Reinhold Ebertin

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Reinhold Ebertin (born February 16, 1901 in Görlitz ; † March 14, 1988 ) was a German astrologer and cosmobiologist .

life and work

Reinhold Ebertin was the son of the then well-known graphologist and astrologer Elsbeth Ebertin . Influenced early by his mother, he began to be interested in border sciences and astrology as a teenager . After an initial career as a school teacher, he soon gave up this profession, founded the Ebertin Verlag, which was later taken over by Hermann Bauer Verlag , was world-famous as the editor of the Cosmobiological Yearbook and devoted himself entirely to his journalistic activities and the development of cosmobiology. Impressed by the astrologer Alfred Witte , the founder of the Hamburg School, he adopted essential astrological elements of interpretation (half-sum technique), but distanced himself from other teachings (for example that about hypothetical planets). His most important work is a combination of celestial influences . This was followed by numerous other books on topics of psychological (cosmopsychology) and medical cosmobiology .

criticism

During the time of the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany, the specialist journal published by Reinhold Ebertin was one of only two astrological journals that the rulers permitted to appear (in this case until the war year 1941). In addition, Reinhold Ebertin has received a public declaration from the time in which he follows elements of the ideology of the rulers in style and content and uses harsh anti-Jewish and inhumane formulations. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke also reports that there are strong indications that Ebertin already belonged to an esoteric-racist group around Herbert Reichstein , in the 1920s , who described his ideology as belonging to the direction of so-called ariosophy .

It should be noted, however, that the “clues” that Goodrick-Clarke mentions are later referred to by Ebertin as defamation. It is certain that astrology was defamed in the context of the Gleichschaltung that Goebbels staged after the victory of the National Socialists. When Rosenberg and Mathilde Ludendorff branded astrology as Syrian magic , many astrologers replied with the assertion that astrology was a "prehistoric Germanic star" and praised the Aryan north as the original home of all culture, partly out of conviction, partly as self-protection and fear of persecution and professional ban. Before 1933, however, Ebertin took a different path and distanced himself from mythical and traditional astrology and at an early age confessed to cosmobiology, which pursued a scientific approach. In April 1941 the edition “Mensch und All” from the Ebertin publishing house was banned. Ebertin writes in his autobiography: It was perhaps a good thing, because you no longer knew what to write without getting into the clutches of the Gestapo and perhaps even being sent to a concentration camp. There were no limits to arbitrariness back then.

Ebertin can be reproached for having made compromises with the National Socialists for far too long and, from today's perspective, gained the reputation of a collaborator in order to be able to continue his astrological publishing activity. Ebertin: How difficult it was to publish a magazine at that time without coming into conflict with the laws, but still letting the truth glimpse through between the lines and still getting over to some compulsory articles just to be able to pass that Hardly anyone can imagine today.

But after Rudolf Hess fled to England in 1941 at the latest , there was no longer any advocate for astrologers in Germany - their National Socialist lip service was now ineffective. There was a wide wave of arrests. R. Ebertin was finally arrested by the Gestapo and his works and magazines were confiscated. It hit many other astrologers even harder, who later even perished in the concentration camp. Ebertin was criticized less by Nazi occult researchers for his negative attitude towards traditional astrology. He has been accused of simply throwing valuable interpretive elements (signs of the zodiac, harmonic aspects such as trigons and sextiles as well as the astrological house or field systems) overboard as mythological ballast. His dream was to use scientific methods to secure an appropriate place for cosmobiology between the natural sciences and the humanities. Today, however, this can be viewed as a failure.

literature

Books by Reinhold Ebertin (selection)

  • Combination of the celestial influences , Ebertin-Verlag, Aalen 1972.
  • Introduction to Cosmobiology , 5th edition, Freiburg im Breisgau 1984.
  • Applied Cosmobiology , Freiburg im Breisgau 1986.
  • Fate in my Hand - Autobiography , Aalen 1975.

Literature about Reinhold Ebertin

  • Reinhold Ebertin is 80 [eighty] years old , Festschrift for Reinhold Ebertin, Ebertin Verlag, Freiburg 1980. - (This is a congratulatory brochure from friends of R. Ebertins.)
  • James Herschel Holden: A History of Horoscope Astrology - From the Babylonian Period to the Modern Age . American Federation of Astrologers, Tempe / Arizona 1996 (see especially p. 263 of the second edition). - (This is an overview of historical developments in horoscope astrology from the point of view of an American astrologer in English, in which a section is dedicated to R. Ebertin).
  • Wilhelm Knappich : History of Astrology , Frankfurt 1967.
  • Kocku von Stuckrad : Geschichte der Astrologie , Beck Verlag, Munich 2003. - (The author is professor for the "History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents" at the University of Amsterdam .)

Web links

Evidence and references

  1. ↑ "... After Hitler's 'seizure of power' in 1933, National Socialist statements accumulated in astrological publications ... With the exception of Korsch's Zenit , all astrological journals now published racist articles on the supposedly 'Nordic' science of star interpretation even rose to the point of replacing the zodiac with the Tyrkreis . Reinhold Ebertin's Mensch im All , which was indirectly connected to Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels ' pathologically racist ariosophical movement, became one of the worst anti-Semitic propaganda papers . R. Ebertin was also in 1933 Involved in founding the Geistige Front , an association of professional characterologists. In the October edition of Mensch im All there is the statement: 'In principle, the following are not accepted: Jews or other racially inferior people, physically deformed or crippled (except war invalids), charlatans, quacks and People registered as unreliable are to be regarded '... "/ Kocku von Stuckrad : Geschichte der Astrologie , page 331 f.
  2. ↑ "... In the first issue of the periodical, dated October 1925, Reichstein announced the collaboration of recognized occultists in his project, including Issberner-Haldane , Lanz von Liebenfels, Wilhelm Wulff, and GW Surya. In December 1925 he began the issue of a bookseries, Ariosophische Bibliothek , which proposed to publicize Lanz's theories in a wide field ranging from astrology to heraldry, while bringing this kind of 'practical self-realization' to its readers. A notice in the first number indicated that Frodi Ingolfson Wehrmann , Herbert Gerstner, and Reinhold Ebertin, the astrologer, had joined his association. ... "/ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of Nazism. Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology . New York University Press 1992 (294 pp.); see p. 168. - Comparisons by Stuckrad: Geschichte ... , p. 329: "... National Socialism was not a storm that simply struck Germany, but the result of a development that had been emerging for a long time. Astrologers were not insignificant involved in the increasing reformulation of public discourse, in the stylization of a 'German' astronomy, which always implied the devaluation of a 'non-Aryan' or 'Jewish' astrology, even before 1933 and the subsequent synchronization of the sciences and the media The Nazis. ..."
  3. ↑ The fate in my hand , Ebertin 1966/77, page 25
  4. ↑ The fate in my hand by Reinhold Ebertin, Aalen 1969/1977
  5. ↑ Knappich: History of Astrology , p. 356
personal data
SURNAME Ebertin, Reinhold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astrologer, cosmobiologist and esotericist
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Goerlitz
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1988