The Germanenorden (Germanic or Teutonic Order) was an

occult The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...

ist and '' völkisch''

secret society A secret society is a club or an organization whose activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence a ...

in early 20th-century Germany. Its aim was to monitor Jews and spread

antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

material.

History

The Germanenorden was founded in Berlin in 1912 by

Theodor Fritsch Theodor Fritsch (born Emil Theodor Fritsche; 28 October 1852 – 8 September 1933), was a German publisher and journalist. His antisemitic writings did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th c ...

and several prominent German occultists including

Philipp Stauff Philipp Stauff (1876–1923) was a prominent German/Austrian journalist and publisher in Berlin. He was an enthusiastic Armanist, a close friend of Guido von List, and a founding member of the Guido-von-List-Society. He was also the obituarist ...

, who held office in the

Guido von List Society Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List (5 October 1848 – 17 May 1919), was an Austrian occultist, journalist, playwright, and novelist. He expounded a modern Pagan new religious movement known as Wotanism, which he claimed was t ...

and

High Armanen Order Armanism and Ariosophy are esoteric ideological systems that were developed largely by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', which means the wisdom of the Aryans, was in ...

as well as Hermann Pohl, who became the Germanenorden's first leader. The order was a clandestine movement that wished to create a small but devoted group and was a sister movement to the more open and mainstream

Reichshammerbund Reichshammerbund (Reich Hammer League) was a German anti-Semitic movement founded in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch. Based on ''The Hammer'', a journal founded by Fritsch in 1902, the Bund argued that Jewish influences had contaminated Germany and attemp ...

Richard S. Levy Richard Simon Levy (May 10, 1940 – June 23, 2021) was a professor of Modern German History at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1971 until his retirement in 2019. He is most noted for his contributions to history in debunking several anti ...

, ''Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1'', ABC-CLIO, 2005, p. 269 In 1916, during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, the Germanenorden split into two parts.

Eberhard von Brockhusen Eberhard von Brockhusen, (1869-1939), was a patron of the List society who lived at in Brandenburg, Germany. Guido von List was travelling to his manor house when he died in the spring of 1919. He was the Grand Master of the Germanenorden The ...

became the Grand Master of the "loyalist" Germanenorden. Pohl, previously the order's Chancellor, founded a schismatic offshoot: the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail.Thomas 2005. He was joined in the same year by Rudolf von Sebottendorff (formerly Rudolf Glauer), a wealthy adventurer with wide-ranging occult and mystical interests. A Freemason and a practitioner of

Sufism Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, r ...

and

astrology Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of Celestial o ...

, Sebottendorff was also an admirer of

Guido von List Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List (5 October 1848 – 17 May 1919), was an Austrians, Austrian occultism, occultist, journalist, playwright, and novelist. He expounded a Modern Paganism, modern Pagan new religious movement kno ...

and

Lanz von Liebenfels Lanz may refer to: Places * Lanz, Brandenburg, a municipality in Brandenburg, Germany * a village in the municipality Störnstein in Bavaria, Germany * Lanz, German name from Lomnice, a village in Sokolov District, Czech Republic * Lanz Peak ...

. Convinced that the Islamic and Germanic mystical systems shared a common

Aryan Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ' ...

root, he was attracted by Pohl’s runic lore and became the Master of the Walvater's Bavarian province late in 1917. Charged with reviving the province's fortunes, Sebottendorff increased membership from about a hundred in 1917 to 1,500 by the autumn of the following year. The Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater when it was formally dedicated on August 18, 1918 was given the cover name the

Thule Society The Thule Society (; german: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the ''Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum'' ("Study Group for Germanic Antiquity"), was a German occultist and '' Völkisch'' group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, ...

, which is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), which was later transformed by

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

into the

National Socialist German Workers' Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

(Nazi Party).

Activity

The Germanenorden had a hierarchical fraternal structure based on

Freemasonry Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

. The structure was adopted due to the assumption that Jews engaged in secret organizing, and that it would be best to counter their influence over the German public life by using the same method. The primary concern was to monitor Jewish activity and to be a centre for the distribution of

material. Secondary concerns involved the assistance between members in business and the circulation of ''völkisch'' journals, especially Fritsch's journal ''Hammer''. Applicants were required to prove their Germanic descent, and if they were married also their wife's. Through Bernhard Koerner, Stauff and Brockhusen, the order became imbued with the occult-nationalist ideas of List. Influenced by List's

Ariosophy Armanism and Ariosophy are esoteric ideological systems that were developed largely by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', which means the wisdom of the Aryan race, Ar ...

, it adopted a

swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. It ...

superimposed on a cross as its symbol in 1916. The rituals of the order were influenced by theories about the

Aryan race The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...

, Freemasonry and the operas of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

References

Citations

Sources

* {{Authority control Antisemitism in Germany Germanic mysticism Secret societies in Germany Organizations established in 1912 Organizations disestablished in 1934