|
Otto Rahn
Otto Wilhelm Rahn (18 February 1904 – 13 March 1939) was a German writer, medievalist, Ariosophist, and an officer of the SS and researcher into the Grail myths. He was born in Michelstadt, Germany, and died in Söll (Kufstein, Tyrol) in Austria. Early life and work From an early age, Rahn became interested in the legends of Parzival, the Holy Grail, Lohengrin and the Nibelungenlied. While attending the University of Giessen, he was inspired by his professor, Baron von Gall, to study the Albigensian (Catharism) movement and the massacre that occurred at Montségur. In 1931, he travelled to the Pyrenees region of southern France where he conducted most of his research. Aided by the French mystic and historian Antonin Gadal, Rahn argued that there was a direct link between Wolfram von Eschenbach's ''Parzival'' and the Cathar Grail mystery. He believed that the Cathars held the answer to this sacred mystery and that the keys to their secrets lay somewhere beneath the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michelstadt
Michelstadt () in the Odenwald is a town in the Odenwaldkreis (district) in southern Hesse, Germany between Darmstadt and Heidelberg. It has a population of 28,629 people. Geography Location Michelstadt is the biggest town in the Odenwaldkreis and borders on the district seat of Erbach. Neighbouring municipalities Michelstadt borders in the north on the municipality of Brombachtal, the town of Bad König and the municipality of Lützelbach, in the east on the town of Klingenberg, the market municipalities of Laudenbach and Kleinheubach, the town of Miltenberg, the market municipality of Weilbach, the town of Amorbach and the market municipality of Kirchzell (all seven in Miltenberg district in Bavaria), in the south on the town of Erbach, and in the west on the municipalities of Mossautal and Reichelsheim. Constituent communities Michelstadt's '' Stadtteile'', besides the main town, also called Michelstadt, are Rehbach, Steinbach, Steinbuch, Stockheim, Vielbrunn, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nibelungenlied
The ( gmh, Der Nibelunge liet or ), translated as ''The Song of the Nibelungs'', is an epic poetry, epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German. Its anonymous poet was likely from the region of Passau. The is based on an oral tradition of Germanic heroic legend that has some of its origin in historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries and that spread throughout almost all of Germanic languages, Germanic-speaking Europe. Scandinavian parallels to the German poem are found especially in the heroic lays of the ''Poetic Edda'' and in the ''Völsunga saga''. The poem is split into two parts. In the first part, the prince Sigurd, Siegfried comes to Worms, Germany, Worms to acquire the hand of the Burgundians, Burgundian princess Kriemhild from her brother King Gunther. Gunther agrees to let Siegfried marry Kriemhild if Siegfried helps Gunther acquire the warrior-queen Brünhild as his wife. Siegfried does this and marries Kriemhild; however, Brünhild and Krie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingdom Of Iceland
The Kingdom of Iceland ( is, Konungsríkið Ísland; da, Kongeriget Island) was a sovereign and independent country under a constitutional monarchy, constitutional and hereditary monarchy, hereditary monarchy that was established by the Danish–Icelandic Act of Union, Act of Union with Denmark signed on 1 December 1918. It lasted until 17 June 1944 when a Icelandic constitutional referendum, 1944, national referendum established the Republic of Iceland in its place. Under a personal union, due to the Danish–Icelandic Act of Union, Act of Union, the monarch was simultaneously monarch of Denmark. The Althing, Parliament of Iceland asked that Denmark represent Iceland internationally, and day-to-day matters were delegated to a Danish plenipotentiary for Icelandic affairs based in Reykjavík, and – after the German invasion of Denmark (1940), German invasion of Denmark in 1940 – a regent was appointed. History Origins of Danish rule Because of the Kalmar Union, Iceland ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingdom Of Italy
The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to an 1946 Italian institutional referendum, institutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and form the modern Italy, Italian Republic. The state resulted from a decades-long process, the ''Italian unification, Risorgimento'', of consolidating the different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state. That process was influenced by the House of Savoy, Savoy-led Kingdom of Sardinia, which can be considered Italy's legal Succession of states, predecessor state. Italy Third Italian War of Independence, declared war on Austrian Empire, Austria in alliance with Kingdom of Prussia, Prussia in 1866 and received the region of Veneto following their victory. Italian troops Capture of Rome, entered Rome in 1870, ending Papal States, more tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the head of gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of the Holocaust. As a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service, and did not fight. He studied agriculture in university, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. In 1929, he was appointed by Adolf Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a 290-man battalion into a million-strong paramilitary group, and set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps. He was known for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich in 1931. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albigensian Crusade
The Albigensian Crusade or the Cathar Crusade (; 1209–1229) was a military and ideological campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc, southern France. The Crusade was prosecuted primarily by the French crown and promptly took on a political aspect. It resulted in the significant reduction of practicing Cathars and a realignment of the County of Toulouse with the French crown. The distinct regional culture of Languedoc was also diminished. The Cathars originated from an anti-materialist reform movement within the Bogomil churches of the Balkans calling for what they saw as a return to the Christian message of perfection, poverty and preaching, combined with a rejection of the physical to the point of starvation. The reforms were a reaction against the often perceived scandalous and dissolute lifestyles of the Catholic clergy in southern France. Their theology, neo-Gnostic in many ways, was basically dualistic cosmology, dualist. Several of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cathar
Catharism (; from the grc, καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure ones") was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France. Followers were described as Cathars and referred to themselves as Good Christians; in modern times, they are mainly remembered for a prolonged period of religious persecution by the Catholic Church, which did not recognize their unorthodox Christianity. Catharism emerged in Western Europe in the Languedoc region of southern France in the 11th century. Adherents were sometimes referred to as Albigensians, after the French city Albi where the movement first took hold. Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who set few guidelines, leading some Catharist practices and beliefs to vary by region and over time. The movement was greatly influenced by the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire, and may have originated in the Byzantine Empire, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfram Von Eschenbach
Wolfram von Eschenbach (; – ) was a German knight, poet and composer, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of medieval German literature. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry. Life Little is known of Wolfram's life. There are no historical documents which mention him, and his works are the sole source of evidence. In ''Parzival'', he talks of ''wir Beier'' ("we Bavarians"); the dialect of his works is East Franconian. This and a number of geographical references have resulted in the present-day Wolframs-Eschenbach, until 1917 Obereschenbach, near Ansbach in present-day Bavaria, being officially designated as his birthplace. However, the evidence is circumstantial and not without problems - there are at least four other places named Eschenbach in Bavaria, and Wolframs-Eschenbach was not part of the Duchy of Bavaria ('' Altbayern'') in Wolfram's time. The arms shown in the Manesse manuscript come from the imagination of a 14th-century artist, drawing on the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonin Gadal
Antonin Gadal (15.3.1877 – 15.6.1962) was a French mystic and historian who dedicated his life to study of the Cathars in the south of France, their spirituality, beliefs and ideology. Life Gadal was born in 1877 in the Pyrenean town of Tarascon in the Ariège region in the south of France, which was one of the centres of the heretical gnostic Christian movement known as the Cathars or the Albigensians in the 12th and 13th Centuries. Another major Cathar centre, Montségur, the castle where their leaders made their last stand against the Crusaders, is not far away to the north-east. Montaillou, the village which continued as a secret community of Cathars until the 14th Century and the Inquisition's records of which went up to make Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's book ''Montaillou: Promised Land of Error'' (1975), is also nearby. Gadal grew up in a house next to the Tarasconian historian Adolphe Garrigou who specialised in the history of the Cathars (along with his son he is hon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast. It reaches a maximum altitude of at the peak of Aneto. For the most part, the main crest forms a divide between Spain and France, with the microstate of Andorra sandwiched in between. Historically, the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarre extended on both sides of the mountain range. Etymology In Greek mythology, Pyrene (mythology), Pyrene is a princess who eponym, gave her name to the Pyrenees. The Greek historiography, Greek historian Herodotus says Pyrene is the name of a town in Celts, Celtic Europe. According to Silius Italicus, she was the virgin daughter of Bebryx, a king in Narbonensis, Mediterranean Gaul by whom the hero Hercules was given hospitality during his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montségur
Montségur (; Languedocien: ''Montsegur'') is a commune in the Ariège department in southwestern France. It is famous for its fortification, the Château de Montségur, that was built on the "pog" (mountain) on the ruins of one of the last strongholds of the Cathars. The present fortress on the site, though described as one of the " Cathar castles," is from a later period. It has been listed as a historic site by the French Ministry of Culture since 1862. According to the book, ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'', Montségur was the location of a mythical treasure related to the Holy Grail, which was promptly smuggled away before the Cathar surrender. History The earliest signs of settlement in the area date back to the time of the Neanderthals, tens of thousands of years ago. Evidence of Roman occupation such as Roman currency and tools have also been found in and around the site. The name "Montségur" comes from Latin ''mons securus'' ("safe hill") which evolved into ''mont s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
