (Altnordistik) goes
back to the early nineteenth century and the beginnings of the German national
project, when intellectuals such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Jacob Grimm
treated Scandinavian material, such as the Icelandic Eddas, as sources for the histo-
ry of German culture.3 Old Norse Studies therefore became as part of German
prehistory (Germanische Altertumskunde) and Scandinavian languages a part of the
study of the German language. During the nineteenth century Old Norse Studies
were detached from German philology and institutionalised at German universities,
starting with the university in Kiel 1864. At the beginning of the twentieth century
the subject was taught at four universities: Kiel, Berlin, Leipzig and Heidelberg.4
The Old Norse culture was also present in the cultural sphere through the efforts
of people such as the editor Eugen Diederichs in Jena, who published popular
translations of the Eddas and other Old Norse material in his series Sammlung Thule5,
3 See Hermann Engster, Germanisten und Germanen. Germanenideologie und Theoriebildung in der
deutschen Germanistik und Nordistik von den Anfängen bis 1945 in exemplarischer Darstellung (Frank-
furt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986), p. 12, Klaus von See, Barbar, Germane, Arier. Die Suche nach
der Identität der Deutschen (Heidelberg: Winter, 1994), p. 77, Julia Zernack, “Germanische Al-
tertumskunde, Skandinavistik und völkische Religiosität”, in Stefanie von Schnurbein and
Justus H. Ulbricht, eds., Völkische Religion und Krisen der Moderne (München: Königshausen &
Neumann, 2001), pp. 228–29.
4 Hans-Jürgen Hube, “Die Nordistik und das Berliner Germanische Seminar”, Wissenschaftliche
Zeitschrift der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Gesellschaftswissenschaftliche Reihe 36-9 (1987), pp.
794–800. See also Rainer Kößling, “Anfänge der Nordistik an der Universität Leipzig”, in
Wilhelm Heizmann and Astrid van Nahl, eds., Runica – Germanica – Mediaevalia (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 2003), pp. 356–74 and Walther Heinrich Vogt, “Die Gründung der Deutschen und
Nordischen Philologie an der Universität Kiel”, in Paul Ritterbusch et al., eds., Festschrift zum
275jähringen Bestehen der Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1940), pp. 295–308.
5 For Diederichs, see Julia Zernack, “Der ‘Mythos vom Norden’ und die Krise der Moderne.
Skandinavische Literatur im Programm des Eugen Diederichs Verlages”, in Meike G. Wer-
ner and Justus H. Ulbricht, eds., Romantik, Revolution und Reform. Der Eugen Diederichs Verlag im
Epochenkontext 1900 bis 1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999), pp. 208–23.
Nordic Studies in National Socialist Germany 171
as well as in an extreme form in the völkisch movement. Interest in modern Scandi-

navia increased in Germany around the turn of the nineteenth century. The em-
peror Wilhelm II travelled annually to Norway by boat, the number of German
tourists to Scandinavia increased and Scandinavian authors such as Ibsen and
Strindberg enjoyed a boom in popularity.6
After World War I, the institutionalisation of Scandinavian studies, now mainly
oriented towards contemporary literature and society, accelerated in Germany. In
1917, the Nordic Institute in Greifswald was founded as a part of the German gov-
ernments’ new interest in cultural foreign policy (auswärtige Kulturpolitik) and studies
of foreign countries (Auslandswissenschaften).7 The Prussian minister Carl Heinrich
Becker especially promoted the study of other countries as well as academic ex-
change as a way for Germany to break the international isolation the country was
experiencing as a result of the World War.8 Also notable are the founding of organ-
isations for international academic exchange such as the Alexander von Humboldt-
Stiftung and the DAAD.9 During the Weimar Republic (1918–33) the universities
in Greifswald, Kiel and Berlin developed into centres for the study of Scandinavia.
Part of the increased German interest in foreign countries and the establish-
ment of centres for Scandinavian studies was the employment of lecturers for
Scandinavian languages at German universities. 10 The first known lecturer for
Scandinavian languages position was established at the University of Berlin as early
as 1906 and was held by the Dane Johannes Neuhaus.11 In the Weimar Republic,
university professors argued that the position as lecturer was ideal for the study of
foreign countries, as he or she could give language courses as well as lectures on
foreign literature, history or politics. Similar arguments came for the German union
of university lecturers, for whom emphasising that the lecturer was a practical
6 Daniela Büchten, “Opp mot Nord! Tyske turister i Skandinavia”, in Bernd Henningsen et al.,
eds., Skandinavien och Tyskland 1800–1914. Möten och vänskapsband (Stockholm: National-
museum, 1997), pp. 113–14 and Zernack “Germanische Altertumskunde”, p. 236.
7 Rainer Höll, Die Nordeuropa-Institute der Universität Greifswald von 1918 bis 1945 (Greifswald:
Eigenverlag, 1997), p. 4.
8 For German cultural diplomacy, see Kurt Düwell, “Staat und Wissenschaft in der Weimarer
Epoche. Zur Kulturpolitik des Ministers C. H. Becker”, Historische Zeitschrift, supplement 1
(1971), pp. 31–74 and Guido Müller, Weltpolitische Bildung und akademische Reform. C. H. Beckers
Wissenschafts- und Hochschulpolitik 1908–1930 (Köln: Böhlau, 1991).
9 Volkhard Laitenberger, Akademischer Austausch und auswärtige Kulturpolitik. Der Deutsche Akad-
emische Austauschdienst (DAAD) 1923–1945 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1976).
10 For a detailed description of the relationship between lectureships and German cultural di-
plomacy, see Andreas Åkerlund, “Die Lektorate für schwedische Sprache in Deutschland im
Kontext der auswärtigen Kulturpolitik 1917–1930”, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 35-1,
(2012), pp. 25–41.
11 See Jutta Hoffmann, Nordische Philologie an der Berliner Universität zwischen 1810 und 1945. Wis-
senschaft – Disziplin – Fach (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 232–39.
teacher, in contrast to the more theoretical professors, was a part of the profession-
alisation of the lecturer corps.12
During the Weimar Republic, the Swedish lecturer position developed into a
form of organised exchange between Sweden and Germany. In this period, a Swe-
dish association called “The national Society for the Preservation of Swedishness
abroad” (Riksföreningen för svenskhetens bevarande i utlandet) started to support the lec-
tureships financially, a support well received in Germany due to the economic crisis
which tormented the republic in the 1920s. Vilhelm Lundström, professor of clas-
sical languages in Gothenburg and one of the leading figures in the society, helped
German universities searching for young Swedish academics to fill vacant lecture-
ships. Lundström had a broad network of contacts and was always able to find
candidates.13 For young Swedish academics, the lectureships at foreign universities
developed into a desirable position from which they could continue their academic
careers. It is possible, although it has yet to be investigated, that lectureships in the
other Scandinavian languages had the same function for young academics in Nor-
way, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.
When the National Socialists took power in 1933, Scandinavian studies were al-
ready established within the German scientific world. The definition of this area of
teaching and research was, however, broad enough to include anything from Old
Norse culture to Scandinavian literature, history, law and geography. This open def-
inition was closely connected to the idea of Auslandswissenschaften. A system for rec-
ommendation of lecturers through the Society for the preservation of Swedishness
abroad existed, enabling Swedish academics to travel to Germany as a first step of
their academic careers. By January 1933, nine German universities had employed
lecturers from Sweden.
The German Academia and National Socialism
The National Socialist seizure of power in January 1933 was the start of a number
of changes for the German scientific community. On 7 April 1933, the Law for the
Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (“Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des
Berufsbeamtentums”, short: BBG), was passed. This law forbade civil servants of
12 Andreas Åkerlund, Mellan akademi och kulturpolitik. Lektorat i svenska språket vid tyska universitet
1906–1945 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensia, 2010), pp. 69–74.
13 See Lennart Limberg, “Svenska lektoraten, åren 1913 till 1945”, in Lennart Limberg, ed.,
Internationell nationalism. Riksföreningen 100 år (Göteborg: Riksföreningen Sverigekontakt, 2008),
pp. 87–139, Karl Ahnlund and Andreas Åkerlund, “Svenskhetens bevarande som bildning-
sprojekt. Storsvenskheten, det svenska språket och nationell integration i utlandet under
första halvan av 1900-talet”, in Anne Berg and Hanna Enefalk, eds., Det mångsidiga verktyget.
Elva utbildningshistoriska uppsatser (Uppsala: Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 2009), pp. 137–53
and Åkerlund, Mellan akademi och kulturpolitik, pp. 79–108.
“non-Aryan” descent or who could be suspected of not supporting the state due to
earlier political activities. Around fifteen per cent of German university professors
were forced to retire from their chairs as a direct result.14 They were, in turn, re-
placed by people supporting or at least not opposing the regime. There is at least
one example of a Swedish lecturer being suspended to give place to a Swedish Na-
tional Socialist. The attempt to replace the Berlin lecturer Vilhelm Sharp with the
National Socialist Malte Welin in 1934 did however fail due to protests from Swe-
dish newspapers as well as German representatives in Sweden.15
Further reforms included the dissolution of the elected university senates. In-
stead, the universities were headed by the chancellor alone, responsible only to the
local authorities. Just like Germany as a whole, the universities were to each have a
Führer.16 At the same time, National Socialist party members were given high posi-
tions within the big organisations controlling research funds, such as the Kaiser
Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG) or the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). In
short: The scientific world in National Socialist Germany was reorganised to sup-
port the new state. In a speech to professors in Munich ,the Bavarian minister
Hans Schemm expressed this in the following way: “From now on your task will
not be to decide whether anything is true, but if it is in accord with the National
Socialist revolution.”17
This was, however, easier said than done. The National Socialist state had no
clear scientific program as different groups within the party and the state admin-
istration had different images of the new state about to be built. These groups were
in a constant conflict with each other. The internal power struggles within the Na-
tional Socialist movement affected the academics. Different groups supported dif-
ferent scientific areas important for their ideological position. The changing politi-
cal fortunes forced academics within the humanities, especially, to position them-
selves and, in many cases, to show a potential protector that their research was rel-
evant to the ideological battles.18 Hence, even researchers trying to stay out of the
14 Peter Lundgreen, “Hochschulpolitik und Wissenschaft im Dritten Reich”, in Peter

Lundgreen, ed., Wissenschaft im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), p. 12.
15 See Andreas Åkerlund, “Das Berliner Schwedischlektorat. Personalpolitik und Ideologie im
frühen ‘Dritten Reich’”, Nordeuropaforum. Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur 21-2 (2011),
pp. 23–38.
16 This model was also called the “Führer” principle, see Horst Möller, “Nationalsozialistische
Wissenschaftsideologie”, in Jörg Tröger, ed., Hochschule und Wissenschaft im Dritten Reich
(Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1984), p. 73.
17 “Von jetzt ab kommt es für Sie nicht darauf an, festzustellen, ob etwas wahr ist, sondern ob
es im Sinne der nationalsozialistischen Revolution ist.” Quoted in Möller “Nationalsozialis-
tische Wissenschaftsideologie”, p. 65. Translation mine.
18 Georg Bollenbeck, “Das neue Interesse and der Wissenschaftshistoriographie und das For-
schungsprojekt ‘semantischer Umbau der Geisteswissenschaften’”, in Georg Bollenbeck and
Clemens Knobloch, eds., Semantischer Umbau der Geisteswissenschaften nach 1933 und 1945 (Hei-
delberg: Winter, 2001), p. 15.
political field sought alliances with representatives for different National Socialist
factions.19
It would be easy to see the National Socialist university politics – cleansing the
university of certain types of personnel, establishing firmer state control over the
universities and the research sector and a stronger ideologisation of scientific re-
search – as an attack on academics as such. There were, however, large fields of
study which grew remarkably during the National Socialist dictatorship. Within the
humanities, one can point to the school of Volksgeschichte within the historical disci-
pline.20 Some smaller disciplines such as ethnology and history of religions also
noted a strong growth of professorships and other personnel within the universi-
ties.21
Alexander Mutén and the Nordic Studies in Rostock
In Autumn 1932, only a few months before NSDAP came to power in Germany,
Alexander Mutén (1903–84) was appointed lecturer of Swedish at the small univer-
sity of Rostock. Muténs background was typical for a language lecturer. He was
born in 1903 and held a degree in Nordic languages, German and pedagogy from
the college in Gothenburg.22 His employer, the University of Rostock, had tradi-
tionally good contacts with the Scandinavian countries, due to its position at the
Baltic coast. During the Weimar Republic the university had not, however, been
able to profit from the expansion of Nordic studies in Germany. The Nordic insti-
tute initiated by the Prussian state in 1917 had been placed at the neighbouring uni-
versity of Greifswald and a smaller Nordic Department had been founded within
the German philology department at the neighbouring university of Kiel in 1922.
The old lecturer, professor Viktor Björkman, had presented a plan in 1919 to estab-
lish a “Baltic Sea-Institute” (Ostsee-Institut) at the university. This idea was never rea-
lised, though.23
At the University of Rostock, the National Socialist takeover was seen as a new
opportunity to take up the old plans and to establish the university as a university
19 For different forms of collaboration, see Dieter Langewiesche, “Die Universität Tübingen in
der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Formen der Selbstgleichschaltung und Selbstbehauptung”,
Geschichte und Gesellschaft 23 (1997), pp. 618–46.
20 For Volksgeschichte, see Ingo Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus. Deutsche Geschichtswissen-
schaft und der ‘Volkstumskampf’ im Osten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002).
21 Horst Junginger, “Ethnologie und Religionswissenschaft, zwei nationalsozialistische Geistes-
wissenschaften?”, in: Bernhard Streck, ed., Ethnologie und Nationalsozialismus (Gehren: Escher,
2000), p. 56.
22 Michael Buddrus and Sigrid Fritzlar, Die Professoren der Universität Rostock im Dritten Reich. Ein
biographisches Lexikon (München: Saur, 2007), pp. 290–91
23 Letter from prof. Björkman to prof. Herbig on 19 February 1919, University Archive Ros-
tock, Phil. Fak., 190.
specialising in Scandinavia. In order to do this, the university sided with the “Nor-
dic Society” (Nordische Gesellschaft, short: NG). Founded in 1921, this organisation
had been working for German-Scandinavian cooperation from a völkish-racist ideo-
logical standpoint, declaring the superiority of the Nordic race.24 After 1933, the
organisation was closely tied to the National Socialist party as it was made part of
the NSDAP organisation for foreign policies (Außenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP),
controlled by Alfred Rosenberg.25 When, in spring 1934, the philosophical faculty
of the University of Rostock presented a programme for the funding of an Institute
for Nordic Culture (Institut für nordische Kultur) to the local government of Mecklen-
burg, the Nordic Society was functioning as patron and protector of the institute.26
The Institute for Nordic Culture was to consist of seven departments. One de-
partment was to focus on law in the Nordic countries within the “total context of
Germanic culture”. One department, named “Nordic thought within the German
philology”, was to focus on the Old Norse language and research on German and
Scandinavian dialects. Other departments were the departments of Nordic music,
Nordic art and history of religions, which were to deal especially with the Christian-
isation of the German tribes. Departments of Nordic history and the “Nordic race”
completed the proposed institute.27 This attempt to establish a Nordic studies insti-
tute is interesting as it shows how the academic and ideological contexts fit togeth-
er. In the plans for the institute, the university professors frequently referred to the
political situation, and stated that it was their duty to establish contact with Scandi-
navia. According the plans for the institute of music history, for instance, a more
intense exchange of music was one way to propagate the “Nordic thought”.28
On the political level, the Nordic Society prepared the ground for the institute.
In April 1934, the society presented a plan for the reorganisation of Nordic studies
in Germany. According to this plan, the academic study of Scandinavia in Germany
lacked focus as they were scattered over the land and had been so for far too long.
The society, therefore, suggested that the study of the North be concentrated at the
three North German universities of Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock, due to the geo-
graphic closeness of these universities to the Scandinavian countries. According to
this proposal, Rostock, being the only university without a Nordic institute, was to
receive extra funds. This idea received support from high-ranking officials in the
24 For the Nordic Society, see Hans-Jürgen Lutzhöft, Der nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920–
1940 (Stuttgart: Klett, 1972).
25 Ernst Piper, Alfred Rosenberg. Hitlers Chefideologe (München: Pantheon, 2007), pp. 275–85, Bir-
gitta Almgren et al., “Alfred Rosenberg und die Nordische Gesellschaft. Der ‘nordische Ge-
danke’ in Theorie und Praxis”, Nordeuropaforum 2 (2008), pp. 7–51.
26 Undated plan for the organisation of the institute, Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, 5.12-7/1
Mecklenburg-Schwerinsches Ministerium für Unterricht, Kunst, geistliche und Medizinalan-
gelegenheiten, 1620.
27 The detailed plans regarding the working area for every institute was handed in to the minis-
try and later merged into a memo. See ibidem.
28 Plan from 4 February 1934, ibid.
The concept of the fateful determination of human life, a tragedy of life and the
possibilities man has for dealing with it first came into the focus of the “Ger-
manenkunde” in the context of thinking about the losses of World War I. It be-
came a central object of Germanic religious research in the 1930s and 1940s, in ad-
dition to the subject of the Christianisation.32 Finally it served as a concept after
1945 to link the horrors of National Socialism and World War II to a transcenden-
tal concept, thus releasing it from the course of history and the issue of individual
human guilt. Thus, it turned into an integral metaphor for coping, repression, and
justification. The widespread occupation with the Völuspá should be seen in this
far-reaching context. With its eschatological subject, this text could obviously con-
tribute to a perspectivation of experiences of German and European history in the
first half of the twentieth century. Additionally, however, it also provided links for
hopes for the future with a vision of a new earth emerging after the Ragnarök, the
apocalypse, and the demise of the gods.
So it is no coincidence that Hauer dealt extensively with the Völuspá in his later
years, just like Bernhard Kummer, and prepared a publication which provided a
commentary and an interpretation of the text in addition to the translations by
Genzmer and Kummer.33 Another example of Hauer’s preoccupation with the
texts of the Eddic songs in his later life is the publication Der deutsche Born.34 It is an
anthology, similar to Wilhelm Schwaner’s Germanen-Bibel after the turn of the centu-
ry, which was intended as a “Hausbuch für Besinnung und Feier”.35 The volume, which
is organised by subject, includes excerpts from many songs of gods and heroes of
the Edda and from other Old Norse texts in various sections which are dedicated
to the topic of fate. Examples include, in addition to the Völuspá, the Hávamál, Hel-
gakviða Hundingsbana I and Hamðismál.
Hauer’s lifelong fascination with the Edda is clearly marked by private, philo-
sophical and spiritual interests. Even more than Bernhard Kummer, who, despite
all ideological implications, normally spoke from the position of the expert scholar
in his dealing with the Old Norse tradition, the religious search is more evident in
Hauer, shining through his interpretations of the Edda as a witness to a Nordic or
Germanic faith and whose alleged symbolic assets renders it effective for the crea-
tion of a German faith.
32 Cf. for the importance of the topic of fate, Debora Dusse, “Grundzüge der Erforschung
germanischer Religion in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus”, in Uwe Puschner and Clemens
Vollnhals, eds., Die völkisch-religiöse Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Beziehungs- und Konflikt-
geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), pp. 417–35.
33 Hauer had published a preliminary study in 1944 under the title “Der Glaube der Völuspá”:
Deutscher Glaube 7–9 (1944), pp. 88–99.
34 Jakob Wilhelm and Annie Hauer, Der deutsche Born, vol. 5: Die ewigen Fragen (München: Tür-
mer Verlag, 1953).
35 Ibid., p. 5.
Mutén’s political preferences. It is however clear that foreign-language lecturers

who openly criticised National Socialism were treated much like their German
counterparts and banned from the country.34
University and provincial government approved of the initiative. During the
following years, Mutén’s lectureship was given more resources. For example, a
foundation donated by Swedish interests in 1919 for a professorship in Swedish
literature was put to his disposition in 1937. In 1938, Mutén presented a plan for
the expansion of his lectureship, where he proposed that the university, instead of
trying to establish a Nordic institute, should focus only on Sweden, the Swedish
language and German-Swedish exchange. This way there would be less resistance
from the already existing institutes in Kiel and Greifswald. In order to achieve this,
Mutén wanted to detach Swedish from German philology, making it an indepen-
dent subject within the faculty. Changing the status within the university was not
enough, however; the provincial government would also have to act. In order to
encourage popular interest in Sweden as well, Mutén proposed the establishment of
Swedish as foreign language in the provincial schools and the exchange of school-
children, students and teachers between Mecklenburg and Sweden, all to be fi-
nanced by the province. To this came state support for public lecturers and Swe-
dish national celebrations, such as the midsummer celebration.35 Mutén himself had
at this point already started to offer courses in Swedish to members of the National
Socialist recreation organisation, “Kraft durch Freude” as a way for them to pre-
pare their holidays in Sweden.36 In February 1939, the philosophical faculty applied
for a teaching assignment (“Lehrauftrag”) in Swedish literature for Mutén, in addi-
tion to his lecturing.37 This was a step up, as it meant that he went from being
merely a language teacher to be more integrated in the faculty. Until this point the
plans of the University of Rostock to position itself as a university specialised in
Scandinavia had benefited Alexander Mutén and this had met no opposition from
either state or party organisations.
This situation was to change. In January 1942, the university asked the ministry
of education in Berlin to give the title of professor to Alexander Mutén. The philo-
sophical faculty pointed to Muténs important contacts with Sweden as well as his
long-time service within the German university system. At this time, he had been at
the university for ten years, far longer than any other Swedish lecturer in Germany.
34 This was the case with Stellan Arvidson, lecturer of Swedish at the University of Greifswald,
who was forced out of the lectureship in 1933 after criticising National Socialism in a Swe-
dish Socialist magazine. See Åkerlund, Mellan akademi och kulturpolitik, pp. 113–16.
35 “Vorschlag zur Erweiterung des schwedischen Lektorats an der Universität Rostock”, Uni-
versity Archive Rostock, Phil. Fak., 190.
36 Letter from Mutén to K.A. Damgren (Swedish Embassy Berlin) on 17 January 1938, Na-
tional Archive Stockholm, Upplysningsnämnden, vol. 17.
37 Letter from Dean Maybaum to Meckl. Staatsministerium, Abteilung Unterricht, 18 February
1939, Federal Archives Berlin (former Berlin Document Center), Alexander Mutén, DS
A0047.
In short: In the application, Mutén was described as a key person for the planned
academic focus on Scandinavia and the plans on a Nordic Institute.38 Although nei-
ther the NSDAP nor the Gestapo had anything against Muténs promotion and alt-
hough he was backed up by the university as well as by the local NSDAP student
organisation,39 the application was rejected. Heinrich Harmjanz at the ministry of
education in Berlin motivated the rejection as due to Mutén’s long employment
time, which exceeded the normal employment of four to five years for a language
lecturer. He also had politically motivated doubts about making Mutén a civil serv-
ant as he did not think that a Swedish citizen could represent the German political
interests in Scandinavian matters.40 Exactly the same arguments the university had
used to promote Mutén were now turned against him.
The discussions between the ministries in Rostock and Berlin continued in the
following years. In the end, a compromise was made. On 30 August 1944, Mutén
was appointed honorary professor at the University of Rostock.41 This way he was
awarded the title professor, but without becoming a civil servant. Mutén’s time as a
professor at the University of Rostock was to be short, though. At the end of 1944,
as the Soviet army drew closer to the German borders, Mutén left the university
and Germany and returned to Sweden.
Stig Wikander and the Lectureship in Munich
In Autumn 1938, the Swedish iranologist Stig Wikander (1908–83) came to Munich,
invited by the newly appointed professor of German studies, Otto Höfler.
Wikander was born in 1908 and had just received his doctorate from the University
of Uppsala. This was also where he and Höfler got to know each other, as the latter
had been lecturer in German in Uppsala, before receiving a professorship in Kiel.
They both also worked on similar topics. In 1934 Höfler published Kultische Geheim-
bünde der Germanen, a book dealing with secret male societies among the pre-Chris-
tian Germanic peoples. According to the historian of religion Stefan Arvidsson,
Wikander’s dissertation on secret male societies in old Iran, Der arische Männerbund,
was an attempt to prove that the theories presented by Höfler were valid not only
for the Germans, but for all Aryans, hence for old Iran as well.42 They also had sim-
38 Letter from the dean to Staatsministerium, Abteilung Unterricht on 19 January 1942, Meck-
lenburgisches Kultusministeium (cf. footnote 24), 2548.
39 Concerning Mutén’s promotion, see the two letters of the dean from 19 January and 18 Feb-
ruary 1942, Federal Archives Berlin, Alexander Mutén, DS A0047 and Mecklenburgisches
Kulltusministerium, 2548 (cf. footnote 35 and 36).
40 Memo from Harmjanz from 12 June 1942, Federal Archives Berlin, Alexander Mutén, DS
A0047 (cf. footnote 35).
41 “Urkunde” from 30 August 1944, ibidem.
42 Stefan Arvidsson, Ariska Idoler. Den indoeuropeiska mytologin som vetenskap och ideologi (Stockholm:
Brutus Östling, 2000), p. 230; see also “Stig Wikander och forskningen om ariska mannaför-
ilar political views. Wikander had been a member of various fascist organisations,
among them the Swedish-German Society (Riksföreningen Sverige-Tyskland), whose
outspoken aim was to bring about understanding for the “New Germany” in Swe-
den.43 Höfler was Austrian and had been active in right-wing organisations during
his studies at the University of Vienna in the 1920s. After receiving a professorship
in Kiel in 1935, he joined the NSDAP and worked as an advisor of the SS Ahne-
nerbe, the scientific organisation of the SS.44 It was Höfler’s contacts with the Ah-
nenerbe that led him to Munich.
The dean of the philosophical faculty at the University of Munich after 1935
was Walther Wüst. Wüst held a professorship in Aryan culture and philology/lin-
guistics (Arische Kultur- und Sprachwissenschaft) and he was one of the leading people
within the Ahnenerbe, whose leader he became in 1937.45 When Wüst was appoint-
ed dean in 1935, his main project became to reform the philosophical faculty,
adapting it to National Socialism.46 One part of this project was to strengthen the
focus on German prehistory and folklore. In a letter to the Bavarian ministry of
education written in December 1937 Wüst explained that modern German philolo-
gy was too concerned with language theory and too little with mythology and his-
torical folklore. This was a contrast to the growing interest for pre-Christian Ger-
man and Nordic history among the general public. The research within this area
was, according to Wüst, carried out by dilettantes, which threatened to damage the
reputation of German science abroad. Research on the old German culture was al-
so crucial knowledge for the new state.47 This plan was made reality as Wüst trans-
bund”, Chaos. Dansk-norsk tidsskrift for religionshistoriske studier 38 (2002), pp. 58–59, Bruce Lin-
coln, Theorizing Myth. Narrative, Ideology and Scholarship (Chicago; University of Chicago Press,
1999), p. 126 and Mihaela Timuş, “‘Quand l’Allemagne était leur Mecque…’ La science des
religions chez Stig Wikander (1935–1941)”, in Junginger, ed., The Study of Religion under the
43 See Arvidsson, Ariska Idoler, p. 58 and pp. 61–63 and Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, p. 126.
44 For Höfler, see Harm-Peer Zimmermann, “Vom Schlaf der Vernunft. Deutsche Volkskunde
an der Kieler Universität 1933 bis 1945”, in Hans-Werner Prahl, ed., Uni-Formierung des
Geistes. Universität Kiel im Nationalsozialismus, vol. 1 (Kiel: Malik, 1995), pp. 171–224 and Es-
ther Gajek, “Germanenkunde und Nationalsozialismus. Zur Verflechtung von Wissenschaft
und Politik am Beispiel Otto Höflers”, in Richard Faber, ed., Politische Religion – Religiöse Poli-
tik (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1997), pp. 173–204.
45 For Wüst, see Horst Junginger, “From Buddha to Adolf Hitler. Walther Wüst and the Aryan
Tradition”, in idem, ed., The Study of Religion under the Impact of Fascism, pp. 107–77 and Maxi-
milian Schreiber, Walther Wüst. Dekan und Rektor der Universität München 1935–1945 (München:
Utz, 2008). For the general background, see Michael H. Kater, Das ‘Ahnenerbe’ der SS 1935–
1945. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches (München: Oldenbourg, 2006 [first ed.
1974]).
46 Schreiber, Walther Wüst, pp. 73–8.
47 Letter from Wüst to Bayer. Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus on 28 December
1937, Bavarian State Archives München, MK 69694.
formed a vacant chair in philosophy to German philology and recommended his

fellow Ahnenerbe-colleague Otto Höfler to fill it.48
The SS and the Ahnenerbe were also active in the appointment of Höfler.
Heinrich Himmler himself contacted the minister of education Bernhard Rust and
supported his application, claiming that Höfler was needed in Munich for the “ex-
ploration of the Germanic heritage”.49 True to the Nordic idea, Scandinavia was
included in the “Germanic heritage by Wüst and Höfler. The university, however,
lacked a lecturer in Swedish as the former lecturer, Herman Hansson, had ended
his job in 1937 and the ministry of education in Berlin refused to appoint a new
lecturer. The reason for this was diplomacy. During the years 1937 and 1938, the
Swedish and German governments were negotiating for a treaty on the appoint-
ment of language lecturers. The National Socialist state, in particular, wanted more
influence over the appointment of lecturers in Sweden and therefore refused to ap-
point more lecturers at the German universities until an argreement had been
reached. This, however, caused a problem for Wüst and Höfler, as it prevented
them from continuing the project of adapting the faculty to National Socialism.
The solution to this problem was Stig Wikander.
In October 1938, Wikander came to Munich to see Höfler and Wüst. Primarily,
he came because Höfler had told him there was a possibility of publishing his book,
Der arische Männerbund, through the SS-Ahnenerbe publishing house.50 He was also
promised use of Wüst’s collections for this new, revised version.51 Wikander’s pres-
ence in Munich was convenient for Höfler and Wüst. He was a young Swedish
scholar who shared their political views as well as their scientific interests and fit
well with their plans to establish studies of the Germanic heritage in Munich.
Wikanders visit turned into employment as Wüst applied for a “Lehrauftrag”
(teaching assignment) in Swedish for Wikander in December 1938.52 The applica-
tion was followed by a letter from Höfler stating that courses in Swedish were cru-
cial for his own teaching. He also pointed out Wikander’s nationalism and his sym-
pathy for the National Socialist state.53 Wikander himself was very optimistic about
the collaboration with Wüst and Höfler, as can be seen in his letter to his parents.54
Wikander’s optimism was not only related to his work in Munich, however. His
48 Schreiber, Walther Wüst, pp. 121–22.

49 Ibidem, p. 123.
50 Letter from Höfler to Wikander on 20 June 1938, Uppsala University Library, Stig Wikan-
ders collection, letters H-K. Otto Höfler.
51 Letter from Wikander to his father on 14 October 1938, ibidem, NC: 1468, letters to the
parents 1938 MT 6.
52 Letter from Wüst to Bayer. Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus on 2 December
1938, University Archive München, Y-XVII-45 vol. 2.
53 Letter of recommendation from Otto Höfler on 19 November 1938, ibidem.
54 See, for instance, a letter to his father on 7 December 1938, in which Wikander states that he
would stay in Germany if his position should become permanent, Uppsala University Li-
brary, Stig Wikanders collection, NC: 1468, letters to the parents 1938, MT 6.
letters to his father, written in 1939, show he did not see a future in the Swedish
academia.55 In Munich, on the other hand, Wüst and Höfler continued to help his
scientific career. Wüst offered to publish his work in the journals controlled by the
Ahnenerbe and the opportunity to write articles on Iran in a planned encyclopaedia
called Reallexikon der Indogermanischen Mythologie.56 They also supported Wikander in
his attempts to get a permanent lectureship. as did the Munich branch of the Nor-
dic Society, describing Wikander as the “Führer” of the nationalistic Swedish
youth.57
Wikanders short career in Munich came to an end in September 1939. The rea-
son for this was money. In 1939, the Bavarian ministry of education decided to
withdraw all funds from the Swedish lectureship, much against the wishes of Wüst
and Höfler. Facing the alternative of continuing his work in Munich on a badly
paid teaching assignment or returning to Sweden, Wikander choose the latter.
Åke Ohlmarks and the Institute for Comparative Religion in

Greifswald
In 1941, Åke Ohlmarks (1911-84) was employed as a lecturer in Swedish at the

University of Greifswald. Ohlmarks had received his doctorate from the University
of Lund in 1937, being the youngest doctor of philosophy in Sweden at the time.
He was a scholar of Nordic philology, specialising in Old Norse religion, but failed
to start an academic career in Sweden after receiving the doctorate. The main rea-
sons for this failure were personal conflicts with other scholars at Lund, conflicts
which ran so deep that one of the leading Swedish historians at the time, Lauritz
Weibull, argued for the disallowance of Ohlmarks’ thesis. Additionally, his scientific
work was not well received within the Swedish scientific community at the time,
and Ohlmarks’ theories on the origins of the Old Norse religion were regarded as
far-fetched and full of fantasies.58 All this together made it hard for him to continue
working within Swedish academia.
Ohlmarks’ political views were conservative, with a notable anti-Communist
and anti-Russian edge. He was, however, never politically active and not a member
of any political organisation or party. There are no signs of him being an anti-
55 Letter to his father on 20 February 1939 and 24 March 1939, ibidem, letters to the parents
1939 MT 7.
56 Letter from Wikander to his father on 8 June 1939, ibidem.
57 Letter from NG München to Bayer. Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus on 21 Au-
gust 1939, University Archive , Y-XVII-45 vol. 2.
58 For Ohlmarks, the failed defence of his thesis and the conflicts about his work, see Andreas
Åkerlund, “Åke Ohlmarks and the ‘Problem’ of Shamanism”, Archaeus. Études d’Histoire des
Religions/Studies in the History of Religions 10/1–2 (2006), 201–20 and idem, “Ohlmarks in the
Third Reich”.
Semite, which did not stop him from siding with the antisemitic Swedish theologian
Hugo Odeberg in 1939. Through him, Ohlmarks established academic contacts
with the German Christian movement. This branch within the German Protestant
church stated Jesus had been an Aryan, and that early Christianity had been per-
verted through contact with Jewish culture. The German Christians had a research
institute in Eisenach, seeking, for example, to purify Christianity by removing all
the Jewish contaminations.59 As the position of a lecturer in the Swedish language
at the University of Greifswald became vacant in 1941, Ohlmarks’ application was
supported by German Christian theologians Gerhard Kittel and Wolf Meyer-Erlach.
In his letter of recommendation, Meyer-Erlach certified that Ohlmarks was a part
of the National Front in Sweden and “actively worked for the cooperation between
the two Germanic nations as a member of the ‘Swedish-German Society’”.60 This
was an exaggeration, as Ohlmarks was neither an active Christian nor does his aca-
demic writing show any traces of antisemitism. Instead, it seems that Ohlmarks sid-
ed with Odeberg and the German Christians only because they could help him to
get an academic position. The German Christians, for their part, had ideological
reasons for supporting Ohlmarks. One must bear in mind that this was an organi-
sation trying to bring about an “Aryan” or “Nordic” Christianity. What was lacking,
for them, was knowledge on Old Norse culture, which Ohlmarks could provide.
This is supported by the fact that Ohlmarks belonged to a research group on Old
Norse religion named “Odal”, which was founded by Odeberg.
In Germany, Ohlmarks continued collaborating with the German Christians,
participating in their academic meetings and giving lectures. According to the work
report recorded for 1941–42, he gave a lecture on the Icelandic sagas eighteen
times and a lecture on the Old Norse God Ullr and on the origin of the sacral
kingdom of the Germanic peoples no less than 36 times.61 For Ohlmarks, however,
it seems to have been more important to establish himself at the University of
Greifswald. He managed to do this and, in 1944, an Institute for Comparative Reli-
gion, headed by Ohlmarks, was opened at the university. As Fritz Heinrich has
shown, this institute was made possible by the church politics of the Third Reich.
59 This institute was called “Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses
auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben” (Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influ-
ence on German Church Life). See Susannah Heschel, “Deutsche Theologen für Hitler”, in
Peter von der Osten-Sacken, ed., Das mißbrauchte Evangelium. Studien zur Theologie und Praxis der
Thüringer Deutschen Christen (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 2002), pp. 70–90. For the
contacts between Swedish theology and the institute, see Anders Gerdmar, “Ein germani-
scher Jesus auf schwedischem Boden. Schwedisch-deutsche Forschungszusammenarbeit mit
rassistischen Vorzeichen 1941–1945”, in Roland Deines et al., eds., Walter Grundmann. Ein
Neutestamentler in Dritten Reich (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2007), pp. 319–48.
60 The letters of recommendation from Kittel and Meyer-Erlach are to be found in UAG, PA
2695. See also: Anders Marell, “Åke Ohlmarks – schwedischer Lektor, Nazimitläufer und/
oder Geheimagent?”, Germanisten. Zeitschrift schwedischer Germanisten 3/1–3 (1998), p. 96.
61 Landeskirchenarchiv Eisenach, A 921, fol. 70.
In order to weaken the faculties of theology, Martin Bormann suggested moving

Greifwald’s theological faculty to Kiel.62 The systematic theologian Wilhelm Koepp
tried to avoid this by widening the theological program to include comparative reli-
gion. Koepp was also a member of the German Christians and he and Ohlmarks
obviously saw mutual benefits in broadening the work of the theological faculty.
For Ohlmarks, it was a possibility to get established within the scientific world,
whereas, for Koepp, the inclusion of Ohlmarks, being a non-theologian and cover-
ing the ideologically important field of Old Norse religion would help the plans to
keep theology at Greifswald. In Spring 1944 Koepp helped Ohlmarks become a
lecturer in general history of religions with a special focus on the religion of the
primitives at the theological faculty. 63 On 22 November 1944, the Institute of
Comparative Religion was opened at the University of Greifswald in the presence
of the minister of education, Bernhard Rust. Ohlmarks’ time as head of the insti-
tute was, however, short. As the Soviet army drew near the city in spring 1945,
Ohlmarks left Germany for Sweden.
Adaptation and Ideological Conflicts as Career Opportunities
At a first look, the three careers described above seem very different. Wikander’s
time in Germany was roughly two years, and short in comparison with Alexander
Mutén’s. Wikander left Germany before the war started, whereas Ohlmarks arrived
in 1941. Mutén was a historian of literature, Wikander an Iranologist and Ohlmarks
a historian of religion. One could say that the only two things they had in common
was that they were all employed as lecturers in the Swedish language and that the
careers all ended abruptly due to either lack of money or the Second World War.
All three cases do, however, show something fundamental about the academic
world in National Socialist Germany. After the politically motivated cleansings,
many within the universities sought to adapt to the new ideology. The University of
Rostock wanted a specialisation in Scandinavia, which was seen as an important
specialisation for National Socialist politics. Wüst’s work for a National Socialist
faculty in Munich can be seen as seeking a way to establish the ideology of the SS
within the university. The German Christians wanted to “Aryanise” Christianity
and adapt it to a “blood and soil” ideology. The new theological interest in Old
Germanic and Old Norse religion could also help keep theology at the universities,
which is shown in the case of Wilhelm Koepp and theology at Greifswald. Here we
see how the National Socialist rise to power changed the conditions of the acade-
mic world, and how all the initiatives mentioned above were attempts to adapt to
these new frames.
62 Heinrich, “Das religionswissenschaftliche Institut”, pp. 225–28.

63 Fritz Heinrich, Die deutsche Religionswissenschaft und der Nationalsozialismus. Eine ideologiekritische
und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchung, (Petersberg: Imhof, 2002), pp. 227–28.
Something that fit into the new frames was Scandinavia and the “North”. The field
of Nordic Studies can therefore be counted as a beneficiary of the National Social-
ist state, alongside the study of religions or ethnology. The case of Alexander Mu-
tén and his career at the University of Rostock is a good example of this. Here the
philosophical faculty used the tradition of close contacts between Scandinavia and
the university within the new political context in order to establish a new institute
for Nordic studies. The arguments that the institute would propagate the “Nordic
Thought” in Scandinavia gave it support from party functionaries and the Nordic
Society. As the big plan failed the solution was to build in a smaller scale, given the
interest in Alexander Mutén and his lectureship. That Mutén benefited from this
new interest in Scandinavia is unquestionable. He kept his lectureship for thirteen
years, an extremely long time compared to other lecturers, who normally stayed be-
tween two and four years. He was also given an extra teaching assignment, again
something very unusual. Mutén was the first ever Swedish lecturer in Germany,
where the university applied for a professorship.
Looking at Ohlmarks and Wikander, they too benefited from the interest in
Scandinavia. Their cases are, however, more closely related to the role of Scandina-
via within the National Socialist ideology. One side of the German interest for
Scandinavia and especially Old Norse culture described above was the idea of a
Nordic race propagated by persons like Hans F. K. Günther, who popularised the
term in the 1920s.64 The notion of a Nordic community, including Scandinavians
and Germans alike, was propagated by a variety of groups in pre-war Germany,
most famously by the Nordic Society. This was basically the same idea of a Ger-
manic cultural unity that had been present in Germany since the nineteenth century,
but with a more essential racial biological element. From this stemmed the notion
of a close affinity between the German and Scandinavian peoples (Volksver-
wandtschaft), a notion often held by National Socialist functionaries.
After the National Socialist takeover, the question of the Nordic race and its
history was the subject for a fierce ideological battle between various NS-orga-
nisations, such as the Amt Rosenberg, and the SS Ahnenerbe. As scholars sympa-
thetic to these organisations made the question their own, this ideological conflict
was carried into the academic world and transformed into an academic conflict.
Walther Wüst and Otto Höfler were, for instance, in conflict with Bernhard Kum-
mer at the University of Jena about the true spirit of the religion of the Germanic
race at the time they decided to recruit Wikander to the University of Munich.65 As
Wüst and Höfler were backed by the SS Ahnenerbe, Kummer received support
from Alfred Rosenberg and his alternate university organisation “Hohe Schule”.
64 See for instance Lutzhöft, Der nordische Gedanke, p. 114 and Almgren et al., “Alfred Rosen-
berg und die Nordische Gesellschaft”, pp. 10–1.
65 For this conflict, see Fritz Heinrich, “Bernhard Kummer (1897–1962). The Study of Religi-
ons Between Religious Devotion for the Ancient Germans, Political Agitation and Academic
Habitus”, in Junginger, ed., The Study of Religion under the Impact of Fascism, pp. 254–58.
Due to the obvious ties between party politics and academia, even the contempo-
raries saw this conflict as not only an academic discussion, but as a part of a larger
conflict about the official ideology of the National Socialist state. The attempts of
the German Christians to “Aryanise” Christianity can be seen as a part of the con-
flict over the official ideology as well. It was a way to confront the more Pagan
thought of people like Kummer, for whom the decline of the Germanic race had
begun with Christianisation. An Aryan Christianity would be more compatible with
National Socialist racial ideology, but would still conserve a Christian heritage.
There is no point in describing the ideological battles of the Third Reich any
further. The point is their importance for the careers of Wikander and Ohlmarks. It
is arguably the planned expansion of Germanic studies at the University of Munich
that was the reason Wüst and Höfler worked to get Wikander a position as lan-
guage teacher and to support him in other ways. The same thing can be said about
the support Ohlmarks received from the German Christians for his application to
Greifswald. The idea of moving theology away from Greifswald, which finally
made the institute for comparative religion possible, was also a part of the ideologi-
cal conflicts between different Christian and non-Christian fractions within Natio-
nal Socialism. For Wikander as well as Ohlmarks, the ideological conflicts of the
Third Reich created an opportunity to establish themselves at German universities.
Lectureships, Academic Careers and Individual Biographies
The careers of Mutén, Wikander and Ohlmarks also show that one did not have to
be an active National Socialist to benefit from the changes within the German uni-
versity system after 1933. It is true that none of them was directly opposed to the
National Socialist state or ideology, but only Wikander had been an active member
of a fascist organisation in Sweden. Political sympathies for the new Germany can,
therefore, not be the only reason these scholars tried to establish themselves at
German universities. The political changes and internal conflicts within the
NSDAP might have created the career possibilities described above, but this is not
enough if one is to explain why persons like Mutén or Ohlmarks also chose to
make use of those opportunities.
In order to understand the interest in a position at a German university during
the National Socialist rule, one has to consider the previous historical epochs. For
many parts of Swedish academia, Germany was the country with which one had the
closest, most extensive academic contacts. This is true especially for the humanities.
Knowledge of German and German research and contact with German scholars
were arguably more common in Sweden in the 1930s than it is today. The position
as lecturer in the Swedish language, in turn, had a special position within the aca-
demic exchange between the two countries. Lecturers in Swedish had existed at
German universities before 1933 and were an established way for German universi-
ties to get in touch with and maintain contacts with the Swedish academic world.
Historically, the lecturer had often been an academic working on topics closely re-
lated to those of the head of the institute. For a young Swedish academic interested
in the German language, literature or, perhaps, even only looking to establish con-
tacts in German academia, a lectureship was a good position. The function of lec-
tureships within the academic career system was, therefore, comparable to a doc-
toral or post-doctoral scholarship and had been so prior to the National Socialist
takeover.
Age is a factor in this context as well. Born 1903, 1908 and 1911, respectively
Mutén, Wikander and Ohlmarks were all in their early thirties when they moved to
Germany. They were yet not old enough to hold a good position at a Swedish uni-
versity and scholarships were rare. All three of them, however, saw their future
within the university. Mutén was working at his doctoral thesis during his time as
lecturer in Rostock, whereas Wikander and Ohlmarks both had finished their dis-
sertations. For all three of them, the lectureship presented itself as a position that
would allow them to keep on working within the academic field after graduation.
This was especially the case with Åke Ohlmarks, due to the problems he had expe-
rienced in Sweden, but we know Stig Wikander was also was very pessimistic about
his chances of ever getting a post-doctoral scholarship in Sweden.66
We see how many different factors combined to make an academic career in
National Socialist Germany attractive for Swedish scholars. First of all, there is the
historical background. The general knowledge of German language and academic
culture was common in Sweden and German education was widely respected in
Sweden. The closeness between those cultures is best illustrated by the fact that
Ohlmarks and Wikander wrote their theses in German.67 The interest was mutual.
The establishment of lectureships in Swedish also shows the German interest in
Scandinavia. These lectureships, moreover, provided a possibility for Swedish
scholars to work at German universities and to establish contacts with German ac-
ademia. The National Socialist seizure of power did not change this relationship in
any way, except that the new rules made it impossible for academics with certain
political views to work at the country’s universities. In accepting lectureships, Mu-
tén, Wikander and Ohlmarks did what a lot of Swedish academics had done before
them. The difficulties they experienced in Sweden definitely helped in this decision.
Once in Germany, other possibilities opened up. These were, in turn, closely con-
nected to the internal ideological battles of the NSDAP and the National Socialist
state. The important role that Scandinavia and the North played within the Nation-
66 Letter from Wikander to his father on 20 February 1939, UUB, Stig Wikanders collection,
NC: 1468, Letters to the parents 1939 MT 7.
67 Åke Ohlmarks, Heimdalls Horn und Odins Auge. Studien zur nordischen und vergleichenden Reli-
gionsgeschichte, Erstes Buch (I–II) Heimdallr und das Horn (Lund: Gleerup, 1937) and Stig
Wikander, Der arische Männerbund. Studien zur indo-iranischen Sprach- und Religionsgeschichte (Lund:
Håkan Ohlssons boktryckeri, 1938).
al Socialist ideology and propaganda made scholars like the ones treated in this pa-
per valuable for organisations trying to achieve a more Nordic profile. What could
be better for a university like the University of Rostock trying to establish itself as a
university specialising in Scandinavia, than to have a Swede as leading figure? If
someone like Wüst or Höfler wanted to include Scandinavia in the mapping of the
“Germanic heritage”, the advantages of working with a Scandinavian scholar were
obvious. Additionally: Making Christianity more “Aryan”, “Germanic” or “Nordic”,
called for knowledge in Old Germanic or Norse mythology.
In short: The possibilities opening up for Swedish scholars in Nazi Germany
were actually due to a combination of two factors. First, there was the older tradi-
tion of Nordic studies, which provided the structural framework of lectureships in
Swedish as well as a concept of Nordic studies where anything related to Scandina-
via would fall within its framework. Secondly, there was the internal adaptation to
National Socialism as well as the ideological conflicts taking place within the aca-
demic field. The Swedish scholars examined here had two things in common. First
of all they came from a scientific context where German science and culture was
seen as an important, if not the most important influence, and secondly they were
relatively young and therefore not established within the Swedish scientific context.
This combination made an academic career in Germany, National Socialist or not,
attractive for Swedish scholars like Mutén, Ohlmarks and Wikander.
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4. Concluding Remarks
The examples of reception mentioned above show the “surplus value” the Eddic
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Sven Hedin and German Scholars: The Cases of
Wilhelm A. Unkrig and Ferdinand Lessing
Hartmut Walravens
Introduction
Sven Hedin harboured a deep affection for Germany, even during the darkest
times of its history. He studied with the geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen
(1833–1905) in Berlin, and he worked and corresponded with many German schol-
ars, scientists, administrators, and explorers. It is, however, premature to venture
serious statements on his relationships with German colleagues. The field is vast,
and an examination of his correspondence files in the Swedish Riksarkivet in
Stockholm as well as an analysis of his expeditions and all of his publications would
be necessary – as would, of course, an investigation of materials regarding his
German collaborators and friends. For the time being, it seems advisable to limit
the discussion to a few case studies. In two cases the correspondence with Hedin
has been published and we have statements and material regarding cooperation on
common projects. Whether the results of this survey may be generalised, is a differ-
ent question; sweeping statements usually have little substance and value. The pre-
sent case studies relate not to scientific exploration but to Mongolian and Tibetan
texts and the religious culture of Central Asia. At first short biographies of the two
scholars are given, then their relationship with Sven Hedin is surveyed on the basis
of their correspondence and other sources, and a summary is then attempted.
Wilhelm A. Unkrig (1883–1956)
Wilhelm Alexander Unkrig was born at Köslin, Pomerania, the son of a farmer, in
1883. He attended gymnasium for six years but did not continue for family reasons
– he probably had to help with farm work. Though reared as a Protestant he con-
verted to the Eastern Orthodox Church and eventually became a missionary to the
Mongols – thus following a hint given by his Pomeranian compatriot Karl Fried-
rich August Gützlaff (1803–51), the well-known missionary.1 In 1908 he started his
studies at the Orthodox Theological Seminary at Žitomir (Volhynia) and passed his
exams as a minister in 1912. He then continued his studies at the seminary in Ka-
zan, where he found a competent mentor in Mongolian and mission work in Father
1 Cf. Hartmut Walravens, Karl Friedrich Neumann [1793 –1870] und Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff
[1803–1851]. Zwei deutsche Chinakundige im 19. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001), p.
190.
194 Hartmut Walravens
Gurij (1880–1938).2 The outbreak of the world war in 1914 brought his efforts to
an end, though. Unkrig was interned by the Russians during the war, and after-
wards made a living in Poland as an electrician and radio mechanic. In 1926 he was
hired by Father Wilhelm Schmidt as librarian to the Anthropos Institute, and in
1928 he followed a call from the Russian Bishop Kyr Tychon to Berlin, to serve as
the bishop’s secretary. This appointment was shortlived as Unkrig was not very as-
sertive, “did not know how to use his elbows”, as the German saying goes. Unkrig
then served as a verger at the Berlin cathedral, getting by on the meagre earnings of
one Reichsmark a day. He offered his services as an amanuensis, e.g. to the explor-
er Wilhelm Filchner (1877–1957)3, and a large part of Filchner’s bulky volume
Kumbum Dschamba Ling4, including all the footnotes, was provided by him. Unkrig’s
situation improved when he was offered the position of a librarian to the China
Institute in Frankfurt where he was in charge of the publications, including the Sini-
ca and Sinica special editions. The institute was destroyed by bombs, though, and its
library and collections and a number of Unkrig’s manuscripts were lost – he had
expected them to be safer in the institute than in his flat. As the institute was not
revived after World War II, Unkrig had again to start on a shoestring with a poorly
paid lecturership at the University of Frankfurt. He passed away in 1956.5
Unkrig’s life was not crowded by highlights; he never was a “successful” schol-
ar. As he never finished gymnasium, Unkrig could not have an academic career
considering himself “a scholarly shoeshine boy”. While he never published a book
of his own, his list of publications numbers 125 items, some of them quite substan-
tial. Unkrig had a very good knowledge of Mongolian and Russian and acquired a
reasonable command of Tibetan. He could also handle Chinese, as this was a re-
quirement for his job at the China Institute. He served as a mentor (if not teacher)
2 Cf. Ljudi i sud’by. Bibliografičeskij slovaŕ vostokovedov ertv političeskogo terrora v sovetskij period
(1917–1991) (St. Petersburg: Petersburgskoe Vostokovedeni, 2003), p. 136.
3 Cf. Wilhelm Filchner, Ein Forscherleben. Mit einem Bildnis des Verfassers und fünf Karten im Text
(Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1950), p. 388.
4 Wilhelm Filchner, Kumbum Dschamba Ling. Das Kloster der hunderttausend Bilder Maitreyas. Ein
Ausschnitt aus Leben und Lehre des heutigen Lamaismus. Mit 208 Abbildungen auf Kunstdrucktafeln
nach eigenen Aufnahmen, 412 Skizzen des Verfassers im Text, einer Lichtdruck- und einer Buntdruckta-
fel sowie einer Klosterkarte (Leipzig: Brockhaus in Komm., 1933). Unkrig’s share is not specified
in the book; there is only a thank you in the preface for his contributions.
5 On Unkrig, see Hartmut Walravens, W. A. Unkrig (1883–1956). Leben und Werk. Mit einigen
seiner mongolistischen Beiträge (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2003), W. A. Unkrig (1883–1956): Kor-
respondenz mit Herbert Franke und Sven Hedin. Briefwechsel über Tibet, die Mongolei und China (Wies-
baden: Harrassowitz, 2003) and W. A. Unkrig (1883–1956): Korrespondenz mit Hans Findeisen,
der Britischen Bibelgesellschaft und anderen über Sibirien und den Lamaismus (Wiesbaden: Harrasso-
witz, 2004). There are also two short obituaries by Wilfried Nölle, “W. A. Unkrig†”, Nach-
richten der Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens 81 (1957), p. 60 (Noelle was a stu-
dent of Unkrig; he later on became German ambassador to India) and Walther Heissig, “W.
A. Unkrig†”, Central Asiatic Journal 3 (1957/58), pp. 21–2.
Sven Hedin and German Scholars 195
to at least two eminent Mongolists, Walther Heissig (1913–2005)6 and Herbert

Franke (1914–2011)7, which shows that he was more than a mere squire to the real
scholars. The prefaces to Filchner’s Kumbum by Berthold Laufer8 (1874–1934) and
Ferdinand Lessing (v.i.) offer very positive statements on Unkrig’s expertise. Un-
krig was painstaking both in his daily life and in his work. Reading his letters pro-
vides a detailed impression of his life and thoughts; details were very important for
him. That also means that the letters are excellent source material.
Unkrig got in contact with Hedin in 1938. He had already provided Gösta
Montell9 with translations of two Mongolian songs collected by Henning Haslund-
Christensen10. How this happened is not known – perhaps on the recommendation
of Ferdinand Lessing. Apparently the sample translations proved satisfactory as
Hedin now inquired whether Unkrig was willing to take responsibility for the Mon-
golian and Tibetan names in the projected edition of maps on Central Asia in 54
sheets. For the Turkish names, Gunnar Jarring11 was the collaborator. Hedin sug-
gested Unkrig should pay a visit to Stockholm so that they would be able to work
together for a month or so. Unkrig readily agreed but pointed out that he could on-
ly do this in addition to his day job at the China Institute. He also emphasised that
he did not have an academic degree and was not sure whether Hedin would trust
him with this task. He mentioned his contributions to Filchner’s work, especially
the edition of maps. The visit to Stockholm took place in October and November
1938 and was apparently very successful. Hedin wrote afterwards that their material
had been very useful but “only through your analysis and editing all these writings
and documents attained a soul and sense and special value and great interest for us
and others”.12 Unkrig hoped to send the corrected and edited list of names by 1
January 1939. He also received two Tibetan anatomical tables for comment and
6 Cf. Françoise Aubin, “In memoriam Walther Heissig 5 decembre 1913 – 5 septembre
2005”, Études mongoles et sibériennes 36/37 (2006), p. 469.
7 Cf. Thomas O. Höllmann, “Zum 90. Geburtstag von Herbert Franke”, Akademie aktuell (2
December 2004), pp. 14–5 and Peter Zieme, Bibliographie Herbert Franke 1933–2010 (Istan-
bul: Türk Dil, Kurumu 2010).
8 Cf. Hartmut Walravens, “Verzeichnis der Schriften Berthold Laufers”, in idem, ed., Kleinere
Schriften von Berthold Laufer, vol. 1, with a preface of Joseph Needham (Wiesbaden: Steiner,
1976), pp. XXIX–LXXX.
9 Gösta Montell, 1899–1975, staff member and later (as of 1953) director of the Ethnograph-
ical Museum in Stockholm, was one of Hedin’s closest cllaborators. See the biographical en-
try of Bo Sommarström in Svenskt biografisk lexikon 25 (1985/87), pp. 686–89.
10 The published volume Music of the Mongols in the Reports of the Sino-Swedish Expedition (vol. 1.,
1943) contains Mongolian songs translated by Kaare Grønbech. Whether Unkrig’s transla-
tions of 13 songs (out of 14) were to appear in a second volume (which was either not fin-
ished or got lost) is not known.
11 1907–2002, Turkologist and diplomat; cf. Akos Róna-Tas, “Gunnar Jarring (1907–2002)”,
Acta Orientalia Hungarica 55 (2002), pp. 413–14.
12 Letter of Hedin to Unkrig on 17 December 1938, quoted in Walravens, W. A. Unkrig, p.
126.
translation. A rabies cure to be found in the material of the Stockholm collections

was made by Unkrig the focus of an article on “Rabies and its Treatment in Lama-
ist Medicine”13, which he enriched with other material from the rGyud-bži, the Four
Tantras, of which he owned a Mongolian and a Tibetan edition owing to the good
services of Yu Dawchyan 于道泉, the father of Chinese Tibetology. In Stockholm
Unkrig had started cataloguing and describing parts of Hedin’s collection – at that
stage 40 books and manuscripts – especially the Čaxar gsuṅ-’bum. His draft com-
prised 65–79 sheets. Unkrig took the opportunity to ask Hedin for an article for the
journal Sinica. Hedin sent him an English text which Unkrig translated partly (pp.
67–83) and edited as “Tibet und die Geschichte seiner Erforschung”.14
Unkrig had previously written a review of Hedin’s book Jehol and enriched it
with additional material, adding to a later edition a translation of a Mongolian text.
In order to get this published, Hedin had given 150 Reichsmark to the ethnologist
Hans Findeisen (1903–68) who promised to get the paper printed.15 As there had
been no or little progress on this front, Unkrig intended to give the contribution to
Montell for publication.16 Unkrig also read proofs of in-progress work for Hedin,
e.g. Waldemar Haude’s Ergebnisse der allgemeinen meteorologischen Beobachtungen (1940)
and later Fritz Albrecht’s Ergebnisse von Dr. Haudes Beobachtungen der Strahlung (1941).
This was also an opportunity to clarify some of the principles of dealing with Mon-
golian names as Haude had his own views on this. July to August 1939 offered an-
other opportunity for a visit to Stockholm. As Mrs. Unkrig fell ill there and had to
be hospitalised, Hedin managed to get an extension of Unkrig’s leave of absence so
that Unkrig actually stayed till December.
In 1940, Montell returned Unkrig’s manuscripts from Stockholm for finalising.
Unkrig continued working on the Čaxar gsuṅ-’bum by Ts‘ul-k‘rims. He offered to
prepare a list of the 223 textile terms from the quadrilingual Mirror of the Manchu lan-
guage (Qingwenjian) for Montell. Work for Stockholm suffered some delay owing to
other tasks – the preparation of geographic lists for Bonacker’s dictionary of maps
and a small Mongolian dictionary.17 In June 1941, Unkrig sent the translation of 11
13 Wilhelm A. Unkrig, Die Tollwut in der Heilkunde des Lamaismus. Nach tibetisch-monogolischen Tex-
ten im ‘Statens Etnografiska Museum’ zu Stockholm, reprinted from reports of the scientific expe-
dition to the North-Western provinces of China under the leadership of Sven Hedin (Stock-
holm: Statens Etnografiska Museum, 1942), 20 pages. The paper became part of the collec-
tive volume Contributions to ethnography, linguistics and history of religions (Stockholm: Statens
Etnografiska Museum, 1954).
14 Idem, “Tibet und die Geschichte seiner Erforschung”, Sinica 14 (1939), pp. 3–26.
15 Cf. Hans Findeisen, Arbeiten zur Ethnographie Sibiriens und Volkskunde Zentral-Europas (Taipei:
Orient Cultural Service, 1973), p. 181.
16 The paper “Jehol” was only published in 2003 in Walravens, W. A. Unkrig (1883–1956). Leb-
en und Werk, pp. 37ff.
17 Cf. Wilhelm Bohnacker, Karten-Wörterbuch. Eine Verdeutschung fremdsprachiger Kartensignatur-Be-
zeichnungen, bearbeitet unter Mitwirkung berufener Sprachkenner (Berlin-Friedenau: Spiegel Verl.
Lippa, 1941) and the Wörterbuch der heutigen mongolischen Sprache mit kurzem Abriss der Gramma-
more songs from Haslund-Christensen’s collection. He also worked on a little Sutra

on the White Old Man (čagan ebügen) from the Stockholm collection.
In 1942, Hedin considered sending Montell’s collection of Lamaistic drugs to
Unkrig for identification and analysis. Unkrig developed the idea of retiring from
his office job to devote himself completely to his Central Asian work, provided ei-
ther Hedin or the Munich Central Asian Institute would be able to furnish a small
stipend. Unkrig was officially invited to the inauguration of the institute in Munich
giving him the opportunity to discuss his plans with Hedin, who agreed. The insti-
tute was also in favour and wanted him to translate the rGyud-bži.18 The idea was
that Unkrig should become a kind of freelance staff member of the institute. This,
however, did not materialise.
The war made further correspondence impossible, and only in 1946 were con-
tacts resumed. Unkrig reported on his losses in the destroyed institute – 283 sheets
of bibliographical material for the Stockholm collection, 4,500 cards with notes on
plants and drugs, 5,000 cards with information extracted from the quadrilingual
dictionary, 17 xylographs which he had received from Cybikov19 and Baradijn20. To
renew the previous collaboration proved difficult, not only because of the losses
but also because of Hedin’s precarious financial situation (he missed the royalties
from Brockhaus) and the situation in Germany. Unkrig offered his Jehol paper for
publication as, apparently, a volume on the subject was under consideration. The
last pieces of the correspondence between Unkrig and Hedin contain mainly greet-
ings and Unkrig’s protestations of his gratitude for the care packages received from
Hedin and his sister Alma.
The records show Unkrig as a serious, devoted and knowledgeable worker,
who achieved good results, many of which were unfortunately destroyed during the
war. Hedin proved his good judgment in winning scholarly collaborators and
showed himself a pleasant colleague and an always-helpful friend.
tik und ausgewählten Sprachproben, arranged by Robert Bleichsteiner and Walter Heissig, with
the collaboration of Wilhelm A. Unkrig (Wien: Siebenberg, 1941).
18 A. M. Pozdneev had published a translation of two of the four Tantras. Cf. Učebnik tibetskoj
mediciny. Bdud-rtsi sñiṅ po yan lag brgyad-pa gsaṅ-ba man ṅag-gi rgyud – Rasiyan-u jirüken nayiman
kesikütü niguča obatis-un ündüsün. Tom pervyj. S. mongol’skago i tibetskago perevel A. Pozdněev (S.-
Peterburg: Imp. Akademija nauk, 1908).
19 Gombožab Cybikov (1873–1930), celebrated Mongolist; cf. B. Cibikov and G.-N. Zajatuev,
Rossijskie mongolovedy (XVIII – načalo XX vv.) (Ulan-Udė: BNC 1997), pp. 105–10.
20 Badzar Baradin (1878–1938), noted Mongolist, cf. ibidem, pp. 117–21.
Ferdinand Lessing (1882–1961)
Ferdinand Lessing had a lot of experience working in China.21 He had strong lin-
guistic and ethnological interests and was, by the time of his death, one of the very
few Western specialists on Lamaistic rituals.
Lessing was born in Essen (Germany) in 1882, the son of a locksmith. He
studied in Berlin and went to China in 1907 to teach, at first at the Peking Inter-
preters’ School, then switching in 1909 to the newly established Deutsch-Chinesi-
sche Hochschule in Qingdao. In 1921, he became a professor at Peking University,
and from then until 1925 he taught German at the Mukden Medical School. After
his return to Berlin in 1925, Lessing was appointed professor at the Seminar für
Orientalische Sprachen and, concurrently, curator of the East Asian collection of
the Ethnological Museum (Museum für Völkerkunde). From 1930 to 1933, he
joined Sven Hedin’s Sino-Swedish Expedition. From 1935 to 1938, Lessing taught
as visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.22 When he returned
to Berlin and considered the working conditions there, observing the developments
under Nazi rule, he decided to continue working at Berkeley, at the risk of forfeit-
ing his pension. After his retirement Lessing continued to work on projects as his
pension was small and he had to support his children and grandchildren in Germa-
ny. He passed away in 1961.
Lessing was a good scholar and an assiduous worker. He was, however, a kind
of perfectionist, so progress was often slow, especially when it came to publica-
tions. He was also haunted by headaches, which made his life miserable at times.
Nevertheless, Lessing left his mark on scholarship. He published, together with
Wilhelm Othmer, a much-used textbook of Chinese23, a dissertation on the parti-
21 Cf. Alexander Wayman, “Ferdinand Diederich Lessing 26 February 1882 – 31 December

1961”, Artibus Asiae 25 (1962), pp. 193–94, Richard C. Rudolph, “Ferdinand D. Lessing in
memoriam”, Oriens Extremus 9 (1962), pp. 1–2, idem, “Schriftenverzeichnis Professor Les-
sing”, Oriens Extremus 9 (1962), pp. 3–5. – Hartmut Walravens, “Ferdinand Lessing (1882–
1961). Vom Museum für Völkerkunde zu Sven Hedin. Aus den Reiseberichten und dem
Briefwechsel”, Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz 30 (1993), pp. 175–98, idem, “Ferdinand Les-
sing und Sven Hedin. Briefe aus dem Jahre 1931 zur Forschungsarbeit in der Mongolei und
China”, in Helmut Eimer et al., eds., Studia Tibetica et Mongolica (Festschrift Manfred Taube)
(Swisttal-Odendorf: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1999), pp. 307–22, idem, Ferdinand Lessing
(1882–1961). Sinologe, Mongolist und Kenner des Lamaismus. Materialien zu Leben und Werk, mit dem
Briefwechsel mit Sven Hedin (Osnabrück: Zeller Verlag, 2000); Susanne Grieder, “Für mich
heißt leben: Arbeiten. Ferdinand Lessing und Sven Hedins sino-schwedische Expedition in
Briefen und Zitaten”, Baeßler-Archiv 50 (2002), pp. 121–51 and Hartmut Walravens, “Ferdi-
nand Lessing (1882–1961) – ein Spezialist für China, die Mongolei und den Lamaismus”, in
Florian C. Reiter, ed., Das Reich der Mitte – in Mitte (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), pp. 47–
57.
22 An appointment which he probably owed to Hedin’s recommendation.
23 Ferdinand Lessing and Wilhelm Othmer, Lehrgang der nordchinesischen Umgangssprache (Tsing-
tau: Deutsch-Chinesische Druckerei und Verlagsanstalt Walther Schmidt, 1912).
88 Bernard Mees
ber of the SA who had written his laudatory dissertation on Old Norse religiosity at
Leipzig in the 1920s.2
Baetke had already held a chair at Leipzig before Kuhn’s departure, one he had
assumed in 1936. That was the year before Kuhn had himself come to Leipzig to
succeed Konstantin Reichardt, a Russian-born Nordicist who had fled Nazi Ger-
many protesting the political pressure he had been subjected to since 1933. Rei-
chardt was treated by many of his colleagues as a prima donna after the fact, but he
had been pressured by his “next-door neighbour”, the Germanist (and Nazi free-
masonry expert) André Jolles, to become involved in pro-regime activities, such as
appearing at public events and on the radio.3 Baetke’s arrival at Leipzig had been an
equally political affair, albeit of a different kind.
Much as Kuhn’s career benefited greatly from the academic intrigues typical of
1930s Germany, Baetke also arrived at Leipzig after a political struggle. Baetke was
one of the many doctoral graduates who had been unable to secure a tenured
teaching position in the 1910s and ’20s, but who, with the rise of the National
Socialists, had managed to obtain an association and later a lectureship with the
University of Greifswald. In 1935, the Faculty of Theology at Leipzig began a
search for a successor to the late Hans Haas, a long-serving professor of history of
religions, an orientalist and faculty dean. Baetke’s name soon emerged as a pre-
ferred candidate. His main competitor was Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, the University of
Tübingen indologist and controversial head of the neo-Pagan German Faith Move-
ment. Much as members of the conservative German archaeological establishment
had managed to exclude the Erich von Däniken-like figure of Herman Wirth from
being considered as a replacement for the late prehistorian Max Ebert in Berlin,
Baetke, who had no formal qualification in the history of religions, was promoted
as a more suitable candidate at Leipzig than the radical religionist (and clearly better
qualified) Hauer.4
Jahrhunderten (Leipzig: E. Pfeiffer, 1927), Klaus von See and Julia Zernack, Germanistik und
Politik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Zwei Fallstudien: Hermann Schneider und Gustav Neckel
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2004), pp. 113–208, Bernard Mees, The Science of the Swastika (Bu-
dapest: Central European University Press, 2008), pp. 120ff., Fritz Heinrich, “Bernhard
Kummer (1897–1962): The Study of Religions between Religious Devotion for the Ancient
Germans, Political Agitation, and Academic Habitus”, in Horst Junginger, ed., The Study of
Religion under the Impact of Fascism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2008), pp. 229–62.
3 Walter Thys, “Inleiding”, in idem, ed., André Jolles (1874–1946): ‘gebildeter Vagant’; brieven en
documenten (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000), pp. 1–6, Mees, Science of the
Swastika, pp. 173–74.
4 Kurt Rudolph, “Leipzig und die Religionswissenschaft”, Numen 9 (1962), pp. 64–7, Ingo
Wiwjorra, “Herman Wirth – Ein gescheiterter Ideologe zwischen ‘Ahnenerbe’ und Atlantis”,
in Barbara Danckwortt et al., eds., Historische Rassismusforschung: Ideologen, Täter, Opfer
(Hamburg: Argument, 1995), pp. 91–112, Horst Junginger, Von der philologischen zur völkischen
Religionswissenschaft: das Fach Religionswissenschaft an der Universität Tübingen von der Mitte des 19.
Jahrhundert bis zum Ende des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1999), pp. 179–80, Fritz Hein-
ideas for the third volume of Tsangpo Lama’s Pilgrimage, which Hedin also envisaged
as a “Weltfilm”. However, it was Lessing who profited most from this association.
Hedin managed to get his leave of several months extended to three years. The
Notgemeinschaft paid Lessing another stipend even before the papers had reached
them. Such was Hedin’s authority in Germany. On the other hand, Lessing did not
forget Hedin’s birthdays and sent dithyrambic congratulations. On the occasion of
Hedin’s 70th anniversary, he spoke on the radio twice and published two articles in
Hedin’s honour.31 When the war broke out, and more after the war, Hedin sent
packages to Brunhilde Lessing (Körner) who was left with four children after her
husband had died in a prisonor-of-war camp. It was not without reason that Les-
sing entitled a presentation before the Berkeley Club in 1953, “My Friend Sven
Hedin”. This is how he recounted their first meeting in Peking:
A few days later, the telephone rang in my hotel room: an unforgettable sonorous voice
bade me a hearty welcome in German, and a few minutes later I stood in front of the
man who had been the object of my admiration since my student years. He was then 65
years old, but looked at least 15 years younger. He had a rather short stature, powerful
build, with energetic features, a Roman nose and warm brown eyes. The great poise
and natural charm quickly aroused a feeling of ease and trust in his presence, but one
would hardly have guessed that this unassuming, kindly man was one of the greatest
travellers of all times.
Lessing reports about his first assignement, providing material for the Jehol book32:
I had no access to the Chinese Palace archives then, and the historical notes I was able
to find proved to be rather barren for the purpose Hedin had in mind. But at that time
the Chinese book market was swamped with trashy popular novels telling the romances
of the emperors of the last dynasty, as chief ingredients. One day I showed Hedin what
I found combing the familiar bookstalls outside of South gate and when dinner was
over I translated to him diffidently some of the more colorful episodes. ‘Halt’, he inter-
rupted after a few sentences; he grabbed his pencil and jotted down my oral German
translation with lightning speed into Swedish. He was delighted. His lively romantic
imagination saw immediately how these episodes fitted into his picture of Jehol as he
visualised it at the height of its splendor in the eighteenth century. We continued this
play for a number of weeks. I am full of impatience because I thought I could put my
time to better account, and Hedin with the steady pace of a camel crossing the sands of
the Gobi desert, when an archaeological discovery of first magnitude terminated our
teamwork. I did not know Hedin yet. A year or two later the book on Jehol came out.
Not a strictly scientific work, to be sure, but a book full of useful information and rich-
ly interlarded with behind-the-curtain scenes drawn from those Chinese novels. It was
in Swedish, and there were also abridged German and English editions.
31 Ferdinand Lessing, “Sven Hedin als Forscher und Mensch”, Ostasiatische Rundschau 16 (1935),
pp. 101–3. Another appreciation appeared in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.
32 Sven Hedin, Jehol. Kejsarstaden. Skildringar från de stora Mandschukejsarnas hov. Illustrerade med foto-
grafier av Dr Gösta Montell och teckningar av författeren (Stockholm: Lars Hökerberg, 1931).
Hedin’s and Lessing’s major common project was a scholarly treatment of the main
Lamaist temple in Peking, the Yonghegong. Lessing remembered how it all started:
Chinese dealers kept coming all the time, offering Lamaist statues and paintings for
sale, and I was called upon for identifying and appraising them. One morning I recog-
nised a small, insignificant picture as purloined from the Yung-ho-kung in Peking
where it had adorned a pillar in one of the 16 halls of that famous Lamaist cathedral,
years ago. ‘Why is it that you know that large temple so well’, asked the astonished He-
din. ‘Because I wrote a complete guide to that sanctuary about 5 years ago.’ I showed
him the typescript, saying that I was unwilling to publish it because it was not much
more than a mechanical identification and description of images and utensils, not at all
a contribution to scholarship. I pointed out that in order to understand the temple I
would have to study the cult in which these objects figure as essential symbols, that I
would have to read the original Tibetan and Mongolian texts with a competent Lama,
and that, after due preparation, I would have to attend the religious services. ‘Summer
would be over soon’, I said, ‘and my leave of absence would expire in a few weeks.’
‘How speaks the great field marshal Helmuth von Moltke: Schwierigkeiten sind dazu
da, um überwunden zu werden. If you promise to publish your results in my series of
scientific publications, then leave everything else to me. I shall arrange things for you,
regardless of cost.’ In two weeks, an extension of my leave of absence was granted, and
a learned Lama was found to initiate me into the mysteries of the Lamaist cult. These
studies continued until the end of 1932. I count that period among my happiest years.
One volume of my results have been published so far, but I am not yet able to finish
my work.33
What had started as a brochure, a kind of tourist guide, over the years turned into a
five volume project. It grew from a description of the temple halls and its deities
into an encyclopaedia of Lamaism. Lessing studied the rituals, participated in the
rituals, improved his Mongolian and Tibetan, and read the relevant texts – all while
continually disappointing Hedin, who was very eager to publish the book – because
he saw it was really a scholarly work that would increase the profile of his publica-
tion series. It would also justify his continued collaboration with German scholars.
In an interview with the Tientsin-based Deutsch-Chinesische Nachrichten Hedin stated:
There is no person who knows Lamaism as well as Lessing. For months Lessing has –
you may not know it – performed the services and duties of a Lama in the [main] tem-
ple on Wutaishan. There is nobody who knows this temple like he does and is familiar
with the customs of the Lamas. But that is not all. He is a thorough China expert, fa-
miliar with all the habits and customs of the country and its inhabitants; he is well liked
everywhere (…).34
33 Ferdinand Lessing, “My friend Sven Hedin. An unfinished portrait. Paper read before the
Berkeley Club on May 21, 1953”, quoted in Walravens, Ferdindand Lessing, p. 424.
34 Wolf Nathusius, “Besuch bei Sven Hedin”, Deutsch-Chinesische Nachrichten 738 (26 March
1933), p. 4. Translation mine.
Hedin must have had the feeling to justify the support he was giving. He appears to
have been happy to finally publish volume one of the major work in 1942. Unfor-
tunately, it was also the only volume, covering just two halls out of the 16. Volume
two of the descriptions of the temple was ready in manuscript when Lessing passed
away in 1961, according to Wolfram Eberhard35 – Lessing’s colleague at Berkley.
This manuscript has not surfaced yet, however, and there are also the filing trays,
reportedly with 10,000 cards, a veritable encyclopaedia of Lamaism, which have not
been found. During his last years, Lessing had the help of a student named Alex
Wayman who was supposed to continue his work.36 During his life time, however,
Wayman disclaimed having any Lessing material besides what he published in a
book on Lamaism.37 But when a young American scholar went through Wayman’s
papers which were bequeathed to the Buddhist research centre at Naritasan, quite a
number of Lessing papers were found. Unfortunately not the ones being looked
for.38 Naritasan had the great generosity to send these materials to the Stockholm
Ethnographical Museum.
Summary
Much could be said about Hedin’s role as a gifted organiser, a great explorer, a
charismatic person, a good friend, a determined administrator, an excellent “sales-
person” as we might say, or PR manager, and a prolific writer. When talking about
Hedin’s collaboration with German scholars, one should also not forget the hun-
dreds of thousands of copies of his books disseminated in Germany, which opened
the world and its adventures to at least two generations that were unable to travel
and interested them in exploration and science. Lessing expressed his gratitude for
Hedin’s “advice, courage, and inspiration” more than once.
Also, it would be unfair to forget about his two faithful “hands” who eased the
burden on Hedin’s shoulders, his sister Alma, aptly described as his right hand, and
Gösta Montell, the ethnologist, photographer, collector, organiser. We know little
about him as his correspondence has not survived. But a large part of the practical
35 1909–89, ethnologist, sociologist, sinologist; cf. Hartmut Walravens, “In memoriam Wolf-
ram Eberhard”, Oriens extremus 33-2 (1990), pp. 5–10.
36 Wayman, 1921–2004, studied mathematics but then switched to Indian and Tibetan studies.
He took his Ph.D. at Berkeley, then taught at the University of Wisconsin and became pro-
fessor of Sanskrit at Columbia University in 1967.
37 Mkhas grub rje’s (mKhas-grub-rje Dge-legs-dpal-bzaṅ-po) Fundamentals of the Buddhist tantras.
Rgyud sde spyiḥi rnam par gźag pa rgyas par brjod. Translated from the Tibetan by Ferdi-
nand D. Lessing and Alex Wayman. With original text and annotations (The Hague: Mou-
ton, 1968).
38 They turned out, on closer inspection, to be materials and collectanea for vol. III of Yong-
hegong.
work, with regards to Lessing and Unkrig, went through his competent hands. Les-
sing called him “the good, sarcastic, amiable Montebello”.
Hedin has been the object of heated discussions regarding his uncritical sup-
port of Germany – to a degree that his scientific achievements have almost been
disregarded. From today’s point of view, Hedin’s political naiveté or stubbornness
is surprising and deplorable. It does not seem to have been rooted in totalitarian
ideas, at least when judged on the basis of his scholarly correspondence. And he
was by no means alone at that time. In closing, here is Lessing’s note on Hedin’s
book on Germany:
So when the Nazi’s invited Hedin in 1936 to visit Nazi Germany and write a book on
the Third Reich, he gladly accepted. They ‘showed him around’ the way the Iron cur-
tain people show our journalists around. Deeply impressed he wrote a book on Nazi
Germany, full of uncritical praise, the only reservation being directed against the way
science was treated (what we call tough control) and the way Jews were dealt with. Here
he let slip in a word to the effect that he was proud of that drop of Jewish blood run-
ning in his veins which came from the great-grandfather of his mother, an immigrant
from Germany. The book was printed. Hedin was promised a royalty of one mark per
copy. But the work never saw the light. When the Nazi despots discovered the criti-
cisms, they sent him an ultimatum: Either change or see the book destroyed. ‘Sint, ut
sunt, aut non sint.’ Hedin said firmly. 199,995 copies were reduced to pulp. Of the re-
maining five, I have one. Hopes of $50,000 in royalties were shattered.39
It would be useful to realise that history, of course, is not black and white but there
are many nuances, as there are in all our personal lives.
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gions. Stockholm: Statens Etnografiska Museum, 1954).
Walravens, Hartmut. “Verzeichnis der Schriften Berthold Laufers”. In idem, ed.,
Kleinere Schriften von Bernd Laufer, vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1976.
—. Bibliographien zur ostasiatischen Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland 3. Otto Kümmel.
Hamburg: C. Bell, 1985.
—. “Otto Kümmel. Streiflichter auf Leben und Wirken eines Berliner Museums-
direktors”. Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz 24 (1987), pp. 137–49.
—. “In memoriam Wolfram Eberhard”. Oriens Extremus 33-2 (1990), pp. 5–10.
—. “Ferdinand Lessing (1882–1961). Vom Museum für Völkerkunde zu Sven
Hedin. Aus den Reiseberichten und dem Briefwechsel”. Jahrbuch Preußischer
Kulturbesitz 30 (1993), pp. 175–98.
—. “Ferdinand Lessing und Sven Hedin. Briefe aus dem Jahre 1931 zur For-
schungsarbeit in der Mongolei und China”. In Helmut Eimer et al., eds., Stu-
dia Tibetica et mongolica (Festschrift Manfred Taube). Swisttal-Odendorf: Indica et
Tibetica Verlag, 1999, pp. 307–22.
—. Ferdinand Lessing (1882–1961), Sinologe, Mongolist und Kenner des Lamaismus. Ma-
terialien zu Leben und Werk, mit dem Briefwechsel mit Sven Hedin (Osnabrück: Zel-
ler Verlag, 2000.
—. Karl Friedrich Neumann [1793–1870] und Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff [1803–
1851]. Zwei deutsche Chinakundige im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2001.
—. W. A. Unkrig (1883–1956). Leben und Werk. Mit einigen seiner mongolistischen Bei-
träge. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003.
—. W. A. Unkrig (1883–1956): Korrespondenz mit Herbert Franke und Sven Hedin.
Briefwechsel über Tibet, die Monolei und China. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003.
—. W. A. Unkrig (1883–1956): Korrespondenz mit Hans Findeisen, der Britischen Bibel-
gesellschaft und anderen über Sibirien und den Lamaismus. Wiesbaden: Harrasso-
witz, 2004.
—. “Ferdinand Lessing (1882–1961) – ein Spezialist für China, die Mongolei
und den Lamaismus”. In Florian C. Reiter, ed. Das Reich der Mitte – in Mitte.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), pp. 47–57.
Wayman, Alexander. “Ferdinand Diederich Lessing 26 February 1882–31 Decem-
ber 1961”. Artibus Asiae 25 (1962), pp. 193–94.
Wörterbuch der heutigen mongolischen Sprache mit kurzem Abriss der Grammatik und aus-
gewählten Sprachproben, arranged by Robert Bleichsteiner and Walter Heissig,
with the collaboration of Wilhelm A. Unkrig. Wien: Siebenberg, 1941.
Zieme, Peter. Bibliographie Herbert Franke 1933–2010. Istanbul: Türk Dil, Kurumu
2010.
The Holy City of Lhasa: Dream and
Destination for Sven Hedin and Ernst Schäfer
Isrun Engelhardt
Sven Hedin and the Myth of Tibet

The image of Tibet as something beyond ordinary experience is deep-rooted in the his-
tory of the Western relationship with Tibet. Each age gives a new dimension to this
perception. During the age of imperialism, Tibet was the last unconquered and unpol-
luted land. While the West extolled the virtues of free trade, Tibet stubbornly remained
protectionist. Tibet held a deep fascination for countless numbers of soldiers, travellers
and colonial officers. It was the last mystical country in the world. It represented the
last challenge to the Western imagination. Tibet fulfilled the spiritual yearning of the
world, Tibet was closed: only the brave of the bravest managed to sneak into the for-
bidden land. (…) Tibet had always been presented as an uncharted land; therefore, the
confusion between geography and imagination was inevitable. (…) There is the real Ti-
bet, what I have called the geographical Tibet, and the imaginary Tibet, which has a po-
tent force of its own. In the Western mind the distinction between the two has merged
to form a particular Western perception of Tibet and Tibetanness. (…) Thus, the image
of a forbidden kingdom was born. The transmission of this image of Tibet has been
constant for centuries, partly due to the fact that Tibet was never conquered by the
West.1
These remarks from the Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya describe the Tibet of
Western imagination and myth. What kind of image of Tibet did Sven Hedin
(1865–1962) present in his writings? Nearly nothing serious has been published so
far on this topic. He is rarely mentioned in the context of the myth of Tibet. Ra-
ther, Hedin is characterised, as recently as the 1980s, as a “pioneer and pathfinder,
the most successful and glorious of all explorers of Asia, the embodiment of a geo-
graphical explorer, at the same time completer of an era, accomplishing, finishing
an era”.2 According to the Austrian mountaineer and geographer Peter Aufschnai-
ter (1899–1973), Hedin not only was not caught up in myth making, he lead the
way in presenting the reality of Tibet: “Up to the present, Sven Hedin’s journeys of
exploration, his reports and maps are the most important source for completing the
map of Tibet. He was the only individual to make major improvements to the map
of Tibet.”3
1 Tsering Shakya, “The Myth of Shangri-la: Tibet and the Occident”, Lungta, Special Issue Ti-
betan Authors (1991), pp. 20–3.
2 Dietmar Henze, Enzyklopädie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde (Graz: Akademische Druck-
und Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), II, p. 484.
3 Martin Brauen, ed., Peter Aufschnaiter’s Eight Years in Tibet (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2002), p.
179. Aufschnaiter had been in Tibet from 1929–31 for the first time. From 1936–39 he act-
208 Isrun Engelhardt
Following Tsering Shakya, however, one could say that Sven Hedin presented a
geographical Tibet of “heroic landscapes”.4 According to him there were “many
imaginative Tibets produced at the turn of the century: The main three imaginative
contexts: imperialism, exploration and mysticism”.5 It is evident that Hedin be-
longs to the category of exploration. Hedin called the Himalayas “the gigantic wall
which Nature has built up like a bulwark to guard the secrets of Tibet on the
north”.6 He also presented Tibet as the source of all the great rivers of Southern
Asia: “Tibet; the country whence the light of holiness streams forth upon the world
of Lamaism, just as its waters, in the form of mighty rivers, stream forth to give life
and nourishment to the countries which surround it. In a strictly geographical
sense, Tibet is one of the least known regions in the world.”7
When Hedin received the Victoria Medal on 18 May 1903 in London, the Swe-
dish explorer said that he wanted to try to get more materials and chart more of the
geography of Central Asia. The time of adventurous journeys would soon be
passed. As early as this occasion, he expressed his wish to give to the world a “very
great publication” on Tibet in English, since this would be the language of scholar-
ship all over the world.8 Five years before, Hedin had foreseen the time to come
with similar emphasis:
A new era is approaching in the historical development of geographical discovery. The

pioneers will soon have played their part; the ‘white patches’ on the maps of the conti-
nents are gradually decreasing; (…) The pioneers of the past, who cleared the way
through increasing danger and difficulty, have been followed by the explorers of the
present day, examining in detail the surface of the earth and its restless life, always find-
ing new gaps to fill, new problems to solve.
Although many regions have already been the object of detailed investigation, there are
several still remaining in which the pioneer has not yet finished his work. This is partic-
ularly the case with the interior of Asia, which has long been neglected. Immense areas
ed as manager of the German Himalaya Foundation. Together with Heinrich Harrer (1912–
2006) and other members of an expedition team he was interned by the British after the
outbreak of World War II when preparing the ascent of Nanga Parbat. Aufschnaiter be-
longed to the group of seven people who succeeded to flee from the internment camp in
April 1944. The story of the flight became the prominent topic of a world selling book of
Harrer (translated into 53 languages) and a film with the same title “Seven Years in Tibet” in
1997. Aufschnaiter’s own memories were first published in 1983.
4 Cf. Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred
Landscape (London: Athlone Press, 1989), p. 145.
5 Idem, Dreams of Power: Tibetan Buddhism and the Western Imagination (London: Athlone Press
1993), pp. 28–9.
6 Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa (London: Hurst and Blackett,
1903), p. 33.
7 Idem, Through Asia (London: Methuen 1898), pp. 4–5.
8 Idem, “Remarks on receiving the Victoria Medal, 18 May 1903”, The Geographical Journal 22
(1903), p. 99.
The Holy City of Lhasa 209
of the almost inaccessible Desert of Gobi, and endless wastes in the highlands of Tibet,
are to this day as little known as the Polar Regions.9
Staying home in Sweden for more than a limited period of time was hard to bear
for Hedin. He became impatient and tried to end the unsatisfactory situation.
Looking back, he wrote in 1908:
In the Spring of the year 1905 my mind was much occupied with thoughts of a new
journey to Tibet. Three years had passed since my return to my own country; my study
began to be too small for me; at eventide, when all around was quiet, I seemed to hear
in the sough of the wind a voice admonishing me to ‘come back again to the silence of
the wilderness (…)’. I must return to the freedom of the desert and hide away to the
broad plains between the snow-clad mountains of Tibet (…). I would rather see with
my own eyes the unknown districts in the midst of northern Tibet, and, above all, visit
the extensive areas of entirely unexplored country (…).10
This expresses Hedin’s character fairly well. He had an insatiable desiderium incogni-
ti.11 He used words such as “conquering” or “conquest” to refer to the deserts and
passes he had explored. His image of Tibet was centred on these vast and unex-
plored landscapes and had nothing to do with mystifying perceptions such as those
spread by theosophists.
Hedin held himself to be the last member in a line or succession of explorers.12
Comparable to Isaac Newton and others, he saw himself as preceding to the next
challenge, in his case to write an exploration history of Tibet. Hedin appreciated the
merits of the missionaries and early explorers and acknowledged the value of their
works.13 It appears to me that his history of exploration of Tibet from antiquity on
is widely unknown despite its comprehensive use of source material in many lan-
guages, mainly in Trans-Himalaya III and particularly in the first volumes of his sci-
entific magnum opus Southern Tibet. Hedin went through the works of the Catholic
missionaries and quoted even from Georgi’s Alphabetum Tibetanum. He enjoyed
quoting the missionaries in order to compare Tibetan Buddhism with Catholicism.
It was for that reason that he got in troubles with Catholic circles. Hedin made use
9 Hedin, Through Asia I, p. 3.

10 Idem, Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, vol. 1 (New York/London: Macmil-
lan, 1909), pp. 1–2.
11 Sven Hedin and Albert Brockhaus, Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger
(Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1942), p. 28.
12 Albrecht Penck, “Sven Hedin als Forschungsreisender: Zu seinem 60. Geburtstage”, Deutsche
Rundschau 202 (1925), pp. 276–82, here p. 280.
13 Sven Hedin, Trans-Himalaya, vol. 3 (New York/London: Macmillan, 1913), idem, Southern Ti-
bet: Discoveries in Former Times compared with my Own Researches in 1906–1908 (Stockholm: Litho-
graphic Institute of the General Staff of the Swedish Army, 1916–22, various volumes),
idem, “Early European Knowledge of Tibet”, Geografiska Annaler 1 (1919), pp. 290–339.
of the famous Tibetan geography ’dzam gling rgyas bshad in the translation of Vasili-
ev and even tried to find Tibetan sources for the area of Manasarowar.
As none before him, Hedin wrote time and again of the heroic achievements of
the early explorers and missionaries and had no problem at all acknowledging their
merits. Actually, his works can be used as the basis for a full-scale qualified history
of Tibetan exploration.14 Therefore, it is surprising that Hedin’s work has found so
little attention in the geographical sciences yet, apart from the heated discussion
with the British in 1909.15
Lhasa
In addition to his main interest in unexplored areas and filling in ‘white patches’,
Hedin was also attracted to the forbidden holy city of Lhasa and participated in the
race for it. Disguising himself as a Buriat lama in 1901, he hoped that by travelling
fast on horseback he would outpace any news about him and reach Lhasa before
he could be stopped. He got within a five-days ride of his goal before being turned
back. However, it is surprising to learn about his motivation to reach Lhasa:
And truly it was a crazy project, I will admit, to risk so much, my life included, merely
for the pleasure of seeing Lassa, a city which, thanks to the descriptions of Indian Pun-
dits and Buriats, their maps and photographs, is far better known, both in respect of its
topography and its appearance, than most other towns in Central Asia. But, after two
years of quiet, peaceful rambling through the uninhabited parts of the continent, and
after my long stretch of strenuous labour, I will honestly confess that I felt an irresisti-
ble longing for an adventure which should have a genuine spice of danger in it. I was
fascinated by the idea of getting myself involved in difficulties which would tax all the
powers of manhood in me to get out of again with a whole skin; in fact, I wanted to
have a good tough tussle with fate. I wanted to pit my alertness, my courage, my re-
sourcefulness, and my resolution against the strong hand of destiny. In a word, it was
adventures I sought for, far more than I sought to get to Lassa. My friend the Lama
had described the holy city to me so thoroughly that I wanted to get to the bottom of
their rooted detestation of Europeans.16
Although Hedin’s attempt failed, he was satisfied with the certainty to have done
everything in his power to reach Lhasa. He accepted without compunction that in-
surmountable obstacles had blocked his way and had forced him to turn back. Still
he felt a little odd about the behaviour of the Tibetans who released him without a
14 Henze, Enzyklopädie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde II, p. 484.
15 A rare exception is Philippe Forêt, Le véritable histoire d’une montagne plus grande que l’Himalaya:
Les résultats scientifiques inattendues d’un voyage au Tibet (1906–1908) et la querelle du Transhimalaya
([Rosny sous Bois]: Bréal, 2004).
16 Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet, p. 320.
single rough word.17 He made a second attempt to reach Lhasa but was stopped
again. Having seen the missive from the Lhasa government, Hedin had no prob-
lems acknowledging the document and admitting that the Tibetans were perfectly
right to prevent him from going further. He was convinced that their policy of iso-
lation would be the only possibility to preserve their country from destruction. All
around Tibet, Europeans had attempted to conquer its neighbouring countries or
had succeeded to make them subject to themselves. Now in China the same pro-
cess had begun. Tibet had remained the only country in Asia to maintain its inde-
pendence.
‘Reh! reh!’ they answered, ‘that is precisely how we wish it to remain! We are very sorry
for you that you cannot go to Lassa, but we must obey orders. So far as we are con-
cerned, we should have been far better pleased if we had been ordered to accompany
you to Lassa, and there show you all there is to be seen.’18
Consequently, the Younghusband invasion in 1903–4 led to the first open quarrel
between Hedin and his British friends.19 He wrote a sharp article for the influential
Berlin weekly Die Woche and defended the rights of all small nations. The British
campaign in Tibet provided new evidence of the imperial ruthlessness that charac-
terised the new geopolitical endeavours of the time. “I was”, Hedin continued, “the
last European, who tried to reach Lhasa in a peaceful way and perhaps the last who
has seen a virgin Tibet, untouched by Europeans, the last hermit state”. He praised
the Tibetans as a peaceful, gentle and kind-hearted people. Their country would be
the last natural fortress with nearly unconquerable walls. No other country on earth
would be more destined by nature for isolation. Only Tibet’s geographical situation
would have protected its inhabitants from the Europeans until 1904.20
As a result of the invasion, the halo and magic of the unknown that had for so
long attracted adventurers to the mysterious land of Tibet, would dissipate to a
great extent. He was the last traveller who penetrated the land of snow trusting
alone to his own resources. Hedin confessed that during the British invasion his
sympathies had been entirely on the side of the Tibetans, “not for any political rea-
son, but because I am a lover of freedom”.21 Soon after Younghusband and his
troops had entered Lhasa, Lord Curzon, the British Viceroy of India, sent a letter
to Hedin apologising for having destroyed “the virginity of the bride to whom you
aspired”. Lord Curzon hoped, “in the interests of the world”, that the Hedin as a
great explorer and scientist would perform one last great journey to Tibet before
17 Ibidem, p. 384.
18 Ibidem, p. 456.
19 The British army officer Francis Younghusband (1863–1942) led a British expedition to Ti-
bet that in fact turned into an invasion of the country.
20 Sven Hedin, “Der englische Angriff auf Tibet”, Die Woche (18 June 1904), pp. 1081–87.
21 Idem, Adventures in Tibet (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1904), p. VII.
settling down.22 However, the British conduct in Tibet was sufficient reason for
Hedin to lose all interest in reaching Lhasa. The longing he had in 1901 to pene-
trate the Holy City in disguise was completely gone and the charm of the unknown
had passed away when a “whole corps of officers, and thousands of Tommy At-
kinses, had been with Younghusband and General Macdonald” to invade Tibet.23
Although Hedin was not able to enter Lhasa, during his next trip, the Trans-
Himalaya expedition, he succeeded reaching Tashi Lhunpo, the Shigatse residence
of the Tashi Lama or Panchen Lama where he stayed for forty days. The most holy
man of Tibet received him as a friend and opened him the doors of all sanctuaries.
Hedin spoke enthusiastically about their meeting. No other person would have im-
pressed him in such a way:
Wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten Tashi Lama! Never has any man made so deep and
ineffaceable impression on me. Not as a divinity in human form, but as a man, who in
goodness of heart, innocence, and purity approaches as near as possible to perfection. I
shall never forget his expression: it displayed unbounded kindness, humility, and philan-
thropy; and I have never seen such a smile, a mouth so delicately formed, so noble a
countenance. That smile I shall always remember, as long as live, as the most wonderful
man I have seen. All my impressions of Tibet and Brahmaputra are nothing compared
to it.24
This friendship proved of great value during Hedin’s last expedition 25 years later,
when a reference to the Panchen Lama sufficed to remove all difficulties.25
Sven Hedin and Germany
Hartmut Walravens has already mentioned in this volume that Hedin became the
“object of heated discussions due to his uncritical support of Germany – to a de-
gree that his scientific achievements were almost disregarded”.26 Therefore I will
not discuss this subject and simply concentrate on reasons why Hedin adhered so
faithfully to Germany and why he was so popular in that country. German diplo-
mat Wipert von Blücher (1883–1963), of the German delegation to Stockholm
since 1922, described in his memories Hedin’s relationship with Germany as quite
unique:
22 Idem, Große Männer, denen ich begegnete (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus 1952), p. 254.
23 Idem, My Life as an Explorer (New York: Garden City Pub., 1925), pp. 418–19. General
James Macdonald (1862–1927) was the leader of the British troops. “Tommy” or “Tommy
Atkins” was a common name for soldiers of the British army in Sweden and in Germany.
24 Sven Hedin, Trans-Himalaya, pp. 324–25.
25 Gösta Montell, “Sven Hedin the Explorer”, Ethnos 30 (1965), p. 17.
26 See the article of Hartmut Walravens on “Sven Hedin and German Scholars. The Cases of
Wilhelm A. Unkrig and Ferdinand Lessing”, p. 203.
Although a good Swedish patriot who honoured his fatherland above all else, he had
developed an exceptional affection for Germany. He never forgot that he had been a
student of Ferdinand v. Richthofen and owed a debt of thanks to German geographical
science. The constancy of Hedin’s love of Germany was a leitmotif throughout the 87-
year life of this sincere, powerful character, from his student years to old age. (…) He-
din’s love of Germany was completely independent of any regime currently in power.
He visited Kaiser Wilhelm II in Doorn, but also Adolf Hitler in the Reich Chancellery,
and used his connections to prominent personalities in the Third Reich to assist in-
terned prisoners and win Finland’s support during the Winter War.27
Ferdinand Lessing (1882–1961), emigrant to the United States in 1938, thought

equally of Hedin’s unbound admiration for Germany. The German Sinologist and
Mongolist had accompanied Hedin in the Sino-Swedish expedition in North China
and Mongolia at the beginning of the 1930s and knew him well. Hedin dreamed the
dream of a strong German axis from the North Cape to the Adriatic Sea, “strong
enough to counteract the pressure of the East and West against the heart of Eu-
rope”. After England joined the “Franco-Slavic block”, the heart of his Swedish
friend would have become “sad and bitter”.28 Hedin likely suspected a conspiracy
and therefore sided openly with the German Reich at the outbreak of World War I
in 1914. Lessing continues:
That attitude cost him immediately more than half of his popularity, in Sweden and
abroad. Traitor, German spy, bootlicker of the Hohenzollern, were some of the epi-
thets hurled at him. Feelings ran high, especially in England. His name, which had been
inscribed in golden letters on a marble slab in the Royal Geographical Society, was
erased, his books banned, his articles ignored, his decorations withdrawn. But no adver-
sity could shake his determined convictions, not even Germany’s total defeat in 1918.29
This did not change Hedin’s views, quite the contrary. For him his support of
Germany was a matter of principle, not of expediency. Against the “Slavic men-
ace”, any help from abroad was to be welcomed. For Lessing it was small wonder
that Hedin “fell an easy prey” to the foul propaganda and bombastic promises
when “Hitler and his gang” seized power.30 On the personal level, Lessing de-
scribed Hedin’s engaging manner and art of treating people as one of his outstand-
ing character traits. “No less admirable is his iron will, conquering all difficulties
27 Wipert von Blücher, Am Rande der Weltgeschichte: Marokko – Schweden – Argentinien (Wiesba-
den: Limes, 1958), p. 120.
28 “My friend Sven Hedin. An unfinished portrait. Paper read before the Berkely Club on May
21, 1953” by Ferdinand Lessing, quoted from Hartmut Walravens, Ferdinand Lessing (1882–
1961). Sinologe, Mongolist und Kenner des Lamaismus. Materialien zu Leben und Werk, mit dem Brief-
wechsel mit Sven Hedin (Melle: Wagener Edition, 2006), p. 423.
29 Ibidem, p. 423.
30 Ibidem.
and losing none of its force even when eye to eye with deathly thirst.”31 However,
the negative side of Hedin’s iron will was his inability to change his position if nec-
essary as it was the case with his philo-German inclination.
Among the Germans Hedin revered most was his teacher at the University of
Berlin, geographer and traveller Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833–1905). Hedin
held an extensive correspondence with Richthofen and kept his letters sent to vari-
ous places in Asia and to his home in Stockholm as one of the “most precious
treasures” of his archive.32 Apart from his closest family, nobody made a deeper
impression or had a greater influence on him than Ferdinand von Richthofen. In
his view, the Berlin professor was the leading figure and most outstanding expo-
nent of geography that ever lived. Hedin spoke highly of von Richthofen, praising
his “exquisite features of distinction and righteousness that are so seldom bestowed
on humanity”.33
Another central person for Hedin in Germany was his congenial main publish-
er, Albert Brockhaus (1855–1921), with whom he maintained a close personal
friendship until Brockhaus’ death in 1921. Hedin’s correspondence with the Leipzig
publisher consisted of about 1900 letters.34 Brockhaus cared for everything and had
a particular interest in Buddhism. However, he was sometimes concerned that He-
din’s suggestions for titles were too prosaic and that he should show more emo-
tions and reflections in his books.35 Hedin promised to change for the better and
that his book Central Asia and Tibet would become an “apotheosis of the geography
of exploration”.36 From his remarks when writing the popular book Adventures in
Tibet that it would contain “no geography, no science, no numbers, names or tedi-
ous descriptions, only thrilling adventures from the beginning to the end,”37 one
could conclude how he estimated his original travel books.
When dealing with Tibetan Buddhism, Hedin, lacking knowledge, modestly re-
stricted himself to simple descriptions.38 He only mentioned the images of gods and
goddesses he has seen himself, regardless of their importance in Tibetan Buddhism.
31 Ferdinand Lessing, “Sven Hedin als Forscher und Mensch”, Ostasiatische Rundschau 16 (1935),
p. 103.
32 Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland (Leipzig: Brockhaus 1938), p. 43. See also Ferdinand Freiherr von
Richthofen, Meister und Schüler: Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen an Sven Hedin (Berlin: Reimer,
1933).
33 “Only when these properties grace a person already in possession of rich talents in other
areas can we speak of true greatness. Among all the great men I have met during my pro-
gress through life, none has been greater in this respect than Richthofen, whom I remember
in reverence, admiration and gratitude.” Sven Hedin, Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, p. 56; transla-
tion mine.
34 Ibidem, p. 105.
35 Ibidem, pp. 42, 101.“The more personal the author, the greater his success.” Ibidem, p. 21.
36 Ibidem, p. 28.
37 Ibidem, p. 54.
38 Ibidem, p. 88.
Hedin’s fifty books published at Brockhaus Leipzig were bestsellers in many edi-
tions: for example the two volume work on world geography for young people
From Pole to Pole in 1944 (83 editions), The Wandering Lake in 1945 (13 editions),
Trans-Himalaya in 1923 (eight editions), Adventures in Tibet in 1924 (17 editions), My
Life as Explorer in 1942 (seven editions), The Silk Road in 1942 (10 editions), Across
the Gobi Desert in 1942 (13 editions). Hedin’s most successful publications were not
those on Asia, however, but his political books during World War I, which sold
1,029,339 copies altogether.39 The book Ein Volk in Waffen sold in more than
600,000 copies.40 When Hedin travelled to Munich in 1943 to attend the official
opening of the Sven Hedin Institute, his prestige in Germany was at its peak. His
books continued to be bestsellers and brought in such sums that his royalties from
Germany were the highest ever for Brockhaus.41
From a financial point of view, the German editions had always the greatest
significance for Hedin. However, while many believed that he earned a fortune
from them, much of the revenues he received from Leipzig over the years were
swallowed up by his expeditions, the money “scattered in the tracks of caravans
through the deserts of Asia and the mountains of Tibet”.42 They also paid for the
expensive publication of his scientific works such as the Scientific Results of a Journey
in Central Asia 1899–1902 and Southern Tibet. In any case, the earnings from the
German editions of his works constituted Hedin’s only regular income. Without
this, his financial situation would have been precarious.43
Of course, Hedin’s fame did not originate from his scientific books and writing
on an exploration history of Tibet, but because he was able to make explorations
exciting and turn his experiences in Central Asia into adventure stories. In like
manner, the Younghusband expedition in Lhasa at the beginning of the twentieth
century helped raise the interest in the publications of Hedin on Tibet.44 Hedin re-
garded his popular books not simply as by-products. He wished that as many peo-
ple as possible would have the chance to participate in his expeditions. However, in
so doing they would get to know the scientific aspects of his explorations as well.
Few have been able to give geography a popular appeal in the way Hedin with his
books and public lectures. The Swedish explorer was also a master of public rela-
tions. His lecture tours were always a great success and attracted the masses. In
1935, on his return from an international expedition to China, Hedin needed a con-
39 Brockhaus giving for once an exact number, in Hedin und Brockhaus, Eine Freundschaft, p.
311.
40 Hedin, Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, p. 104. To the joy of his parents, Hedin donated the entire
revenues from Ein Volk in Waffen to the Red Cross in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Tur-
key.
41 According to Hedin’s diary, 9 July 1943; see also George Kish, To the Heart of Asia: The Life of
Sven Hedin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), p. 138.
42 Ibidem, pp. 106–7.
43 Ibidem.
44 Hedin und Brockhaus, Eine Freundschaft, p. 52.
siderable sum to process his vast material consisting of collections and notes accu-
mulated over several years in Asia.45 He accepted an offer of a longer lecture tour
to speak about the activities and adventures of the 1927–35 expedition. He had
toured throughout Germany several times before, and had always been extraordi-
narily popular as a public speaker. For example, when he was to present a public
lecture in Leipzig during a festival in September 1922 about the Tibet plateau and
its inhabitants, there were such crowds of interested people that the chairman of
the day, Nobel laureate Fritz Haber, regretted that the hall with its 2,000 seats was
far too small. Thus Hedin agreed to repeat his lecture in the afternoon of the same
day.46 His talks, given in concert halls and large auditoriums, attracted thousands of
listeners, and his fees were usually very high. He noted in his diary that on the tour
from October 1935 until April 1936, he gave 130 public lectures in ninety-one cities
in Germany. The tour was impressive by any standards, but Hedin was seventy
years old at the time. Hedin described this tour to his attorney and friend Eric
Wennerholm even more strenuous than his marches across the desert. “I felt like a
circus horse”, he wrote. But those marches cost money. The lectures provided in-
dispensable funds.47
Although Hedin was so popular in Germany, rumours circulated already in the
1920s that the famous Swedish explorer would have had Jewish blood in his veins.
This becomes evident from a letter from German explorer Wilhelm Filchner
(1877–1955) to Hedin in which Filchner asked Hedin tactfully whether he might
adhere to the Mosaic religion and whether his father would have been a rabbi. Im-
mediately after Hedin’s response, Filchner informed his influential informant that
Hedin was a Lutheran Protestant with a Swedish architect as father and the person-
al physician of King Gustav III as grandfather. Moreover, Filchner requested the
anonymous “Geheimrat” to use his influence to stop the rumours about Hedin’s
Jewish ancestry and correct them.48 Hedin himself referred to his Nordic back-
ground and thought himself to be a descendant of the Vikings. “It was the ancient
Viking blood that was stirring in me” he wrote as reason why he was participating
in the race for Lhasa.49
Hedin’s influence on the German youth was immense. No wonder he became
the admired idol for a generation of future explorers. This was the case with Hein-
rich Harrer as well as with Peter Aufschnaiter, who wrote to Sven Hedin that one
of the first books he ever read as a school boy at the gymnasium was Hedin’s ac-
45 Kish, To the Heart of Asia, p. 126

46 Hedin, Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, p. 110.
47 Eric Wennerholm, Sven Hedin (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1978), p. 206.
48 The letter of Filchner to the unnamed “Geheimrat” from 17 November 1924 is to be found
in the Swedish Riksarkivet in Stockholm, Sven Hedins arkiv, korrespondens, box 460.
49 Sven Hedin, Adventures in Tibet, p. 348.
count of his travel to the Himalayas in 1905–08.50 According to Heinrich Harrer,

Hedin was not stingy with his experiences and findings. Hedin generously provided
support and advice to young researchers who wanted to combine adventure with
scientific work. He never refused to supply a foreword with his world-famous
name for the travel reports of members of his expeditions, spurring them on to
new ventures with his recognition.51 Among them we find the names of Nils Am-
bolt, Wilhelm Filchner, Henning Haslund-Christensen, Albert Hermann, Wilhelm-
Karl Herrmann, Gösta Montell and Herbert Tichy.52
Ernst Schäfer and His Third Expedition to Tibet in 1938–3953
Apart from this group of explorers-in-the-making, there was a school boy who
wanted to become an explorer as well, but who had never actually read the books
of Sven Hedin, only having heard via school friends of his explorations. This was
Ernst Schäfer (1910–92), who was only interested in being outdoor after school
and watching wildlife, and had restricted his reading to Brehms Tierleben, a famous
ten-volume zoological encyclopaedia on the life of animals. Schäfer could not imag-
ine that he would accomplish in 1938–39 what Hedin had failed to do: to reach the
Tibetan capital Lhasa and to enter the Potala Palace.
Schäfer had already interrupted his studies in zoology twice to join two Ameri-
can scientific expeditions to Western China and Tibet organised by Brooke Dolan
(1908–45) from 1930–32 and 1934–36. Apparently for the promotion of his aca-
demic career, Schäfer entered the SS in 1934. After his return to Germany from
Asia, Schäfer continued his studies at the University of Berlin, where he received
his doctoral degree in zoology in 1937. Meanwhile the success of Schäfer’s journeys
to Tibet had attracted the attention of Heinrich Himmler. Probably the popularity
of Hedin’s books on Tibet had created a favourable climate from which the interest
of the Reichführer SS emerged. When Himmler heard about Schäfer’s plans to lead
yet another expedition to the Himalayas, he was immediately keen on launching
this expedition under the auspices of the SS Ahnenerbe, the intellectual brain trust
50 Brauen, Peter Aufschnaiter’s Eight Years in Tibet, p. 87. The first German edition of Hedin’s
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet appeared in 1909; many others followed.
51 [Sven Hedin] Reisen mit Sven Hedin. Mit einem Vorwort von Heinrich Harrer (Wiesbaden:
Brockhaus 1968), p. 10.
52 Willy Hess, Die Werke Sven Hedins: Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses (Stockholm:
Sven Hedin Stiftelse 1962), pp. 68–72.
53 For more details on the expedition, see Isrun Engelhardt, “Tibetan Triangle: German, Tibet-
an and British Relations in the Context of Ernst Schäfer’s Expedition, 1938–1939”, Asiatische
Studien/Études Asiatiques 58 (2004), pp. 57–113, eadem, ed., Tibet in 1938–1939: Photographs
from the Ernst Schäfer Expedition to Tibet (Chicago: Serindia, 2007) and eadem, “Nazis of Tibet:
A Twentieth Century Myth”, in Monica Esposito, ed., Images of Tibet in the 19th and 20th Cen-
turies (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2008), pp. 63–96.
of the SS. Himmler, who was fascinated by somewhat lurid, fantastic ideas of Asian
mysticism, wanted Schäfer to conduct research on the pseudoscientific “World Ice
Theory” of the Austrian inventor and engineer Hans Hörbiger (1860–1931) as well.
As a natural scientist, Schäfer had more serious purposes in mind. The primary ob-
jective of his research was to create a complete scientific record of Tibet, through a
synthesis of geology, botany, zoology and ethnology. Finally “the task of the expe-
dition has diverged too far from the targets of the Reichsführer-SS and does not
serve his ideas of cultural studies”. Thus, in the end, the expedition was not spon-
sored by the SS or the Ahnenerbe of the SS.54 However, Schäfer needed the politi-
cal support from the Ahnenerbe and Himmler for his work. Schäfer actually raised
the funds for the expedition himself, albeit with the support of the Ahnenerbe. On-
ly part of the flight back to Germany was sponsored by the “Freundeskreis
Reichsführer SS”, Himmler’s circle of friends of the economy.
The expedition undertaken from 1938–39 comprised four scientists and a
technical caravan leader. All had to be members of the SS. Although planned by its
members as a purely scientific venture similar to the earlier US Tibet expeditions in
which Schäfer had participated, the “Deutsche Tibet-Expedition Ernst Schäfer” actu-
ally became involved in the conflict between politics and science from the very start
of its planning stage. Heinrich Himmler and the Ahnenerbe wanted to influence and
determine the venture from a political, esoteric and pseudo-scientific viewpoint. It
was little wonder that the expedition became part of foreign-political dispute when
official permits were required from the British. National Socialist foreign policy and
propaganda damaged the goals of the expedition and created enormous obstacles for
its accomplishment. However, the political attention and fear of the British authorities
stood in inverse proportion to its size and scientific objectives.
Although the Tibetan government refused entry to the expedition several
times, some months later Schäfer and his crew were admitted to Lhasa as the first
Germans, where they were allowed to stay a full two months. The members of the
expedition established official contact with the Kashag ministers and the Reting
Regent as well as friendly relations with many aristocratic families. Similar to Hedin,
Lhasa was originally not the goal of Schäfer. Given the myths surrounding the ex-
pedition’s alleged secret political aims and the unfounded speculation about politi-
cal negotiations between the Tibetan government and Schäfer even in recent aca-
demic publications, it is best to focus on the contact with the Reting Regent, and
probably the most famous outcome of the expedition, the letter from the Regent to
Adolf Hitler. Schäfer convinced the Regent to write a letter to the Chancellor of the
German Reich to present an official success at home. The Reting Regent had little
idea of who Hitler really was. Despite the fact that many goods from Europe and
54 Sievers to Wolff, Chef des Persönlichen Stabes RFFS, on 23 January 1938 and Galke, Per-
sönlicher Stab RFFS, Abt. Wirtschaftliche Hilfe, to Wolff on 27 May 1938, Federal Archives
Berlin, NS 21/682.
Germany were available in the Lhasa market, knowledge about Germany was nearly
non-existent. The letter reads in the official accompanying English translation:
To his Majesty Fuhrer Adolph Hitler, Berlin,

Germany.
From
The Regent of Tibet.
On the 18th day of the first month of Sand-Hare Year.
Your Majesty,
I trust your Highness is in best of health and in every progress with your goodly affairs.
Here I am well and doing my best in our religious and Government affairs.
I have the pleasure to let Your Majesty know that Dr. Schaefer and his party, who are
the first Germans to visit Tibet have been permitted without any objection, and every
necessary assist is rendered on their arrival. Further, I am in desirous to do anything
that will help to improve the friendly tie of relationship between the two Nations, and I
trust your Majesty will also consider it essential as before.
Please take care of Your good self, and let me know if Your Majesty desire anything.
I am sending under separate parcel a Tibetan silver lid and saucer with a red designed
tea cup, and a native dog as a small remembrance.
Sincerely Yours,
Reding Ho-Thok-Thu.55
While this letter is not more than an example of the noncommittal polite corre-
spondence typical of Tibet, it gave rise to much speculation. Forty years later the
German translation of the Tibetan original by the tibetologist Johannes Schubert
(1896–1978) from 1942 was published in 1995.56 Schubert probably thought it ad-
vantageous to translate this letter in a Nazi style and may thus have falsified the
translation deliberately to flatter Hitler. But his translation is simply wrong in many
regards. Since then, Schubert’s translation has been used to demonstrate Tibetan
sympathy for National Socialist racism and to ascribe an uncritical friendship to-
ward the Nazis.57 It had taken three years after his return from Asia for Schäfer to
eventually succeed in presenting the letter from the Tibetan Regent to Hitler at the
Führer’s Headquarters, but not personally, only via Hitler’s assistants, on 14 May
1942. Hitler was quite disappointed and was unable to grasp the significance of the
gifts he received from the Tibetan Regent. Nor was he impressed by the accompa-
nying letter. Therefore he only ordered its German translation. According to the
table talks recorded by Henry Picker, Hitler said on 21 May 1942 that in his youth
55 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. tibet. 535, 7 March 1939

56 Reinhard Greve, “Tibetforschung im SS-Ahnenerbe”, in Thomas Hauschild, ed., Lebenslust
und Fremdenfurcht (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1995), pp. 175-76.
57 On the Reting letter to Hitler see Isrun Engelhardt, “Mishandled Mail: The Strange Case of
the Reting Regent’s Letters to Hitler”, Zentralasiatische Studien 37 (2008), pp. 77–106.
the figure of Sven Hedin interested him very much,58 so he must at least have had
some vague knowledge of Tibet. One week earlier, Hitler was informed about
Schäfer’s expedition to Tibet and the film the expedition team made.59
Although the “Deutsche Tibet-Expedition Ernst Schäfer” was highly successful
in collecting an amazing amount of material about Tibet and a unique ethnograph-
ical collection of Tibetan everyday culture that continues to be of great value until
today, its outcome proved anti-climactic as some weeks after the return of its
members, World War II broke out. While Schäfer was able to establish an Institute
for Inner-Asian Research, Himmler did not allow him to publish his material or to
show the film “Geheimnis Tibet” for three years. Despite Schäfer’s attempt to win
the best scholars for his institute, the results of its work were rather modest to say
the least. Instead of working with the expedition material, its staff was kept busy
with other tasks, for example with research for Himmler’s ideas, or were required
to serve in the army. Only the tibetologist Helmut Hoffmann (1912–92), who re-
mained in Berlin nearly until the end of the war, was able to continue with his phil-
ological research and got, with the permission of Himmler, the opportunity to visit
the famous Italian tibetologist Guiseppe Tucci (1894–1984) in Rome.
The Relationship between Ernst Schäfer and Sven Hedin
Today it is not easy to say something about the relationship between the famous
old explorer, who unsuccessfully tried to reach Lhasa, and the young one who did
reach it. The two met first in October 1940, although, according to their memoires,
the beginning seemed not very promising and they did not like each other at first
glance. When Schäfer was introduced to Hedin, the Swede remained cool and re-
served. However, through the intervention of Hedin’s old friend, the princess Elis-
abeth Fugger, the ice was melting. When Hedin visited Schäfer in Munich in No-
vember 1942, he wrote in his diary:
After lunch we drove to Dr. Schäfer’s Research Institute, where he showed us a small
but very fine collection of ritual objects from Tibet and after that a series of highly suc-
cessful colour photographs of Lhasa and a technically excellent moving film of Tashi-
lunpo and other temples showing processions and ceremonies of the Tibetan Lamas
and the ever picturesque temple services with their drums, trumpets and flutes and their
impenetrable mystery. Dr. Schäfer gave an explanatory lecture by way of commentary
on the pictures.60
58 Henry Picker, Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (München: Propyläen, 2003, 1st ed. 1951), p.
460, entry on 21 May 1942.
59 The entry from 14 May 1942 reads: “At lunch, the boss was told about the film about Tibet
made by the SS Schäfer expedition. The boss said that if anyone would try to criticise a Ti-
betan priest, the whole of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church too would scream
blue murder.” Picker, Tischgespräche, p. 421; translation mine.
Hedin was asked by Himmler “to show as much interest in his young protégé as I
felt he deserved, which I promised all the more readily as I was very interested my-
self in hearing what he had found”.61 Schäfer saw himself as designated successor
of the great Swedish explorer who ought to continue his legacy. In April 1942,
Schäfer visited Hedin in Stockholm to win his support for a Reich Institute for the
Exploration of Central Asia to be established at the University of Munich.62 Ac-
cording to his diary, Hedin initially objected that the institute should bear his name.
But then he was told that a refusal could be misunderstood as a slight against the
authorities who had approved the plan. Therefore, the only remaining possibility
for Hedin would have been to comply and to await the foundation of the institute
next year.63
The official opening of the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research
(Sven Hedin Institut für Innerasienforschung) eventually took place on 16 January
1943 in Munich. Walther Wüst (1901–93), the head of the Ahnenerbe and rector of
the University of Munich, worked to make sure that the opening was a great event.
Hedin was amazed that such a grandiose ceremony could happen amidst the war.64
On that occasion, Schäfer’s Tibet film – lensed by the camera operator Ernst
Krause more correctly – Geheimnis Tibet was shown in public for the first time. He-
din was deeply impressed by the presentation and wrote to Schäfer immediately
afterwards: “I can still see your masterful film on Tibet in my mind’s eye; Mr Krau-
se’s achievement was outstanding, and your countrymen and others can gain such a
clear picture of the people and fauna, the landscapes and temples in my beloved
Tibet.”65
Although the long-standing correspondence between Hedin and Schäfer in the
Swedish National Archive, dating from 1940–51 and spanning 88 letters,66 is rela-
tively comprehensive, it contains little reference to scientific discussion or partner-
ship – perhaps owing to the situation during the war and post-war period. Howev-
er, it provides some new insights concerning the results of Schäfer’s expedition to
Tibet, such as 2,000 successful colour photographs by Ernst Krause and the draft
of an expedition report encompassing over 2,000 pages (letters from 11 December
1940 and 3 June 1943). In his letters, Schäfer described extensive plans for the pub-
60 Sven Hedin, German Diary 1935–1942 (Dublin: Euphorion Books, 1951), pp. 113–14.
61 Ibidem, p. 122.
62 W. Wolff to Sven Hedin on 6 June 1942, Federal Archives Berlin, NS 21/330.
63 Hedin, German Diary, p. 233.
64 The “470jährige Jubiläumsfeier der Universität München” is described in Maximilian Schrei-
ber, Walther Wüst: Dekan und Rektor der Universität München 1935–1945 (München: Herbert
Utz, 2008), pp. 266–77.
65 Sven Hedin to Ernst Schäfer on 19 February 1943, Swedish Riksarkivet Stockholm, Sven
Hedins arkiv, korrespondens, box 496.
66 Swedish Riksarkivet Stockholm, Sven Hedins arkiv, korrespondens, box 496, 88 letters be-
tween Sven Hedin and Ernst Schäfer, from 26 August 1940 until 26 December 1951, last let-
ter from Sven Hedin.
lication of general travel descriptions of Sikkim, southern Tibet, Lhasa and Yar-
lung-Podrang to complement a seven-volume edition of the scientific findings of
the edition (20 November 1940), none of which would come to fruition. It is also
interesting to find that conditions at the Sven Hedin Institute, after its relocation to
Mittersill Castle from Munich to evade bombing attacks, were quite uncomfortable
and inconvenient, lacking running water, electric light and heating (letter from 20
October 1943). The correspondence also reveals that Schäfer increasingly came to
value Hedin as a father figure, asking for advice on many occasions and requesting
his intercession even when this proved to overtax Hedin. Hedin always delivered
patient and detailed replies, however.
After World War II, Hedin made great efforts to support Schäfer’s rehabilita-
tion in his de-Nazification hearings. With the assistance of his sister, Hedin provid-
ed the Schäfer family with urgently needed food (7 October 1948), as he did in
numerous other cases. This was not easy for Hedin, since his own financial situa-
tion was rather strained in that time resulting from a US ban on his books.67 Vice
versa, Schäfer delighted Hedin with the news that in a recent survey of students
asked which books they would take with them in case of an emergency, the majori-
ty specified the travel works of Hedin (23 August 1948). On 19 July and 28 August
1950, Schäfer took the opportunity to dedicate with “gratitude and reverence” a
book of his own to Hedin. The relationship between Hedin and Schäfer found an
appropriate expression in their correspondence over the years and political circum-
stances.
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The Use of Theories of Religion
in Contemporary Asatru
Stefanie v. Schnurbein
Between Völkisch Intuition and Academic Reconstruction
In the 1970s, small religious groups emerged in North-Western Europe and North
America, expressing faith and belief in “Germanic” deities, such as Odin, Thor, and
Freya, as they are described in medieval Icelandic sources.1 These neo-Germanic
Pagan, Asatru, or heathen groups2 were direct successors of the völkisch3 religious
movement of the early twentieth century and formed a link between right-wing ex-
tremist ideology and contemporary alternative movements.4 Their attitude towards
academic scholarship was rather ambivalent. On the one hand, they favoured an
1 Two Icelandic texts recorded in the thirteenth century and referred to as Edda stand in the
foreground. The so-called Snorra or Prose Edda is a prose work relating pre-Christian
myths, which was given its title by the author, the thirteenth-century cleric, politician and
scholar Snorri Sturluson. The so-called Elder or Poetic Edda refers to a collection of myths
and heroic poetry on which it was initially thought Snorri based his accounts.
2 The question of terminology is unresolved both within the “scene” and outside. Neo-Ger-
manic Paganism or Germanic neo-Paganism are terms used by scholars investigating the
phenomenon, whereas Germanic Paganism, heathenism and Asatru are contested terms
within the community. For the purpose of this paper, I am going to use the terms inter-
changeably.
3 The term völkisch refers to a specific German form of ethnic nationalism. The völkisch ideolo-
gy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century fused nationalism, cultural pessimism,
antisemitism, racial ideology, anti-materialism and anti-liberalism with a general romanticised
enthusiasm for anything “Germanic”, forging it into a heterogeneous conglomerate of
worldviews. Cf. Uwe Puschner, Die Völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Deutschland: Sprache –
Rasse – Religion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001) and Stefan Breuer, Die
Völkischen in Deutschland: Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 2008).
4 This was the central thesis of my dissertation which was based on extensive fieldwork con-
ducted in the 1980s. Cf. Stefanie v. Schnurbein, Religion als Kulturkritik: Neugermanisches Hei-
dentum im 20. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Winter, 1992) and Göttertrost in Wendezeiten: Neugermani-
sches Heidentum zwischen New Age und Rechtsradikalismus (Munich: Claudius, 1993). Amongst
others, the German Armanen-Orden as well as the Deutschgläubige Gemeinschaft and Artgemein-
schaft belonged to this spectrum of neo-Germanic Paganism, as well as the British Odinic-Rite,
the American Asatru Free Assembly, and a small, but internationally active faction of the Ice-
landic Ásatrúarfélagið.
226 Stefanie v. Schnurbein
intuitive, inspirational approach, yet they also used scholarship (mainly of a völkisch
and National Socialist kind) to justify their own religious convictions.5
However, in the 1990s, the neo-Germanic Pagan movement started diversify-
ing and distancing itself from the racial esotericism of its earlier years. Some of the
earliest attempts at such demarcation are easily recognisable as strategies for hiding
racialist agendas from the public eye. Nevertheless, more recently, Asatruers are
increasingly speaking out against Aryan ideologies, neo-Nazism, racial ideologies
and cultural exclusionisms within their own movement.6 During this time, Asatru
expanded and the constitution of its adherents as well as the presentation of its ide-
as and beliefs changed fundamentally. There is now a clearer split between overt
racist, white supremacist groups, which use the belief in Odin and Thor as an ex-
pression of their political ideologies,7 and other Asatru groups, which quite credibly
reject this blend of politics and religion. Within the latter groups, there are a few
people who personally espouse right-wing sentiments, and a handful of individuals
who are involved with ultra-conservative or right-wing extremist organisations. The
majority despises this type of racial thinking and tries to find “apolitical” ways of
living their faith. There is also an active minority, which takes political stances
against right-wing tendencies within Asatru. In the course of these changes, the at-
titude towards scholarly work on (Germanic) religion has altered as well. The “apo-
litical” Asatruers, in particular, attach much more importance to basing their reli-
gious convictions and practices on current academic work on pre-Christian Nordic
myth and religion, which is available in their respective countries. The first names
mentioned in these contexts are popularising and summarising works by estab-
lished scholars who cater to a book market on which history – especially medieval
and pre-history – sells.8 Such references to scholarship serve as an effective, alt-
5 For a discussion of exchanges between völkisch scholarship and neo-Germanic religion from
the 1920s to’40s, see Stefanie v. Schnurbein, “Nordisten und Nordglaube: Wechselwirkun-
gen zwischen akademischen und religiösen Konzepten von germanischer Religion”, in Jürg
Glauser et al., eds., Germanentum im Fin de siècle: Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien zum Werk An-
dreas Heuslers (Basel: Schwabe 2005), pp. 309–25.
6 Important new groups which belong, more or less, to this “anti-racist” faction are for exam-
ple the American Troth, Norwegian Bifrost and Foreningen Forn Sed, Swedish Sveriges Asa-
trosamfund (later Samfundet Forn Sed), Danish Forn Sidr and German Eldaring, Nornirs Ætt and
Verein für germanisches Heidentum (VfgH).
7 For an in-depth study of North American white supremacist Odinism, see Mattias Gardell,
Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham and London: Duke Universi-
ty Press, 2003).
8 In Germany, Rudolf Simek’s popular books, notably, Religion und Mythologie der Germanen
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), together with Bernhard Maier, Die
Religion der Germanen: Götter, Mythen, Weltbild (Munich: Beck, 2003). In Norway and Sweden,
Gro Steinsland, Norrøn religion: Myter, riter, samfunn (Oslo: Pax, 2005) and Britt-Mari
Näsström, Blot: Tro och offer i det förkristna Norden (Stockholm: Norstedt, 2002) are frequently
referred to, whereas English-speaking Asatruers fall back on the relevant classics by Gabriel
Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964) and
Theories of Religion in Contemporary Asatru 227
hough not quite watertight, strategy of immunisation against racial esotericism and
right-wing extremist ideology, both within the groups and regarding the image they
are projecting.
Can we consequently exonerate Asatru as a whole and consider its previous ties
to völkisch ideology, religion and scholarship as merely historical? The answer is
both yes and no – yes on the level of individual political convictions and group pol-
icies, partially no on the level of how these groups are using scholarship and aca-
demic theory. In the following, I would like to discuss this ambivalence with the
help of one example, the significance that contemporary Danish and German Asa-
tru groups assign to theories of religion, Christianity and monotheism.
Attitudes towards Christianity
Generally speaking, the concept of Paganism is built upon its inherent religious op-
position to Christianity. At the same time, many Asatruers today display a fairly re-
laxed or indifferent attitude towards their Christian surroundings and traditions.
We thus need to explore the explicit and implicit tensions between the anti-Chris-
tian foundations of Asatru and the lived faith of some of its adherents, as well as
their ideological and political significance. It is a tension that makes the topic of
anti-monotheism one of the most contested fields, at least in parts of European
Asatru.
An instructive example of how leading Asatruers conceptualise their own reli-
gion is a contribution listed under “basic articles” on the German Eldaring’s
homepage, which carries the programmatic title “What is heathenism?”9 Here, hea-
thenism is consistently defined in opposition to Christianity and its alleged simpli-
fied ethics of good and evil. Asatru appears as a religion of nature, based on experi-
ence and oral wisdom, as opposed to a religion in need of external revelation, blind
faith, priestly, authoritarian mediators, and codified texts; as a system which seeks
salvation in this world and not in the hereafter; as a faith valuing deeds higher than
abstract values, abrogating the artificial division between secular and spiritual and
rejecting the central Christian concept of original sin.
In accordance with earlier proponents of a “heroic” Germanic religion, the ar-
ticle finally invokes an implicitly Nietzschean framework and grants Christianity in
contemporary society a function for those with insufficient moral strength and will:
Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1964).
9 Kurt Oertel, “Was ist Heidentum? Wie kann man den Begriff verstehen”, http://www.elda
ring.de/readarticle.php?article_id=8, 2007 (last accessed 7 April 2011).
From this follows one of the reservations why the old heathen way is not suitable
for everybody: People who depend on others or some ‘holy scriptures’ to constant-
ly tell them what they ought to do, people who are not willing to take responsibility
for their own lives, people who are too weak to develop a persuasive ethic and an
individual character on their own, people who need a divine system of prohibitions,
e.g. in the form of the biblical Ten Commandments, in order to understand the
most natural things, for these people, the heathen way is indeed the wrong alterna-
tive.10
This article succinctly summarises some of the most widespread heathen attitudes
about the evils of Christianity and the benefits of a Pagan worldview. At the same
time, it demonstrates striking parallels between the concepts of religion within con-
temporary Asatru and the Germanic Faith or völkisch religion of the early twentieth
century.
While a majority of German völkisch religionists in the early twentieth century
adhered to a “purified” version of Protestantism, purged of its “Jewish”, universal-
ist elements and promoting an “Aryan Christ”, the neo-Pagan minority of the
German Faith Movement set itself apart by combining its antisemitism with a pro-
nouncedly anti-Christian stance as its guiding force and strongest motivation. Early
manifestos by Ernst Wachler and Ludwig Fahrenkrog,11 to mention just two, con-
structed their ideas for the “Future of the German Faith” as clear oppositions to
what they perceived as the central Christian (and Jewish) dogmas. Christianity ap-
peared as an authoritarian religion detached from the world, fixated on the hereaf-
ter, promoting a bleak, unnatural gospel of sin, repentance, punishment and the
need for redemption, and of the evilness of human nature and sexuality. The “Ary-
an” or “German” religion appears as a polar opposite to this life negating Christia-
nity: a religion celebrating (human) nature’s goodness, cultivating “a pure view of
nature, an affirmation of the world, a self-confident, high handed view of life and
custom”12 and the possibility, as well as the duty, of self-redemption through one’s
own (heroic) deeds.
At the same time, there is a decisive difference between such older German
Faith attitudes and the majority of contemporary Asatruers: Again, Wachler and
Fahrenkrog, among others, ultimately see the reason for the destructiveness of
Christianity – under whose influence the Germanic peoples “faith and myth, poetry
and morals, custom and law were annihilated or distorted and deprived of their cre-
10 Oertel, “Was ist Heidentum?”. All translations from German and Scandinavian languages
are my own.
11 Ernst Wachler, Über die Zukunft des deutschen Glaubens: Ein philosophischer Versuch (Freiberg: Th.
E. Hubricht, 1930, 1st edition 1900); Ludwig Fahrenkrog, “Germanentempel I”, Der Volkser-
zieher 6 (1907), pp. 42–3; idem, “Germanentempel II” and “Germanentempel III”, ibidem 6
(1908), pp. 41–2 and 10 (1908), pp. 77–8.
12 Wachler, Über die Zukunft des deutschen Glaubens, p. 16.
ative power”13 – in its foreignness, i.e. in its being based in a Semitic worldview,
which despises “natural differences” between races, classes, and the sexes.14 This is
a foundational antisemitism not many Asatruers would share today.
Polytheism versus Monotheism
The obvious parallels between Fahrenkrog’s, Wachler’s and other German Faith-
lers’ outlook on Christianity and anti-Christian attitudes held by contemporary Asa-
truers are not even necessarily proof that today’s heathens are directly influenced by
a German völkisch religion. Rather, they are reflections of a much broader critique
of Christianity originating in nineteenth century theories of language and myth,
which frequently distinguished between “Aryan” (today we would say Indo-
European) and “Semitic” languages, peoples, myths and religions.15 It is important
to note that the linguistic differences discovered in the early nineteenth century
were imbued from the beginning if not with racial, then with cultural connotations.
An instructive example for this type of research is the work by Ernest Renan
(1823-92). In the French political philosopher’s work, Judaism and its offshoots
appear as static, conformist (monotheistic), nomadic, intolerant and oppressive re-
ligions of revelation, whereas Aryan religion is painted as diverse (polytheistic), ra-
tional, immanent, modern, and formed by God-Men or Avatars. This distinction is
built on a climate-theoretical argument, which assigns all the negative traits of a
sterile and rootless monotheism to its origin in a nomadising desert culture (hence
the catchword “desert religion”), while the positive characteristics of Aryan poly-
theism are attributed to the climate favouring a fertile and cultivated nature.16
The distinction between a life-affirming polytheism or nature religion and a
life-denying, unnatural monotheism has been productive in many alternative reli-
gious contexts in the twentieth century. It has also been burdened by this anti-
Jewish heritage as well as criticised within and beyond the respective groups for its
overt or implied antisemitism.
Such (anti-Christian) anti-Judaism appears today as a less important facet of
neo-Paganism and anti-monotheism in general, and represents a minority position
within current Asatru as well. Nevertheless, the anti-Jewish connotations, which a
13 Ibidem, p. 7.
14 Cf. Wachler, Zukunft des deutschen Glaubens, p. 4.
15 For a critical discussion of such theories on Indo-European myth, see Stefan Arvidsson,
Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2006). Cf. also Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas
in Europe (New York: New American Library, 1974) and Maurice Olender, The Languages of
Paradise: Aryans and Semites. A Match Made in Heaven, 2nd revised and augmented edition (New
York: Other Press, 2002, 1st edition 1992).
16 Cf. Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, pp. 102–18.
more general critique of Christianity and monotheism is based on, have made the
issue of anti-monotheism one of the most controversial topics within Asatru in re-
cent years. This has to do with the considerable public attention the monotheistic
world religions and conflicts between them have received since the 1990s, when the
theory of a Clash of Civilisations was launched by Samuel Huntington,17 and even
more so since 9/11. At the same time, the thinking around the nature of monothe-
ism and polytheism is part of an attempt by Asatruers to conceptualise the speci-
ficity of their religion with help of current theories of religion. In the following, I
would like to use a few instructive examples from Denmark and Germany, where
the controversies have been most vivid, in order to tease out some more general
problems.
For many neo-Pagans the idea is that worshipping more than one god is an ex-
pression of and leads to diversity and tolerance, whereas monotheistic religions cre-
ate potentially totalitarian systems. This expresses an intuitive truth and serves as a
convincing proof of Paganism’s alliance with and suitability for modern democratic
and pluralistic societies. Although it has been exposed as a “myth of modernity”,
rather than a true statement about the politico-religious systems of Greek and Ro-
man antiquity for which “polytheism” was coined originally,18 the idea has devel-
oped a remarkable productivity. In early Renaissance thought, though, a “polythe-
ism of reason” was mobilised against “a militarily – and perhaps also theologically –
superior monotheism”, combining it with the call for a “pragmatic state reform”
directed against the “disagreements within the Christian churches”.19 Some enlight-
enment philosophers, for example David Hume, utilised this kind of critique of
church power and invoked polytheism as a guarantee for tolerance claiming
The intolerance of almost all religions, which have maintained the unity of God, is as
remarkable as the contrary principle of polytheists. The implacable narrow spirit of the
JEWS is well known. MAHOMETANISM set out with still more bloody principles;
and even to this day, deals out damnation, though not fire and faggot, to all other sects.
And if, among CHRISTIANS, the ENGLISH and DUTCH have embraced the princi-
ples of toleration, this singularity has proceeded from the steady resolutions of the civil
magistrate, in opposition to the continued efforts of priests and bigots.20
17 Cf. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
18 Joachim Losehand, “‘The Religious Harmony in the Ancient World’: Vom Mythos religiöser
Toleranz in der Antike,” Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 12 (2009), pp. 99–132.
19 Burkhard Gladigow, “Polytheismus und Monotheismus. Zur historischen Dynamik einer
europäischen Alternative”, in Manfred Krebernik et al., eds., Polytheismus und Monotheismus in
den Religionen des Vorderen Orients (Münster: Ugarit, 2002), pp. 3-21, quotation from p. 16.
20 David Hume, The Natural History of Religion. Edited with an introduction by H.E. Root (Lon-
don: Adam and Charles Black, 1956), p. 50.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, German Romanticism revisited the
“rediscovery of polytheism”21 debate and was combined with a cult of the genius
artist who was the only one capable of compensating for the loss of gods and the
disenchantment of nature. This constellation culminates in Friedrich Nietzsche’s
attempt to conceptualise a “polytheism of tolerance” or “diversity” after the “death
of God”.22 Finally, the ensuing popularised Nietzscheanism of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century inspired multiple neo-Paganisms, not just of the Ger-
manic variety.
An inherent problem in the praise of polytheism as a religion of tolerance,
which has been frequently remarked upon, is that it has been polemically conceptu-
alised in opposition to an “intolerant” monotheism since its inception. The toler-
ance of the new, self-proclaimed polytheists quickly finds its limits when it comes
to granting tolerance to the religions that are perceived, or rather construed, as
fundamentally different, i.e. monotheism.23 As long as such anti-monotheism is di-
rected primarily against the dominant political, social and discursive power of the
Christian churches, the problematic aspects of such a critique may not be apparent.
However, David Hume’s theory, and, even more, Ernest Renan’s, demonstrate that
this critique is all too easily directed not exclusively against hegemonic powers, but
instead aimed at minorities, enabling or reinforcing discrimination Jews in particu-
lar.24 By seeing the origin of the antagonist monotheism in the Jewish God, the an-
ti-monotheist polemic criticised its target Christianity by simultaneously adopting a
Christian construction of Jews as arch-enemy. Consequently, traditional Christian
anti-Judaism is preserved in an anti-Christian form.
The anti-Christian and anti-Jewish elements of the Nietzschean critique, espe-
cially the accusations of these “book religions”, “slave morality”, “humility”, “op-
pression” and enmity to human nature, its dynamism and heroism, were eagerly
adopted within the emerging neo-Germanic Pagan scene. At the same time, the re-
ligious alternatives promoted by them were not outspokenly polytheistic, but rather
related to a pantheism inspired by the era’s Goethe cult and a general “cult of the
genius” in whom the transcendent was embodied, or who strove for self-deifica-
tion.
Overt praise of polytheism in the tradition of Nietzsche’s anti-bourgeois, liber-
tarian, intellectual aristocratic individualism became fashionable again in the 1970s,
21 Gladigow, “Polytheimus und Monotheismus”, p. 45.

22 See Burkhard Gladigow, “Polytheismen der Neuzeit”, in Bärbel Köhler, ed., Religion und
Wahrheit: Religionsgeschichtliche Studien: Festschrift für Gernot Wießner zum 65. Geburtstag (Wiesba-
den: Harrassowitz, 1998), pp. 45–59, quotations from p. 49.
23 For a differentiating critique of the “myth of religious tolerance in antiquity”, see Losehand,
“Religious Harmony”. See also Klaus Koch, “Monotheismus als Sündenbock?”, in Jan Ass-
mann, ed., Die Mosaische Unterscheidung oder der Preis des Monotheismus (Munich: Hanser, 2003),
p. 229.
24 Nietzsche’s contradictory attitudes towards Jews and Judaism, his “anti-antisemitism” in
particular, indicate that he himself was aware of this problem.
in a variety of national and political contexts. The rise of neo-Paganism in general

thus coincided with a “new wave” of philosophical support for polytheism. In the
United States, this trend was most explicitly represented by David L. Miller,25 in
Germany, Odo Marquard26 began singing his “praise of polytheism”, and was
joined by the authors Botho Strauß, Martin Walser, and later Peter Sloterdijk.27 The
most outspoken anti-monotheist philosopher of the era was Alain de Benoist.28 In
his seminal praise of “being pagan” as a religio-philosophical alternative for Eu-
rope, this leading political theorist of the so-called New Right in France modified
the totalitarian ideas of the “old” right, i.e. National Socialists, condemning the
“Judeo-Christian” idea of monotheism as the root of all totalitarianism. His under-
standing of polytheistic tolerance and diversity motivated his ethno-pluralistic app-
roach. Benoist’s idea was that, in order to have this desired diversity, “cultures”
needed to be preserved in their own areas of origin and needed to be kept pure and
unmixed in order to thrive and develop. Benoist specifically avoided speaking of
“races” and “nations”, using, instead, terms such as “ethnos” or “culture”, hence
the label “cultural racism”.29 In our context, Benoist’s idea that the mission man-
date and universalism of Christianity originated in the rootlessness of Judaism, and
that that is one of the main reasons for globalisation and the demise of cultural di-
versity, is seminal. It thus comes as no surprise that Benoist’s anti-Christian, pro-
Pagan approach has found supporters amongst Asatruers since the 1980s.30 How-
ever, amongst most of the newer Asatru groups, Benoist’s ethnopluralistic, anti-
monotheistic ideology has not received such a warm welcome. Neither have, inter-
estingly enough, the anti-monotheist praises of polytheism featured in the previous-
ly-mentioned intellectual and media debates in Germany.
In recent years, another and, internationally better known, German contributor
to the debate about the negative implications of monotheism, the Heidelberg pro-
25 David L. Miller, The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 2nd edition with a prefato-
ry letter by Henry Corbin, appendix by James Hillman (Dallas: Spring, 1981).
26 Odo Marquard, “Lob des Polytheismus: Über Monomythie und Polymythie,” in Odo Mar-
quard, ed., Abschied vom Prinzipiellen: Philosophische Studien (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1991), pp. 91–
116.
27 Botho Strauss “Anschwellender Bocksgesang”, in Heimo Schwilk et al., eds., Die selbstbewuss-
te Nation: ‘Anschwellender Bocksgesang’ und weitere Beiträge zu einer deutschen Debatte (Frankfurt
a.M.: Ullstein, 1994), pp. 19–42, Martin Walser, Ich vertraue: Querfeldein (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhr-
kamp, 2000) and Peter Sloterdijk, Gottes Eifer: Vom Kampf der drei Monotheismen (Frankfurt a.
M.: Insel, 2007).
28 Alain de Benoist, Comment peut-on être païen? (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981), English translation:
On Being a Pagan (Atlanta: Ultra, 2004).
29 Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, nation, classe: Les identités ambigues (Paris: La
Découverte, 1988).
30 Benoist’s book On Being a Pagan was published in 2004 with a preface by Stephen Edred
Flowers, a leading Asatruer in the US, and is strongly promoted by the Asatru Folk Assem-
bly, see http://www.runestone.org/store.html (last access 4 April 2011).
fessor of Egyptology Jan Assmann, has provided international heathenism with a

concept of religious distinctions. In his memory-historical attempt to explain the
deep historical genesis of violent intolerance, religious persecution and, not least,
anti-Judaism, Assmann identifies a revolutionary, decisive religious shift from “‘po-
lytheistic’ to ‘monotheistic’ religions, from cult religions to religions of the book,
from culturally specific religions to world religions”.31 Assmann makes use of a dis-
tinction between “primary” and “secondary” religions proposed by the professor of
missiology, Theo Sundermeier,32 and explicates the relation between primary and
secondary religion:
Primary religions evolve historically over hundreds and thousands of years within a sin-
gle culture, society, and generally also language, with all of which they are inextricably
entwined. (…) Secondary religions, by contrast, are those that owe their existence to an
act of revelation and foundation, build on primary religions, and typically differentiate
themselves from the latter by denouncing them as paganism, idolatry und superstition.33
In his attempt to characterise the core idea of this turn for which he coins the term
“Mosaic distinction”, Assmann notes that the crucial difference is not the one be-
tween polytheism and monotheism “but the distinction between truth and false-
hood in religion, between the true god and false gods, true doctrine and false doc-
trine, knowledge and ignorance, belief and unbelief”.34 The claim that this distinc-
tion motivates a new kind of religious hatred and violence is crucial for the recep-
tion of his theses in contemporary debates.35
For our purposes, the fact that both Sundermeier and Assmann have been crit-
icised by theologians and historians of religion alike for their overly generalising
concepts of religion are of little relevance. What matters is rather, that the way they
31 Jan Assmann, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung oder der Preis des Monotheismus (Munich: Carl Hanser,
2003), English translation by Robert Savage: Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2010).
32 Cf. Theo Sundermeier, “The Meaning of Tribal Religions for the History of Religion: Prima-
ry Religious Experience”, Scriptura 10 (1992), p. 1–9 and idem, Was ist Religion? Religionswissen-
schaft im theologischen Kontext (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999). In contrast to Ass-
mann, and in an attempt to demonstrate possibilities of religious dialogue between contem-
porary “tribal religions”, in particular in Africa, and Christianity, Sundermeier does not see a
fundamental difference between “primary” and “secondary” religious experience, but main-
tains that they form various syntheses. He also stresses the distinctions between different re-
ligious experiences and avoids speaking of primary and secondary religions. See Anja A.
Diesel, “Primäre und sekundäre Religion(serfahrung). Das Konzept von Th. Sundermeier
und J. Assmann”, in Andreas Wagner, ed., Primäre und sekundäre Religion als Kategorie der Religi-
onsgeschichte des Alten Testaments (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), pp. 23–44.
33 Assmann, Price of Monotheism, p. 1.
34 Ibidem, p. 2.
35 See also his most recent book on the topic titled “Monotheism and the Language of Vio-
lence”: Jan Assmann, Monotheismus und die Sprache der Gewalt (Vienna: Picus, 2006).
describe “primary” and “secondary” religions and the shift from one to the other
have been inspiring and productive for the conceptualisation of neo-Pagan reli-
gions and their distinction from Christianity and monotheism. Assmann’s claim
that the turn from primary to secondary religion went hand in hand with a turn
from ritual to text, from cult religion to book religion,36 and that this media shift
led to an alliance of writing with transcendence as well as of ritual with immanence,
suits the image of heathenism as an immanent religion based on a unity of practice
and community. The same applies to his idea that secondary religion is not fulfilled
through the correct performance of ritual, but leads to the invention of an inner
self and needs to be fathomed introspectively, thus requiring faith, belief and a dis-
tinction of truth and lie.37
The Reception of the ‘Mosaic Distinction’ in Current Asatru
The theory of the “mosaic distinction” between “true” and “false religions” has led
to quite divergent actualisations within European Asatru. At one end of the spec-
trum, we find attempts to merge Assmann’s discussions of monotheism with the
ethno-pluralist and violently anti-monotheist theories of the “New Right”.
Recently, a passionate debate on the topic erupted in Denmark starting with
the publication of a series of articles in the magazine Valravn in 2005 and 2006, ti-
tled, “The mischief/terror [uvæsen] of monotheism. A religious liberation of con-
cepts”.38 Here, author Starkad Storm Stensgaard stated the need to work for the ex-
termination of monotheism. The introductory paragraph of the series reads:
The differences between monotheism and polytheism are greater, more important, and
more essential than it is possible to communicate verbally. The necessity to make these
differences known, however, grows with the pace in which monotheism’s intellectual
and spiritual pest casts the darkness of chaos over the world, this time armed with
modern technology and weapons of mass destruction.
Stensgaard continues to criticise the “totalitarian monopoly of existence, a monop-

olisation of all that is sacred” with rhetorical use of poisoning, pollution, contagion
and psychiatric pathology, e.g. when he describes Judaism as the origin of “mono-
theism’s evil obsession”. Polytheism, on the other hand, appears as the “in all re-
spects superior and natural religiosity”.39 Steensgaard’s objection to monotheism’s
alleged intolerance and praise of polytheism’s tolerance of other gods beyond one’s
36 Cf. Assmann, Die mosaische Unterscheidung, p. 145.

37 Cf. ibidem, p. 156.
38 Starkad Storm Stensgaard, “Om Monoteismens Uvæsen: Religiøs Begrebsbefrielse, del 1”,
del 2 and del 3, Valravn: Hedensk tidskrift om samfund og kultur 14 (2005), pp. 18–9, 15 (2005),
pp. 20–4 and 16 (2006), pp. 13–7.
39 All quotes Stensgaard, “Om Monoteismens Uvæsen, del 1”, p. 18.
own pantheon is an example of the limits of this tolerance, which explicitly ex-
cludes the tolerance for monotheism posited as fundamentally irreconcilable with a
polytheistic paradigm, as he unambiguously calls for open-eyed hatred of and re-
venge against monotheism.40
Starkad Storm Stensgaard’s attacks, which he continued in Forn Sidr’s journal
Vølse in 2008 and 2010, have been constantly commented on and argued against by
other Danish Asatruers, who see such anti-monotheism as the expression of an
unnecessary fixation on a concept of an enemy, instead of concentrating on the
building and promotion of one’s own faith. Moreover, they point out that anti-
monotheists fall prey to exactly the same exclusionary logic, which they project on-
to monotheism.41
The anti-monotheism controversy has not remained purely theoretical within
Danish Asatru, but rather has motivated several leading members of the state-reco-
gnised national Asatru group Forn Sidr, who opposed the radicalism of such posi-
tions and their influence on Forn Sidr’s board, to leave the group altogether.42 On
the one hand, this demonstrates the potential for dissent and split which is impli-
cated in a radical anti-monotheist position. On the other hand, meta-political theo-
ries such as Stensgaard’s and others’ anti-monotheism are able to give a religiously
motivated framework to the more general anti-Islamic sentiments which circulate
not only within Asatru but have gained ground in Danish (and other European so-
cieties’) public debates in general. Denmark so far seems to be the only country
where such a radical reading of Assmann, an eliminatory anti-monotheism in the
style of Benoist and parts of the New Right, as well as the anti-Jewish and, even
more, anti-Islamic sentiments connected with it, have been able to dominate the
debates within nationally active Asatru groups.43 This is probably equally related to
the general political climate in Denmark, where populist xenophobic and anti-
Islamic positions have entered the parliamentary and legislative spheres. A partici-
pant in an online debate on anti-monotheism in the forum Idasletten points to this
when he writes: “The debate has filled a good part of the Danish [Asatru] envi-
40 Cf. Stensgaard, “Om Monoteismens Uvæsen, del 2”, p. 20.

41 Cf. Martin P. Hansen, “Politik og religion”, Vølse 44 (2008), pp. 23–4 and Martin Mørch,
“Om politik og religion” Vølse 46 (2008), p. 18. See also numerous threads on the online-
forum www.kindir.dk in 2010 and 2011.
42 See, e.g., the threads “Min fremtid i Forn Sidr” as well as “Farvel Forn Sidr”, and “Nyt tros-
samfund - Nordisk Tingsfællig” (all 2010 and 2011) on www.kindir.dk, as well as the thread
“Anti-monoteisme” on www.idasletten.dk (last accessed 7 April 2011).
43 A search for the term “anti-monotheism” (or Scandinavian equivalents) on the most im-
portant Swedish and Norwegian Asatru websites and online forums turned up nothing. A
search for “monotheism” and “polytheism” produced a few hits, leading to threads where
similar controversies were argued, but in a much less inflamed manner.
ronment. Unfortunately, I don’t think it can be separated from the general climate
of debate in Denmark.”44
In Germany, similarly radical distinctions between monotheism and a polythe-
ism that rebukes monotheism for its dualistic thinking have been circulating in Asa-
tru contexts that stand in closer proximity to new right and conservative, revolu-
tionary thought. However, generally speaking, German Asatruers who promote the
usefulness of Sundermeier’s and Assmann’s categories of primary and secondary
religion, mainly the “theoreticians” of Eldaring and the Verein für germanisches
Heidentum, Kurt Oertel and Asfrid (Fritz Steinbock), are most attracted by Ass-
mann’s description of “Cosmotheism”, a religious attitude which sees gods and the
world as a unity, puts nature at the centre, and experiences the divine as emanations
of the world and not dependent on a transcendent revelation.45 Kurt Oertel empha-
sises similar notions of a primary religion that aims at rooting individuals in the
world and integrating them into the divine orders of the earth.46
At the same time, in spite of this idealised image painted here of primary reli-
gions, there is an acute awareness that a return to such a state is neither possible
nor desirable. Asfrid, in particular, emphasises the profoundly modern and liberal
character of contemporary heathenism and reminds his fellow heathens: “We want
the church to dictate which gods we should honour and how we should do it just
as little as we want a tribe or other society – fictive as they are – to.”
On the contrary, he continues, modern heathenism is characterised by the indi-
vidual choice of a suitable religion based on a free decision. From this he draws the
conclusion that the “primary” Germanic religion can but serve as an inspiration
while modern heathenism is of a “new, third kind”, a “tertiary religion which sets a
new beginning as a critically thinking, ‘enlightened’ alternative to the secondary re-
ligion”. This emphatic invocation of a new beginning is combined with an unam-
biguous avowal of the “cultural fundaments” of the present age: “Self-determina-
tion of religion, critical philosophy and science, humanism and enlightenment, de-
mocracy and human rights.”47
Generally speaking, the majority of German Asatruers today would support the
same values of enlightenment, religious plurality and humanism, thus positioning
Asatru as a valid choice on a late-modern market of religions.48 Such notions stand
in a certain, albeit unacknowledged tension with another category German Asatru-
44 See http://www.idasletten.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=300&start=80 (last accessed 7 April

2011).
45 Cf. Asfrid, “Religion der dritten Sorte”, Ringhorn. Gemeinschaftsanzeiger des Vereins für germani-
sches Heidentum e.V. 55 (2008), pp. 10–1 and Fritz Steinbock, “Die Freiheit eines Heidenmen-
schen: Inhalt und Gründe der ‘Leitidee freies Heidentum’ des ORD”, Heidnisches Jahrbuch 1
(2006), pp. 147–65, from pp. 149.
46 Correspondence with Kurt Oertel, Eldaring.
47 All quotes Asfrid, “Religion der dritten Sorte”, p. 11.
48 This is one thesis of René Gründer, Germanisches (Neu-)Heidentum in Deutschland: Entstehung,
Struktur und Symbolsystem eines alternativreligiösen Feldes (Berlin: Logos, 2008).
ers frequently evoke to characterise their religion: “religion of experience” (Erfah-

rungsreligion). This term is, of course, not new, but has been used to describe a va-
riety of religious trends, from mysticism through Pietism and Christian free-chur-
ches to Buddhism, Hinduism and Wicca, that emphasise personal emotional expe-
rience. When invoking this category, German Asatruers seem unaware of this use
of the concept, and ascribe it to the German historian and “natural philosopher”
Reinhard Falter.49 Obviously, the invocation of the category of experience offers a
seemingly self-evident description of Asatruers’ own perception of the origin of
their religious choice, which they see in an immediate experience of divine forces
either within themselves, in the surrounding nature, or also in their community. For
them, the idea of “religious experience” is conveniently set against religions relying
on revelation and scriptural authority.
In a programmatic article in the first volume of Heidnisches Jahrbuch, titled
“What is Neopaganism?”,50 Baal Müller, a former member of the Eldaring and later
the Verein für germanisches Heidentum,51 as well as a close collaborator of Falter,
sharpens this distinction by denigrating “belief” and positing “experience” as supe-
rior, writing: “A religion which bases itself on faith doesn’t have any worth. (…)
Experience, not faith is the true religious attitude towards the world.”52 For Falter,
as well as for Müller, the “Gods of the religion of experience” are to be character-
ised as “basic qualities or basic characters of the world”, as “seizing or moving at-
mospheres”, in a similar sense to C.G. Jung’s conceptualisation of archetypes.53
Both Falter and Müller strongly rely on the life-philosophy of the so-called
“Kosmiker”, an alternative circle in early twentieth century Munich, gathering
around Alfred Schuler and his student Ludwig Klages. This fact reveals the poten-
tially problematic implications of their concept of a “religion of experience”. The
Kosmikers’ irrational mysticism of natural essences and their attempts to revive a
Greek/Roman Paganism were based on a fierce anti-monotheism, and accompa-
nied by an equally religiously motivated anti-Judaism, which Falter adopts unfil-
tered and develops further in his work on an ethic based on nature and its laws.54
In contrast to Asfrid (Fritz Steinbock), Falter rejects enlightenment, humanism and,
with it, “the ideology of human rights which supports the spread of capitalism as
well of the world police”55, quoting, among many others, Alain de Benoist. Cham-
49 Steinbock, “Die Freiheit eines Heidenmenschen”, p. 152: “The modern ‘Heathen scene’ has
welcomed Reinhard Falter’s notion of Erfahrungsreligion like no other academic term.”
50 Baal Müller, “Was ist Neopaganismus?”, Heidnisches Jahrbuch 1 (2006), pp. 11–40.
51 For more on Müller’s membership in the Eldaring, see the e-mail correspondence with Uwe
Ehrenhöfer, secretary of the Eldaring, and Haimo Grebenstein, former chair of the VfgH.
52 Müller, “Neopaganismus”, p. 12.
53 Ibidem, p. 20.
54 Cf. e.g. Reinhard Falter, Natur prägt Kultur: Der Einfluß von Landschaft und Klima auf den Men-
schen. Zur Geschichte der Geophilosophie (Munich: Telesma, 2006), p. 294.
55 Falter, Natur prägt Kultur, p. 165. The book and others by Falter appeared in Müller’s pub-
lishing house Telesma.
pioning a subjection of humanity to the laws of nature, he argues monotheism is

fundamental unnatural, replacing the more neutral “secondary” religion with the
biologicistic term, “Pfropfreligion” (graft-religion), and combines his anti-mono-
theistic and anti-universalist opinions with eugenic sentiments, rejecting the notion
that all (human) life deserves preservation, a concept which in his eyes leads to a
“Making an idol of mere life, in other words of survival, and a levelling of hierar-
chies (…)”.56 Again it is Judaism that he sees as the root of such a denial of death
and sacrifice and thus the order of nature. He deplores an inclination characteristic
of Judaism in every form, i.e. the will to survival at any price, or the unwillingness
to accept a relation to death as a necessary sacrifice in the sense of Anaximander.57
Such attitudes are quite in contrast to Asfrid’s firm support of human rights and
other enlightenment ideals on which an optimistic new (Pagan) beginning is to be
based.
Implicit Contradictions: Reasons and Consequences
I haven’t found any case where this implicit contradiction between the reception of
Falter’s concepts and the construction of Asatru as a modern religion is openly
thematised and discussed. Most Asatruers I spoke with don’t even know of Falter
and his theories. On the one hand, this is proof of the great diversity of attitudes
and concepts within one and the same group, and even within individuals’ religious
constructions. On the other hand, these observations warrant the question of how
such unacknowledged contradictions and their potential effects can be understood.
Here, the previous reflections on the origin and contexts of an alleged funda-
mental difference between monotheism and polytheism, religion of experience and
religion of revelation, tribal and universal religion or Aryan and Semitic religion
play a role. The conception of such an essential dissimilarity permeates both popu-
lar and academic discourse, or as Friedrich Wilhelm Graf claims for the “new cul-
tural historians” of the twentieth century: They “merely reproduce the everyday
knowledge which is always already formed by the ‘Kulturkämpfe’ (the struggles be-
tween church and state) in the past”.58 In the case of neo-Paganism, the academic
construction and critique of religion mutates into the formation of new religions. It
56 Reinhard Falter, “Die Götter der Erfahrungsreligion wieder verstehen. Das griechische Bei-
spiel und die heutige Situation”. Heidnisches Jahrbuch 1 (2006), pp. 90–146, quotation from p.
107.
57 Falter, Natur prägt Kultur, p. 290. For a fundamental discussion and critique of Falter’s posi-
tions, see Ulrich Linse, “‘Fundamentalistischer’ Heimatschutz. Die ‘Naturphilosophie’ Rein-
hard Falters”, in Uwe Puschner et al., eds., Völkisch und national: Zur Aktualität alter Denkmus-
ter im 21. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), pp. 156–78.
58 Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Die Wiederkehr der Götter: Religion in der modernen Kultur (Munich:
Beck, 2004), p. 108.
is, of course, not illegitimate to construct a new religion out of a well-established

critical discourse on religion. However, it is equally legitimate to point to some
problems inherent in such critical as well as creative constructions.
The anti-monotheism of Asatruers like Starkad Storm Stensgaard or the anti-Juda-
ism/anti-monotheism of philosophers like Reinhard Falter are extreme examples of
potential problems that are inherent in constructions of modern religiosity built on
theories of essential differences between mono- and polytheism. Not only do the
anti-Christian prejudices circulating in neo-Pagan circles not do justice to the com-
plex and contradictory developments, historical effects of and lived experiences
within Christianity as well as with the equally diverse manifestations of religions
that are grouped together as “polytheistic”. The logic of such a dichotomisation of
religious systems also frequently leads to a process of excluding everything associ-
ated with Christianity and thus to a curious division of history into “good” Pagan
eras and “bad” Christian or monotheistic ones. Such processes of dividing out ad-
versary tendencies from one’s own (idealised) object of study is not a prerogative of
neo-Pagans either, but has its foundational moment in the history of scholarship as
well and can, for example, be observed in the construction of “antiquity” in the
nineteenth century. Thus, Jürgen Ebach has shown that German classical studies
and theology in the nineteenth century systematically excluded Judaism from an
academic reception or configured it as a mere minority within the ancient empires.
He concludes: “In contrast to Greek and Roman antiquity, antique Israel was not
supposed to be recognised and discussed because it was not supposed to be pre-
sent”.59
In Asatru, but also in some academic contexts that are mainly interested in re-
constructing pre-Christian religion, a similar mechanism leads to an exclusion of
Christian elements and influences in general. This does not have to go as far as one
Icelandic Asatruer, who first professes a vivid interest in history and then immedi-
ately adds: “I am interested in history except for the latest 1,000 years. That is not
interesting. I don’t want to bother to listen to that. It has to be 1,000 years or even
older.”60 The 1,000 years in this quote refers to the history of Iceland, and the
northern European areas in general, which were Christianised fairly late. Another
effect of such attempts to identify original Paganism and detach it from its Chris-
tian interpretations is a rather curious de-Christianisation or “paganisation” of the
Middle-Ages,61 an effect which can be found both in scholarship and in its Asatru
appropriations. Some of the mentioned objections to Christianity may of course be
justified, albeit one-sided, objections to a dominant and repressive social and politi-
59 Jürgen Ebach, “Amputierte Antike. Über Ursachen und Folgen des Antijudaismus in deut-
scher Altertumswissenschaft und Theologie”, in Richard Faber et al., eds., Antike heute
(Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1992), pp. 183–96, quotation from p. 186.
60 Interview with an Icelandic Asatruer, August 2010.
61 Cf. also František Graus, Lebendige Vergangenheit: Überlieferung im Mittelalter und in den Vorstel-
lungen vom Mittelalter (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1975).
cal force, against which a more liberal and open Paganism/polytheism is cast. Fre-
quently though, as we have seen, this disapproval of the Christian churches and
their power turns into the vilification of Christianity’s own favourite scapegoat: Ju-
daism, which is seen and despised as the creator of monotheism and its evils. As we
also have seen, this stereotypical image of an arch-enemy may more or less latently
lie at the basis of many of the constructions which Asatruers and other neo-Pagans
build their religion on. However, as demonstrated above, “the Jew” doesn’t figure
very prominently in these contexts anymore. Today, it is rather Islam which takes
its place as the incarnation of the most radical and developed monotheism, and the
monotheistic religion which calls most strongly for war against polytheists and Pa-
gans. This, again, facilitates alliances between religious Asatru and general anti-
Islamic tendencies in Western societies.
I want to briefly return to my initial question about right-wing extremist
tendencies in Asatru and the possibility of immunising against them with the help
of academic theory. The conclusions that can be drawn are complex and partly
contradictory. On the one hand, it is clear that the majority of Asatruers today do
not support a “right-wing”, racist or antisemitic worldview. Actually, many of them
work quite actively and effectively against such tendencies within neo-Paganism.
On the other hand, certain patterns of thought that originated in völkisch, radical
nationalist, or ultra-conservative milieus in Germany in the early twentieth century
still circulate within contemporary Asatru, although in modified forms and often
without the knowledge of their origin. We thus need to distinguish between politi-
cal convictions of individuals and the ideological potential of certain ideas or
thought patterns. At the same time, it seems that many of those who try to give
Asatru a more solid theoretical-philosophical basis are working in close proximity
to the New Right, a fact that often remains unnoticed by Asatruers themselves.
How then can we explain such discrepancies between what Asatruers write
about their faith and worldview, what they recommend as reading and the convic-
tions individual group members relate in interviews and online forums? How can
we account for the curious fact that credible distancing from anti-Jewish ideologies
goes together with the positive reception of anti-Jewish theorists such as Falter?
The reason is probably that many of the publications recommended as reading or
put out by Asatruers themselves are not read thoroughly by most members, and
play a very minor role in individuals’ constructions of their own beliefs and convic-
tions.62 At the same time, individual Asatruers make grateful use of what they per-
ceive as well-reputed academic findings and theories in order to justify their religion
and give it a respectable foundation. The reaction of some Asatruers when con-
fronted with some of the evidence about Falter developed in this article makes this
62 In his analysis of interviews he conducted in German Asatru groups, René Gründer comes
to a similar conclusion on the significance or rather the lack of significance of written mate-
rial for the construction of individuals’ faith. Cf. René Gründer, Blótgemeinschaften: Eine Religi-
onsethnografie des ‘germanischen Neuheidentums’ (Würzburg: Ergon, 2010).
plausible: They perceived Falter’s articles as inaccessible, unnecessarily complicated

or pretentious, but felt flattered that a serious philosopher had endorsed their reli-
gion by writing in Heidnisches Jahrbuch.63
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A Völkisch Addendum
Photographs of Wirth’s Excursions to Sweden
The following photographs show Herman Wirth (1885–1981) during his excursions
to Bohuslän in West Sweden in 1935/36 funded by the Ahnenerbe of the SS. His
intention was to study and replicate Nordic petroglyphs, particularly the rock carv-
ings of the Tanum region. Drawing on that material, he worked on a publication,
with which he wanted to prove the common bond of the Nordic race. A handwrit-
ten Swedish extract of this unpublished book bore the title Utdrag ur ‘Den store Gu-
dens äldsta runor’. ‘Fimbultýs fornar rúnar’ (Voluspá 60) and is given as an English trans-
lation on the pages that follow. A description of is to be found in the article of
Luitgard Löw in this volume. The photos originate from the Vitlycke museum,
which was opened in 1998 near the Tanum World Heritage area with its fascinating
rock art.1
1 See for the museum: http://www.vitlyckemuseum.se. The editors wish to thank the Vitlycke
museum for the permission to reprint these photographs.
248 Photographs of Wirth’s Excursions to Sweden
Introduction 249
Summary of
“The Great God’s Oldest Runes”
“Fimbultý’s Prehistoric Runes”
(Voluspá 60)
by Herman Wirth.
/1/
The Great God’s Oldest Runes”
“Fimbultý’s1 Prehistoric Runes”
(Voluspá 60)
Short summary of a report on the work and research findings of the second Scan-
dinavian Hällristningar-expedition by Prof. Dr. Herman Wirth, president of the
Ahnenerbe, Berlin.
II. Comparison between

1/
Baltzer, Nordén, older works of Sjögren, Holmberg et al.2
2/
Oscar Almgren “Tanums härads hällristningar” (Bidrag till kännedomen om Gö-
teborgs och Bohusläns Forminnen och Historia, H. 13, 1912.)3
–––
III. The Rune “homestead” and “life”:
The Annales Brunwilarenses (Vatican ms. Urbin 290 membr. fol.) from Cologne,
recorded by a High German monk 998 AD on fol. 71b a series of North Germanic
runes, parts in alphabetical, parts in Futhark-order. In the heading he says: “Liberas
sequentes, cum minio colore notatae
1 The original reads “Fimbultýs”.

2 Meant are Carl Emil Lauritz Baltzer (1845–1917), Gustaf Arthur Nordén (1891–1965), Ivar
Wilhelm Sjögren (1897–1953) and Axel Emanuel Holmberg (1817–1861).
3 Oscar Almgren, “Tanums härads hällristningar från bronsålderen”, Bidrag till kännedom om
Göteborgs och Bohusläns fornminnen och historia 8-13 (1912), pp. 474–75. Almgren (1869–1945)
was one of the most renowned Swedish archaeologists of the early twentieth century and
became the first professor of archaeology in Uppsala in 1913. Strongly influenced by the
works of Frazer, Mannhardt, Nilsson and others, he wrote an important analysis of the Swe-
dish Bronze Age petroglyphs.
252 Herman Wirth
/2/
nordmanni in suis usiterant carminibus vocant apud eos runae”.
H.F. Massmann had already referred to both these series of runes in 1871 in his
“Runes from Rome and Vienna”.4
In German studies the runes remained completely unnoticed until now because
their derivation as a prorotype from the Greek or Italian alphabet was not possible.
And further – because they do not appear among the runic manuscripts known to
us.
A final and hypothetical example where such a sin of omission can lead, is
found in Helmut Arntz “Handbuch der Runenkunde” Halle 1935 in the introduc-
tion pp. VII–VIII5 – “Responsible German studies do not tolerate a meddling of
Wirthianism – as even Gustav Neckel has realised now” – “The view represented
from Wirth up to Neckel is that the alphabetic writing would be an Old and Indo-
G
/3/
Germanic heritage, since we do not possess an inscription from Germanic settle-

ments dating back to the Stone and Bronze Age.
Helmut Arntz “Handbuch der Runenkunde” (1935) fails completely to display
– – the same with the “Annales Brunwilarenses” and with H.F. Massmann’s article.
In the “Bibliografie der Runenkunde” (Leipzig 1937)6 by Helmut Arntz it was
not mentioned either!
In his treatise “Christliche deutsche Runendenkmäler” (Archiv für Religions-
wissenschaft vol. XXXV, 1938) Helmut Arntz explains (p. 36): “The runes show
from the beginning two faces, and particularly this one is stronger developed that
turns itself towards symbols, holy markings, cult signs, or however one wishes to
call them, which were already used by the Germans from the Bronze Age on.”7 –
The Germans then would have taken over those letters from the North Italian al-
phabet that resembled their primitive symbols. “The adoption
4 Hans Ferdinand Maßmann, “Runen aus Rom und Wien”, Germania. Vierteljahrsschrift für
Deutsche Altertumskunde 16 (1871), p. 253–58. Maßmann (1797–1874) was a pupil and friend
of the German gymnastics educator and nationalist Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852). In
1842 Maßmann became professor of German philology at the University of Berlin.
5 Helmut Arntz, Handbuch der Runenkunde (Halle a.d. Saale: Niemeyer, 1935), p. VIIf. The se-
cond edition from 1944 was reprinted in 2007.
6 Helmut Arntz, Bibliografie der Runenkunde (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1935).
7 Helmut Arntz, “Christlich deutsche Runendenkmäler”, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 35
(1938), p. 36.
/4/
of the runes is, as it appears to us, only understandable from the existence of these
signs. The outward semblance between Italian letters and Germanic characters, ac-
cidentally emerging and based on the law that the simplest geometrical form allover
the world must return incoherently, became the starting point for the amalgamation.
To those letters reminding him of his symbols, the Teuton assigned cultic content
– or, as one could just as well say: he attributed letter characters to symbol forms
that found a formal parallel in Northern Italy. The principle of phonetic spelling
was applied not before some ‘runes’ were fixed; in fact even two symbols, the
opened and the closed circle of the year as letters i and y, seem to have been admit-
ted because the Italian model had no equivalent expression for these pronounced
Germanic sounds. – Each rune
/5/
now received an expedient name, whose initial sound was determined by its pho-
netic value and whose content was defined by the comprehension of the underlying
cult symbol – in so far as any such model existed. Finally, the runes were collated
into the order suggested above, causing us to call the rune series ‘Futhark’; a series
of additional or exclusive pairs that have been classified deliberately in parallel or-
der.”8
With these views, which Helmut Arntz had already cautiosly presented in his
small book “Die Runenschrift. Ihre Geschichte und ihre Denkmäler” (Halle 1938),
he appeared to land himself “unpleasently in the overcome era of Herman Wirth”.
But he has not enough decency and dispassion to openly acknowledge that the
terms “opened” and “closed circle of the year” were “Wirthianisms” borrowed by
him.
/6/
This doctrine about “ethnographic parallels” (Andree) from the evolutionism

of the previous century is based on completely inadequate knowledge of Nordic
artefacts and completely inadequate comparative research into ethnographic paral-
lels of rock carvings and their continuation as cult symbols in the Scandinavian
peasant runic calendar.9
If it is true that since the Bronze Age the correlation between North Italian al-
phabetic characters and ur-Germanic symbolic signs had been dominant, this, simi-
8 Ibidem.
9 Richard Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche (Stuttgart: Maier, 1878).
254 Herman Wirth
lar to a corresponding Celtic form affiliation, cannot arise from loaning but must
go back to a common original kinship.
Comparative linguistics has itself, on the basis of the Indo-Germanic affinity of
languages and the common Old Aryan religious community (e.g. the name of the
Sky God) associated with a common Aryan original homeland [Urheimat].
If there existed for the time being a common Aryan original homeland, a
common Aryan original
/7/
language [Ursprache] and a common Aryan original belief [Urglaube], then a com-
mon Aryan cult symbolism must have existed and this system of writing of the Ar-
yan tribes migrating to the South and East must originate from these common sa-
cred series of characters.
The reputed non-literate nature of the Teutons and Indo-Aryans is based for
both on the customary usage of local writing materials: wooden sticks, wooden
blocks, barks (birch bark), Scandinavian’s local writing material mentioned by Swe-
den’s last Roman Archbishop, Olaus Magnus. – But that is all ephemeral and by-
gone material.10
The Germanic word for “skriva” is “ritzen” (in wood) (Anglo-Saxon, Old-
Germanic writan, English to write, Old Norse Rita, Gothic writs, streck, punkt)
and “malen” (Old High German malōn, malēn, and. mālon, Old Norse Māla, Goth-
ic Meljan.)
The custom, to write on stone, was borrowed from the Greek and Italic tribes
“ex oriente”
/p. 7, verso folio/
Why no runes in bronze or in stone during the Bronze and Stone Age?
Why none on wood findings or wood materials from Russian fens in the
Bronze Age?11
/8/
only after their migration into their new Mediterranean homeland.
10 The Swedish ethnographer Olaus Magnus (ca. 1490–1557) is best know for his Historia de
Gentibus Septentrionalibus (History of the Northern Peoples) published in Rome in 1555. Al-
ready in 1539 his famous Carta Marina, the earlieast map of the Nordic countries, appeared
in Venice.
11 Handwritten comment by Sigurd Curman (1879–1966), the director of the Swedish National
Heritage Bond (Riksantikvarieämbetet) from 1923–46.
The living tree, the lineage’s material, the Tree of Life and the World Tree, is the
Nordic building material, for the farmhouse as well as for the tools of the peasants.
No stone. And only after the expansion of the Roman Empire and its civilisation in
Germanic circles inscription stones arouse instead of the generally spread German-
ic sepulchral and tomb steles made of wood.
This hitherto unnoticed and unknown circumstance led the old philological
school to the wrong conclusion about the adoption of the Germanic runic inscrip-
tions during the Roman period.
Concerning the depiction of wooden tomb steles in Scandanavian rock paint-
ings and the common North and South Germanic tradition up to the twentieth
century, see H.d.E12 I, ills. 149 and 150; II, ills. 197–204
/9/
209–224.
The use of grave boards with runic inscriptions by Nordic Varangians is docu-
mented by the Arabic emmisary Ibn Fadhlan since the beginning of the tenth cen-
tury.13
B. (p. 24) Prehistoric belief (trúa í forneskio) and the Odil-rune

according to the Annales Brunwilarenses particularly in the so-called North Ger-
manic series of runes. Symbol for soil, home, as property of lineage or kinship:
Old Nordic: odhal Old Saxon: odil, othil

Swedish: odal Old High German: odil, nodil. nodal, etc.
Norwegian: odel
According to the Germanic sacral law, this Odal was originally no private
property, as later in the Viking period after the Southern example, but the heritage
of relatives, dynasties and ancestors.
Therefore the following sounds similarly in Germanic languages.
/10/
Native soil and property

as dynastic possession and lineage (forefathers)
Old High German: heim-odil

heim-note to nota “maternal grandmother”
heim-oti (paternal grandmother)
Middle High German: heim-et(e)
12 H.d.E: unknown abbreviation.

13 The Arab traveller Ahmad ibn Fadlan visited the Volga Bulgars in 921/2.
256 Herman Wirth
heim-not(ē)
heim-ode, heim-at
Middle Low German: heim-ode
hem-ode
Gothic: heim-othli
–––
Anglo- Saxon: aedhil, oethel, othal
adhel, adel
Old Friesian: oedhel, othol, ethel, edel
= “the ancestral homeland, soil to ethla, edela, edila, edel
as dynastic property, ancestral
heritage or family property (paternal grandfather, great-
‘homeland” grandfather, antecedent)
/11/
p. 27. It is the same old primeval Aryan reincarnation belief that is closely connect-
ed in the cult of the dynastic line with home and soil “from time immemorial” (trúa
í forneskio), as it reads at the end of Helgaviða Hundingsbana:
at var trúa í forneskio, at menn vaari endrbornir: en Þater nu kollðd kerlingavilla.
“It was a belief in old times that people would be reborn, but that is today an old
wive’s tale.”
The Old Germanic law knows the following forms of land laws: odal, odil, the
odil of dynastic lines, family heritage, “homeodil” – “Heimat” (until today in the
Swabian-Alemannic region = homestead. Alsace, Switzerland, South Württemberg).
The other land was common land (Allmende, Old North German almennr, all-
mennig(f)), (ager compascuus, fundus communio14).
The sacral law lapsed during the Viking period when the treasures in the cities
of luxury culture in Britain, Gaul and South Germany made the Nordic odal-
/12/
peasants greedy pirates and when “the gold stream caused by the migration period
converted the old ancestral land into saleable land”. (Axel Olrik: Nordisk Aandsliv i
Vikingetid og tidlig Middelalder).15
Then, the Lord – Odin, the general companion of the souls during Christmas
time, transformed himself to the follower god defeated in combat and to the
14 I.e. common land and common farmstead.

15 Axel Olrik, Nordisk aandsliv i vikingetid og tidlig middelalder (Copenhagen: Gylendal 1927, first
ed. 1907).
Southern (= winter position of the sun) house of heaven Gimle16, “to which all
who are virtuous come” (Gylfag 3), to the heavenly jarl17 – or royal court with a
soldier’s hall [Wahalla], where they no longer could find a place for the old peasant
belief in reincarnation or for women and children. Trua i forneskio is contemptu-
ously referred to as “women’s talk”.
But neither the jarl nor the later king being elected in the southern manner suc-
ceeded to rid Norway and Sweden of the old Odal law, as in Denmark and South-
ern Germania, in like manner “trua í forneskio et menn endrbornir” could not be
wiped out from the womb of the homeodil [Heimatodil], the family heritage of
home soil, neither by the Wallhall-
/13/
wodanism18 nor by the subsequent Roman-Christian belief at the Jarl and royal
court.
“We will come back”, said the old man in Säterdalen when death called him
away from the court of his lineage (Axel Olrik). And in 1935 I was still able in the
village of Bergum in Friesland, the village of my mother, to record the same old
reincarnation belief as “women’s talk”, trúa í forneskio, dating back to the time of
rock carvings and megalithic graves.
According to the widespread Friesian oral folk traditions, newborn children
were brought by the mother or the midwife from Poppenstien, the children’s stone,
situated in the near of Bergum. – During the excavation in 1935 we were able to
detect that the Poppenstien as well as the roof stone of a destroyed grave mound
made of stone belonged to a stone grave of a big peasent’s lineage from the rock
carving age.
About this stone the folk tradition of women’s talk brought to my knowledge
in 1935:
“Der leit de Poppenstien
dy seit da alt senien:
/14/
“As jem my mar mei rêst liff bisjen,

seil Brigum nea brek hawne oan ljear-lytse bern.
16 Gimlé, the paradise in Northern mythology, where the survivors of Ragnarök were sup-
posed to live. The Prose Edda and Völuspá describe Gimlé as the most beautiful place on
earth.
17 Jarl, the title of a royal ruler in the Nordic countries until the High Middle Ages.
18 The word “Wallhallwodanismus” has a negative connotation addressing the Pagan belief in
Odin and Valhalla.
258 Herman Wirth
Hwent as it jier my draeit

de leadene hoannes kraeit,
den lil ik efkes op,
en Memke grypt de pop.
–––
There lies the stone of the children,
Which says to everybody:
‘if you just leave me in peace,
then Bergum will never lack cute little children.
For when the year turns me,

and the lead cock crows,
then I raise myself up
and the mother takes the little child.
–––
/15/
(p. 42) The ideograms of the Scandinavian rock carvings are hence testifying to and
illustrating the old Indo-Ayran tradition, similar to the reasonable hieroglyphs with
regard to an ur-Ayran religious community of an Ayran-Indo Germanic homeland
in the North and Baltic Circle.
(People of the Megalithic and Corded Ware culture)
[15/ Gerhard Heberer: “Die mitteldeutschen Schnurkeramiker” Veröffentlichungen
der Landesanstalt für Volkheitskunde, Halle 10, 1938, p. 419]
Therefore it ought to be possible to present the ancient Vedic texts as a direct
explanation of the rock carving ideogrammes.
There are also two forms of Brahman, time and non-time. Previous to the sun
there was non-time, the non-divisible, and what began with the sun was the time,
the divisible.
(Maitrayaniya Upanishad 6, 15.)
(Prashna Upanishad I, 9).
(Manu............bok I, 67??).20
/16/
The revelatory form of the divisible is however the year, and from the year these
beings emanate further, and through the year, after their resurrection, they grow,
19 Gerhard Heberer, Die mitteldeutschen Schnurkeramiker (Veröffentlichungen der Landesanstalt

für Volkheitskunde 10, Beiträge zur Rassengeschichte Mitteldeutschlands) (Halle a.d. Saale:
Gebauer-Schwetschke Buchdr. A.G., 1938).
20 Crossed out in the original.
and during the year they perish, and therefore the year surely is Prajâpati, the time
the nutrition, residence of Brahman and Átman (Maitrayaniya-Upnaishad 6, 15).
Certainly, Prajapati is the year; and in it there are two courses (those of the sun),
the one to the south and the one to the north (Prashna Upanishad I, 9).
For the gods a (human) year lasts one day and night, so the two are divided: the
northern course is the day and the southern the night (Manu’s Code of Law I, 67)
Manava Dharama Shastra I, 67: “The divine dichotomy ‘Day and Night’ forms
the year. Its division is antithetical: the day is thereby the half-year during which the
sun moves northward, the night has to be the half year in which the sun goes
south.”
–––
/17/
My first photographs of the family characters of the Dutch-Friesian farmhouses

were taken during the year 1922–23. Until then, these gable signs, Uleborde (=
Swan boards from úldert “swan”) remained completely unnoticed. Since then al-
most half of the old “Uleborde” have disappeared, were destroyed, dismantled for
new brick or corrugated iron covers, radio antennas etc.
During my photographic work I visited, especially in Gaasterland, the surviv-
ing 80-and 90-year-old old village carpenters. And these old masters of the building
tradition told me many times that the “Ulebord” with the three fingered sheets (tri-
dent) and characters etc. would have been used as gable signs only on the farm with
eegen-ierde, i.e. “own ground”. –
Aeyn-Eerde, ain-ervet = ethel, edel, othol, cedhel = odal.
Figure 40 “Ulebord” on the farmstead Seedeich in Firdum: the Odil rune between
two Odil-S.
Fig. 41 and 42
/18/
The peasant craft tradition in the villages among the old Friesian carpenters origi-
nates from the Friesian common law in the twelfth and thirtienth century. And this,
with its legal habits and legal symbolism, leads back to the tradition of the heredi-
tary succession of the rock carving period. –
The general Friesian law does not lead from the “Recht der Rüstinger”21 (man-
uscript of 1327 regarding the eigth Küre) to the Frankish king Charles, Pope Leo
and Bishop Linger, but to the twelve “forespeakers” (foerspreka, forspreka). On
21 Rüstringen was an old Friesian district at the North Sea west of the Weser River becoming
an autonomous Friesian community (terra Rustringie) with a particular legal sturcture in the
thirteenth century. The Rüstringer Law contained older and newer legal parts, so-called
“Küren”.
260 Herman Wirth
the command of King Charles they were sent out on a ship without rudder, rigging
and sails to find the law out on the sea. At their prayers they were joined by an un-
known thirteenth with an axe on his shoulder with which he steered the ship
against current and wind ashore. –
At the place where they landed, he throwed his axe on the ground to lift “a sod”
from where “a well” sprang up: “And therefore the place is called to Axenthove
(Zum Axthof). And at Eesweg,
/19/
Eschweg which means ‘god’s way’, they came ashore. Then they sat themselves
around a ‘well’, and what the thirteenth had taught them, they adopted as law. –
However, no one knew who the thirteenth was although he resembled the other
ones and was one of them. When he had revealed them the law, they were only
twelve. And for that reason there should be thirteen lawspeakers (asega) and the
judgemnt ought to be rendered at ‘Axenthove’ and ‘Eschweg’. And if they can not
agree, then seven should persuade the six.”
The God with the Axe hammer or with six axes is the Thor of the North
Germans, the son of the earth and of the Lord, South Germanic Thonar, Tunar;
Anglo-Saxon: Thunor, the peasant god. – Eeswey (Eschweg); ees Old Friesian for
Old Norse Aesir (god) (city regent of Torshälla22, highlighted by Oscar Almgren
and Oscar Montelius23).
Germanic place names with “ax” (yxa), Anglo-Saxon. Eaxanceaster (Exeter),
Eaxanminster (Axminster), Eaxanmuth (Exmauth) after the river at which they
were situated.
/20/
The twelve lawspeakers around the thirteenth is the pattern for the northern stone
circles, which was, for instance, originally the case with the old Swedish court for
22 Torshälla, situated in the municipality of Eskilstuna in the county of Södermanland, is one

of the oldest towns in Sweden. The name Torshälla stems from Þors harg, a place where
Thor was offered sacrifices. Probably the oldest part of the town church was built on or
close to the site of an earlier holy place where Thor was worshipped during the Viking Age.
23 As to Almgren, see footnote 3. Oscar Montelius (1843–1921) worked for the Museum of
National Antiquities in Stockholm since 1863 and acted as its director from 1907–13. His
main works include Om tidsbestämming inom Bronsåldern (Stockholm 1885, translated a century
later as Dating in the Bronze Age with Special Reference to Scandinavia, Stockholm 1986), The Civili-
sation of Sweden in Heathen Times (London 1888) and Die älteren Kulturperioden im Orient und in
Europa (Stockholm 1903–23). Montelius developed a controversial concept of seriation, a
relative chronological dating method by arranging material culture and biological life on the
same level of evolutionary processes.
the election of the king at the Stones of Mora at Uppsala24: 12 stones around a sub-
stantial mid-block on which the new king vowed to defend and protect the country
and the people’s law, the forefathers’ old Odal-law of the rock carving period.28/
(28/ Olaus Magnus. Historia de gentibus septentrioniabus. Romae 1555, p. 52, cf.
page 243 in the edition of Basel 1567, p. 5225).
The 12-number derives from the younger Southern (Indo-)Germanic twelve-
part-division of the year (the annual calendar with 2 x 12 = 24 calendar runes = the
long rune row), while the North Germanic 8-part-division of the year (2 x 8 = 16)
must have had 16 calendar runes (= the short rune row). 29/
(29/ Aufgang der Menschheit26, pp. 532ff.)
/21/
The older Nordic form of cult- and thing sites as day- and eyktaground27 is there-
fore the stone setting with 8 stones around the centerstone.30/
(30/ H.U.28 chapter 7, pp. 179ff., see plates 47–8)
–––
–––
P. 94. The rock carvings in Kalleby-Långemur are as symbolic representation the
the most beautiful prehistoric evidence of the origin of the old-Aryan cosmic pri-
meval religion and its myth of the course of the year of their Son of God and
Heaven, preserved for us in the oldest traditions of the Aryan ancient myths, in the
Rigveda.29
24 At the Stones of Mora (Swedish Mora stenar) the Swedish kings were elected during the Mid-
dle Ages. The place is situated southeast of Uppsala in today’s municipality of Knivsta.
However, the location along the ancient waterway from the Baltic Sea to Uppland was prob-
ably destroyed during the war against the Danes in 1515.
25 Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus septendrionalibus (Rome: de Viottis 1555).
26 Herman Wirth, Der Aufgang der Menschheit. Forschungen zur Geschichte der Religion, Symbolik und
Schrift der atlantisch-nordischen Rasse (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1928).
27 Eyktamark is an icelandic term. The word eykt means time measurement. In old Iceland the
day was split into eight eyktir (named lágnætti, ótta, rismál, dagmál, hádegi, nón, miðaftann,
náttmálwith) with three hours each.
28 Herman Wirth, Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit: Symbolgeschichtliche Untersuchungen diesseits und
jenseits des Nordatlantik (Koehler & Amelang: Leipzig 1931–36).
29 The rock carvings of Kalleby (Langemyr in the parish of Tanum) in the Swedish traditional
province Bohuslän, have, together with five other rock carving sites in Tanum (Vitlycke,
Aspeberget/Tegneby, Fossum, Litsleby and Gerum), been declared a World Heritage Site in
1994 due to the high quality and concentration of petroglyphs.
100 Bernard Mees
reformation of their discipline along the lines championed by Baetke in the ’50s. As
the scholarship of figures such as Bloch came to represent the canon of medieval
studies in the 1960s and beyond, as universities increasingly became bastions of
academic socialism, a work such as Baetke’s Yngvi and the Ynglings no longer seemed
quite so radical. Taken in light of his earlier study of Holiness in Germanic (which is
only cited once in the whole of Baetke’s 1964 work), however, the change seems
quite abrupt and intellectually uncharacteristic of a man who had previously prided
himself so obviously on his own contribution to the pre-war Germanic resurgence.
Baetke was one of the first German Nordicists to reject the romantic preten-
sions of scholars such as Otto, Kummer, Wirth and Hauer. He was a quintessential
empiricist who had no time for what he considered unwarranted speculation. Yet it
remains a strange kind of intellectual history that heroises someone who proved so
academically successful under both German dictatorships, first as a critic of Ger-
manist excess that was publicly skewered at the time even by many card-carrying
Nazis and then, later, as a bitter opponent of post-war academic romanticism. The
“radical source critic” of Sundqvist’s rather diffident assessment of Old Norse sa-
cral kingship evidently thought himself a stern critic of basely politicised academic
distortion. But his own scholarship, often oppositional and overwrought as it
sometimes is, was clearly also enabled by political circumstance – like Kuhn, Baetke
lived in his own version of a metaphorical Wodanstraße in the 1920s and ’30s. That
Baetke specialised in a field that was so suggestively amenable to ideologised fancy
meant that a certain amount of pointed boundary setting would seem to have been
essential. Yet, unlike Reichardt or Feist, Baetke was never forced into emigration –
even to an “inner” one; his matter and method drank only too deeply of the accep-
ted conservative consensus of the day.50 Drawn to his studies of the Old Germanic
past initially in terms of an illiberal sense of patriotism, Baetke used the opportu-
nities he was afforded quite successfully, hailed later in his life as an academic hero
(the subject of two East German Festschriften – one posthumous) rather than the
conservative-turned-socialist ideological changeling that he might rather more
empirically be admitted to have been.51
Any scholar who lived through those times had to tread a difficult path, but it
is surely overstating Baetke’s role in the 1930s to paint him as an implacable
opponent of Nazism. As Richard Steigmann-Gall has demonstrated so clearly, Nazi
Germany was ideologically Protestant, not a neo-Pagan state, figures such as Hauer
and Wirth representing a political extreme, not the fascist mainstream. If Nazism
50 Cf. Reinhold Grimm, “In the Thicket of ‘Inner Emigration’”, in Neil H. Donahue and Doris
Kirchner, eds., Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–
1945 (New York: Berghahn, 2003), pp. 27–45.
51 Kurt Rudolph et al., eds., Festschrift Walter Baetke, dargebracht zu seinem 80, Geburtstag am 28.
März 1964 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1964), Ernst Walter and Hartmut Mittelstädt, eds., Altnordistik:
Vielfalt und Einheit. Erinnerungsband für Walter Baetke (1884–1978) (Weimar: Böhlau, 1989),
and cf. also Walter Baetke, Kleine Schriften: Geschichte, Recht und Religion im germanischen Schrift-
tum, ed. Kurt Rudolph and Ernst Walter (Weimar: Böhlau, 1973).
occur)
–––
P 101.
according to the Anglo-Saxon runes rows: gae, ger, gear, gyr (= jear), “Jahr” (år) or
gifu, gyfu, geofu, geuo, “Gabe” (gåva) in a simplified form with a raised and a low-
ered arm in the Nordic runes:
X ár (år)
in the “Abecedarium Nordmannicum” from an Anglo-Saxon monk32.
/23/
An old Friesian-Saxon “primeval feud and atonement oathformula” from my home

region in Groningen reads:
Wi zwaren een oilde oirvede voir den levendigen ende den doeden, – voir den ge-
boiren ende voor den ongeboiren, also verre als die sonne op ende tre gaet 57/
The farmers swore by the living as the born and by the dead as the unborn to
be reborn truá í forneskio. –
It is not possible to express the Odil oath, the oath on life and death, on the
ascending and descending “light of the country” in the annual ring of god, the di-
vine world order, in a clearer way.
od(il) is - God gift, the new light of life, the reincarnation.
Therefore stands or -God in the rock carvings with the wheel of the year
or the sun , or the od(il)runes or or rather a small
/24/
32 The Abecedarium Normannicum is a Rune Poem originating from the nineth century presenting
the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark.
264 Herman Wirth
“elven mill” in the uplifted hands, as we see them in the rock carvings of Fossum
(fig. 60), of Kalleby-Långemyr (figs. 54-55), of Backa (fig. 9) and also of Bro utmark
(Fig. 108)
And so once again the farmer once carved “the annual gift” of the sun of heaven
and god on the stone in his Odal field (Ingelstrup, Ods distr., Sjælland, Nat Mus
Köpenhamn), (figs. 61–62)
/25/
/26/
An Anglo-Saxon runic song33 (Hickes: Thesaurus I, p 135) explains the year rune as
the twelfth or midsummer rune in the following way:
ger gyr
byþ gumena hikt, ðonne god læteÞ, halig heofenes cyring hrusen syllan beorkte
bleda beornum ond ðearfum.
The “year” is the hope of the people, when God causes the holy heavenly king of
earth to donate glorious fruits to the rich and wealthy.
–––
In my native village the children wear in the Friesian-Saxon mixed area, Vollenhave
and Salland district near Zuiderzee, in Twente and Drente also the year’s wreath
bread as påskmaj34 in
in the shapes of a green branch (limb, pine) or as a bar with boxwood (evergreen)
with a bread baked in the form of a swan and od(il)kringles,
/27/
apples and egg shells (blown out) as symbols of the sun, fruit chains.
–––
12. Of the Lapp tradition of “trúa í forneskió”: Vāralden Radien (world ruler) or
Vāralden Olmai (worldly man, man of the world), Radien acce (age depending)
(wheel-father, lord father), and his son Radien kiedde (lord’s child, heaven’s child)
(kiedde, kidda “spring breeding force”) and his wife Mader-altje, Maderakko 62/
(62/ Gustav von Düben: Om Lappland och lapparne. Företrädesvis “Svenska Eth-
nografiska Studier”. Stockholm 1873, p. 217–225.)35
33 The Old Anglo-Saxon or Old English rune poem with stanzas on 29 Anglo-Saxon runes
dates back to the eigth or ninth century and stands alongside younger rune poems from
Scandinavia recording the names of the 16 younger Futhark runes. The manuscript was lost
in a fire in 1731. Yet copies of the poem had been made by Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726),
while the Anglican divine and philologist George Hickes (1642–1715) published it in his Lin-
guarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus which was finalised in
1705 and attracted great attention among European scholars after that.
34 “Whitsun-May”.
35 Gustav Düben: Om Lappland och Lapparne, företrädesvis de Svenske. Ethnografiska studier (Stock-
holm: Norstedt, 1873). The physician and anthropologist Gustav Düben (1822–1892) was a
professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm where he conducted research on a collec-
tion of craniums. During two trips to Lappland in 1868 and 1871 he sought to complete his
craniological studies among the Sami people and their material culture.
266 Herman Wirth
J. Qvigstad: Kildeskrifter til den lappiske Mythologi. Det Kongelige Norske Viden-
skabens Selskabs Skrifter 1903. Trondhjem 1904. p. 24f.36)
Even among the Koryaks traces of the religion of rock carvings: After the death
the souls of the dead turn back to the “Master up there”, there they hang on the
posts and beams of the heavenly houses. “There above”
/28/
they send the souls (uyi’cit or uyi’-rit) until the rebirth back to the mother’s
womb.63/
(63/ Waldemar Jochaelson: Religon and Myths of the Koryak – Memoirs of the
American Museum of Natural History, Vol X, Part. I. Leiden-New York 1908 (Re-
print from Vol VI, Part I of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition), pp. 24 -26.37
A corresponding perception in Gylfaginning 4:
“He (the Lord) has created heaven and earth and air and everything that is here.
– But the greatest work he accomplished is man giving him breath (soul); which
will live and never perish, even if the corpse molds to dust or burns to ashes. And
all men who are right-minded (þeir er rett ern siðaðen) shall live and be with him in
the place called Gimle.” – 64/
(Edda Snorre Sturlusonar, Codex Wormianus, Copenhagen and Christiania 1924,
pp. 10–11.38)
36 Just Qvigstad, Kildeskrifter til den lappiske Mythologi, 2 vols. (Trondhjem: Aktietrykheriet, 1903
and 1910). Just Knud Qvigstad (1853–1957) was a Norweigan linguist, ethnographer, cultur-
al historian, teacher and politician of the conservative party. After a long career as educator
he started to document Samian language and culture.
37 Waldemar Jochelson, Religion and myths of the Koryak (Leiden: Brill, 1905). The Jesup North
Pacific Expedition, directed by the anthropologist Franz Boas and sponsored by the indus-
trialist, philantropist and president of the American Museum of Natural History Morris Je-
sup, led to Siberia, Alaska, and the north west coast of Canada from 1897–1902. Renowned
American and Russian scholars participated in the expedition that examined life and culture
of the peoples along the Bering Strait. Waldemar Jochelson, i.e. Wladimir Ilyich Jochelson
(1855–1937), was a Russian ethnographer who, as a Jew and Socialist, had to leave Russia at
the age of twenty. Upon his return he was imprisoned for three years in 1884 and exiled for
ten years in 1887. During his banishment in the Siberian province Yakutsk he undertook
ethnographical studies and was chosen to participate in the Jesup expedition in order to re-
search the Koryaks, the Yukaghir and the Sakha. Later he worked as curator of the Russian
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg from 1912–22 before emigrat-
ing to the United States in 1922.
38 Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Codex Wormianus, edited by the Kommissionen for Det Arnamag-
næanske Legat with the cooperation of Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1924).
Gylfaginning, the tricking of king Gilfy by the gods, is the first part of the Prose Edda after
the Prologue.
/29/
During the Christianisation of the ancient runic calendar the house of heaven and
soul Gimle was placed at the beginning of November (All Souls’ Day).
–––
On the Gotlandic grave stones from the end of the first millennium of Ardre
and Tjängvide (Swedish Museum of National Antiquities) Gimlé, the house of
heaven and soul with its gates and sun fittings, is set to the left.39 Already here the
transformation towards Valhalla is clearly recognisable, but also on the rune stone
grave of Sanda, Gotland.40 However, Freya-Frigg, the “ruler” of Fólkvangr, is al-
ways sitting opposite to the All-Father. And she also bends her shoulders to the
Odebar swan fetching the dead warrior who stands in front of Odin; he has to fol-
low to the mother’s well in the womb of the earth, the Well of Urd, for rebirth in
the “sacred springtime”. As to these monuments and their cult symbolism, see
H.d.E. IV “Mothers’ night”.
–––
/30/
That the religion of the “supreme being”, the sky father and the son of heaven
and god, the redeemer-god, did not arise from the connection with Christianity, but
is a primeval religion [Urreligion], has been proven by the modern Catholic com-
parative study of religion (Father W. Schmidt)41 especially with regard to the region
of Eurasia.66/
66/
It was a directive of fate that the same church that once accomplished the as-
signed syncretism of Pope Gregorovius between the son of heaven and god in
northern Germania, the ancient faith “hviti-ass” and “hvite Krister”, has in our
time become the first to break with our old evolutionary doctrine of the religio-
histoical and mythological school, and rediscovered the primeval religion [Urreli-
gion] of the “Supreme-Being” as “primeval monotheism” [Urmonotheismus].
Unfortunately, Father W. Schmidt’s investigations “Der Ursprung der
Gottesidee”, Munich 1926–1935, 6 vols.,42 still rest
39 On the island of Gotland ten image stones were discovered in the church of Ardre in 1850
originating from the eigth to the eleventh century. Together with the nearby stones of
Tjängvide they are most widely recognised for their mythological sceneries.
40 In 1863 a runestone probably depicting Odin, Thor and Freyr was discovered at the church
at Sanda. It is designated as G 181 in the Scandinavian Runic-text Data Base (Rundata) and
currently located at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm.
41 Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954) was a Catholic linguist and ethnologist whose 12-volume
work Der Ursprung der Gottesidee (The Origin of the Idea of God) advocated the theory of a
primeval monotheism along with a monotheistic High God that would have existed among
almost all tribal peoples.
42 Wilhelm Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee. Eine historisch-kritische und positive Studie, 12 vols.
(Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1912–55).
104 Bernard Mees
—. “Ein Lebensbeispiel zur Frage nach Ursprung und Fortwicklung demokrati-

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a/ The magic drum of the Finn Lapp Anders Poulsson (hundred-year-old) (as
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/33/
No. 2 Veralden olmai with cross hand and light hand and -year mark, the Hagal-
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with cross or “people” -hand. – Note respectively the symbol wintersolstice “day”
– and “stone” runes, that form the body of the son of god, or originate from it (see
ills. 84–92.)
According to the tradition of the Lapp ceremonial drum, Raddien kidda, Jub-
mal child, is the lord of the solar year, [drawing is missing in the script] respectively
[drawing is missing in the script] was further revealed in the sacrificial findings of
Gråträsk, with arms crosswise outstretched as a “deus in rota” for [drawing is miss-
ing in the script] and [drawing is missing in the script] as a lord of the year and
world picture and of the soul escorting bird, the Odebar swan with the od(il)-
“dynasty”-rune.
All of this is orginially Germanic, the cult symbolism of the North-Sea Ger-
mans from the rock-carving epoch.
–––
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/36/
“the enhancer of joy of man and the magnifier of the surface soil and the adorn-
ment of the (land appropriation) ship.”
In fig. 80 there is a reproduced section of the rock carvings at Runohällen, Ta-
num parish, Bohuslän, where you see a remakable tree trunk on which the lower
part of the branch-ends are remaining, and under them it continues to be totally
hewn plain and stripped off bark. As other researchers, including Almgren 73/, sus-
pected, a ritual custom is at stake. –
Three thousand years later we can learn from the Old Icelandic “Landnámabok”
that during that settlement ceremonies a debarked and debranched rod (staf ny
birkðan) was raised indicating the entering and appropriation of the land (land-
konnuð) and that the land appropriating settler took in possession with his crew
and entourage as much land as possible he was able to encircle (in a certain time?!).
This surrounding had to take place along with the course of the sun, from east to
west,
/37/
from the morning until the evening. The land appropriating settler himself carried a
torch in his hand, as symbol of the sun, the divine light, “the ligth of the country”
(landa ljóme), as it reads in the Old Icelandic runic song. Landfara eldi “travelling
around in the country with fire”, is the name of the ceremony in the Book of Set-
tlements and in the myths and the dedication rituals “helga ser land” (hallowing
one’s country).
In the middle of the trunk is a small shell-like indentation. From the top three
long ribbons fall down, of whose two ends carry a previously undetermined object,
while the third ribbon leads to one of the two bent-over figures, who, while they
turn the back to each other, place one hand around the hips and touch the floor
with the other. – An earthwork or a cult dance (folk dance), that in Sweden still is
common during Yule time, or perhaps both at the same time? – The top of the rod
carries a sun wheel or a sun sprial as crown. On it stands
/38/
binda helskó.
horned figure with outstretched arms.
At the foot of the great “maypole” a ship stands with a foot sole indicating that we
have landed here, here we have gone round in the country. Above the ship next to
the rod’s foot the crew, which is participating in the settlement procedure, is walk-
ing with high outstretched hands. The backmost man carries a horn-shaped head-
gear (helmet?) like the figure at the top of the maypole. –
272 Herman Wirth
/39/
F. “Mother night’s” runes and the origin of the runic script.

P. 134.
The Yule symbolism on a circular runic calendar of the Oldsaksamling of the Uni-
versity of Oslo, dating from 1550, shows the following76/:
25·XII: The picture of the Son of God with outstretched arms and sun-year-
cross as head (Sonnenjahresrautenkreuz)
6·I. the younger od(il)rune, od(il)sling with the year’s cross, the second last
or twenty-third rune in the extended runic alphabet (ill. 92.)
13·I. the incandescent “Ur”.
17·I. the Rune of the Winter position of the sun dagr, egs. daegr. “dag”-rune,
the twenty-fourth and last in the longer rune row (ill. 92)
25·I. 2·II} The pair of arms of the son reborn on earth, of the All-Father, Tuisto
Thor-Freyr, who returns the 8-spoke sun-year-wheel. –
The Norwegian circular runic calendar from 1550 shows again the same tradi-
tion as the runic calendar disc of Fossum.
/40/
Rock drawings in Himmelstadlund48 ill. 85 – 86/ is not an inscription but end and
beginning of the long rune row as a formula for the position of the sun at winter
solstice, a calendaric prayer during Yule time.
48 The varied field of rock carvings of Himmelstadlund originate from the Swedish Bronze
Age (1500–500 BC) and are located in East Gothland.
P. 140/ The short or Nordic rune row can therefore neither be the younger nor the
long rune row the older one, as it has been commonly assumed since the time of
Ludwig Wimmer.49 We can only recognise that during the Migration Period the
long rune row
/41/
were prevailing as characters among West and South Germanic peoples in the
whole Germanic region. – After the Christianisation of the South and West Ger-
manic peoples and the displacement of the runic alphabet by the clerical script of
the Roman Catholic Church the short rune row occurs on the Nordic rune stones
since then beginning with the ninth century.
This is no loan, no abbreviated form of the long rune row, but a revival out of
the popular heritage of Nordic customs.
But now and then it shows a strong influence of the long rune row, e.g. when
the B-runes are standing at the entrance (beginning?) to the third dynasty, the dyn-
asty of the winter, but moreover as a redoubled at the end and at the beginning
of the row. –
The rock carvings in Fossum, Tanum parish, Bohuslän, can be regarded as the
main document and evidence for the Nordic or short rune row and the disc-shaped
rune calendar (ills. 81–82) –
The steely granite did not allow
/42/
the same treatment as wood. The peasant who created these rock carvings was not
able to carve the runes with his small flint dagger as he could on a wooden disc.
Hence he beat the disc out and around it, rather than inside the symbols and runes.
In fig. 82 I reckognised these symbols and runes and divided them into 3 ættir
(“stroke order, dynasty”). – If we compare the calendar disc of Fossum with the
short and the long rune row, where we discover later the original circle order /78 of
the wooden calendar disc, with the 8-divided course of the world and year, we ob-
tain the following result:
A. from the long rune row:
1./ twelfth rune, rune, half of the long rune row, Old English gar, ger, gear,
“year”, stands here as division of the year at the summer solstice in the
middle of the disc.
2./ sixteenth rune, -sig-rune
49 Ludvig Wimmer (1839–1920) was a Danish linguist and runologist teaching from 1886–1919
as professor of Nordic languages at the University of Copenhagen. He belonged to the first
scholars who used runic monuments as historical source.
274 Herman Wirth
3./ twenty third rune, , odil-rune, Old English oedil, œthil, ēthel, Old-High-
German ōdil, etc.
/43/
B. from the short rune row:
4./ The eleventh rune, -rune, Old Norse sól

please note the broken shaft of the sun rune being found with Bure50 and
Stiernhielm51 with the designation -rune, as sól-rune, sun with bent knees,
sun at highest position (the sun with bent knees, the sun at the highest posi-
tion in the sky) that means or , ending at the second dynasty, Hagal’s
family/dynasty or the summer part of the rune row.
5./ the fourteenth rune, - -rune, Old Norse madhr, Old English man (human)
C. from both rune rows

6./ the first rune Freyr “master” and Old English feoh, feh, Old Norse fé,
“livestock, cattle, property”.
7./ the sixth rune, -rune, Old English cén, “leader, light, beacon, torch”.
–––
B. Symbols:
1/ Under sun with bent knees, that now becomes the winter half year’s sól
sudhr halber (the southerly sinking sun, Atlakviða 30), stands the depiction of
a horse,
/44/
i.e. the nineteenth rune in the long rune row, the M-Rune, Old English eh,
“horse”, Old Saxon. ehn etc. – Concerning the horse of the sun and the year
50 Johan Bure (1568–1652), latinised to Johannes Bureus, was born in Åkerby near Uppsala as
the son of a Lutheran priest. He was a linguist, royal librarian, tutor, and adviser of King
Gustav Adolf of Sweden. As an antiquarian he documentet prehistoric monuments follo-
wing his particular interest in runes and runestones. Bureus was inspired by the idea to deve-
lop a runic system that he called the Adulruna. With it he referred not only to the Futhark
but also to Hermetic traditions and the Kabbalah. In 1611 he published a school book in
Swedish using both the runic alphabet and the latin script.
51 Georg Stiernhielm (1598–1672) was a Swedish nobleman, linguist and president of the Royal
College of Antiquities in Stockholm. Being called the “father of Swedish poetry”, Stiern-
hielm tried to prove that Gothic, which he equated with Old Norse, would be the origin of
all languages. In 1669 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
in the Old Indo-Aryan texts, see HU 67 and 7352. These symbols are therefore
commonly Indo-Germanic as well.
We again find the horse as symbol for the winter and the winter death,
God’s breath animal as companion of the year and the soul, in a form of oath
in Atlakviða 30, that noticeably expresses the old calendric formula;
at sólen suður hollu ok at Sigtý’s bergi,
hölkvi hvilbeðiar ok at hringi Ullar.
(by the southward verging sun, and by Sigtý’s hill, the secluded bed of rest,
and by Ullr’s ring.)
This is the formula of the runes:
Cf. H.U. pp. 295ff.53
2/ down in the south at the place of the position of the winter solstice, a neolith-
ic axe with a sidewise handle, the masculine symbol for the “division of the
year”
/45/
in the Scandinavian rune calender, namely in the Yule symbolism, at the win-
ter and summer solstice.
cf. H.U. plate 45 to 13.1. (Julian calender) and plate 336.
The Scandinavian rune rows show the “year cleaving” axe both forms:
the Neolithic axe with the handle sidewise fixed;
the bronze or iron axe directly attached to the handle.
–––
3/ The pair of arms with the triparted rune hands carrying the sun circle as a
symbol for the winter solstice. Belongs to the major motif of the rock carv-
ings.
–––
52 Herman Wirth, Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit: Symbolgeschichtliche Untersuchungen diesseits und
jenseits des Nordatlantik (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1931–36).
53 Cf. ibidem, pp. 295ff.
276 Herman Wirth
4/ The hand of God with the sun, the Old Indo-Aryan symbol of the “golden-
handed god of light” “Savitr, hiraņyapāņi”, a primeval Aryan symbol as well.
–––
/46/
1. The calender disk from Fossum was postponed to the younger Stone Age
(third millenium BC) by reason of the depiction of a Neolithic axe.
In contrast, for instance, to the rock carvings of East Gothland, which are
clearly Bronze Age, the rock carvings of Bohuslän are outright “palimpsests”:
they clearly display overpaintings in the carvings from different epochs, be-
ginning with the early Stone Age up to the Germanic Iron Age.
–––
2. The rock carvings of Fossum display runes of the short as well as of the long
Germanic rune row from the first millenium BC but also of the symbols that
were used for calendars still common in sixteenth and seventeenth centruy
Scandinavia
–––
3. The signs and symbols find appropriate explanations in the ancient Indo-
Aryan texts.
–––
The Germanic runic scripts are therefore common or primeval Aryan, of Neolithic
origin and dependent on
/47/
the observance of the course of the year in the northern hemisphere.
–––
/48/
As a parallel to the Fossum disc the formerly discussed Norwegian circular shaped
runic calender from 1550 can be mentioned, but also a Swedish runic rod calender
from 1687 (Sammlung für deutsche Volkskunde, Berlin, replica by the “Ahnener-
be”, published in H.U., pp. 616–17 and fig. 102 and p. 614, fig. 101.) –
Grip (fig. 83) to the summer side; half of the year with the increasing light, Jan-
uary – June. The beginning is denoted with
The grip (fig. 84) to the winter side with decreasing light, July – December be-
ginning with with lowered arms and “rune hands”.
As to , it can be said briefly: The rune or have aros en from
-ideograms. – It represents the “course of the year” of heaven’s and
god’s son:
/49/
The rune is therefore “two ” madhr, mann = twimadur.

Also it becomes apparant here how deep Swedish humanism was rooted in the
earth-bound, popular traditions (Swedish word?) in opposition to the rootless hu-
manism of the other side of the sound (Ole Worm54), where the clan of Odal-
peasanty perished.
Among Swedish humanists we find:
In Joh. Bure (1599)55
- madhr “Mann, Ehemann”
- maghr “son-in-law” (family members)
- ormaghr “fore-son-in-law” that is
54 Ole Worm (1588–1655) was a Danish physician and antiquary who collected early Scandina-
vian literature, among it runic texts as well.
55 As to Johan Bure, see footnote 63.
110 Luitgard Löw
accepted with a wink because of his charismatic and charming personality, which
fascinated those around him.11 Wirth designed reform clothes for himself and his
wife, maintained a paradigmatic vegetarianism, dominated by fruits and crudités,
avoided vinegar, coffee and alcohol, insisted on homeopathic treatment, did his
daily gymnastics and practised breathing exercises.12 He was convinced that his way
of living was the reason for his long, vital and active life.13 Wirth died at the age of
95, one year after publishing his last book Europäische Urreligion (European Primeval
Religion).14
Biographical Beginnings
Herman Felix Wirth was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands on 8 May 1885. His
father’s side of the family originated in Rheinpfalz, Germany, and his mother came
from the Netherlands. Wirth studied German studies, Dutch philology, history, and
music at the universities of Utrecht and Leipzig. He earned his degree in ethnology
(Folklore studies) in 1910 under John Meier (1864–1953), writing a thesis entitled
Der Untergang des niederländischen Volksliedes (The Fall of the Dutch Folksong).15
Due to his strong identification with Germany, Wirth voluntarily joined the
German army in 1914 as a “devotee of the greater Netherlander belief”.16 However,
by the end of the year, he was transferred from the military service to the German
civil administration in Belgium. While in Gent in 1915, he became part of the Fle-
mish independence movement, sympathising with the most radical group involved
in a separation from the French-speaking Walloons, the “Jung-Flamen”.17 By the
middle of 1916, Wirth returned to Berlin, and on 21 December 1916 he was gran-
ted the title of a titular professor for Netherlander philology at the University of
Berlin, most likely in honour of his work during the war.18 In the same year he got
married to his second wife Margarethe Schmitt (1890–1978), daughter of the pain-
ter Eugen Vital-Schmitt (1858–1935). Having returned to the Netherlands, Wirth
worked as a teacher and founded a youth movement group along the lines of the
Wandervogel movement in 1920. Probably his wife had inspired him to do that.
11 See for instance Friedrich Hielscher, Fünfzig Jahre unter Deutschen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1954),
pp. 288–93.
12 Cf. the letter of Herman Wirth to Gustav Schlyter on 8 March 1941, Regional State Archive
Lund, LLA 30112, vol. A: 51.
13 Günter-Joachim Neumann, Meine Begegnung mit Herman Wirth (private copy, 2007).
14 Herman Wirth Roeper Bosch, Europäische Urreligion und die Externsteine (Wien: Volkstum-Ver-
lag, 1980).
15 Idem, Der Untergang des niederländischen Volksliedes (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1911).
16 Idem, Der Aufgang der Menschheit (Jena: Diederichs, 1928), p. 15.
17 Ingo Wiwjorra, Herman Wirth. Leben und Werk (Berlin: unpublished Magister thesis 1988), pp.
7ff.
18 Ibidem, p. 8.
/51/
Mainz): Son of God and heaven as “twimaðhr” in the wheel of the year: H.d.E. II,
fig. 163).
–––
Ornamental disc of Pfahlheim, Migration Period: description of the “twimaðhr” in
the wheel of the year (Museum Nuremberg): H.d.E. II, fig. 164).
The Germania of Tacitus chapter 2: “celebrant carminibus antiquis – Tuisco-
nem (or Tuistonem) deum terra editum”.
Codex Vaticanus 1862 (H.d.E, II fig. 166) mentions “Tuismen” (two-men) in a
marginal note.
–––
Now the two humanists and last Roman titular bishops of Uppsala, Johannes
and Olaus Magnus, are fully rehabilitated, the pioneers of a national study of folk-
life, who reported on the origin and maturing of the runic calender being regarded
as local patriotism thus far and pushed aside as unscholarly. ––
Accompanied by his wife, Wirth and this group travelled through the country
playing folk music on traditional instruments and performing theatre. In 1924, the
couple moved to Marburg where Wirth became a member of the NSDAP a year
later. Probably due to the fact that he accepted Jewish sponsoring money, he
withdrew in 1926. Later he declared that he had wanted to be a part of the National
Socialist movement as an outsider, and that he had informed Hitler personally of
his position.
In the mid-twenties Wirth settled for the life of a private scholar. This was
made possible through influential and wealthy friends who supported the father of
four children. His earnings were almost never sufficient. The funds went directly to
his research, while his family mostly had to live in modest circumstances. The
money was generously given by sponsors like Mathilde Merck (1864–1958), a lea-
ding figure in the völkisch movement and wealthy widow of Willy Merck, associate
of the Merck company Darmstadt, one of the foremost international chemical-
pharmaceutical companies. Another generous sponsor was Eugen Diederichs
(1867–1930), who was willing to publish Wirth’s first large work Der Aufgang der
Menschheit (The Ascent of Mankind) in 1928; the heavy folio edition was priced at
42 Reichsmark and the linen edition at 48 Reichsmark.19 A second edition of the
book was printed in 1934. Wirth found another important sponsor in Ludwig
Roselius (1874–1943), producer of the decaffeinated coffee brand “Kaffee Hag”
and one of the richest men in Germany. Between 1929 and 1931, the Atlantis
house was built as a part of famous Böttcherstrasse in Bremen, which was tho-
roughly influenced by Wirth’s vision of the mythical continent.20
With the purpose of spreading his views and collecting money for his research,
Wirth established a society named after himself, the “Herman Wirth Gesellschaft”.
Wirth’s theories were aimed at a general audience in the main, while scholars
usually dismissed his work as speculative. In 1931, the geologist and prehistorian
Fritz Wiegers (1875–1955) published a collection of scholarly articles with argu-
ments against Wirth’s thought.21 However, the philosopher Alfred Baeumler
(1887–1968), who later became head of the department of science in the “Amt
Rosenberg”, issued a series of rebutting articles one year later in support of Wirth’s
theories.22
In that time, Wirth turned towards National Socialism with renewed force,
19 Cf. Justus H. Ulbricht, “‘Meine Seele sehnt sich nach Sichtbarkeit deutschen Wesens.’ Welt-
anschauung und Verlagsprogramm von Eugen Diederichs im Spannungsfeld zwischen Neo-
romantik und ‘Konservativer Revolution’”, in Gangolf Hübinger, ed., Versammlungsort moder-
ner Geister. Der Eugen Diederichs Verlag – Aufbruch ins Jahrhundert der Extreme (München: Die-
derichs, 1996), pp. 335–76.
20 Cf. Arn Strohmeyer, Parsifal in Bremen. Richard Wagner, Ludwig Roselius und die Böttcherstraße
(Weimar: VDG, 2002).
21 Fritz Wiegers, ed., Herman Wirth und die deutsche Wissenschaft (München: Lehmann, 1932).
22 Alfred Baeumler, ed., Was bedeutet Herman Wirth für die Wissenschaft? (Leipzig: Köhler und
Amelang, 1932).
282 About the authors
kischen Religionswissenschaft (1999), Das Überleben der Religionswissenschaft im Nationalso-

zialismus, special issue of the Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft (ed. 2001), Im
Dienste der Lügen. Herbert Grabert (1901–1978) und seine Verlage (coed. 2004), The Study
of Religion under the Impact of Fascism (ed. 2008), Die Universität Tübingen im Nation-
alsozialismus (coed. 2010), Die Verwissenschaftlichung der ‘Judenfrage’ im Nationalsozialis-
mus (2011).
Luitgard Löw
PhD in archaeology, is director of the Museum of the Bavarian Kings in Hohen-
schwangau and lecturer in archaeology at the University of Bamberg. Studied pre-
history, historical geography, archaeology and ethnology at the universities of Er-
langen and Bamberg. 2003–06 she was a post-doc scholarship holder researching
the layman interpretation of Bronze Age rock art in Scandinavia during the 1920s
and 1930s.
Bernard Mees
PhD in the history of ideas, is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Sustainable Organ-
isations and Work and the Global Cities Research Institute at the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology (RMIT). He holds a PhD in the history of ideas from the
University of Melbourne; his books include The Science of the Swastika (2008) and
Celtic Curses (2009).
Uwe Puschner
PD and PhD in history, is professor of history at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut,
Free University Berlin. Studied German studies and history at the Ludwig-Maximi-
lians-Universität Munich. Permanent member of the Centre d’Études Germaniques
Interculturelles de Lorraine (CEGIL); visiting professor in Metz, Montpellier, Lon-
don and in Canada. Research interests include the history of early modern handi-
craft, the völkisch movement and press and reception history. Publications include
Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Sprache – Rasse – Religion (2001),
Völkisch und national. Zur Aktualität alter Denkmuster im 21. Jahrhundert (coed. 2009)
and Die völkisch-religiöse Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Beziehungs- und Konfliktges-
chichte (coed. 2012).
Stefanie v. Schnurbein
PD and PhD in Scandinavian studies, is professor of modern Scandinavian litera-
tures at the Department for Northern European Studies, Humboldt-University
Berlin. Her fields of research include Scandinavian 19th and 20th century literature;
the reception of old Icelandic literature and Norse myth in literature, art, popular
media, and religion (neo-Paganism); the history of scholarship and ideology; repre-
sentations of Jews in Scandinavian literature; figurations of hunger, disorderly eat-
ing and economy in Scandinavian literature. Publications include Religion als Kul-
About the authors 283
turkritik. Neugermanisches Heidentum im 20. Jahrhundert (1992), Krisen der Männlichkeit.

Schreiben und Geschlechterdiskurs in skandinavischen Romanen seit 1890 (2001) and Völk-
ische Religion und Krisen der Moderne. Entwürfe ‘arteigener’ Glaubenssysteme seit der Jahrhun-
dertwende (coed. 2001).
Hartmut Walravens
PhD in East Asian studies, was library director at the Berlin State Library and pro-
fessor (PD) at the Free University Berlin. He has published numerous books and
articles on East Asian studies. Publications include Ferdinand Lessing. (1882–1961).
Sinologe, Mongolist und Kenner des Lamaismus. Material zu Leben und Werk. Mit dem Brief-
wechsel mit Sven Hedin (2000) and W. A. Unkrig (1883-1956). Leben und Werk (2003).
Zivilisationen & Geschichte / Civilizations & History / Civilisations & Histoire
Herausgegeben von / edited by / dirigée par Ina Ulrike Paul und / and / et Uwe Puschner
Bd. / Vol. 1 Ljiljana Heise: KZ-Aufseherinnen vor Gericht. Greta Bösel – „another of those brutal
types of women“? 2009.
Bd. / Vol. 2 Ivonne Meybohm: Erziehung zum Zionismus. Der Jüdische Wanderbund Blau-Weiß als
Versuch einer praktischen Umsetzung des Programms der Jüdischen Renaissance.
2009.
Bd. / Vol. 3 Tamara Or: Vorkämpferinnen und Mütter des Zionismus. Die deutsch-zionistischen
Frauenorganisationen (1897-1938). 2009.
Bd. / Vol. 4 Sonja Knopp: „Wir lebten mitten im Tod“. Das „Sonderkommando“ in Auschwitz in
schriftlichen und mündlichen Häftlingserinnerungen. 2010.
Bd. / Vol. 5 Vera Kallenberg: Von „liederlichen Land-Läuffern“ zum „asiatischen Volk“. Die Reprä-
sentation der ,Zigeuner‘ in deutschsprachigen Lexika und Enzyklopädien zwischen 1700
und 1850. Eine wissensgeschichtliche Untersuchung. 2010.
Bd. / Vol. 6 Stefan Gerbing: Afrodeutscher Aktivismus. Interventionen von Kolonisierten am Wende-
punkt der Dekolonisierung Deutschlands 1919. 2010.
Bd. / Vol. 7 Karena Kalmbach: Tschernobyl und Frankreich. Die Debatte um die Auswirkungen des
Reaktorunfalls im Kontext der französischen Atompolitik und Elitenkultur. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 8 Monika Brockhaus: „Ein Ereignis von weltgeschichtlicher Bedeutung“. Die Balfour-
Deklaration in der veröffentlichten Meinung. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 9 Klaus Geus (Hrsg.): Utopien, Zukunftsvorstellungen, Gedankenexperimente. Literari-
sche Konzepte von einer „anderen“ Welt im abendländischen Denken von der Antike bis
zur Gegenwart. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 10 Gregor Hufenreuter: Philipp Stauff. Zur Geschichte des Deutschvölkischen
SchriftstellerverBd./Vol.es, des Germanen-Ordens und der Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft.
Ideologe, Agitator und Organisator im völkischen Netzwerk des Wilhelminischen Kaiser-
reichs. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 11 Ghazal Ahmadi: Iran als Spielball der Mächte? Die internationalen Verflechtungen des
Iran unter Reza Schah und die anglo-sowjetische Invasion 1941. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 12 Thomas Brünner: Public Diplomacy im Westen. Die Presseagentur Panorama DDR
informiert das Ausland. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 13 Jonas Kleindienst: Die Wilden Cliquen Berlins. „Wild und frei“ trotz Krieg und Krise. Ge-
schichte einer Jugendkultur. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 14 Anne Katherine Kohlrausch: Literarische Selbstverortung als historische Handlung. The
Travels of Dean Mahomet, 1794. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 15 Reinhard Blänkner: „Absolutismus“. Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Studie zur politischen
Theorie und zur Geschichtswissenschaft in Deutschland, 1830-1870. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 16 Jens Flemming, Klaus Saul, Peter-Christian Witt (Hrsg.), unter Mitarbeit von Simona
Lavaud: Lebenswelten im Ausnahmezustand. Die Deutschen, der Alltag und der Krieg,
1914-1918. 2011.
Bd. / Vol. 17 Philipp Küsgens: Horizonte nationaler Musik. Musiziergesellschaften in Süddeutschland
und der Deutschschweiz 1847-1891. 2012.
Bd. / Vol. 18 Anette Dietrich / Ljiljana Heise (Hrsg.): Männlichkeitskonstruktionen im Nationalsozialis-
mus. Formen, Funktionen und Wirkungsmacht von Geschlechterkonstruktionen im Nati-
onalsozialismus und ihre Reflexion in der pädagogischen Praxis. 2013.
Bd. / Vol. 19 David Hamann: Gunther Ipsen in Leipzig. Die wissenschaftliche Biographie eines „Deut-
schen Soziologen“ 1919-1933. 2013.
Bd. / Vol. 20 Richard Faber / Uwe Puschner (Hrsg.): Intellektuelle und Antiintellektuelle im 20. Jahr-
hundert. 2013.
Bd. / Vol. 21 Nicola Kristin Karcher / Anders G. Kjøstvedt (eds.): Movements and Ideas of the Ex-
treme Right in Europe. Positions and Continuities. 2013.
Bd. / Vol. 22 Klaus Geus / Elisabeth Irwin / Thomas Poiss (Hrsg.): Herodots Wege des Erzählens.
Logos und Topos in den Historien. 2013.
Bd. / Vol. 23 Alina Soroceanu: Niceta von Remesiana. Seelsorge und Kirchenpolitik im spätantiken
unteren Donauraum. 2013.
Bd. / Vol. 24 Horst Junginger / Andreas Åkerlund (eds.): Nordic Ideology between Religion and
Scholarship. 2013.
Bd. / Vol. 25 Richard Faber (Hrsg.): Totale Erziehung in europäischer und amerikanischer Literatur.
2013.
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Nordic Ideology between Religion and Scholarship

Civilizations & History

Zu Qualitätssicherung und Peer Review Notes on the quality assurance

Die Qualität der in dieser Reihe Prior to publication,

Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg

The photographs on the binding display Herman Wirth during

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg

The photographs on the binding display Herman Wirth during

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

NOTION AND CONCEPT OF THE NORDIC IDEA

The Notions Völkisch and Nordic: A Conceptual Approximation

Nordic Ideology in the SS and the SS Ahnenerbe

RELIGION, SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY IN GERMANY AND SWEDEN

The Eddic Myth between Academic and Religious Interpretations

The Great God’s Oldest Runes

“Luthers Kampf gegen die Juden”: A Völkisch Reception of Luther’s

Nordic Studies in National Socialist Germany: A Possible Career Path

THE MIGRATION OF THE NORDIC IDEA

Sven Hedin and German Scholars: The Cases of Wilhelm A. Unkrig

The Use of Theories of Religion in Contemporary Asatru

Photographs of Wirth’s Excursions to Sweden .......................................................... 247

Summary of “The Great God’s Oldest Runes”. Fimbultý’s Prehistoric

About the authors ............................................................................................................ 281

1. The Relevance of the Nordic Myth

3. Particular Aspects of the Nordic Myth as Presented in this

10 Junginger, “From Buddha to Adolf Hitler”, p. 122.

Historical Remarks on the Political Slogan

THE MIGRATION OF THE NORDIC IDEA

Sven Hedin and German Scholars: The Cases of Wilhelm A. Unkrig

The Use of Theories of Religion in Contemporary Asatru

Photographs of Wirth’s Excursions to Sweden .......................................................... 247

Summary of “The Great God’s Oldest Runes”. Fimbultý’s Prehistoric

About the authors ............................................................................................................ 281

Völkisch ideology could never be formulated as a systematic ideology binding for

The Völkisch ideology corresponded in character to a radical-nationalistic protest

se found expression, for example, in male-connoted heroism, in notions of male-

Völkisch Religion and Religiousness

Religion must be considered the “Archimedean point” of the völkisch ideology.37

As a hybrid of radical nationalism, the völkisch movement appears to be a confusing

Adam, Thomas. “Heinrich Pudor – Lebensreformer, Antisemit und Verleger”. In

und Vorträge, vol. 1: Deutschfaschistische Literatur und Ästhetik. Gesammelte Studien.

—. “Völkisch-rassische Siedlungen der Lebensreform”. In Puschner et al., eds.,

1. The Relevance of the Nordic Myth

2. The Starting Point of this Volume

3. Particular Aspects of the Nordic Myth as Presented in this

10 Junginger, “From Buddha to Adolf Hitler”, p. 122.

35 An anime is a Japanese animated film or style of motion-picture animation.

Antarctic expedition to New Swabia in 1938/39. Many other patterns of an omni-

4. The General Irrelevance of Paganism

The religious distribution of the German population

Persons altogether Figures Percentages

Members of a church, religious associa-

Jews 307,614 0.4

Irreligious 1,208,005 1.5

Without statement 27,584 0.0

Total population 79,375,281 100.0

The religious distribution of the German population

The general division of Christians and non-Christians

The distribution of the 5.5 per cent non-Christians

—. “Völkisch-rassische Siedlungen der Lebensreform”. In Puschner et al., eds.,

Wiwjorra, Ingo. Der Germanenmythos. Konstruktion einer Weltanschauung in der Altertums-

1. The Historiography of the Church Struggle and its Misrepresen-