Rudolf von Sebottendorf

Rudolf von Sebottendorf , including Rudolf von Sebottendorff , actually Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer , pseudonym Erwin Torre (*  9. November 1875 in Hoyerswerda , † 8. / 9. May 1945 in probably Istanbul ), was a German anti-Semitic occultist and publisher .

The at times very wealthy Sebottendorf was active in the environment of the völkisch movement , the smashing of the Munich Soviet republic , the free corps and anti-Semitic secret societies and as a publisher of the Völkischer Beobachter . Around 1918 he gathered like-minded people, for example in the Thule Society , many of whom later belonged to the leadership of the NSDAP . Sebottendorf himself was denied the recognition he sought as a pioneer of National Socialism .

Life

Youth, stay in Turkey, occultism

Rudolf Glauer grew up as the son of a locomotive driver in Hoyerswerda. He graduated from high school and went to Berlin to study engineering at the Technical University , but broke off his studies. In April 1898 he was hired as a stoker on a ship from Bremerhaven to New York and went to sea for several years. a. also in the Orient, where he dealt with occultism . The information about his further life is mostly unsecured, as it is only based on his memoir Before Hitler came out in 1933 ; but these are considered unreliable.

From 1901 to 1914 he allegedly stayed in Turkey several times . In Bursa in 1901 he made the acquaintance of a Greek Jew named Termudi, who is said to have introduced him to a Masonic lodge . The British esoteric researcher Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke suspects that the lodge in Bursa was connected to French lodges of the Memphis Rite . In addition, it was a cover organization of the Young Turk Committee for Unity and Progress , an illegal opposition movement against the absolutist regime of Sultan Abdülhamid II. Sebottendorf also claims to have inherited Termudi's library of occult books.

In addition, he allegedly dealt with Islamic mysticism , Sufism , the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky and the ariosophical offshoot of the "theozoology" of Lanz von Liebenfels . In his work, published in 1924, Glauer describes encounters with Sufism, in particular the Bektashi - Dervish order , which he dubbed "old Turkish Freemasonry" . He believed he saw Rosicrucian traditions in their practices, which supposedly served to transform the body into subtle- matter. With his work he delivered by the superposition of the dervish practice with the letters exercises JB kerning and Karl Kolb of letters magic new impetus. Glauer is considered to be one of the first Neo-Sufis in the West, even though his later eclectic teachings had less to do with those of the Bektashi order, Islam or the Sufis than with western esoteric traditions such as the Rosicrucians.

In 1910 he is said to have founded a mystical lodge in Istanbul . In the East Glauer was by its own account of one (expatriate) Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorf adopted and named since then Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf. In 1919, however, the Freiburg District Office assumed that Glauer was wrongly bearing names, titles and nobility. A first marriage lasted only a few months. He acquired the Turkish citizenship and participated as a soldier in the Ottoman army at the Second Balkan War part of the 1913th He then returned to Germany and first settled in Berlin, then in Kleinzschachwitz , a suburb of Dresden villas, where he bought a large property for 50,000 Reichsmarks. Because of his Turkish nationality, he was not drafted into the military during the First World War . In 1915 he married Bertha Anna Iffland in Vienna, the daughter of a wealthy Berlin businessman. Since then he has lived on his wife's fortune.

Fight against the "Jewish World Conspiracy"

Sebottendorf joined the ethnic Germanic order , for which he advertised with considerable sums of money of unknown origin. On his behalf, he collected the remaining Munich members in early 1918 in order to found a Bavarian offshoot of the order: the Thule Society . It was on 17./18. Officially founded in August 1918 under the name "Thule Society, Order for German Art" in the Munich Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten .

The members of this secret society began during the war with rabid anti-Semitic propaganda activities with which they promoted the development of völkisch radicalism. They believed in the conspiracy theory of a “ Jewish conspiracy ”, which they wanted to put an end to by conspiratorial means: Their goals were to “ break the bondage of interest ”, establish a dictatorship and expel all Jews from Germany. These goals should be concealed by referring to the Germanic prehistoric times in the name and occultism.

In July 1918, Sebottendorf bought the Münchner Beobachter with his wife's fortune from Franz Eher Nachhaben Verlag GmbH . The tabloid became the central organ of the Thule Society under Sebottendorf's chief editor. In August 1918 the newspaper was renamed Völkischer Beobachter . After the Munich soviet republic was proclaimed in November 1918 , Sebottendorf incited in his newspaper against a "Jewish world conspiracy" that was supposed to be behind the council system and the November revolution.

Sebottendorf founded a "Kampfbund" from the circle of members, which procured weapons and from which the Freikorps Oberland emerged , which was involved in the suppression of the communist Munich Soviet Republic and the Ruhr uprising in 1920. Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley , the murderer of the Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner , was only excluded from the Thule Society immediately before the crime because of his Jewish mother. In January 1919, Sebottendorf commissioned Karl Harrer , a sports editor of his Munich observer , who was also a member of the Thule Society, to get involved in an initially obscure "Free Workers Committee". From this, the German Workers' Party emerged in January 1919 with Harrer as chairman , which thirteen months later renamed itself the NSDAP .

Renewed exile, return and deportation from Germany, last years

In 1919 Sebottendorf left the Thule Society because he was accused of being complicit in the deaths of seven members. Because the council government had confiscated lists of members from him, several Thule shareholders were taken hostage and murdered by Red Guards on April 30, 1919. In 1920 Sebottendorf, who had lost his fortune due to bad speculation, became editor of the Astrological Rundschau , an astrological magazine. He wrote books on astrological and esoteric topics and traveled extensively, including in North America, Switzerland and Turkey. According to his own statements, he is said to have been Honorary Consul of Mexico from 1923 to 1928 .

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he returned to Germany, where he hoped to establish the Thule Society again. In the same year he published his book Before Hitler Came , in which he clearly exaggerated the influence of the Thule Society in the early days of the National Socialist movement. The book was banned. In 1934 Sebottendorf was deported from Germany, after which his trace is lost. Rumor has it that he settled back in Turkey. From 1942 to 1945 he is said to have worked in Istanbul for both the German Abwehr and the British secret service. Immediately after the German surrender , Sebottendorf, who was now impoverished, is said to have drowned himself in the Bosporus .

Works

• The talisman of the Rosicrucian (novel). Baum, Pfullingen 1925.
• The symbols of the zodiac: a symbolism of each degree collected from ancient sources. Theosophical publishing house, Leipzig 1920.
• History of astrology. Theosophical publishing house, Leipzig 1923.
• The practice of ancient Turkish freemasonry. Theosophical publishing house, Leipzig 1924.
• Before Hitler came. Documents from the early days of the National Socialist movement. Deukula-Verlag, Munich 1933. New edition: Facsimile-Verlag, Bremen 1982.

literature

• Hermann Gilbhard: The Thule Society. From the occult mummery to the swastika. Kiessling Verlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-930423-00-6 .
• Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : The Occult Roots of National Socialism. 2nd edition, Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz u. a. 2000, ISBN 3-7020-0795-4 .
• Ellic Howe : Rudolph Freiherr von Sebottendorff. Edited and provided with a preliminary bibliography of his writings by Albrecht Götz von Olenhusen . Private printing, Freiburg 1989 (2nd edition 2009).
• Klaus Kreiser: Bektaşî studies 4. The “Freiherr von Sebottendorff”, a German-Turkish Bektaşî and “pioneer” of Hitler. In: Turcica. Revue des Etudes Turques . Vol. 21-23 (1991), pp. 123-127.
• Detlev Rose: The Thule Society. Legend - Myth - Reality. Grabert, Tübingen 1994, ISBN 3-87847-139-4 ( = publications of the Institute for German Post-War History. 21).
• Wolfram Selig: Sebottendorff, Rudolf von [also Sebottendorf]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 2/2: People. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 757 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul. Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2004, p. 66 f.
2. ^ Jan Philipp Pomplun: Thule Society. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 5: Organizations. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027878-1 , p. 597 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
3. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. New edition, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 123 f.
4. ↑ Rudolf von Sebottendorf: The practice of old Turkish freemasonry. The key to understanding alchemy . Theosophical publishing house, Leipzig 1924, quoted. after Willy Schrödter: A Rosicrucian Notebook. The Secret Sciences Used by Members of the Order. Red Wheel / Weiser 1992, p. 111.
5. ^ John Michael Greer: Sebottendorff, Rudolf. In: ders .: Encyclopedia of Secret Doctrines. Ansata Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7787-7270-6 , pp. 655-659.
6. ↑ Muhammed A. al-Ahari: Painting Coal Gold. An Essay on the misuse of the Bektashi name in the West. Magribine Press, Chicago 2006; Mark Sedgwick: Neo-Sufism. In: Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Ed.): Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2006, p. 848.
7. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. New edition, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 124.
8. ↑ Albrecht Götz v. Olenhusen: Citizens' Council, Resident Defense and Counter-Revolution Freiburg 1918-1920. At the same time a contribution to the biography of Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff. In: Ways and astray. Contributions to the European intellectual history of modern times. Freiburg 1990, p. 130.
9. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. New edition, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 126.
10. ↑ Wolfram Selig: Sebottendorff, Rudolf von [also Sebottendorf]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 2/2: People. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 757 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
11. ^ Ernst Piper : Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, pp. 44–47.
12. ↑ Joachim Fest : Hitler. A biography, second book, the road to politics. Licensed edition by Spiegel-Verlag, Hamburg 2007, p. 196.
13. ^ Jan Philipp Pomplun: Thule Society. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 5: Organizations. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027878-1 , p. 597 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
14. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Thamer : Seduction and violence. Germany 1933–1945. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1994, p. 59.
15. ^ Wolfram Selig: Harrer, Karl. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 2/1: People. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, p. 331 (accessed via De Gruyter Online)
16. ^ Hellmuth Auerbach: Thule Society. In: Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997, p. 759; Wolfram Selig: Sebottendorff, Rudolf von [also Sebottendorf]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 2/2: People. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 757 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
17. ↑ Marco Frenschkowski : The secret societies. A cultural and historical analysis. Marix, Wiesbaden 2007, p. 168.
18. ↑ Kocku von Stuckrad : History of Astrology . CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2003, p. 330.
19. ^ Jan Philipp Pomplun: Thule Society. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 5: Organizations. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027878-1 , p. 597 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
20. ↑ Hans Thomas Hakl : National Socialism and Occultism. In: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. New edition, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 201.
21. ^ Jan Philipp Pomplun: Thule Society. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 5: Organizations. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027878-1 , p. 597 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
22. ^ Herbert Rittlinger : Secret service with limited liability. Report from the Bosphorus. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1973, page number missing.
23. ^ Mark Sedgwick: Against the Modern World. Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press, New York 2004, p. 97; Wolfram Selig: Sebottendorff, Rudolf von [also Sebottendorf]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 2/2: People. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 757 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf von Sebottendorf in the catalog of the German National Library