


















SECRET SOCIETIES
- SALASEURAT
THULE
GERMANEN ORDEN

Before Hitler came: Thule
Society and Germanen Orden Reginald
H. Phelps LATE
IN 1933, several months after the establishment of the National Socialist
regime, a book appeared in Münich with the exciting title Bevor Hitler kam:
Urkundliches aus der Fruhzeit der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung von Rudolf
von Sebottendorff. l It was dedicated to the memory of seven members of the
Thule Society (Thule Gesellschaft) who were killed by the Reds as
.'hostages" in Münich on April
30, 1919, the day before the entrance into the city of
White troops supporting the Bavarian government, then
temporarily exiled in Bamberg.
It combined details of its author's activities in
Bavaria
during the war and the revolution with an account of the Thule's history. Its
principal thesis was summarized by Sebottendorff in the preface: "Thule
members were the people to whom Hitler first turned, and who first allied
themselves with Hitler! "The armament (Rüstung) of the
coming Führer consisted-besides the Thule itself-of the Deutscher
Arbeiterverein, founded in the Thule by Brother Karl Harrer at Münich, and the
Deutsch- Sozialistische Partei, headed there by Hans Georg Grassinger, whose
organ was the Münchener Beobachter, later Völkischer Beobachter.
From these three sources Hitler created the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei."2 The book must have aroused lively
interest, for a second edition appeared early in 1934.3

And well it might,
considering the mass of information it contained about the myth-encrusted early
days of the counterrevolution in Münich (though not about Hitler personally).
Its contents did not at all suit the official view, deriving from Mein Kampf
that national socialism was essentially Hitlers own creation. On March I, 1934
the Bavarian political police sent a brief note to the publisher that the book
was banned and confiscated because it was misusing Hitlers name for profit and
contained inaccuracies derogatory to leading National Socialists: "The
whole tendency of the book is in general-contrary to fact-to give the chief
credit for the national renewal of Germany to the Thule Gesellschaft." 4 Sebottendorff's
astounding claims have been little studied. Though Georg Franz- Willing's
recent study of the period uses documentary materials from the NSDAP
Hauptarchiv in the Berlin
Document
Center, plus considerable oral
information, he largely follows Sebottendorff's account of the Thule.5 This
article will consider the history of the Thule in relation to the völkisch
movement generally, its connections with the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP,
later NSDAP) and the Deutschsozialistische Partei (DSP), with the Völkischer
Beobachter, and with the Freikorps Oberland, parent of Bund Oberland, which
marched together with the NSDAP in the Hitler Putsch of November 1923.
Materials from the NSDAP Hauptarchiv, from the Rehse Collection, and at the Institut
für Zeitgeschichte and the Bavarian State Archives in Münich, make it possible
to check Sebottendorff's claims and to fiII in extensively the picture of the
pre-Hitler völkisch movement, of which the Thule
was a small, though locally important, part. The principal individual sources
are documents of Johannes Hering, a central figure in völkisch
activities in Münich well before 1914, and of Julius Riittinger of
Nuremberg,
whose correspondence in the Hauptarchiv sheds considerable light on this murky
chapter of ideology and politics. The results only partly confirm the
implication of Sebottendorff's title, and his claims; rather they show paraIlel
racist groups, with overlapping member- ships, most of them ultimately absorbed
into, allied with, or declared heretical by, the National Socialists. And they
illuminate the tragic event-the "murder of the hostages"
(Geiselmord)-which became one of the principal springs of violent antisemitism
and anti-Leftism in Bavaria.
Sebottendorff was born Rudolf Glauer, the son of a locomotive
engineer, in Silesia.
The Social Democratic Münchener Post reported that he had in 1909 been
sentenced as a swindler and forger and that four years later he reappeared as
"Baron von Sebottendorff," having meanwhile succeeded in being
adopted by an Austrian of that name (and even- tuaIly re-adopted by a German
branch of the family) and having become a Turkish citizen!6 His activities in
Ba- varia from 19l7 to 1919 Will be dealt with below. After the fall of the
Münich
Soviet
Republic,
he moved to Bad Sachsa in the Harz, whence he returned to
Istanbul,
seems to have traveled in Mexico
and perhaps the United
States, and tumed up
again at Münich in 1933, engaged in reviving the Thule.
He disappeared after that; his publisher H. G. Grassinger thinks that he was
killed by the Nazis but has no proof of this.7 Sebottendorff's is a spectacular
version of the not unfamiliar career of the shady and mysterious adventurer,
often from foreign parts, who attaches himself vehemently to an extreme nationalist
cause. He built up his own role excessively in the book; but he
was less chary than Hitler in Mein Kampf of paying his respects to his
"intellectual" antecedents, foremost among them Theodor Fritsch of
Leipzig, and in lesser degree three Austrians, Guido von List, Jörg Lanz von
Liebenfels, and Baron Wittgenberg.8

The most needed study of the
"intellectual" roots of German racism and national socialism is,
incidentally, one that would deal with such figures of the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Joachim Besser made a promising beginning in 1949 and 1950
but seems not to have pursued it; Wilfried Daim's significant, though not
wholly convincing, study of Lanz likewise has not been followed.9 Men like
Guido von List and Lanz, publications like the former's .'Germanic"
researches and the latter's Ostara-Hefte and his queer tomes of
pseudo-anthropology, journals like Ludwig Woltmann's Politisch-anthropologische
Revue, reveal a scientifically embroidered racist theory, complete with
"theology," propagated with varying success among intelligentsia and
aristocrats as well as among that famous foundering petty bourgoisie that is
supposed to be the chief consumer of such wares; the same names run through the
same arguments and blow up the same balloons of theory, year after year, in
book after book. It is hard to decide the extent of their influ- ence on such
political-social movements as Adolf Stoecker's Christian socialism or the other
antisemitic groups of the l880's and l890's; though they contributed to the
ideological bases of such groups, they did not really produce a mass movement
until after 1918; and the following account of Thule and its parent, the
Germanen Orden, will show something of how and why this transition from
conspiracy and propaganda effort to masspolitics occurred. There
is still no thorough study of Theodor Fritsch, probably the most significant
figure of German antisemitism before the Nazis, and the chief instigator of the
political and conspiratory movement from which the Germanen Orden and Thule
grew; author of innumerable tracts and books, a leader from the l880's on in
the antisemitic Deutschsoziale Partei and publisher of its Antisemitische
Correspondenz and the Deutschsoziale Blätter from 1885 to 1894.10 In 1902,
after sulking in his tent for several years, Fritsch founded the Hammer a
principal organ of "scientific" antisemitism, and henceforth devoted
his chief energies, and the income from his successful trade journal Deutscher
Müller, to this cause. He was in close contact with many racist-reformist
groups, and he was deeply concemed with spreading his message both to the elite
and t.o the workers-neither of them, especia1ly in South
Germany, very ready to receive it during the first
decade of the Hammer. Fritsch was an inveterate founder. As
early as 1904 the Hammer published an appeal for a völkisch
general staff (and Fritsch actually headed a national committee incorporating
this idea); Hammer readers early formed local groups, Hammer-Gemeinden,
consolidated in 1908 into the Deutsche Erneuerungs.Gemeinde, and two years
later the Deutscher Hammerbund.11 Early in 1912 Fritsch ca1led for
an antisemitic organization "above the parties."12 This was a crucial
year; the Social Democratic success in the Reichstag election in January, and
the growing fear of catastrophe abroad, exemplified in the continuing Morocco
crisis and the Balkan war, stirred Fritsch as it simultaneously stirred
Heinrich Class, chairman of the Alldeutscher Verband. Class's Wennich der
Kaiser wär! published early that year under the pseudonym Daniel Frymann,
with its appeal for dictatorship, its passionate denunciation of the Jews, its
demand for "Deutschland den Deutschen," supplied Fritsch with a
platfonn,18 He summoned Gennans of good will and flawless Teutonic descent to
unite, and he sponsored two organizations to carry on the task of
"enlightenment".

At a meeting in
Leipzig
on Whitsuntide 1912, these two groups, the Reichshammerbund and the secret
Germanen Orden-both already existing-were given formal status. Colonel Hellwig
of Kassel
headed the former until his death in 1914; the latter was led by Hermann Pohl,
a sealer of weights and measures in
Magdeburg,
who was also Hellwig's vice-chairman in the Reichshammerbund. Among those
present at the found- ers. meeting was Julius Rüttinger, prominent in the
nationalist commercial employees' union, Deutschnationaler
Handlungsgehilfenverband (DHV) at
Nuremberg,
and soon to be head of both Reichshammerbund and Germanen Orden in that city.14
His correspondence in the NSDAP Hauptarchiv is the chief source for this
account of the two organizations until 1919. Their numbers were
small, their growth slow. North and central Germany
were obviously more fertile ground for this racist antisemitism than
Bavaria
and the south (and the number of sub- scribers for the Hammer in the north
indicates that even that ground was not very fertile). From Leipzig Riittinger
received in February 1912 the draft constitution of the Reichshammerbund; the Bundeswart,
with Fritsch and an Armanen-Rat of twelve members-the term sounds like an echo
of Guido von List's elitism-formed the executive. Members had to guarantee
their Aryan blood; leaflets were for the present to be the chief weapon in the
struggle against the Jews and for an independent middle c1ass.15 A set of guide
lines followed at Easter, urging collaboration with Catholics, a broad spread
of propaganda to workers, farmers, teachers, officials, and officers, and
special activity at the universities.l6 Rüttinger's correspondence reflects the
slow progress of the Hammerbund and a persistent trend to internal disputes and
petty concems. At the end of 1912, the
Nuremberg
group reported twenty-three members, an average atttendance of ten at meetings,
and a balance of 5.58 marks, from a year's income of 94.64! And 1913 showed
figures hardly more impressive.17 Indeed, in June 1913 I only nineteen
Hammer-Gemeinden existed in all Germany.
The liveliest center appears to have been Hamburg,
under Alfred Roth, who succeeded Hellwig as Bundeswart on the latter's
death in February 1914 and was to achieve notoriety as head in 1919 of the
Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund. He was ably seconded at
Hamburg
by Walter Otto and many other members of the DHV.18 Thousands of
leaflets, hand-to-mouth propaganda, and a few hundred members! No wonder this
looked like one more of Fritsch's stillborn children. Yet in October 1912
Fritsch and Hellwig informed the Hammer-Gemeinden: "We
are now going to the limit!"; the enemy is prepared to exploit war or
revolution; the Reichshammerbund must spread discord in his ranks; "he
shall find his master in the German!"19 And in the Hammer, in
November, Fritsch fired a blast for "The Counter-Revolution"; the
"hate of the Tschandala" had for decades been undermining the
Germanic peoples; now the counterattack against the "chief criminals"
must be launched; "a few hundred courageous men can accomplish the
work"; the enemy leaders "must fall, at the very start of the revolt;
not even flight abroad shall protect them. As soon as the bonds of civic order
lie shattered on the ground and law is trodden underfoot, the Sacred Vehme
enters on its rights; it must not fear to smite the mass-criminals with their
own weapons."20 Though the development of the secret Germanen
Orden appears only obscurely in the material, it was obviously intended to be
the activist side of the movement. In Nuremberg, as later in Münich, it lived
in the shadows beside the Reichshammerbund; Rüttinger headed both groups in
Nuremberg, forming, he wrote, the Germanen Orden out, of the Hammerbund, and
there was doubtless much duplication of membership.21 The Hammer rarely
commented on the Germanen Orden, but in the first July issue of 1912, Fritsch,
responding to inquiries, stated his approval of its aims and leaders. The Orden
published frequent advertisements in the Rightist press (e.g., Deutsche Zeitung, Alldeutsche
Blätter) at least from 1917 on, inviting "German-blooded, serious men
of pure character" to join a "Germanic lodge."22 In
organization, ritual, and terminology it clearly imitated Freemasonry. It
published for many years a joumal, Runen embellished by the inevitable völkisch
swastika-a widespread symbol among racists long before Hitler had been heard
of. The Hauptarchiv contains a hectographed notice from Pohl,
dated January 12, 1912, referring to a circular he had sent the previous
November to "50 loyal persons in the Reich and Austria," about
forming secret lodges to spread Fritsch's ideas.23 Mosi of the favorable
replies were from north and central Germany, and he announced that he had found
support in thirty-seven different places. His tone was violent, his stress was
on an "Aryan-Germanic" religious revival, Germanic supremacy over
"lower working races," "inexorable hate for the Jews" and
their exclusion from the Volkskörper; an all-powerful Pan-Germany-but he
urged cautious procedure toward the Jews as well as toward the church. In the
spring Rüttinger sounded Hering-a central figure in völkisch activities
in Münich-about founding a lodge there, but was informed that "the soil in
Münich is too virginal"; it was even difficult to keep together in tha.t
tolerant city the fifty to sixty members of the Deutschsoziale Partei and the
Hammerbund 24 Rüttinger's approach to Karl Matthes of Münich was more fruitful,
and, some time in 1913, Matthes evidently established a lodge at Münich. though
he reported in October, "The work here is damned hard!"25 During the
following months Pohl urged the creation of a grand lodge for all Bavaria, and
there was some discussion whether Nuremberg or Münich should be its cen- ter.26
The Reichshammerbund was also established in Münich that spring, headed by
Wilhelm Rohmeder, chairman of the Deutscher Schulverein and a familiar figure
then and after the war in Münich nationalist circles.27 The war
threw both organizations into confusion. Riittinger went to the front early.
Pohl wrote him there in November 1914 that finances were bad, nearly half the
brethren were with the military; "the war came on us too early, the G.O.
was not yet completely organized and crystallized, and if the war lasts long,
it will go to pieces."28 The childish play of ritual and ceremony in the
Orden wearied the members, as Rüttinger's successor Töpfer wrote him from
Nuremberg; Pohl seemed to think that the ban- quets were the chief thing, and
Töpfer himself was sick of reproaches from headquarters for doing too little.29
In August 1916 Pohl was removed as chan- cellor of the Order, and Töpfer wrote
in December 1917 that he had turned over the business of the Nuremberg lodge to
its counterpart in Stuttgart; the Germanen Orden was "a seven months'
child." there was no hope for it in Nuremberg. but "in Münich it is
still possible for it to awake after the war to a new and powerful
existence."30 Sebottendorff mentions a split in the Orden in 1916, the
continuation of one branch, "Walvater", under Pohl and G. W. Freese,
head of the Berlin lodge, while
the author Philipp Stauff of Grosslichterfelde continued the other branch.31 Regrettably,
the history of the German Orden in Münich is not much illuminated in the
Hauptarchiv, and the curious anonymity of persons and events after Pohl's
withdrawal is only partially clarified in Sebottendorff's book and in Hering's
notes. Sebottendorff states that the Orden was "revived" at a
Christmas meeting in 1917, that he was made head of the province of Bavaria,
and that he undertook to finance an information sheet and the journal Runen.32
He made swift progress, finding in Münich an art student, the wounded veteran
Walter Nauhaus, also a member of the Germanen Orden and head of a
"Germanic study group" called the Thule Gesellschaft. The two allied;
Nauhaus was to work on young prospects, Sebottendorff on older ones. Hering,
Rohmeder, and Justizrat Gaubatz were his first supporters. Sebottendorff
ran notices in the press, became involved in a newspaper argument about
Freemasonry, and in July issued invitations to join the struggle for
"Deutschland den Deutschen" mainly against the Jews, as well as
against egalitarianism. In the elegant Münich hotel Vier
Jahreszeiten, Sebottendorff rented the rooms of a naval officers' club, and
here, on August 17, 1918, in the presence of the evidently indestructible Pohl
and G. W. Freese, a dedication ceremony was held.38 Already the name Thule was
used by the Germanen Orden as a cover, though the two were not yet merged, and
Hering's diary long continues to refer to the Orden. Thirty members were
initiated that day, and the Orden kept busy with meetings, initiations, and
excursions at least once a week. How innocent they sound! Hering's diary
records talks about old Germanic subjects and alecture by Sebottendorff on
divining rods (pendeln), which upset Hering because such occult nonsense
los't them good will. Less innocent is his note of a joint meeting with the
Alldeutschen on October 24, when the publisher J. F. Lehmann-according to
Sebottendorff, "the most active, driving element in the whole circle"
-demanded a coup d'etat. Sebottendorff claims that there were by November 250
members in Münich, 1,500 in all Bavaria, but says that a large number
disappeared with the revolution.34 Still the round of meetings continued, while
Bavaria passed through that incredible series of governments that began with
Kurt Eisner's overthrow of the monarchy on November 7 and culminated in the
Soviet Republics of April 1919.
Thule
and the Germanen Orden held their first joint meeting on November 9, to hear
Sebottendorff issue a plangent call to arms against "Juda." 85 And
Thule's
hospitable quarters in the Vier Jahreszeiten welcomed other nationalist
groups-the AIldeutschen, Rohmeder's Schulverein, the Hammerbund among them.36 Meanwhile
the farce was over, and Thule and the Germanen Orden were quietly preparing for
the counterrevolution and welcoming Lehmann's caches of weapons as well as his
friends.31 Early in December Sebottendorff planned to seize Eisner during a
political meeting at Bad Aibling but failed. So did an attempt to expand and
generate counter-revolutionary activity through the "vigilante"
Bürgerwehr, late in December, at a meeting in the Thule
rooms. The plan was betrayed, the ubiquitous Lehmann imprisoned; there was a
bitter session in the Provisional National Council on December 30, when the
author-politician Ernst Toller attacked the whole plot; and the fact that the
moderate Socialist 1 cabinet members Auer and Timm had signed a
proclamation for the Bürgerwehr sharpened the far Left's suspicions of their
aims.38 That tumultuous winter in Bavaria
need not be described here. In the weeks after Eisner.s assassination on
February 21, the Thule did not escape the attention of the Workers' and
Soldiers' Councils, but it kept up the pretense of being a study group for
Germanic antiquity (and was even entered as such in the Münich:
Vereins-Register on March 21, the date when, according to Nauhaus, it
officially merged with the Germanen Orden).89 Its activists set up a military
group (Kampf-bund), with a detachment at Eching, a few miles north of
Münich; they penetrated Communist organizations and, through contact with the
legal Bavarian government at Bamberg, recruited for the free corps which were
being formed to march against Münich.40 Thule mem-bers took part in the
unsuccessful Palm Sunday Putsch (April 13). Their role is described
ironically in a narrative evidently by Seyffertitz of the Republican, Guard,
leader of this anti-Soviet rising,who says that the leader of the Kampf-bund
in Münich, Friedrich Knauf, offered him six hundred men; actually ten or twelve
tumed out, one of them a captain, "in gala uniform! Patent leather riding
boots, riding whip, monocle!"41 Sebottendorff left Münich and at
Bamberg
was authorized by the government on April 19 to set up a free corps.42 At
Münich, the Communists seized control on April 14 from the first feeble Soviet
government. Threats to take hostages were put into effect, and, as the iron
ring of troops around Münich tightened, the Soviets struck more sharply at
danger points within the city. How the Thule members were exposed is not clear;
in any case, their quarters were raided on the aftemoon of April 26; the
secretary, Countess Heila von Westarp was arrested, and in the course of the
day four other members; two more were seized shortly thereafter .43
Sebottendorff blames the official head of the Thule, Knauf, for failing to
conceal membership lists. The next day Egelhofer, the Red commandant of Münich,
posted a notice that a "band of criminals ...of the so-called upper
classes" had been seized, plunderers who forged official passes in order
to confiscate goods, "arch reactionaries, agents and touts for the
Whites". They were taken to the cellar of the Luitpold gymnasium, a Red
military post since its capture on April 14. On Egelhofer's orders, following
reports of the killing of Red prisoners by the Whites at Starnberg, the seven
Thule
members, with two captured White hussars, and Professor Ernst Berger-a Münich
artist and a Jew were shot one by one on April 30. Apparently it is impossible
to write "objectively" about this tragedy.44 Conservatives and
moderates regard it as murder; the Left generally considers it to be horrible
in itself, but understandable in view of the Whites' executions of Spartacists
captured with arms, and the specific charge that the Starnberg shootings led to
these reprisals; moreover, the Left maintains that the Thule victims were not
hostages but were active counterrevolutionaries subject to whatever laws of war
prevail in civil strife. There is no doubt that they were smuggling men and
information out of Münich.45 But, if it can be argued that they were victims of
a stern military code, the two hussars and Berger seem to have been shot as
"hostages." In any case, few events have so enraged a
populace as this one did. Rumors spread like fire, multiplying the terrible
deed, telling of frightful mutilations (this was indeed officially announced by
the authorities after the fall of Münich, and denials the next day never quite
quelled the false report). The White troops hastily threw over their plan of
encircling the city gradually, and began to enter it on May 1, finding an
uprising, with Thule participating, already under way.46 The "murder of
the hostages" goes far to explain the merciless repression of the Soviet
republic, the willingness to gloss over White brutality, and the passionate
wave of antisemitism that spread because the deed was alleged to represent the
Vengeance of "Jewish soviet leaders" -Eugen Levine-Nissen, Tobias
Axelrod, Max Levien-on antisemitic foes. The instant violent denunciation of
the act by the Jewish author-politician Ernst Toller, ex-commander of the Red
Army; the fact that the victim Berger was a Jew and that Levien, most
bloodthirsty of the Soviet leaders-like Egelhofer and aIl those directly
connected with the shooting-was not; the absence in the "hostage
murder" trials in September and October of any indication of a " J
ewish conspiracy" behind the killings-all this was ignored or explained
away by extremists of the Right; and for Sebottendorff, for the Thule, and for
the National Socialists, the slaying of the hostages remained "an act of
revenge by the Jews..'47 Thus, in part actively through propaganda
and counterrevolutionary action. in part because of the fate of the hostages,
Thule and the Germanen Orden had a major share in the creation of the raw and
rancorous atmosphere-so different from the golden haze enveloping the typical
recollections of Münich before the war! -in which movements like national
socialism throve.48 But thus far nothing has been shown of their direct contact
with the NSDAP or the proto-Nazi elements-Harrer's political group, the
Deutschsozialistische Partei, the Völkischer Beobachter-listed by
Sebottendorff as Hitler's other initial sources of strength. Chronologically,
the connection with the Beobachter, a minor weekly published in the
eastem suburbs of Münich, comes first. When Sebottendorff bought the paper in
the summer of 1918, it had existed since 1868, with interruptions and changes
of name, a cheap newspaper presenting largely local items, with a middle-class.
somewhat anticlerical and antisemitic bias.49 Franz Eher published it from 1900
on. He died in June 1918; the paper, already on the downgrade, ceased
publication until Sebottendorff picked it up. without securing approval from
his Germanen Orden colleagues, renamed it Münchener Beobachter und
Sportblatt and began filling its four or six three-column pages with
antisemitic material and items on horse-racing! Thus he sought publicity for völkisch
aims, particularly among the young. and he managed to keep the paper going,
under the Eisner regime and afterward. It served also as a bulletin for
meetings of several Right- ist groups, including Thule
and Germa- nen Orden, during that time. In May, after the fall of the
Soviet
Republic, its address was given as
the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. On May 31, the paper announced a völkisch,
anticapitalist antisemitic program of twelve points, resembling considerably
the twentyfive points of the NSDAP proclaimed by Hitler in February 1920. 50 In
fact, though claiming to be a völkisch organ above the parties, the
paper was sponsoring the program and the aims of the newly created
Deutschso-zialistische Partei. In the spring, Sebottendorff passed the
editorship to Hanns Georg Müller; the staff included Wilhelm Laforce and Marc
Sesselmarin, both Thule members and later persons of note in the NSDAP; among
the contributors were Gottfried Feder and "Redivivus" that is,
Bernhard Stempfle, a Catholic völkisch friar who, after being a warmally
of Hitler in the early years, dropped away and was murdered in the Röhm purge
of 1934. During 1919 the paper also began to appear twice weekly,
changed its title to Münchener Beobachter und
Freiwirtschaftszeitung/Deutschvölkische Zeitung (and in August one edition
began to appear as Völkischer Beobachter) and moved to Thierschstrasse
15, the address of the Nazi official press, EherVerlag, in its palmy days. On
October 15 the firm of M. Mü1ler und Sohn began printing the paper, and the
editorial offices were transferred to Müller's plant at Schellingstrasse
41-later, in 1923, the scene of dramatic events as Hitler conferred, Rosenberg
editorialized, and Göring instructed his SA officers in these rooms. And on
October 22, the paper carried its first report of a meeting of the Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei, held on October 16 in the Hofbräukeller (not the grandiose
Hofbräuhaus), where Erich Kühn, editor of Lehmann's Pan-German monthly
Deutschlands Erneuerung, spoke on the Jewish question, and in the ensuing
general discussion, "Herr Hitler of the DAP" declaimed fierily of the
need of union against the Jews and of supporting the real "German"
press. In 1920 still the Beobachter maintained its standpoint ostensibly
"above the parties," regularly carried columns " Aus der
Bewegung" and " Aus völkischen Parteien," in which, to be sure,
the (NS)DAP received increasing attention. The new editor Bernhard
Köhler-though he was to hold a high post in the Third Reich-wrote on May 27,
regarding the imminent Reichstag election, that adherence to a single party
would be the "death of the völkisch movement." A curious
squabble occurred at the founding of a League of Friends of the Beobachter,
late in July, where "Hittler" (the paper frequently misspelled his
name) charged the Beobachter with cowardice for not supporting the NSDAP, in
which he was clearly the rising star, and with setting the price of its shares
too high; so his imperialistic and "social" tendencies were early
publicly revealed.51 As usual, he eventually won. The scramble for money to get
control of the paper before it fell into other, perhaps Separatist; hands,
climaxed in the "loan" from Ritter von Epp to Hitler's friend
Dietrich Eckart in December, and on Christmas Day a small announcement appeared
that the NSDAP had taken over the paper at great sacrifice "in order to
develop it into a relentless weapon for Germanism against any hostile un-German
efforts." 62 So Sebottendorff's Beobachter had indeed,
roundabout, entered the arsenal of the Führer. The baron's account of the
paper's misadventures in 1919-20 gives numerous financial details, but nothing
of the financial support by Gottfried Grandel of Augsburg,
an early backer of Hitler, who in fact made the purchase of the paper possible
for the NSDAP.53 While the sources on the Beobachter are fairly
abundant, those concerning the Thule's
connection with Karl Harrer's Arbeiterzirkel (not Verein) are scanty and
depend on other witnesses than Harrer. He was a sports reporter on the
conservative Munchener-Augsburger Abendzeitung who was actively
collaborating with Sebottendorff by the fall of 1918 and was assigned to form a
"workers' ring" parallel to other Thule rings for Nordic culture,
genealogy, and so on.54

Presumably this "ring" was the Politischer
Arbeiterzirkel founded in November 1918, with Harrer as chairman, Anton
Drexler-the founder of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei -its most active member next
to Harrer, and Michael Lotter, acolleague of Drexler in the locomotive shops at
Münich, as secretary. This tiny group, with three to seven members usually
attending, met weekly or oftener. Copies of the minutes of many meetings in
1918 and 1919 are in the Hauptarchiv.55 Generally Harrer was the chief
speaker-"How the war came," "Germany's
greatest foe: the Jews!" "Could we have won the war?'- such subjects
were dealt with, and might have gone on interminably, had not Drexler in
December urged the circle to take the lead in founding a political party. The
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei came into existence in the tavern Fürstenfelder Hof on
January 5, 1919, with its supporters chiefly from among Drexler's fellow
workers at the locomotive shops, invited by word of mouth.56 The exclusive
circle continued to assemble, often in the Thule quarters, sometimes at the
Cafe Gasteig across the Isar, or in private homes.67 Franz Dannehl, a perennial
Thulist and occasional speaker at DAP meetings, claims to have discussed the
founding of the party with Harrer at the Thule; but Drexler's pamphlet Mein
politisches Erwachen, the document that so stirred Hitler when he read it
after his first visit to a meeting of the party, mentions neither Harrer nor
Dannehl nor the Thule nor the foundation of the party! 58 Though the minutes of
the circle show no basic discussions of racist Weltanschauung, it is likely
that Harrer's völkisch ideas seeped through the circle and through Drexler to
the DAP, which was transformed a year later, about the end of February 1920,
into the NSDAP. Yet it should be noted that the party's line was predominantly
one of extreme political and social nationalism, not the
Aryan-racist-theoretical pattern of the Germanen Orden and its like.59 It
will be recalled that Sebottendorff refers to Harrer's "Deutscher
Arbeiterverein" as one of the three sources from which Hitler created the
NSDAP.60 He claims indeed that this organization was founded on January
18, 1919 in the Thule
rooms and that it later became the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. I find no evidence
for this statement. Harrer founded the Arbeiterzirkel with Drexler in November
1918, but Drexler was the party' s founder. The Nationalsozialisticher
Deutscher Arbeiterverein was not founded until September 1920, to give the
party corporate status.61 Harrer had already left the party in the preceding
winter. There is, too, little evidence of participation by
Thule
members in the DAP. Sebottendorff gives 220 names of members of Thule,
or the Thule Kampfbund, in his book, but fewer than twenty of these appear in
the two probably authentic early lists of NSDAP party members. Nor do the attendance
lists at DAP meetings in 1919 show any appreciable number of Thule
names.62 The conclusion is that the mixed elements in the DAP, and the kind of
political activity it pursued, had little appeal for the conspiratory gentlemen
of the Thule. Moreover, their
political wishes were probably better answered in the Deutschsozialistische
Partei, or for some even in the moderate Deutsche Volkspartei, than in the DAP.
As for the Deutschsozialistische Partei, the last of
Sebottendorff's three sources of the NSDAP, it was only locally and in-
directly a creation of the Thule;
but its long program, which includes the phrase "Gemeinnutz vor
Eigennutz" that reappears in the Nazi program, shows substantial
similarities to some parts of the latter. Much of the purpose of the DSP had
been foreshadowed in the prewar Deutschsoziale Partei, which Fritsch had
supported, and which had established a small Ortsgruppe at Münich in
1911, with Hering as vice-chairman.63 The postwar DSP, another outgrowth of the
Germanen Orden, was founded in the winter of 1918-19 by Alfred Brunner and
Heinrich Kraeger of Düsseldorf.64 The sympathies of the Beobachter in
1919, with Sebottendorff, H. G. Müller, and Sesselmann leading the way,
inclined toward it more than toward its rival, the NSDAP. Here again the lines
are blurred, for the DSP moved more energetically in Nuremberg, where Julius
Streicher joined it early, than in Münich.66 It also grew swiftly outside
Bavaria, unlike the early NSDAP, but in the long run it could not outmaneuver the
coming Führer, and Streicher's capitulation, bringing the important Nuremberg
DSP group to Hitler in 1921, marked the triumph of the Munich movement over a
movement which-despite Streicher-seems to have been generally more moderate,
even Christian Social, in its aims than was the NSDAP . One other
important connection of Thule and
the Gennanen Orden with the NSDAP-the Free Corps Oberland- is only briefly
treated by Sebottendorff; and he ignores another of the most significant links,
the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund. Sebottendorff, as
noted previously, went to Bamberg
shortly after mid-April 1919 to get official backing for a free corps. He
writes that he made a report, supported by Stempfle, to the cabinet, on the
need of quick action, that he was authorized to set up a free corps, and that
the government than decided to summon Epp's free corps from Thuringia to join
the attack on Münich.66 Sebottendorff opened a recruiting bureau in the Hotel
Deutscher Kaiser at Nuremberg. His book gives in great detail his own movements
in northem Bavaria in the days before Münich fell and some account of
Oberland's part in the campaign.67 The narrative of Seyffertitz supplements
him, adding that shortly after the fall of Munich Sebottendorff and Knauf
called him to the Vier Jahreszeiten to discuss merging Seyffertitz' detachment
with Oberland, and Knauf put at his disposal there 70,000 marks, provided by
the Münich Bürgerrat, in addition to some 30,000 presented the day
before to his representative. Sebottendorff's political interference led to his
removal from Oberland by its military leadership about the middle of May; the
free corps was later taken over in part into Epp's regular formation,
Schiitzenbrigade 21. 68 The Free Corps Oberland fought in 1920 in the Ruhr
and against the Poles in Upper Silesia in 1921. After
its dissolution, its successor, Bund Oberland, was officially headed by Knauf
during 1921-22, till the latter-suspected of "Jesuit" tendenciesl
-was dropped, founding shortly thereafter a counterorganization, Treu-Oberland;
Friedrich Weber succeeded him.69 Therole of Bund Oberland underWeber among the
Bavarian activists in 1923, and its participation in the Hitler Putsch,
are well known. As for the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und
Trutzbund, this huge organization of the far Right was created in 1919 by
Alfred Roth, Bundeswart of the Reichshammerbund, with the support of Class of
the Alldeutscher Verband, and swept into its fold a mass of extremist
organizations, including the members of the Hammerbund and, at least locally,
many of the Germanen Orden.70 Kurt Kerlen of the Thule at Nuremberg became the
head of its Bavarian office. What the Thule and the Germanen Orden never
attained in mass response was achieved by the furious activity of the Schutz-
und Trutz- bund, until its dissolution in 1922 on suspicion of connection with
the murder of Rathenau.71 Hitler supplemented his income at times by speaking
at its meetings. From 1919 to 1923 the Thule maintained its
activities, despite bitter disputes between Knauf and Sebottendorff on the
responsibility for the arrest of the hostages, and Sebottendorff.s departure.72
Familiar names continue to appear in Hering's diary-Lehmann, Rohmeder, Hermann
Bauer, who succeeded Knauf as head of the Thule in February 1920 and used this
office as a "Sprungbrett" to the chairmanship of the powerful
Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände Bayerns in 1923. Sesselmann, who followed
him in office in 1924, remained chairman for years.73 Dietrich Eckart and
Alfred Ros- enberg were guests of the Thule in its early days; Hans Frank
joined it in the summer of 1919 and spoke to the members on Spengler's
Preussentum und Sozialismus; he met Harrer and discussed with him and Drexler
the forthcoming program of the DAP.74 The military and the police, anxious to
keep order, now and then noted that Thule's antisemitic activities were
continuing; Sebottendorff in fact was reproved in the summer of 1919 by the
Reichswehr commander Möhl for distributing antisemitic leaf- lets to the Free
Corps Oberland.75 But, in the chaos of contending rightist groups, Thule
gradually grew quiet. The split occasioned by the Hitler Putsch of 1923 was
only partly made up for by the entrance of members of the NSDAP after the ban
on the party-especially "intellectuals" like Rudolf Hess and Karl
Fiehler, later mayor of Munich-into this useful cover organization.76 After
1926 the Thule gave few signs of life. It was of course the Nazi
triumph of 1933 that revived it; again the Vier Jahreszeiten housed Thule
meetings, now more afluent, social, and artistic than a decade before.77
Sebottendorff published a journal, the Thule-Bote, and his book came out
to claim Thule's place in the Nazi
sun. But conflicting emotions stirred the members, the diehards refused to let
Thule
be "degraded" to a social club, and once more it split and foundered.
If now we examine Sebottendorff's statement that the Thule
provided the three chief sources of national socialism, and that "almost
all of Hitler's collaborators had something to do with the Thule,
if they were not themselves members," we find that it claims too much,
and, perhaps, too little.78 While the Munich
version of a völkisch workers' move. ment-the Harrer-Drexler line,
Politischer Arbeiterzirkel and DAP-was initiated from the Thule, the pattern of
mass national socialism, developed around the Führer complex, deviated sharply
from the conspiratory nature of , Thule. The "old fighters" of
Thule
seldom joined the NSDAP; the political views dearest to most of them, the
platform of the Deutschsozialistische Partei, were absorbed in fiercer form
into the Hitler monolith. So was the originally "non-partisan"
Beobachter. So was much of the contentious military wing represented by the
Kampfbund and Oberland. The obsessive antisemitism remained, but I the
atmosphere of the Vier Jahreszeiten and the discussions of Germanic antiquity
gave way to the beer hall meetings, and the mammoth processions of SA, SS, and
co-ordinated civilians. On the other side, Thule
was only a segment of the völkisch movement, and Sebottendorff muddles
his case by saying "Thule"
when he means "Germanen Orden" or even broader groupings. The
ideology-if the word may be used-of Fritsch and his like was a main part of
that movement; the many small völkisch cells in the Reich kept the
movement going, but they made conspicuously little headway in Münich and
Bavaria until war, revolution, the Münich Soviets, and the killing of the
hostages provided the festering soil for them to grow in. Only then did violent
racist antisemitism become "popular" in Bavaria,
only then could Münich become the logical center for national socialism. But,
to repeat: It was less the theories of racist cranks than concrete national and
local conditions, plus the remorseless propaganda of Hitler, that enabled national
socialism to make its start at the place and time it did. One of
the last entries in Rüttinger's file may serve as an epilogue for the Third
Reich.s treatment of cast-off pioneers.79 On August 20, 1936 he was informed
that he was barred for life from holding party offices because of
"belonging from March 1912 to May 1921 to the Germanenorden". Even
though former members of lodges who had left them before 1933 might remain Nazi
party members, they could not hold office. The measure "simply corresponds
to the basic attitude of the NSDAP toward Freemasonry" [!] And the end:
"No protest against this decision is permitted."
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY

1 The first edition is slightly shorter than the
second, chiefly because of the addition of numerous pictures and the expansion
of the index notes. The Rehse Collection, now in the Manuscript Division,
Library of Congress, contains {Rehse No.431) an undated typescript of Bevor
Hitler kam (a penciled title Von Thule bis Hitler appears on the
typescript); some 15 pages out of a total of 77 are missing, but these, like
several other deviations from the printed text, evidently (consisted of
articles or speeches which fill out Sebottendorff's narrative in print. The
typescript has many small divergences from the printed text, though neither the
tone nor the thesis differs from it.
2 Sebottendorff, Bevor
Hitler kam, "Widmung." References to this work, unless otherwise
noted, are to the second edition (Münich, 1934).
3 There is a review,
composed in a tone more sour than sweet, in Ludendorff's journal Am Heiligen
Quell, IV (Feb. 5, 1934), 482-84. H. G. Grassinger, the publisher, in a
deposition of Dec. 19, 1951
in the archives of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte. Münich, states that the
first edition totaled 3,000 copies, the second (almost all of which was seized
by the Gestapo) 5,000.
4 Typescript carbon, Rehse
No.431.
5 Georg Franz-Willing, Die
Hitlerbewegung: der Ursprung, 1919-1922 (Hamburg and Berlin, 1962), pp. 28-34
(on the Thule), 62-102 ("Das Werden der Hitlerbewegung"). Historians of
national socialism have paid little attention to the Thule.
It is not mentioned by Alan Bullock, Hitler (New York, 1961), nor by Konrad
Heiden, Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus (Berlin, 1932) -which,
interestingly, Heiden begins by referring to the threefold origins of national
socialism -as an intellectual movement, from largely North German figures in
1926-28; as a "living political cell" from the Vaterlandspartei and
the Pan-Germans (Alldeutsche); as a "political instrument" from the
Münich Reichswehr. Heiden does deal briefly with Thule in Adolf Hitler, das Zeitalter der
Verantwortungslosigkeit (Zurich, 1936), pp. 58-59.
6 "Das Porträt eines
hakenkreuzlerischen Hochstaplers,.' Munchener Post, No.61 (Mar. 14, 1923); see
also "Ein gewissenloses Hetzblatt", Munchener Post, No.178 (Aug. 2,
1919), for an earlier encounter between the paper and Sebottendorff. Johannes Hering,
"Beiträge zur Geschichte der Thule Gesellschaft," two typescripts,
one from 1936 and the other from 1939, confirms some details and adds others;
the documents are in the NSDAP Hauptarchiv (henceforth cited as HA), No.865.
(It should be noted that the Hauptarchiv materials are being transferred from
the Berlin Document
Center to various German archives,
and that microfilms of them have been made for the Hoover Institution.) A copy
of the Hering document of 1939 is also in Rehse No.431. See also the above
mentioned review in Am Heiligen Quell.
7 H. G. Grassinger, letter
to the author.
8 Sebottendorff. pp. 31-33.
9 Besser, "Der Okku1tismus stand Pate," Archiv der
unabhängigen Gesellschaft zur pfiege junger Wissenschaft und Kunst (Peine,
1949), pp. 38-50, and "Die Vorgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus im neuen
Licht," Die Pforte, II (1950), 763-84;Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler
die ideen gab (Münich, 1958).
10 The principal
source for Fritsch is of course his publications, especially the Hammer,
Blätter fur deutschen Sinn (Leipzig, 1902 ff.). For an account of Fritsch's
early activities, see "Aus der Entstehungszeit des 'Hammer,' "
Hammer, XXV (1926), 529-35. See also R. H. Phelps, "Theodor Fritsch und
der Antisemitismus," Deutsche Rundschau, LXXXVII (May 1961), 442-49.
11 Paul Förster, "Ein
deutsch-völkischer General-Stab" Hammer, III (1904). 207-10, and Fritsch's
comments on the plan, "Zusammenfassende nationale Organisation,"
ibid., p. 254; Fritsch. "Die Emeuerungs-Gemeinde," Hammer, VII
(1908), 461-65, and "Grundziige der Emeuerungs-Gemeinde," ibid.,
678-81, and 712-17; "Aufruf," on rear cover of Hammer, No. 209, X
(1911).
12 "Vom partei-politischen Antisemitismus," Hammer, XI (1912),
153-58; and Richard Bergner, "Ein Vorschlag zur Organisation der
Hammer-Leute," ibid., p. 247.
13 Wenn ich der Kaiser wär!" Hammer, XI (1912). 309-11.
14 Julius Riittinger, "Von 1904 bis 1937". typescript, HA
No.886, and "Erinnerungen aus vergangener Zeit", typescript, HA
No.496. HA No.887 contains an unidentified newspaper photograph evidently from
1935, "Griindungstag des Reichshammerbundes", showing Fritsch,
Hellwig, Pohl, Professor Heinrich Kraeger, Rüttinger, and others at the
founders' meeting, May 24 or 25, 1912.
15 "Verfassung des Reichshammerbundes" and "Erläuterung
zu der Verfassung". HA No.888.
16 "Richtlinien für den Reichshammerbund". typescript,
Leipzig. HA No.888.
17 Rüttinger's report, Reichshammerbund meeting of Jan. 11, 1913. HA
No.886; "Kassenbericht für 1912", "Jahresbericht für 1912",
and "Jahresbericht für 1913". HA No.888.
18 Reichshammerbund circulars, Kassel, June 13 and 28, 1913; Ortsgruppe
Hamburg circulars, especia1ly July 19, 1913, Feb. 21 and 25, 1914, in HA
No.888; Alfred Roth Aus der KamPfzeit des deutschvölkischen Schutz-. und
Trutzbundes (Hamburg, 1939), esp. pp. 9-19.
19 Fritsch and Hellwig "Botschaft an die Hammer-Gemeinden", HA
No.888.
20 Fritsch, "Die Gegen-Revolution", Hammer, XI (1912), 589-93;
"Weisskind", "Vorschläge zur Organisierung der
Gegen-Revolution" ibid., p. 670. "Tschandala", for lower classes
or races occurs in Nietzsche and Lanz von Liebenfels
21 Rüttinger, "Erinnerungen", HA No.496; Rüttinger's
correspondence with Otto Mahr of Bamberg. Jan.
27, 1913-Apr. 14, 1914, HA No. 885.
22 "Private Mitteilungen" Hammer, XI (1912), following p. 364;
advertisement in Hammer, No. 340, XV (1916). The Germanen Orden's symbolic
runes do not appear here (instead, there are two swastikas pointing left!) but
they do in many other advertisements in the Rightist press.
23 Pohl,
"Aufklärungsschrift über Veranlassung, Zweck, Ziel, Ausbau der Treulogen:.
issued from Magdeburg, HA No.883. See also his first "Vertrauliche
Ordensnachrichten", July 1912, HA No.492.
24 Hering to Riittinger, May 9, 1912, HA No. 884.
25 Matthes to Rüttinger, Dec.
12, 1912, and Oct. 19, 1913;
Rüttinger to Matthes, Nov. 21 and 24, 1913, HA No.885.
26 Matthes to Rüttinger, Dec. II imd 20, 1913, and their correspondence
in April 1914, HA No. 885.
27 Arthur Strauss to Rüttinger, Münich, May 20, 1914, HA No.885.
28 Pohl to Rüttinger, from Magdeburg,
Nov. 22, 1914, HA No.886.
29 Töpfer to Rüttinger, from Nuremberg,
Sept. 24 and Dec. 6, 1915,
HA No.886.
30 Töpfer to Rüttinger, Apr. 15, Oct. 25, and Dec.
26, 1917, HA No.886.
31 Sebottendorff, pp.
34. 245. HA No.851 contains a few documents of "Germanen-Orden
Walvater" which Sebottendorff says was the name used by the Pohl-Freese
branch, which he headed in Bavaria; they include a membership application,
requesting among other things information about the amount of hair on various
parts of the body, and "if possible an imprint of the sole of the foot on
a sheet of paper," no doubt as evidence of Aryan descent. There are also,
in this file, some bits of the literature of the "Wälsungen-Orden,"
with the customary runic symbols of the original Germanen Orden. To complete
the confusion, one authority tells the author that the Stauff branch was called
the Skalden-Orden; and documents in the "Schumacher files" of HA,
under "Bunde," state that the cover name of that organization in
Münich was Thule Gesellschaftl And a letter of Walter Nauhaus to Rüttinger from
Münich, Apr. 9, 1919, in HA No.886 seems to imply that the Thule, which he
headed in Münich, was originally a branch of the Germanen Orden and not, as
Hering indicates, a separate group. Such chaos among völkisch and nationalist
groups in Germany
was of course not unfamiliar.
32 Sebottendorff, pp.
40-41. 202; „Aus der Geschichte der Thule
Gesellschaft" Thule-Bote, I (1933). 1-2.
33 Sebottendorff. p.
52; Hering. "Beiträge" 1939. including his "Tagebuch"
beginning Oct. 3, 1918, HA
No.865 (copy in Rehse No.431). Sebottendorff mentions the adornment of the
rooms with the Thule’s arms-curved
swastika pointing right (Sonnenrad) plus sword and wreath.
34 Sebottendorff. pp.
53. 62.
35 lbid., pp. 57-60.
Hering however notes for "9. Nebelung" simply. "In the evening,
musical rehearsal," and for tenth. "Beautiful initiation lodge, Seb.
conducts it despite illness."
36 Sebottendorff, p.
62. 37
lbid., pp. 63-70.
38 Verhandlungen des
provisorischen National- rates des Volksstaates Bayern im Jahre 1918/1919, 7.
Sitzung. pp. 185-236, and 8. Sitzung. pp. 237-62; Me1anie Lehmann, Verleger J.
F. Lehmann , (Münich, 1935). pp. 46-48. The Munchener- , Augsburger
Abendzeitung, Nos. 655-59 (Dec. 27- 31, 1918) carries a 1ive1y series of
reports on the arrests "in the rooms of the Germanen Orden" and on
the debate in the Nationa1rat.
39 Records of the
Vereins-Register, .Münich. copied by Hering, HA No.865; and the high1y
interesting letter of Nauhaus from Münich to Rüttinger. Apr. 9. 1919. HA No.886. on the
Thu1e’s activities.
40 Darstellungen aus den
Nachkriegskämpfen deutscher Truppen und Freikorps, IV: Die Niederwerfung der
Räteherrschaft in Bayern 1919 (Ber1in. 1939). pp. 7. 16-17. 23;
Sebottendorff, pp. 106-13; H. J. Kuron,
Freikorps und Bund Oberland (dissertation, Erlangen. n.d. [1960]). , pp. 16-19.
41 The typescript,
243 pages long, anonymous and untitled, in HA No.72, is written in the first
person; it concerns Alfred von Seyffertitz and the Repub1ikanische Schutztruppe
and appears to be by him. The account of the Palm Sunday affair is found on pp.
177-204.
42 Sebottendorff, pp.
116-20; Darstellungen, IV, 47, 86; Kuron, pp. 17-18. See a1so Sebottendorff’s
letter to Hering from Bad Sachsa (Harz), Dec.
7, 1922, HA No.1229, for further details of his military enterprise.
A photostat of a typescript carbon of his authorization by Schneppenhorst,
minister for military affairs, Bamberg, Apr. 19, 1919, is found in Rehse
No.431.
43 Sebottendorff, pp.
135-41; his letter to Hering, Dec. 7.1922. HA No.1229.
44 The contemporary
press reports in German
and
foreign papers of course general1y follow the official accounts; see, e.g., the
Munchener Neueste Nachrichten, which also published the experiences of the
hostage Kurt Schmidt, "Als Geisel im Luitpold-Gymnasium" (No. 172,
May 6, 1919); and the Munchener Post, which however published a letter on May
15, "Der Geiselmord …von einem Eingeweihten" pointing out that the
victims had been seized as counter-revolutionaries, not as hostages; the London
Times (..Shooting of Hostages," May 5; ..Münich Savagery," May 6;
"Münich Battle Fury", May 7); and the New York Times, with several
reports on the shooting of the hostages, May 3-7, and an article from the
Chicago Tribune service, "Jested at Slaying Münich Hostages," on May
13. The trials in September and October of those involved in the shooting were
widely reported, generally with no more sympathy for the executioners than in
May. A few examples of the "literature" on the subject: Josef
Hofmiller, Revolutionstagebuch 1918/19 (Leipzig,
n.d.), pp. 207-25; H. H. Breuer. Das blutige Fiasko der Räte-Republik (Münich, n.d.
[1919]), pp. 42-43; Josef Karl, Die Schreckensherrschaft in Munchen ...
(Münich, n.d. [1919]), esp. pp. 77-96, al1 hostile to the Reds; Hans Beyer, Munchen
1919: der Kampf der Roten Armee in Bayern 1919 (Berlin, 1956), pp. 26.39-40,
and Von der Novem- ber-Revolution zur Räterepublik in Munchen (Berlin. 1957). pp. 91, 110,
128 ff.; anon., Die Munchener Tragödie (Berlin,
1919), esp. pp. 25-27-all explaining the shooting as a consequence of the
Whites’ actions.
45 On the Starnberg
shootings, see the eyewitness account by Schleusinger in Ernst Toller, Justiz:
Erlebnisse (Berlin, 1927), pp.
19-29. On the Thule’s activities,
see Sebottendorff, pp. III, 116-17, 137-38; Darstellungen, IV,
17. 47. HA No.70 contains a forged pass, with a note by the Thule member
Fritz von Trützschler that he had provided some ten men with such papers to
enable them to escape from Münich to join Epp’s free corps. See also Hering, "Beiträge"
1936, HA No.865.
46 Darstellungen. IV,
107-28; also report to the military ministry, typescript carbon (Ia d Nr 256
op. Bayerisches Oberkommando Möhl, May 7. 1919) and "Bericht über die
Operation zur Befreiung Münchens", typescript carbon (Grup. penkommando
Oven, Abt. Ia, May 13, 1919), both in Bavarian Hauptstaatsarchiv. Münich, files
of Gruppenkommando 4. Band 11. Akt 2.
47 The Beobachter of
course followed this line -see articles and letters on the "murder of the
hostages" in the issues of Aug. 9, Sept. 17, and Oct. 25, 1919; and the
article by Karl Brassler, "Zum Gedächtnis der am 30, April 1919 ermordeten
Geiseln" Apr. 29, 1920, which was so vehement against the Jews that even
the Münich Police President Pöhner saw fit to ban the paper for ten days, an
action discussed acridly for a full page in the issue of May 11, Sebottendorff,
in the dedication of his book, writes, "it no longer needs to be concealed
that the seven Thule members did not die as hostages, -no, that they were
murdered because they were antisemites. They died for the swastika, they were sacrificed to
Juda, they were murdered
because
some one [man] wanted to destroy the beginnings of the national revival."
A contemporary leafiet, probably of June 1919, from the Ausschuss für
Volksaufklärung,
Berlin, a völkisch group, in HA No.847, is
headed "German Pogrom in Münich! Sevenfold assassination!" On Levien, see I.
Birnbaum, „Juden in der Münchener Räterepublik," in Hans Lamm, Von Juden
in München (Münich. 1958). pp. 301- 3. On Toller. see his I Was a German (New York. 1934).
pp. 197-200, and Paul Signer, Ernst Toller (Berlin. 1924). pp. 26-35.
48 There are probably
about as many nostalgic books on Münich as on Vienna.
Of particular significance for our topic are severa1 chapters of Hans Lamm, Von
Juden in München.
49 Adolf Dresler.
Geschichte des "Völkischen Beobachters» und des Zentralverlages der NSDAP,
(Münich. 1937), passim; Dresler, Der "Münchener Beobachter" 1887-1918
(Wiirzburg- Aumühle, 1940), passim,. Sebottendorff. pp" 43- 51; Hering,
"Beiträge" 1939, HA No.865. Only a few issues. or photographs from
1918 have been available. Sebottendorff reprints several articles from that
year.
50 "Unser
politisches Programm." Münchener Beobachter,
May 31, 1919.
Sebottendorff, pp. 171- 82, prints the text, noting that it had already been
published as a proclamation of the Germanen Orden in the Allgemeine
OrdenNach richten of the Orden, in the previous December.
51 "Zur
Gründungsversammlung des Bundes der Beobachterfreunde," Völkischer
Beobachter, July 31, 1920.
Grassinger reports that Hitler became a reader of the paper during his
propaganda course at the transit camp
Lechfeld in the summer of 1919 and
that Grassinger, Stempfle, and Gregor Strasser refused Hitler's offer to write
for the paper!
52 This is the usual
account of the purchase. Eckart's promise to repay Epp 60,000 marks
(Schuldschein), dated Dec. 17, 1920, is in fact among the captured documents
formerly held at Alexandria and now returned to Germany (EAP I-le-16/2). But
see below, n. 53, concerning the purchase.
53 The "great
sacrifice" was Grandel's, not the party's! In correspondence with the
Hauptarchiv, Grandel wrote from Freiburg Oct. 22, 1941 (HA No.514) that Hitler
asked him on Dec. 17, 1920 to guarantee the loan "because the party had no
money"; he did so, the paper was bought.for 113,000 marks, but Frau Kunze
(Sebottendorff's sister) and Käthe Bierbaumer, both heavy shareholders, shortly
came to him- not the penniless Eckart- for repayment, and received a total of
56,500 marks! This is supplemented by further details, in a letter of Grandel
to Grassinger, Nov. 21, 1940,
made available to the author by Grassinger. Sebottendorff gives a less than
full account of the financing, pp. 191-96.
54 Sebottendorff, p. 74;
Hering, "Beiträge," 1936, HA No.865.
55 Photostats of
fourteen sets of minutes are in HA No.76. Through the courtesy of Drexler's
daughter, Frau Anni Widmaier, the author has received photostats of three
further minutes. The earliest set is for Dec.
5, 1918, the latest for Nov.
24, 1919. See R. H. Phelps, „Anton Drexler der Gründer der NSDAP," Deutsche
Rundschau LXXXVII (1961), 1134-43.
56 Drexler,
"Lebenslauf," March 1935, typescript copy made available to the
author by Frau Widmaier; M. Lotter, „Der Beginn meines politischen
Denkens," typescript of a speech de- livered Oct. 19, 1935, HA No.78.
57 Lotter, op. cit.
58 Dannehl's claim is
in a statement of Oct. 10, 1933
in the (unnumbered) Dannehl file, HA. Sebottendorff, p. 184, states that
Drexler dedicated (widmete) the first edition of Mein politisches ETWachen (not
available to the author) to Harrer as "the founder of the Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei." There is no printed dedication in the 1ater editions, but
the "Münich Collection" in the Hoover Institution has (Folder 10,
Franz Danneh1) a photostat of the title page of the brochure with this
inscription in Drexler’s handwriting! Perhaps, after al1, Harrer's political
role was more significant than most of the evidence indicates. Heiden,
Geschichte, pp. 20. 25, and Adolf Hitler, p. 84, presents Harrer as more
moderate, less antisemitic, and more sympathetic to the proletariat, than
Hit1er.
59 The contemptuous attack
of Hitler on „völkisch wandering scholars" in Mein Kampf, I (Kartonierte
Ausgabe, Münich. 1932), 394-400, doubt1ess echoes his old quarrels with Harrer and the
conspiratory approach of groups like Thule and the Germanen Orden, just as it
proclaims vehement1y that open, mass political, party ac- tivity is essentia1
to success.
60 Sebottendorff, pp.
81, 235.
61 Photostats of
several documents on the foundation of the Arbeiterverein are in HA No. 76.
62 Photostats of the
membership lists of the (NS)DAP were made available to the author by Frau
Widmaier. Photostats of the attendance lists, once evidently in Harrer’s
possession, are found in HA No.80.
63 Reports of
meetings of the Münich Ortsgruppe, Mar.
10, 1911-Apr. I, 1912, HA No.883. See, on the DSP in 1918 ff.,
Franz-Willing, pp. 88-92.
64 File of Alfred
Brunner, HA No.1371; Kraeger, «Lebenslauf," June
21, 1941, HA No.509, which mentions also Kraeger's earlier
collaboration with Pohl in the Germanen Orden.
65 Anonymous
typescript on the DSP in file of Julius Streicher, AL
1, HA.
66 Sebottendorff, pp.
115-20 67 bid., pp. 125-34. Various details
are confirmed by a Thule member
from Nüremberg, Franz Müller, «Erfahrungen eines alten Vorkämpfers," HA
No. 1249.
68 Seyffertitz
typescript, pp. 225-27, 237, HA No.1372; Kuron, pp. 35-37.
69 File of Bund
Oberland. HA No.1662; anonymous typescript, Münich, Oct.
4, 1922, in the Polizeidirektion München files, HA No. NB 1133.
Kuron, passim, gives in detail the later history of Oberland, both as
free corps and, after its reorganization in October 1921 under Knauf as Bund
Oberland.
70 Roth. Aus der
Kampfzeit, pp. 13-19, and
Roth’s
extensive correspondence with Rüttinger and with Walter Otto of the Hamburg
Ortsgruppe, HA No.888.
71 Alfred Roth, Judas
Herrschgewalt (Hamburg. 1923), passim.
72 Sebottendorff. pp.
116-17, 135-36; Hering, "Beiträge," 1939, entries for May 4. 10,
17, 1919, HA No.865.
73 Hering, notes from
Vereins-Register des Münchener Register-Gerichts, HA No; 865.
74 Eckart was
arrested by the Reds in the Thule rooms but convinced them he was a friend
because of his hostility to loan capital; see the police report on Eckart's
speech at a DAP meeting on Feb. 6, 1920, P.N.D./M 35, HA No.81. On Rosenberg, see Serge
Lang and Ernst von Shenck, Porträt eines Menschenverbrechers (St. Gallen,
1947), pp. 55-56. On Frank, see his Im Angesicht des Galgens (Münich, 1953),
pp. 31-32.
75 Bayerisches
Hauptstaatsarchiv: Files of Gruppenkommando 4, Band 46, Akt 9 contain
intelligence reports of meetings of the Schutzund Trutzbund on Oct. 23, 1919
and Nov. 24, 1919, telling of antisemitic utterances by Dannehl and Sesselmann.
Files
of Schützenbrigade 21, Band 24b. Akt I, contain a letter of General Möhl in
February 1920 (RW GK 4, Ia Nr. 328, geh.) concerning an attack by Thule
members on a Jewish student. A
photostat of Möhl's letter, of June
21, 1919 to Sebottendorff is in Rehse No.431. .
76 Hering,
"Beiträge," 1939, HA No.865.
77 Rehse No.431
contains Thule correspondence from
this period and two issues of the Thule-Bote.
78 The quotation is
found in "Die Thule Gesellschaft:' Thule-Bote, I (1933), 2.
79 HA No.887.
Drawings from the Finnish Nature






