Ariosophy

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The Ariosophy is a Gnostic - dualistic religion on racial basis, which was the 20th century in Austria and Germany followers in the first half. The name was coined in 1915 by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels , who until then had spread his teaching as theozoology . Another important inspirer was Guido von List , whose views became known as Wotanism and Armanism . Ariosophic authors combined ideas of the superiority of the " Aryan race " and demands for this supposed race to be kept pure with elements of astrology , number symbolism , Kabbalah , graphology and palmistry . The most important ariosophical organization was the Neutempler Order founded by Lanz .

Emergence

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke traces the ariosophy back to a connection between folk nationalism and racism with occult terms from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's theosophy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Vienna. He names Guido von List as the actual founder, he sees a forerunner in the Berlin theosophist Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth (1859–1916), from whom List took over some occult racial speculations. List devised a spiritual system of creative interpretations of old pre-Christian traditions and referred to a form of mystical knowledge that he called “remembering”. The central statement is the postulate of an " Aryan primal race" in Northern Europe. Of all races it was the most highly developed. Since belonging to a people in the ethnic environment was mainly defined by racial characteristics, the superiority of the descendants of this primordial race - Indo-Europeans / Indo-Europeans / Aryans and especially Germans in general, Germans in particular - follows from this over all other peoples.

Teaching

Ariosophy is based on the idea that there was a golden age in prehistoric times when the Aryan race was still "pure" and was led by a wise priesthood. This ideal world had been destroyed by racial mixing, and therein lay the causes of wars, economic hardship and political insecurity. To counteract this, the Ariosophs founded secret religious orders with the aim of reviving the lost occult knowledge, renewing the racial virtues of the ancient Teutons and creating a new pan-German empire.

Lanz von Liebenfels linked his race theory with the idea of ​​an "Aryan Christianity" and then put the fight of the Aryans against the "lower races" in the foreground. Specifically, he was concerned with preventing racial mixing and the weakening of the “Aryan hero race” resulting from this mixing. To prevent this from happening, he proposed extensive breeding programs for Aryans and sterilization measures for inferior breeds. Liebenfels reinterpreted the books of the Bible and the history of Christianity as evidence of an alleged racial struggle .

Relationship to Blavatsky's theosophy

Ariosophy links some of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's theosophical thoughts on cosmology, symbolism and human evolution ( root races ) with Arthur de Gobineau's racial theory and occult belief in runes. Parts of Blavatsky's ideas are separated from their central position, according to which the establishment of a “brotherhood of mankind without distinction of race” is sought and the higher development of mankind is seen in the merging of all races. Conversely, ariosophy strives for the higher development of mankind through a kind of "aristocratic" racial segregation and postulates a race hierarchy which is to be expanded through biological breeding and mystical development. The Gnostic element of an ascent through knowledge and spiritualization is radicalized in the sense of a Manichaean strict dualism.

The historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke also makes it clear that the central meaning of “Aryan” racism in Ariosophy, albeit mixed with occult terms of theosophy , can be traced back to concerns about race in German social Darwinism .

Relationship to National Socialism

The historical interest in ariosophy stems primarily from the fact that it was related to the origins and ideology of National Socialism . In 1958 , Wilfried Daim put forward the thesis, which is no longer supported in science today, that Lanz von Liebenfels was "the man who gave Hitler the ideas". Goodrick-Clarke, in his 1985 work on The Occult Roots of Nazism, however, comes to the conclusion that ariosophy may have anticipated Nazi ideology, but is more a symptom than a historical influence. Adolf Hitler knew works by List and Lanz von Liebenfels and was partly influenced by them, namely by their millenarianism and their Manichaeism . Other central aspects of the Ariosophic doctrine, such as the past "Golden Age" of the Aryans or their secret cultural heritage, would not have interested him. The Israeli historian Isaac Lubelsky comes to the conclusion that the Ariosophers overall had a significantly lower influence on the ideology of the “Third Reich” than Goodrick-Clarke's formulation of the “occult roots of National Socialism” suggests.

After the seizure of power in 1933, ariosophic groups, along with all other occult, Masonic and various religious groups, were classified as "sects hostile to the state" and initially observed by the security service of the Reichsführer SS . With a decree of July 1937 all such "sects" were banned. In 1941, under the leadership of Reinhard Heydrich, in the campaign against secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences, massive police measures followed against all members of such groups with the order that they were sent to concentration camps or sentenced to forced labor.

Resurgence after 1945

Ariosophical ideas revived after the end of the Second World War in various new-Germanic groups, for example in the Armanen-Order founded in 1976 , the Gylfiliten-Gilde , in the working group of natural religious tribal associations of Europe (ANSE) as well as in the Bund der Goden , further in certain forms of Odinism in the USA , in the National Renaissance Party or with Miguel Serrano .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : Ariosophy . In: Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Ed.): Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism . Leiden 2006. p. 91.
  2. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz 1997, p. 50 f.
  3. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz 1997, p. 10 f.
  4. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz 1997, pp. 10 and 175.
  5. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 21.
  6. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz 1997, p. 1.
  7. ↑ Wilfried Daim : The man who gave Hitler the ideas , Isar-Verlag, Munich 1958.
  8. ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of Nazism. Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology . Tauris Parke, London 2005, pp. 192-204.
  9. ^ Isaac Lubelsky: Mythological and Real Race Issues in Theosophy . In: Olav Hammer, Mikael Rothstein (Eds.): Handbook of the Theosophical Current . Brill, Leiden 2013, p. 354.
  10. ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul. Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 2004, p. 220 f.
  11. ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul. Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 2004, p. 224.
  12. ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul. Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 2004, p. 224 f.
  13. ^ Rainer Fromm : Right-wing radicalism in esotericism. In: Brennpunkt Esoterik ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 872 kB), 3rd edition Hamburg 2006, pp. 169–183. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hamburg.de