Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke | |
|---|---|
 Goodrick-Clarke in his office | |
| Born | (1953-01-15)15 January 1953 Lincoln,Lincolnshire, United Kingdom |
| Died | 29 August 2012(2012-08-29) (aged 59) Torquay, United Kingdom |
| Occupations | Historian, professor, translator |
| Spouse | |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater |
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| Thesis | The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935: Reactionary Political Fantasy in Relation to Social Anxiety (1982) |
| Academic work | |
| Main interests | Western esotericism,occultism in Nazism |
| Notable works |
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Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (15 January 1953 – 29 August 2012) was a British historian and professor ofWestern esotericism at theUniversity of Exeter, best known for his authorship of several scholarly books on the history ofoccultism in Nazism andWestern esotericism, includingThe Occult Roots of Nazism,Hitler's Priestess, andBlack Sun.
He edited and translated several other books, and edited two academic book series on religion and esotericism. Goodrick-Clarke was the founder and director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO), and the co-founder of theEuropean Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke was born inLincoln, England, on 15 January 1953, to David and Phyllis Goodrick-Clarke (née Gilbert).[1][2][3] His father was a lawyer.[1] Nicholas was the pair's only son,[2] though his father had another son, Andrew.[4]
Goodrick-Clarke was anOpen Exhibitioner atLancing College.[5] He studied German, politics, and philosophy at theUniversity of Bristol, and gained aBachelor of Arts with distinction in 1974.[1][5] Moving toSt Edmund Hall, Oxford, Goodrick-Clarke obtained aD.Phil. in 1983.[1][6]
During his education he worked as a schoolmaster, first inPerth, Scotland from 1978 to 1980, before moving toSchelklingen inWest Germany until 1981, and atCambridge until 1982. From 1982 to 1985, he was the manager of theChase Manhattan Bank in London. He also worked on a fundraiser for theCampaign for Oxford.[5][6] He was made avisiting scholar atFitzwilliam College, Cambridge in Cambridge in 1982.[1]
In 1987, he was involved in the investigation of Austrian presidentKurt Waldheim for war crimes. With two other researchers he visited Germany, and was told to investigate Waldheim's ties to the Nazis; he acted as an interpreter, interviewer, and researcher for the investigation.[7] He was also the director of IKON Productions starting in 1988.[1] In 1992, he became the vice chairman ofKeston College, and convinced the college to move to Oxford.[8][9]
In 2002, he was appointed a Research Fellow in Western Esotericism at theUniversity of Lampeter.[1][5][8] In 2005 he was appointed to a personal chair ofwestern esotericism in the Department of History atExeter University. It was the third university to create a chair dedicated to esotericism.[6][10]
Goodrick-Clarke was the founder and director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO) within the College of Humanities at Exeter.[6][11] He was a co-founder of theEuropean Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), the founder of the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE), and was a founding member of the American Association for the Study of Esotericism.[6][11] He edited Aquarian Press'sEssential Readings anthology series on religion and esotericism from 1986 on.[1][11] He also edited forNorth Atlantic Books theirWestern Esoteric Masters series, which gives biographies on central esoteric figures and anthologies of their writings.[5][8][11]
Goodrick-Clarke described his research interests as "globalization of esotericism in modernity; Paracelsica;Rosicrucianism;Hermeticism, pietism and alchemy in the Enlightenment era; esotericism and modern political ideology;conspiracy theory".[12] His 1982 Oxford Ph.D. dissertation,The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935: Reactionary Political Fantasy in Relation to Social Anxiety,[13] was the basis for his most influential work,The Occult Roots of Nazism.[6][11][14]
This book is about the connections betweenNazism and occultism. Goodrick-Clarke wrote that he found the previous discussion of the connection to be "a literature rich in mystery and suggestion, but short on facts and hard evidence", but that after looking into it he found "there was a hard kernel of truth" to the connection, the improbable accounts disregarded, once he had done historical research.[1]The Occult Roots of Nazism has been translated into twelve languages and has been in print since its first publication in 1985.[6]
He wrote a 1987 work on Welsh mysticArthur Machen.[6] In 1998, Goodrick-Clarke wrote a biography of the fascist writer andesoteric HitleristSavitri Devi, titledHitler's Priestess.[11][15][16] He wrote another book as a follow-up toThe Occult Roots of Nazism,Black Sun, published in 2002, focusing on modern occult kinds ofneo-Nazism.[1][17] His final book,The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction, was published byOxford University Press in 2008.[18][19][20] He also contributed several chapters to academic edited volumes and encyclopedias.[11]
Goodrick-Clarke edited several books.[6][11] In 1990, he edited and translated the bookParacelsus: Essential Readings, a collection of the writings of the alchemistParacelsus,[21][22] which was later reissued as part of theWestern Esoteric Masters series.[11] In 2005 he edited a collection onHelena Blavatsky titledHelena Blavatsky, also part of theWestern Esoteric Masters series.[5][8][11] He and his wife co-edited and prefaced the bookG.R.S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest in 2005, about TheosophistG. R. S. Mead.[11] Goodrick-Clarke also translated several books, including in 2002Emanuel Swedenborg: Visionary Savant in the Age of Reason by Ernst Benz andWestern Esotericism: A Brief History of Secret Knowledge byKocku von Stuckrad in 2005.[6][11]
Outside of his studies, Goodrick-Clarke had an interest in photography andsteam trains.[5] He was involved in a society that read papers on esoteric subjects. As the members were unable to come up with a better name, the group was simply called "The Society". Other members of The Society included Clare Badham,Gerald Suster, andEllic Howe.[6] He was fluent in German.[7]
Goodrick-Clarke married Clare Radene Badham, a scholar of English literature and publisher, on 11 May 1985.[1][2][6] With her he ran a publishing house. She has also written several books on esoteric and alchemical topics, and was also a member of EXESESO. They had asilver wedding in 2010.[6]
Goodrick-Clarke died on 29 August 2012, inTorquay, ofpancreatic cancer.[5][6] Following his death, the university decided to close EXESESO.[10]
The 2021 academic bookInnovation in Esotericism from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Georgiana D. Hedesan and Tim Rudbøg, was dedicated to him. The editors describe him as "one of the foremost pioneering scholars of the academic study of Western Esotericism".[11]
In 2021, Christian Giudice describedThe Occult Roots of Nazism as Goodrick-Clarke's "magnum opus", and as a "ground-breaking work" that decades later "stood the test of time, and it is still today considered as one of the most important works on the topic".[23]
