Germanic Faith Community (Ludwig Fahrenkrog)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Germanic Faith Community (GGG) was a neo-pagan , Germanic religious association that was founded in 1912/1913 by the painter and poet Ludwig Fahrenkrog and existed until 1964.

history

In an essay that appeared in 1908 in the journal “Der Volkserzieher” founded and edited by Wilhelm Schwaner , Ludwig Fahrenkrog called for the formation of a “German-religious community” which would, in the long term, “promote state recognition, equality and equality of the members of this community with the Members of the state churches ”. He asked the readers to get in touch with him if they were interested in founding a community to cultivate the “German religion”. In another essay from the same year he commented on the response to his appeal.

Fahrenkrog founded the Association for Personality Culture in 1907 . In 1911 Fahrenkrog and Schwaner joined the " Teutonic Order " led by Otto Sigfrid Reuter (not to be confused with the religious knightly order of the German Order, which was founded in the Middle Ages ). The members of the "Teutonic Order" were automatically members of the " German Religious Community " according to their association statutes . The planned unification of both communities failed. In the summer of 1912, Fahrenkog founded the 2nd German Religious Community . In 1913 it received its final name Germanic Faith Community and its new constitution. A prominent member was the painter of the youth movement Fidus , as well as ethnic representatives of the wandering bird . A fire sanctuary in Rattlar became a place of pilgrimage for the group, who liked to show themselves in clothing that was youthful. The community was hierarchically ascending in house communities with the father as the "natural voter of the house", in local communities consisting of at least "one clan with a special voter", in districts or tribes with one district in each case and in community with the Hochwart, since 1914 Ludwig Fahrenkrog, and the bailiff. In the year it was founded, the Germanic Faith Community had 80 to 90 members. In 1914 the community had 120 to 150 members, in 1918 there were 13 local churches; only at the beginning of the 1920s, which may be considered the heyday of the GGG, did the number of members increase significantly. The association was entered in the association register in 1924.

In the initial phase of the Weimar Republic until 1925, the GGG cooperated with the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft Otto Dickels . In 1932 the Germanic Faith Community joined the Nordic Religious Working Group , whose leaders were Norbert Seibertz and Wilhelm Kusserow . The Nordic-Religious Working Group wanted to gather the Nordic-Religious of all communities in order to fight for equality in the state. In addition to the Germanic faith community, the Nordungen , the Nordic faith community as well as parts of the German faith community Otto Sigfrid Reuters with Norbert Seibertz participated in the Nordic-Religious Working Group . The Nordungen , which, along with Norbert Seibertz, played a key role in the founding, withdrew in 1932. The number of members of the Nordic denomination should have been around 1000 members. Right from the start, the Nordic-Religious Working Group sided with National Socialism . She considered Christianity to be a “dangerous gateway for Asianism, Judaism and Marxism ”. In July 1933 she set up a “Nordic Species Confession”.

After the Nordic-Religious had not received the hoped-for funding from the NSDAP as part of the new religious policy , the Nordic-Religious Working Group finally became a member of the German Faith Movement Working Group (ADG) founded in July 1933 after a large meeting in Eisenach at the end of June. , which was led by Jakob Wilhelm Hauer and is only partly attributable to the nationalist movement. In the ADG the Nordic-religious formed the radical wing and spoke out against the participation of free religion from. The radical fight against the Christian denominations hoped for by the ADG was not the goal of the Hauer movement, but their equal rights with the churches as a third denomination . The ADG remained ideologically and ideologically heterogeneous, an aggregate of the most diverse directions, the components of which soon strived for organizational independence again. The adoption of the "Nordic Species" demanded by the Nordic religious was rejected by Hauer. Despite the radicalization of the Working Group on the German Faith Movement , it resigned after the decision was made to found its own organization for the German Faith Movement in May 1934.

In August 1941, Fahrenkrog again took part in an attempt at unification by supporters of a native German religion outside of Christianity in peas near Göttingen, to which Karl Strünckmann and Friedrich Schöll also made an appeal.

After Fahrenkrog's death in 1952, the GGG existed until 1964 and was deleted from the register of associations in the same year. Its last chairman was Ludwig Dessel .

Teaching

The community initially drew its spiritual foundations from German mysticism with a special focus on the presence of God and the divine law in man as well as on the perception of nature as the most important form of knowledge of God . The Christian and pro- church aspects of German mysticism, however, played no role.

While these foundations were reflected in the content of Wilhelm Schwaner , the author of the Germanic Bible , above all in the statements "German statesmen and philosophers", for Ludwig Fahrenkrog the Nordic and German legends and folk art were in the foreground Portrayed pictures and texts. The seven-volume illustrated book God through the ages was a central theme .

In 1924 Fahrenkrog presented the principles of the Germanic Faith Community in his Manifesto Germanic Faith . This manifesto also contains an address "to the Germanic peoples of this earth", in which Fahrenkrog speaks as a prophet to the Germanic peoples with the aim of repenting and turning to one's own Action and love in the here and now.

The “Confession” of the community summarizes these teachings in brief statements. Compared to the old version, only in 1992 was the term universal spirit replaced by “forces of the universe” or “gods”.

“The Germanic Faith Community is a religious association for the preservation, promotion and dissemination of the traditional Germanic faith and cult that has been developed through research.

  1. We confess to the forces of spirit and life that pervade the universe and us.
  2. And recognize form-forming forces of life in the universe, which determine the diversity of all phenomena, and therefore also recognize all special phenomena in their natural necessity as revelations of the forces of life.
  3. But since the truth and the meaning of their existence lie just as naturally necessary in the appearances themselves, it is also the meaning or the task of all appearances to fulfill themselves.
  4. So we also recognize the meaning and the task of our existence - as a seed risen with us and waiting for fulfillment - lying within us.
  5. We therefore believe and know that a Germanic religion can only arise from themselves.
  6. For us religion is the pure, world-affirming, active and insightful relationship of the soul to the essence of the universe and to its forms of appearance and revelation.
  7. Our knowledge and experience of the gods as ultimate truths and beings and as forces working in us and through us is at the same time the knowledge of a moral law in us and the reason for our trust in their leadership and the cause of our belief in the high destiny of the Teutons .
  8. From such knowledge also germinates the will to good, the will to purity, truth and justice, to self-redemption and to self-fulfillment, and in this way the will to free, moral deed up to self-sacrifice arises.
  9. So we see in the reflection on our own being as the special manifestations of the gods that work in us and in maintaining health and strength, the further and higher development of this being to ever purer, nobler forms and goals, the most noble task of every Germanic within like outside the German borders.
  10. But beyond the grave we look into infinity with all confidence, from which we came. Our task is to fulfill this existence - to determine it is the right and the power of the gods, who pervade the universe and us, in time and eternity. "
- Ludwig Fahrenkrog : The German book. Berlin 1921.

Faith practice, rite

Little is known about the actual ritual practices of the GGG. In any case, the celebration of the feasts of life in the spirit of old Germanic belief was of particular importance. For this purpose, the community designed its own GGG festival calendar , in which the festivals of the Christian church year were filled with content from their own religion. The main focus was on the constant experience of nature.

Known members

See also

literature

  • Stefan Breuer : The nationalists in Germany. Empire and Weimar Republic. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-21354-2 .
  • Hans Buchheim : Faith Crisis in the Third Reich. Three chapters of National Socialist religious policy. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1953.
  • Daniel Junker: God in us! The Germanic Faith Community. A contribution to the history of ethnic religiosity in the Weimar Republic (=  Academic Series  1). Publisher Daniel Junker, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8311-3380-8 .
  • Ulrich Nanko: The German Faith Movement. A historical and sociological investigation (=  religious studies series  4). diagonal-Verlag, Marburg 1993, ISBN 3-927165-16-6 (also: Diss. Univ. Tübingen, 1989; on GGG: pp. 40-43; numerous other information on Fahrenkrog).
  • Uwe Puschner : The nationalist movement in the Wilhelmine Empire. Language - race - religion. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-534-15052-X (also: Habil.-Schr. Freie Univ. Berlin, 1998/99; reviews on this book in H-Net and H-Soz-u-Kult ).
  • Uwe Puschner: Völkisch movement. In: Axel Schildt (Ed.): German history in the 20th century. A lexicon (=  Beck's series 1618). Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-51137-6 , p. 383f.
  • Uwe Puschner, Clemens Vollnhals (ed.): The ethnic-religious movement in National Socialism: A history of relationships and conflicts. Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-647-36996-9 ( google-books preview ).
  • Katrin Riedel: About God and the gods. A comparative study of the neo-pagan Germanic belief community (s). In: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 66.3 / 4 (2014), pp. 270–294.
  • Stefanie von Schnurbein : Religion as a cultural criticism. New Germanic paganism in the 20th century (=  Scandinavian works 13). Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-533-04582-X (also: Diss. Univ. Frankfurt (Main), 1992).
  • Stefanie von Schnurbein: God comfort in times of change. New Germanic paganism between New Age and right-wing radicalism. Claudius-Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-532-64003-1 .
  • Stefanie von Schnurbein: The search for a “specific” religion in “Germanic” and “German-believing” groups. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Saur, Munich a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-11241-6 , pp. 172-185.
  • Sylvia Siewert: Germanic religion and new Germanic paganism. On the history of the reception of Germanic religion and on the problem of the question of continuity from religious studies self (=  European university publications. Series 23: Theologie 741). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-631-38338-X (at the same time: Diss. Univ. Würzburg, 2001; on the old GGG: p. 146–155 on the new GGG: p. 174–180, chronology p. 163f.).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Daniel Junker: “God in us!” , P. 44.
  2. ↑ Daniel Junker: “God in us!” , P. 45 ff.
  3. ↑ Ulrich Nanko: The German Faith Movement. A historical and sociological investigation . Marburg 1993, p. 41.
  4. ↑ a b Stefanie von Schnurbein: The search for a “specific” religion in “Germanic” and “Germanic believing” groups, p. 180.
  5. ^ Uwe Puschner: The völkisch movement in the Wilhelmine Empire. Language - race - religion. Darmstadt 2001, p. 387.
  6. ↑ Stefan Breuer: The Völkische in Germany . Darmstadt 2008, p. 260.
  7. ↑ Ulrich Nanko: The German Faith Movement. A historical and sociological investigation . Marburg 1993, p. 49.
  8. ↑ Ulrich Nanko: The German Faith Movement. A historical and sociological investigation . Marburg 1993, p. 49 ("certainly but under 2000")
  9. ↑ Kurt Hutten: Christ or German faith. A fight for the German soul . Steinkopf, Stuttgart 1935, p. 15f.
  10. ^ A b Stefan Breuer: Die Völkischen in Germany . Darmstadt 2008, p. 259 ff.
  11. ↑ Hans Buchheim: Faith Crisis in the Third Reich. Three chapters of National Socialist religious policy. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1953, pp. 169ff, 171.
  12. ↑ Hans Buchheim: Faith Crisis in the Third Reich. Three chapters of National Socialist religious policy. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1953, p. 171.
  13. ↑ sects. Risks and side effects , brochure of the Senate Department for School, Youth and Sport, 1997 Berlin, pp. 41–44, here: p. 41. Accessed October 29, 2016
  14. ↑ Confession of the Germanic Faith Community
  15. ↑ Hans Buchheim: Faith Crisis in the Third Reich. Three chapters of National Socialist religious policy. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1953, p. 168.
  16. ↑ a b c d e Stefan Breuer: Die Völkischen in Germany. Darmstadt 2008, p. 96.
  17. ^ Uwe Puschner: The völkisch movement in the Wilhelmine Empire. Language - race - religion. Darmstadt 2001, p. 279.
  18. ↑ Stefan Breuer: The Völkische in Germany . Darmstadt 2008, p. 93.
  19. ^ Armin Mohler : The Conservative Revolution in Germany 1918–1932. A manual. 3. to add a supplementary volume. Edition. Darmstadt 1989, p. 362.
  20. ↑ - ludwig Ludwig Dessel in the Lexicon of Westphalian authors