Yrjö von Grönhagen

Yrjö von Grönhagen

Yrjö of Grönhagen (born September 20 ^{. Jul} / 3. October  1911 ^greg. In St. Petersburg ; † 17th October 2003 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish author and researcher .

Life

Yrjö von Grönhagen was born as the son of Karl von Grönhagen (German-Finnish noble family from southern Finland ) and the Finnish-Russian noblewoman Zina von Holtzmann. His brother fell as a fighter in the anti-communist Belarusian troops in 1920. After the family emigrated to France and completed his school career, he began training at the Finnish consulate in Paris , but broke it off and began in 1933 - after a brief excursion into the film world - studied philosophy at the Sorbonne University in Paris . In the spring of 1935 - before finishing his studies - he embarked on a journey through Europe, which took him from Paris to Helsinki. In August 1935 he was on his way to Germany, where he was given the opportunity to write an article about the Finnish collection of sagas Kalevala for the Frankfurter Volksblatt .

Work for the ancestral heritage of the SS

The Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler read this article and invited Grönhagen to a meeting, to be held on October 1, 1935th After a positive impression, Himmler referred the author to his advisor Karl Maria Wiligut / Weisthor, who at a meeting confirmed Himmler's enthusiasm for the young Finnish researcher and recommended that he be transferred to the SS Research Office Ahnenerbe . On November 1, 1935, Grönhagen was appointed head of department of the “Care Center for Indo-European- Finnish Cultural Relations” for the Ahnenerbe and commissioned with carrying out a research trip to Finland.

In June 1936, Grönhagen and the musicologist Fritz Bose set out for Karelia . There the Finnish draftsman Ola Forsell joined the group. The task of the expedition was to seek out Finnish “magicians” and shamans , to collect or record Finnish legends and poems and songs. At a meeting with the folk singer Timo Lipitsä , he performed a song that was also included in the Kalevala, although the singer was not familiar with the book. There followed meetings with the Finnish singer Hannes Vornanen and the shaman Miron-Aku , who enjoyed a good reputation as a seer among the local population . In the course of this meeting, film and sound recordings were made of an occult session in which Miron-Aku reproduced past and future events that he "received" visionary. Other research reports related to the Finnish saunas.

On February 18, 1937, two lengthy conversations took place in Berlin between Grönhagen, Wiligut, and the British occultist Gaston de Mengel , who had been invited by the Finn, about previous research by the British and future research assignments.

On May 22, 1937, De Mengel, financed by the SS, traveled to Finland, where Yrjö von Grönhagen was already staying. From Helsinki, De Mengel sent a report to Weisthor in Berlin on June 23, about a “black center” in Sin-Kiang (Mongolia) and a “force axis” in Murm (Finland). It remains unclear whether von Grönhagen was directly involved in de Mengel's research. After this excursion into the occult world of the secret societies , Grönhagen's work for the SS came to an abrupt end in 1939.

Activity during the Second World War

At the beginning of the war, on the one hand, the importance of the Grönhagens research department was in question, and on the other hand, as a department head without a doctorate , he himself had a difficult time with his employer Walther Wüst . In addition, there were thoughtless remarks by Grönhagen's wife, Hertha, which led to Himmler's displeasure, who had previously held his protective hand over the German-Finn. So in 1939 Grönhagens department was dissolved and the Grönhagens traveled to Finland. Faced with the Russian attack on Finland, the researcher joined the army. After the Finnish-Soviet armistice in 1940, he returned to Germany as a Finnish liaison officer. In 1941, Mrs. Grönhagens applied for reinstatement in the SS service, which was finally rejected after lengthy discussions within the Ahnenerbe. From 1942 Grönhagen wrote several books in Germany, including a book together with two other authors about the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939: The Winter Campaign. War in Finland's forests . Karelia was published in the same year . Finland's bulwark against the east .

Until 1945 Grönhagen worked as a propagandist for German-Finnish cooperation, at times as a spokesman for German newsreel recordings shown in Finland and most recently as a reporter for Vapaan Suomen Radio. His wife Hertha was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Suomi-Saksa ("Finland-Germany"), a pro-German propaganda magazine , from 1941 to 1945 .

post war period

After the war, Grönhagen worked for the Finnish government on the repatriation of Finnish prisoners of war in Oslo before he was targeted by the British secret services and charged as a Nazi collaborator . After his acquittal in 1947, the German-Finn wrote an autobiographical paper about his collaboration with the SS ( Himmlerin Salaseura , 1948). Nevertheless, the revelations about his collaboration with the SS ensured that Grönhagen was banished from civil service and all academic activities.

As a result, Grönhagen turned to the Christian faith and in 1959 founded the Finnish branch of the Christian- ecumenical order " Ordo Sancti Constantini Magni (OCM)". In 1964 he became general secretary of the Greek Orthodox order “Constantine the Great” and until 2000 lived every six months in Crete and in Lapland . Grönhagen died in Helsinki on October 17, 2003.

Works

• Finnish conversations . Nordland publishing house, Berlin 1941.
• Karelia, Finland's bulwark against the east . Franz Müller Verlag, Dresden 1942.
• The face of Finland . Wiking Verlag, Berlin 1942 (with Hertha von Grönhagen).
• Heavenly Salaseura . Kansankirja, Helsinki 1948.

literature

• Michael Kater: The ancestral inheritance of the SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich. Oldenbourg, 4th edition, Munich 2006
• Dennis Krüger: The occult 3rd Reich. SS research projects between German studies , occult science and secret weapon technology. Forsite, Bottrop 2011
• Heather Pringle: The Master Plan. Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. Hyperion, New York 2006
• Franz Wegener: Heinrich Himmler. German Spiritism, French Occultism and the Reichsführer SS. Series: Political Religion of National Socialism, 4th Kulturförderverein Ruhrgebiet KFVR, Gladbeck 2004, 2nd slightly exp. Edition ibid. 2013 content ; Wegener: online = links to supplements (on alchemy), person and bibliography of the book. Reference to the English edition 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Pringle (2006), p. 81.
2. ↑ Pringle (2006), p. 78.
3. ↑ See Krüger (2011), p. 138.
4. ↑ cf. Pringle (2006), p. 86 f .; see also von Grönhagen: Finnish talks. 1941
5. ↑ cf. Wegener (2004), p. 79 f.
6. ↑ BArch NS 19 3974 p. 45; see. on this Krüger (2011), p. 228.
7. ^ According to a letter from Ahnenerbe managing director Wolfram Sievers to the German envoy in Finland, Wipert von Blücher , Grönhagen was in Finland in the summer of 1937, but nothing is known about the purpose of the trip, which is variously confused with the 1936 expedition. Wegener suspects that De Mengel “attached” to Grönhagen's area of ​​responsibility; see. Kater (2006), p. 380; Wegener (2004), p. 80.
8. ↑ See Kater (2006), pp. 193/286 and 202, where von Grönhagen is referred to as a "dubious amateur".
9. ↑ See Pringle (2006), p. 302 f.