Ex septentrione lux

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Ex septentrione lux (Latin: from the north [comes] the light ) is a catchphrase that goes back in Germany to the rescue of the Protestant cause through the intervention of the Swedish King Gustav Adolf in the Thirty Years' War in 1630. Theodor Körner took it up again in 1813 when Sweden joined the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon I ( light from the north breaks the light of freedom ).

Later it was mainly used in racist and nationalist circles in northern, eastern and central European countries to question the prevailing thesis Ex oriente lux . In their opinion, the origin of all culture lay in the supposedly Aryan northern Europe and Germania, or rather the ancestors of today's people spread them south. Despite intensive efforts, especially in the 1920s to 1940s, völkisch researchers never succeeded in finding convincing evidence for this archaeologically no longer tenable theory. After the Second World War, both reprints of corresponding older works, particularly from the time of the Third Reich , and more recent works were primarily published by publishers from the right-wing extremist spectrum. In them the supposedly cultural mission of Nordic and Germanic peoples is emphasized already in prehistory and early history compared to the ancient high cultures (for example the Greeks , Philistines , Phoenicians and Egyptians ) and thus their superiority or the descent from the former.

One of the best-known proponents of Ex septentrione lux is Jürgen Spanuth , who in 1953, in his publication Das Unrätselte Atlantis, located the submerged Atlantis in the German Heligoland on the North Sea and postulated a Bronze Age immigration of northern European peoples into the Mediterranean area. The Swede Olof Rudbeck the Elder (1630–1702), who had placed Atlantis in Uppsala , is claimed to be an early representative of Northernism .

literature

  • Ingo Wiwjorra: "Ex oriente lux" - "Ex septentrione lux". About the conflict between two identity myths. In: Achim Leube / Morton Hegewisch (ed.): Prehistory and National Socialism. Central and Eastern European Prehistory and Early History Research in the years 1933-1945. Studies on the history of science and universities 2 (Heidelberg 2002) 73–106. ISBN 3935025084 .

Web links

Henningsen: The Swedish construction of a Nordic identity by Olof Rudbeck