Thule Society Thule-Gesellschaft | |
|---|---|
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| German name | Thule-Gesellschaft |
| Abbreviation | Thuleorden |
| Leader | Walter Nauhaus[1] |
| Founder | Rudolf von Sebottendorf |
| Founded | 1918; 107 years ago (1918) |
| Dissolved | 1925; 100 years ago (1925) |
| Split from | Germanenorden |
| Headquarters | Berlin,Germany |
| Newspaper | Münchener Beobachter |
| Membership | 1,500 (peak) |
| Ideology | |
TheThule Society (/ˈtuːlə/;German:Thule-Gesellschaft), originally theStudiengruppe für germanisches Altertum ('Study Group forGermanic Antiquity'), was a Germanoccultist andVölkisch group founded inMunich shortly afterWorld War I, named after amythical northern country in Greek legend. The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored theDeutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers' Party), which was later reorganized byAdolf Hitler into theNational Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). According to Hitler biographerIan Kershaw, the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", includingRudolf Hess,Alfred Rosenberg,Hans Frank,Julius Lehmann,Gottfried Feder,Dietrich Eckart, andKarl Harrer.[2]
AuthorNicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess had been Thule members, but other leading Nazis had only been invited to speak at Thule meetings, or they were entirely unconnected with it.[3][4] According to Johannes Hering, "There is no evidence that Hitler ever attended the Thule Society."[5]
The Thule Society was originally a "German study group" headed by Walter Nauhaus,[6] a woundedWorld War I veteran turned art student fromBerlin who had become a keeper of pedigrees for theGermanenorden (or "Order ofTeutons"), asecret society founded in 1911 and formally named in the following year.[7] In 1917, Nauhas moved to Munich; hisThule Society was to be a cover-name for the Munich branch of the Germanenorden,[8] but events developed differently as a result of a schism in the order. In 1918, Nauhas was contacted in Munich byRudolf von Sebottendorf (or von Sebottendorff), an occultist and newly elected head of theBavarian province of the schismatic offshoot known as theGermanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail.[9] The two men became associates in a recruitment campaign, and Sebottendorff adopted Nauhas's Thule Society as a cover-name for his Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater at its formal dedication on 18 August 1918.[10]
A primary focus of the Thule Society was a claim concerning the origins of theAryan race. In 1917, people who wanted to join the "Germanic Order", out of which the Thule Society developed in 1918, had to sign a special "blood declaration of faith" concerning their lineage:
The signer hereby swears to the best of his knowledge and belief that no Jewish or coloured blood flows in either his or in his wife's veins, and that among their ancestors are no members of the coloured races.[11]
"Thule" (Greek:Θούλη) was a land located by Greco-Romangeographers in the farthest north (often displayed as Iceland).[12] The Latin term "Ultima Thule" is also mentioned by Roman poetVirgil in his pastoral poems called theGeorgics.[13] Thule originally was probably the name forScandinavia, although Virgil simply uses it as a proverbial expression for the edge of the known world, and his mention should not be taken as a substantial reference toScandinavia.[14] The Thule Society identifiedUltima Thule as a lost ancient landmass in the extreme north, nearGreenland orIceland,[15] said byNazi mystics to be the capital of ancientHyperborea.
The Thule Society attracted about 1,500 followers inBavaria, including 250 followers in Munich.[16]
The followers of the Thule Society were very interested in racial theory and, in particular, in combatingJews andcommunists. Sebottendorff planned but failed to kidnap Bavarian socialistprime ministerKurt Eisner in December 1918.[6][17] During theBavarian revolution of April 1919, Thulists were accused of trying to infiltrate its government and of attempting a coup. On 26 April, the Communist government in Munich raided the society's premises and took seven of its members into custody, executing them on 30 April. Amongst them were Walter Nauhaus and three aristocrats, including Countess Heila von Westarp, who functioned as the group's secretary, andPrince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis, who was related to several European royal families.[18][19] In response, the Thule organised a citizens' uprising as White troops entered the city on 1 May.[20]
In 1918, the Thule Society bought a local weekly newspaper, theMünchener Beobachter (Munich Observer), and changed its name toMünchener Beobachter und Sportblatt (Munich Observer and Sports Paper) in an attempt to improve its circulation. TheMünchener Beobachter later became theVölkischer Beobachter ("Völkisch Observer"), the main Nazi newspaper. It was edited byKarl Harrer.
Anton Drexler had developed links between the Thule Society and various extreme-right workers' organizations in Munich. He established theDeutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers' Party) on 5 January 1919, together with the Thule Society's Karl Harrer. Adolf Hitler joined this party in September of the same year. By the end of February 1920, the DAP had been reconstituted as theNationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers' Party), often referred to as the Nazi Party.[21]
Sebottendorff, by then, had left the Thule Society and never joined the DAP or the Nazi Party. Dietrich Bronder (Bevor Hitler kam, 1964) alleged that other members of the Thule Society were later prominent in Nazi Germany: the list includesDietrich Eckart (who coached Hitler on hispublic speaking skills, along withErik Jan Hanussen, and hadMein Kampf dedicated to him), as well asGottfried Feder,Hans Frank,Hermann Göring,Karl Haushofer,Rudolf Hess,Heinrich Himmler, andAlfred Rosenberg.[22] HistorianNicholas Goodrick-Clarke has described this membership roll and similar claims as "spurious" and "fanciful", noting that Feder, Eckart, and Rosenberg were never more than guests to whom the Thule Society extended hospitality during theBavarian revolution of 1918,[23] although he has more recently acknowledged that Hess and Frank were members of the society before they came to prominence in the Nazi Party.[4] It has also been claimed that Adolf Hitler himself was a member.[24] Evidence on the contrary shows that he never attended a meeting, as attested to by Johannes Hering's diary of society meetings.[5] It is quite clear that Hitler himself (unlike Himmler, for example) had little interest in, and made little time for, "esoteric" matters.[25][page needed]
Wilhelm Laforce and Max Sesselmann (staff on theMünchener Beobachter) were Thule members who later joined the NSDAP.[6]
Early in 1920, Karl Harrer was forced out of the DAP as Hitler moved to sever the party's link with the Thule Society, which subsequently fell into decline and was dissolved about five years later,[22] well before Hitler came to power.
Rudolf von Sebottendorff had withdrawn from the Thule Society in 1919, but he returned to Germany in 1933, hoping to revive it. In that year, he published a book entitledBevor Hitler kam (Before Hitler Came), in which he claimed that the Thule Society had paved the way for the Führer: "Thulers were the ones to whom Hitler first came, and Thulers were the first to unite themselves with Hitler." The Nazi authorities did not favourably receive this claim: after 1933, esoteric organisations were suppressed (includingvölkisch occultists), and many were closed down by anti-Masonic legislation in 1935. Sebottendorff's book was prohibited, and he was arrested and imprisoned for a short period in 1934 after departing into exile in Turkey.
Nonetheless, it has been argued that some Thule members and their ideas were incorporated intoNazi Germany.[24] Some of the Thule Society's teachings were expressed in the books ofAlfred Rosenberg.[26] Many occult ideas found favour with Heinrich Himmler, who had a great interest in mysticism, unlike Hitler, but theSchutzstaffel (SS) under Himmler emulated the structure ofIgnatius Loyola'sJesuit order[27] rather than the Thule Society, according to Hohne.
The Thule Society has become the center of manyconspiracy theories concerningNazi Germany due to its occult background (like theAhnenerbe section of the SS). Such theories include the creation ofvril-poweredNazi UFOs.[28]
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