Rudolf John Gorsleben

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rudolf John Gorsleben; contemporary illustration early 1940s

Rudolf John Gorsleben (actually Rudolf John) (born March 16, 1883 in Metz ; † August 23, 1930 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ) was an ariosophically oriented runologist and esoteric who created an "originally racist mystery religion ". His specialties were the Edda as well as runes and runic magic .

Life

Gorsleben grew up in Alsace-Lorraine and went to Munich before the First World War . He initially wanted to go to the theater and in 1913 wrote a play entitled Der Rastaquär , which was performed in Munich for a short time. He also worked as a journalist and published a leaflet magazine under the name Allgemeine Flugblätter Deutscher Nation , which was nationalistic and pan - German . When war broke out, he volunteered for a Bavarian regiment that fought on the western front for two years. He then moved to a unit that supported the Ottoman army in the fight against Bedouin tribes in Arabia. Gorsleben had the rank of lieutenant at the end of the war and received twelve military awards.

He was recruited as a political teacher by its director, Captain Mayr, as well as Gottfried Feder and Karl Alexander von Müller for the Reichswehr Command 4, the news, press and propaganda department, which was created in early 1919 .

After the war Gorsleben returned to Munich, where he met Dietrich Eckart . It was through him that he got to know the Thule Society and joined them. In April 1919, he and Eckart were imprisoned as a hostage by communist members of the Munich Soviet Republic . Only Eckart's quick-wittedness at interrogation prevented the joint execution. On December 18, 1920 he gave a lecture on the "Aryan people" in the Thule Society.

For the radically anti-Semitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund he became Gauleiter for southern Bavaria in June 1921 and soon got into internal party disputes. In the course of these disputes, he was removed from the federal administration in January 1922. Gorsleben had previously entered into an alliance with Julius Streicher . After further internal disputes, which continued after his dismissal until mid-1922, he turned away from politics and devoted himself primarily to his ideological and literary interests.

In 1922 he moved to Dinkelsbühl , where he believed, among other things, to recognize runes in the half-timbered houses. To this end, his book about the secret of Dinkelsbühl was published in 1928 . In 1926 he took over a weekly newspaper in Munich, which he renamed Deutsche Freiheit , later Arische Freiheit and finally Hagal . He also became editor of the journal for human knowledge .

Gorsleben belonged to the circle of friends of Lanz von Liebenfels , where he was run as a new temple in Staufen under the name Fra Rig . As a member of the Ordo Novi Templi (New Templar Order) founded by Lanz on December 25, 1900 and of the Guido von List Society , he was inspired by the ariosophy represented by Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels.

He translated the Edda into German (so-called "Gorsleben Edda"). The work first appeared in 1920 and subsequently in further editions. He also wrote poems, a comedy and his war memories, among other things. He claimed of the Edda that it appeared in Atlantis . In the Edda, as well as in the Bible and the Vedas, he saw secret contents of Urarian origin that he wanted to interpret.

The Edda Society

On November 29, 1925, Gorsleben founded the Edda Society in Dinkelsbühl, a kind of community of readers dedicated to Gorsleben's Edda translation, and had several hundred members in the years that followed. The Edda Society, of which he was Chancellor, was involved in the early days of the German Faith Movement Working Group founded at the end of July 1933 through several individual members. Membership was independent of membership in other religious communities. After Gorsleben's death in 1930, Werner von Bülow became the new chairman, who had been the new editor of the Edda Society's magazine Hag All (Hagall) since 1929 . In the early 30s, the Edda Society got into financial difficulties and had to change format and publisher frequently. Bülow tried through Karl Maria "Weisthor" Wiligut to increase the sales of the magazine Hagal and the membership lists by advertising for Hagal with the Reichsführer SS and Walther Darré . As a result, several SS sections joined the Edda Society. Around 1937/38, when the magazine was doing badly again, there were negotiations to let the SS-Ahnenerbe take over Hagal (here, however, the decision was made for 'Germania'). Wiligut recommended Bülow to the head of the RuSHA as the head of Department VII there. Later, Bülow submitted his treatise on the Irminsul to the Ahnenerbe Forschungswerk Wald und Baum in Aryan-Germanic intellectual and cultural history , albeit unsuccessfully. The research work initiated by the Ahnenerbe was to investigate the role of the tree (for example as the world tree Yggdrasil , as a world axis, as Irminsul, quest tree , etc.) in Indo-European peoples. Even in wartime, in 1942, von Bülow tried to interest the SS-Ahnenerbe in a manuscript for the calendar disc from Fossum, in which he saw a missing link and evidence of the age and the Indo-European distribution of a pre-runic symbolic writing.

According to its own information, Hagal magazine had over 2000 subscribers who went far beyond the circle of its members. A large part of the subscribers joined the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur in 1933 .

The religious goals of the Edda Society are clear from the subtitle of their magazine: Aryan Freedom. Monthly for Aryan knowledge of God and the world, for spiritual purification, spiritual and physical exaltation through species-appropriate knowledge and manners, working and becoming, judging and guessing, looking and creating, helping and healing, plowing and harvesting, breathing and eating to master life . So it was holistic, metaphysical and mystical oriented and tried to research the Indo-European (Aryan) religious-philosophical heritage and to integrate it into an idealistic, life-reforming natural philosophy and worldview.

reception

Gorsleben's Edda translation was received by Mathilde Ludendorff , among others . His work Hoch-Zeit der Menschheit , which is primarily concerned with runic studies and published in 1930 by the Leipzig publisher Koehler & Amelang , is still recommended in neo-pagan and religious- folk circles and is considered the standard work of Aryan runic, racial and religious studies . In this book he laid down his worldview and "mixed folk elements, such as racism, cultural pessimism , criticism of science and anti-materialism, with cues from the works of List and Lanz in an ariosophical manner ". Gorsleben claimed to have discovered the original script, original language and original sense in the runes. The source for his speculations was on the one hand the song Edda, on the other hand the Bible. The book was reissued in 1981 and 1986 by the Bremer Facsimile-Verlag / Versand. Another edition from 1993 was banned in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Gorsleben's work The Overcoming of Judaism in Us and Outside Us ( Deutscher Volksverlag , Munich 1920) was placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone after the end of the Second World War .

Gorsleben's runic magic and symbolism is also received today by numerous esotericists, far beyond the narrow circle of neo-pagan-folk groups, albeit with rejection of racist elements. In contrast, Gorsleben's folk ideologues are taken up by circles of the New Right and by Sigrid Hunke . Uwe Puschner uses Gorsleben to analyze that the national dogma of the unity of religion and race inevitably leads to anti-Semitism. In Gorsleben it is said that “in every Aryan […] there is still a remnant of the will to good […] as a fragment of the divine from race and religion”, “the Jew […] is already born as determined by law and education by the will to evil ”. Gorsleben adapted the root race system from Blavatsky's secret doctrine and was a proponent of Hanns Hörbiger's thesis , according to which Atlantis set as a result of the approaching moon.

magazine

  • German freedom. Monthly for Aryan knowledge of God and the world . Published by Rudolf John Gorsleben, 1925 to 1926, Munich (3.1925 and 4.1926).
  • Aryan freedom. Monthly for Aryan divine u. Knowledge of the world , 1927, Dinkelsbühl (5.1927).
  • Hag-All, All-Hag. Journal for Aryan Freedom . Edda Society, 1930 to 1934, Mittenwald, Obb. (7.1930 to 11.1934).

Works

  • The Buccaneer , drama, 1913.
  • The Rastaquar , drama, 1913.
  • The Royal Washerwoman , comedy, 1918.
  • Overcoming Judaism within and outside of us . 71 p., Deutscher Volksverlag Dr. Ernst Boepple, Munich 1920.
  • The Edda. Transferred from Rudolf John Gorsleben . The homecoming (W. Simon, Buchdr. And Verlag), Pasing 1920.
  • Poems , 1921.
  • The delusion of the gods (Gylfaginning). From d. younger Edda translated into standard German. by Rudolf John Gorsleben . 75 p., Die Heimkehr (W. Simon, Buchdr. And Verlag), Pasing 1923.
  • The Edda, Volume 1. Songs - Edda. Heroes' songs, sayings, godly songs - what really is in the Edda. Reprint from 2002 ISBN 3-8311-4000-6 .
  • Festschrift for the 25th anniversary of the hammer 1901–1926 . Appropriate for employees. Hammer, Leipzig 1926. Collected work. Contains: Rudolf John Gorsleben: Thoughts on Time and Eternity .
  • The secret of Dinkelsbühl. A profound and yet entertaining treatise on the origins of the city, its history, the origin of the coat of arms, the custom of the ancient “children's mine” and the meaning of an enigmatic inscription by the secret brotherhood of the Bauhütte, mainly based on knowledge of the runes / discovered , deciphered u. explained by Rudolf John Gorsleben , 70 p., Brückner, Berlin 1928 (Wunder der Heimat, H. 1).
  • High time of mankind . XXV, 689 S., Ill., Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1930.
  • High time of mankind . XXV, 689 p., Ill., New print of the Leipzig 1930 edition, Facsimile-Verl./Versand, Bremen 1981 (historical facsimiles).
  • High time of mankind . XXV, 764 S., Ill., Faks.-Nachdr. the edition Leipzig 1930, Faks.-Verlag, Bremen 1993, ISBN 3-8179-0025-2 (series research series "historical facsimiles").

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : The Occult Roots of National Socialism . Marixverlag, 2004, p. 137.
  2. ↑ Peter Orzechowski : Black Magic - Brown Power . Ravensburg 1987, ISBN 3-926532-05-X , p. 22 f.
  3. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism . Marixverlag, 2004, p. 138.
  4. ↑ Peter Orzechowski: Black Magic - Brown Power . Ravensburg 1987, ISBN 3-926532-05-X , p. 59.
  5. ^ A b Friedrich Paul Heller , Anton Maegerle : Thule . 2nd Edition. ISBN 3-89657-090-0 , p. 26.
  6. ^ Stefanie von Schnurbein : Religion as cultural criticism. New Germanic paganism in the 20th century . Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-533-04582-X , p. 106.
  7. ^ A b c Friedrich Paul Heller, Anton Maegerle: Thule . 2nd Edition. ISBN 3-89657-090-0 , p. 25.
  8. ↑ Peter Orzechowski: Black Magic - Brown Power . Ravensburg 1987, ISBN 3-926532-05-X , p. 23.
  9. ↑ Stefanie von Schnurbein: God comfort in times of change . Munich 1993, ISBN 3-532-64003-1 , p. 72.
  10. ^ Stefanie von Schnurbein: Religion as cultural criticism. New Germanic paganism in the 20th century . Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-533-04582-X , p. 107
  11. ↑ a b c d e f Ulrich Nanko: The German faith movement. A historical and sociological investigation. Diagonal-Verlag, Marburg 1993, ISBN 3-927165-16-6 , p. 52.
  12. ↑ Ulrich Nanko: The German Faith Movement. A historical and sociological investigation. Diagonal-Verlag, Marburg 1993, ISBN 3-927165-16-6 , p. 73, p. 149.
  13. ↑ a b Stefanie von Schnurbein: Göttertrost in Wendezeiten , Munich 1993, p. 72 and p. 152
  14. ^ A b c Stefanie von Schnurbein: Religion as cultural criticism. New Germanic paganism in the 20th century . Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-533-04582-X , p. 106.
  15. ↑ Stefanie von Schnurbein: God comfort in times of change . Munich 1993, ISBN 3-532-64003-1 , p. 152.
  16. ↑ polunbi.de
  17. ↑ Karlheinz Weißmann : Druiden, Goden, Wise Women. Back to Europe's old gods . Herder / spectrum. Freiburg 1991, ISBN 3-89657-090-0 , p. 153.
  18. ↑ a b c Uwe Puschner: Weltanschauung and Religion - Religion and Weltanschauung. Ideology and forms of ethnic religion . (PDF; 223 kB). In: zeitenblicke , 5, 2006, No. 1.
  19. ↑ Alfred Schobert : Networks, Viruses, Streams - Roots and the Empire or How Alain de Benoist and Carl Schmitt want to defy the “steamroller of globalization” . (PDF; 138 kB). In: kultuRRevolution - Journal for Applied Discourse Theory , Issue 44, pp. 23–33.
  20. ↑ Franz Wegener: The atlantidische worldview. National Socialism and the New Right in search of the sunken Atlantis . 2nd Edition. Kulturförderverein Ruhrgebiet KFVR, Gladbeck 2003, pp. 26–27. Series work, volume 1: The water. First in 2000; 3. strong adult 2014 edition, ISBN 1-4936-6866-8
personal data
SURNAME Gorsleben, Rudolf John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES John, Rudolf (real name); Gorsleben, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ariosophically oriented runologist and esotericist
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH 23rd August 1930
Place of death Bad Homburg vor der Höhe