41. The Conservative Revolution

41. The Conservative Revolution

Third Reich

“The similarities between the Jewish political messianic trend and German Nazism,” conclude Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky in Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, “are glaring.”[1] The millenarian influences of the Sabbateans on the Nazi movement are expressed in their ambition to create a “Third Reich.” The Nazis declared that they were dedicated to continuing the process of creating a unified German nation state begun by Otto von Bismarck. The Third Reich, meaning Third Empire, alluded to the Nazis’ perception that Nazi Germany was the successor of the First Reich, the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806), with the crowning of Charlemagne in 800 and which was dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, and Second Reich, the German Empire (1871–1918), which lasted from the unification of Germany in 1871 by Otto von Bismarck under Kaiser Wilhelm I until the abdication of his grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918 at the end of World War I.

Despite their association with Marxism, there was a curious overlap between the Jewish members of the Frankfurt School, with the exponents of the German Conservative Revolution which gave rise of Nazism, along with the George-Kreis, the Munich Cosmic Circle, and the burgeoning field of History of Religions associated with the Eranos conferences. Rooted in the Counter-Enlightenment of the Romantic Era, the movement rejected liberalism and parliamentary democracy as the failed legacies of the Enlightenment. Inspired by the notion of the Volk, the movement advocated a new conservatism and nationalism that was specifically German, or Prussian in particular.[2] Ultimately, explained Kurt Sontheimer, Conservative Revolutionary anti-democratic thought in the Weimar Republic “succeeded in alienating Germans from the democracy of the Weimar constitution and making large groups receptive to National Socialism.”[3]

Together, they shared the influence of Sabbatean antinomianism, in a transgressive approach to art and culture, referred by Steven M. Wasserstrom to as “defeating evil from within.”[4] The name Frankfurt School describes the works of scholarship and the intellectuals who were the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), an adjunct organization at Goethe University Frankfurt, founded in 1923, by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist professor of law at the University of Vienna. The Frankfurt School originated through the financial support of the wealthy student Felix Weil (1898 – 1975), a Jewish German-Argentine Marxist. In addition to Hegel, Marx, and Weber, Freud became one of the foundation stones on which the Frankfurt School’s interdisciplinary program for a critical theory of society was constructed.

Although conservative essayists of the Weimar Republic like Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Hugo von Hofmannsthal of the George-Kreis, or Franz von Papen’s secretary, Edgar Jung (1894 – 1934), had already described their political project as a Konservative Revolution (“Conservative Revolution”), the name saw a revival after the 1949 doctoral thesis of Neue Rechte philosopher Armin Mohler (1920 – 2003) on the movement.[5] Notions of a “thousand year Reich” and “fire of the blood” were adopted by the Nazis and incorporated into the party’s propaganda from Stefan George, founder of the George-Kreis—who was identified by Armin Mohler as an exemplar of the German Conservative Revolution.[6]

In 1950, Mohler, who served as private secretary to Ernst Jünger (1895 – 1998), published Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932 (“The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932”), the product of his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Karl Jaspers (1883 – 1969). However, Mohler noted that the phenomenon of the Conservative Revolution was not exclusively German, and cited as examples: Dostoyevsky in Russia, Georges Sorel and Maurice Barres in France, Julius Evola in Italy, D.H. Lawrence and G.K. Chesterton in England, Madison Grant and James Burnham, the theorist of the “managerial revolution” in the United States, and Zeev Jabotinsky for Zionism.[7]

According to Mohler, the interrelationship between these disparate influences in the movement during the interwar period was explained in the novel The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence, first published in 1926. The novel’s plot takes place after the Mexican Revolution (1901–1920), when Don Cipriano, a Mexican general who supports a religious movement, the Men of Quetzalcoatl, founded by his friend Don Ramón Carrasco, who bring about an end to Christianity in Mexico, replacing it with pagan Quetzalcoatl worship. In the novel, Ramón explains to Cipriano that he wants to be “to be one of the Initiates of the Earth. One of the Initiators.” And, because races should neither mix nor mingle, every nation should have its own savior, and only the natural aristocrats of the world, can be international, or cosmopolitan, or cosmic, forming together a “Natural Aristocracy of the World.” Specially, Mohler then quotes Ramón explaining:

So if I want Mexicans to learn the name of Quetzalcoatl, it is because I want them to speak with the tongues of their own blood. I wish the Teutonic world would once more think in terms of Thor and Wotan, and the tree Igdrasil. And I wish the Druidic world would see, honestly, that in the mistletoe is their mystery, and that they themselves are the Tuatha De Danaan, alive, but submerged. And a new Hermes should come back to the Mediterranean, and a new Ashtaroth to Tunis; and Mithras again to Persia, and Brahma unbroken to India, and the oldest of dragons to China.[8]

The phrase “Third Reich” was originally coined by Moeller van den Bruck, who in 1923 published a book titled Das Dritte Reich. In German, as indicated by Richard Landes, in Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience, the word Reich can connote at once kingdom, realm, empire, and also something sacred, or an “age” or “epoch.” When Engels spoke of the Reich der Freiheit, he was referring to the realm or “age” of freedom. Reich also has a religious meaning. When Germans pray zu uns kommed ein Reich (“Thy kingdom come”), they are calling for the “Lord’s kingdom.”[9] According to Moeller van den Bruck:

It is an old and great German conception. It arose from the collapse of our first Reich. It was fused early on with expectations of a millennial Reich. Yet always there lived within it a political conception which aimed to the future, not so much upon the end of times, but upon the beginning of a German epoch in which the German Volk will fulfill its destiny on earth.[10]

Moeller van den Bruck’s use of the term “Third Reich” was inspired by of Joachim of Fiore—a heretical Cistercian abbot from Calabria, and a disciple of Bernard of Clairvaux, patron of the Templars—who is suspected by several historians of having been a crypto-Jew.[11] Looking back at German history, Moeller van den Bruck distinguished two separate periods, and identified them with the ages proposed by Joachim of Fiore: the Holy Roman Empire as the Age of the Father and the German Empire, beginning with unification under Otto von Bismarck to the defeat of Germany in World War II, as the “Second Reich” or the Age of the Son. After the interval of the Weimar Republic, during which constitutionalism, parliamentarianism and even pacifism ruled, these were then to be followed by the “Third Reich” or The Age of the Holy Ghost.

The book begins with a “Prepatory Letter to Heinrich von Gleichen,” addressed to the founder of the Anti-Bolshevik League, with Eduard Stadtler. The Anti-Bolshevik League was funded by the Anti-Bolshevik Fund, composed of Jewish financiers like Arthur Salomonsohn and Felix Deutsch, both members of the Gesellschaft der Freunde, founded leaders of the Haskalah around Moses Mendelssohn.[12] Gleichen played a leading role in the Kulturbund, founded in 1915 and supported by the Reich government, which included, among others, Max Planck, and also members of the Gesellschaft der Freunde, Max Liebermann and Walter Rathenau.[13] In 1919, von Gleichen organized the Juniklub (“June Club”), a discussion group for the Jungkonservative (“Young Conservatives”), where Moeller van den Bruck played an important role as chief ideologist. When the Juniklub dissolved in 1924, von Gleichen founded the Deutsch Herrenklub (“German Men’s Club”) in 1924, an association that included important industrialists who supported the Nazi cause, like Fritz Thyssen and politicians like Hjalmar Schacht, another member of the Gesellschaft der Freunde. In 1925, he took over the editorship of the magazine Das Gewissen (“The Conscience”) from Stadtler and changed the name to Der Ring in 1928. Von Gleichen founded branches in other cities that called themselves Rings and copied the model of British gentlemen’s clubs and Masonic lodges.[14] The Herrenklub achieve renown when its members Heinrich Brüning (1885 – 1970 became Chancellor in 1930 and Franz von Papen in 1932. Wilhelm von Gayl (1879 – 1945) became Reich Minister of the Interior in 1932. During the World War I, Gayl was an advisor General Erich Ludendorff.[15]

Herrenclub

Julius Evola, a close friend of Baron Von Gleichen, addressed the Herrenclub in Berlin in 1934, of which he wrote, “there I was to find my natural milieu.”[16] Moeller van den Bruck, like Martin Heidegger, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Julius Evola and Carl Schmitt, was a leading figure of the German Conservative Revolution. Otto Weininger, the “self-hating” Jew who assimilated völkisch ideas and was admired by Dietrich Eckart, also had a strong influence on Evola, Ludwig Wittgenstein, August Strindberg and, via his lesser-known work Über die letzten Dinge, on James Joyce.[17] Evola translated Weininger’s Sex and Character into Italian, and wrote the text Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, where his views on sexuality were dealt with at length. Goodrick-Clarke noted the fundamental influence of Otto Weininger’s book Sex and Character on Evola’s dualism of male-female spirituality.[18] In Sex and Character, Weininger argues that the male aspect is active, productive, conscious and moral/logical, while the female aspect is passive, unproductive, unconscious and amoral/alogical. When applied to the Jewish race, Weininger concluded:

The true concept of the State is foreign to the Jew, because he, like the woman, is wanting in personality; his failure to grasp the idea of true society is due to his lack of free intelligible ego. Like women, Jews tend to adhere together, but they do not associate as free independent individuals mutually respecting each other’s individuality.
As there is no real dignity in women, so what is meant by the word “gentleman” does not exist amongst the Jews. The genuine Jew fails in this innate good breeding by which alone individuals honour their own individuality and respect that of others. There is no Jewish nobility, and this is the more surprising as Jewish pedigrees can be traced back for thousands of years.[19]

Evola also shared a number of acquaintances with Schmitt, including Ernst Jünger, Armin Mohler and Prince Karl Anton von Rohan (1898 – 1975)—who worked with Baron von Gleichen’s Juniklub—who founded the Kulturbund, the Austrian counterpart of the Herrenclub. After the World War I, there appeared a large number of movements dedicated to the economic and political union of European. One example was the fascist-leaning Verband für kulturelle Zusammenarbeit founded in Vienna in 1921 which cooperated closely with its sister organization, the Fédération des Unions intellectuelles, with which it later united as the was the Association for Cultural Cooperation (“Kulturbund”).[20]

Rohan, an active supporter of the idea of conservative revolution, was the scion of one of the most prestigious aristocratic families in Europe. Karl’s aunt was Berthe de Rohan (1868 – 1945), who participated in Max Theon’s Cosmic Movement.[21] The Kulturbund later opened individual centers in Paris, Milan, Frankfurt and Heidelberg, and its membership reads like a “Who’s Who” of European industry and intelligentsia.[22] Future Chancellor of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, who had belonged to the pro-Zionist Pro-Palästina Komitee, was among the leading members. The Kulturbund’s periodical, Europäische Revue, which Rohan founded in 1925 and edited until 1936, was identified by Armin Mohler as one of Germany’s leading “young conservative” publications.[23] After the onset of the Great Depression, IG Farben subsidized the journal and other Kulturbund activities. Lilly von Schnitzler, whose husband George was a director of IG Farben, was one of the Kulturbund’s treasurers.[24] Lilly was in extensive correspondence with Carl Schmitt. As Paul Gottfried observed, although the Europäische Revue “never surpassed 2,000 paid subscribers,” nevertheless, “its list included almost every leading political, religious, and philosophical thinker in the 1920s.”[25] Frequent contributors to the Europäische Revue were George-Kreis members Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Karl Wolfskehl and Joseph Goebbels’ Jewish professor Friedrich Gundolf. Foreign authors featured in the Europäische Revue included Winston Churchill, Julius Evola, Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells, Arrigo Solmi, José Ortega y Gasset and Carl Jung.[26] The revue appeared from 1925, but in 1933 came under the control of the ideology of National Socialism. The journal would continue its publication until 1944, with the help of Goebbels.[27]

In 1901, Hofmannsthal married Gertrud “Gerty” Schlesinger, the daughter of a Viennese Jewish banker.[28] Their daughter, Christiane von Hofmannsthal, married the German Indologist and linguist Heinrich Zimmer (1890 – 1943). Christiane’s brother, Raimund von Hofmannsthal (1906 – 1974), married Ava Alice Muriel Astor, daughter of John Jacob Astor IV, the Robber Baron who died on the Titanic in 1912. Astor’s cousin, Waldorf Astor, was a member of the Round Table, also known as the Cliveden Set. With his wife Nancy Astor, Waldorf held regular weekend parties at their home Cliveden House, a large estate in Buckinghamshire on the River Thames. Guests of the Astors at Cliveden included Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Joseph Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, von Ribbentrop, Mahatma Gandhi, Amy Johnson, F.D. Roosevelt, H.H. Asquith, T.E. Lawrence, Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour, Henry Ford, the Duke of Windsor and the writers Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Edith Wharton.

Mohler also maintained extensive correspondence with Carl Schmitt.[29] Mohler was also press secretary for Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976), and whose urging Schmitt joined the Nazi party.[30] Heidegger who would become one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and a major influence on the rise of Postmodernism. Heidegger’s thought was influenced by Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938), who established the school of phenomenology. According to Athol Bloomer, “Phenomenology itself has roots in the teachings of Jacob Leib Frank who wished to encourage a spirituality that looked at truth from the perspective of man and his life.”[31] In 1923, Heidegger began an extra-marital affair with then seventeen-year-old Hannah Arendt, who was raised in a secular Jewish family and who was also close friends with Anna Mendelssohn, whose family was descended from Moses Mendelssohn.[32] Arendt later faced criticism for this because of Heidegger’s support for the Nazis after his election as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933.

Heidegger was a friend of the German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers, was often viewed as a major exponent of existentialism in Germany. Jaspers was a close friend of the Weber family, and Max Weber also having held a professorship at the University of Heidelberg, where he had studied.[33] Friends and students of Jaspers included the linguists Benno von Wiese and Hugo Friedrich with whom Hannah Arendt attended lectures by Friedrich Gundolf—Goebbels’ Jewish professor and a member of the George-Kreis—at Jaspers’ suggestion, and who inspired in her an interest in German Romanticism.[34] After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Jaspers was considered to have a “Jewish taint” due to his Jewish wife, Gertrude Mayer, and was forced to retire from teaching in 1937.

Victor Farias in Heidegger and Nazism has revealed comments from Heidegger in 1933 such as, “the glory and the greatness of the Hitler revolution,” and a speech in that same year where proclaimed: “Doctrine and ‘ideas’ shall no longer govern your existence. The Führer himself, and only he, is the current and future reality of Germany, and his word is your law.”[35] During a 1935 lecture, which was published in 1953 as part of his Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger refers to the “inner truth and greatness” of the Nazi movement.[36] Karl Löwith, a former student who met Heidegger in Rome in 1936, recalled that Heidegger wore a swastika pin to their meeting, though Heidegger knew that Löwith was Jewish. Löwith also recalled that Heidegger “left no doubt about his faith in Hitler,” and stated that his support for Nazism agreed with the essence of his philosophy.[37]

Ernst Jünger (1895 – 1998), a close friend of Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, and a contributor to Baron von Gleichen’s Das Gewissen, was the most prominent of the German Conservative Revolutionaries and considered one of the greatest German writers of the twentieth century. He was a highly-decorated German soldier in World War I, after which he became active in German politics, experimented in psychedelic drugs, and travelled the world. Jünger never joined the Nazi Party, and eventually turned against them by the late 1930s. Along with Karl Haushofer, the Strasser brothers, Niekisch and other figures of the Conservative Revolution, Jünger advocated National Bolshevism, a German-Russian revolutionary alliance which influenced the German Communists with connections to the Nazi left-wing.[38] Jünger’s 1932 work Der Arbeiter (“The Worker”) is considered a seminal National Bolshevik text.

Carl Jung

Freud’s former student, Carl Jung (1875 – 1961), the founder analytical psychology, published frequently in Rohan’s Europäische Revue. The uncle to Jung’s grandfather was Johann Sigmund Jung (1745 – 1824), a member of the Illuminati.[39] In his autobiography, Jung attributes the roots of his destiny as the founder of analytical psychology to his ancestor Dr. Carl Jung of Mainz (d. 1645), whom he portrays as a follower of the Rosicrucian and alchemist Michael Maier.[40] Jung indicated that his own grandfather, Carl Gustav Jung Sr., famous as a doctor in Basel, rector of the University and a Grand Master of Swiss Masons, and that his coat of arms included Rosicrucian and Masonic symbolism. During his student days, he entertained acquaintances with the family legend that his paternal grandfather was the illegitimate son of Goethe and his German great-grandmother, Sophie Ziegler.[41] Jung’s mother, Emilie Preiswerk, was the youngest child of a distinguished Basel churchman and academic, Samuel Preiswerk (1799 – 1871), an antistes of the Swiss Reformed Church and a proto-Zionist, who taught Jung’s father Paul Hebrew at Basel University.[42]

In a newspaper article entitled “The Fight against Neurosis and the Renewal of Europe,” Rohan wrote that “Jung stands among the leading avant-garde in the fight for a new Europe.”[43] Richard Noll, in The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung, has argued that the early Jung was influenced by Theosophy, sun worship and völkisch nationalism in developing the ideas on the collective unconscious and archetypes.[44] Jung initially interpreted the Nazi Movement as a manifestation of the “Wotan” archetype that had been reactivated in Germany.[45]

Otto Gross, who was Freud’s as well as Jung’s student, explains Richard Noll, “knew several of the members of the circle and probably developed his interest in matriarchy and Bachofen through them.”[46] Gross was connected to the Cosmics through his relationship with Klages’ lover, Contessa Franziska “Fanny” zu Reventlow. Fanny left Munich for Monte Verità in in 1910, where she wrote her “Schwabing” novels. She also got to know Rainer Maria Rilke, Frank Wedekind, and Theodor Lessing, a friend of Klages who had studied under Edmund Husserl. Lessing was the author of Der jüdische Selbsthaß, his classic on Jewish self-hatred, published by the Jüdische Verlag. Lessing’s political ideals, as well as his Zionism made him a very controversial person during the rise of Nazi Germany. He was assassinated by Sudeten German Nazi sympathizers on August 30, 1933.

In Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reports how Jung described “Hitler as possessed by the archetype of the collective Aryan unconscious and could not help obeying the commands of an inner voice.” In a series of interviews between 1936 and 1939, Jung characterized Hitler as an archetype that often took the place of his own personality. “Hitler is a spiritual vessel, a demi-divinity; even better, a myth. Benito Mussolini is a man.”[47] Jung, explained Goodrick-Clarke, likened Hitler to Mohammed, the messiah of Germany who teaches the virtue of the sword. “His voice is that of at least 78 million Germans. He must shout, even in private conversation… The voice he hears is that of the collective unconscious of his race.”[48]

Munich psychotherapist Gustav Richard Heyer (1890 – 1967) of the Göring Institute, was Jung’s leading promoter in Germany. Heyer also had connections with the George-Kreis and was a devotee of the völkisch Lebensphilosophie of Klages of the Cosmic Circle.[49] Heyer’s influence can be seen in his 1932 book The Organism of the Soul, published by Lehmanns Verlag, Germany’s leading publisher of medical books and major promoter of eugenics and other völkisch causes. The firm’s policy was a reflection of the convictions of the firm’s founder, Thule Society member Julius Lehmann. In 1940, the firm issued a fiftieth anniversary volume that recounted its history and included a bibliography of such leading eugenicists as Hans Gunther, Albert Hoche, and Ernst Rüdin.[50] Ernst Rüdin (1874 – 1952) headed the Kraepelin Institute, named after his mentor Emil Kraepelin (1856 –1926), who is considered the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, and which came under the Rockefeller-funded Kaiser Wilhelm institution in Munich. Rüdin and his staff, as part of the Task Force of Heredity Experts chaired by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, drew up the Nazi sterilization law.

Heyer helped found the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy in 1926. Jung joined the society in 1928, and became its president in 1930. However, when Hitler came to power in 1933, all German professional societies were required to become gleichgeschaltet, “conformed” to Nazi ideology. In 1934, the leadership of the German General Medical Society for Psychotherapy was taken over by Matthias Göring (1879 – 1945), whose position as leader of organized psychotherapy in Nazi Germany stemmed from the fact that he was an elder cousin of Hermann Göring. The German Institute became popularly known as the Göring Institute. Göring, who had joined the Nazi party in 1933, preached against “Jewish” psychoanalysis and enforced the exclusion of Jewish psychoanalysts, particularly those from the Freudian school of thought.[51]

As sitters in Schrenck-Notzing psychical research seances, Jung and Eugen Bleuler (1857 – 1939), a Swiss psychiatrist and eugenicist, confirmed reports of movements of objects and other phenomena previously observed with Willi Schneider’s brother Rudi and his predecessors. Records of the sittings with Rudi were compiled by Gerda Walther (1897 – 1977) after Schrenck-Notzing’s death and published, with a foreword by Bleuler, by his widow.[52] Walther, who is considered an exponent of phenomenology, later became a student of Husserl. In her childhood, Walther came into contact with her parents’ social democratic friends, including August Bebel, Klara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Adolf Geck.

Walther became friends with Husserl’s assistant was Edith Stein (1891 – 1942), a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She was born into an observant Jewish family, but had become an atheist by her teenage years. From reading the works of the Marrano of the Carmelite Order, Teresa of Ávila, she was drawn to the Catholic faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Catholic Church. She was eventually canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church, and she is one of six co-patron saints of Europe. She met Heidegger in 1929. She tried to bridge Husserl’s phenomenology to Thomism. She was executed at Auschwitz and eventually canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church. She was beatified in 1987 by Pope John Paul II as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Walther was also associated with Ernst Schulte-Strathaus (1881 – 1968), Rudolf Hess’ leading occult adviser. In 1907, Schulte-Strathaus, together with Karl Wolfskehl, Carl Georg von Maassen (1880 – 1940), Hans von Weber (1872 – 1924), and Franz Blei (1871 – 1942), had founded the Gesellschaft der Münchner Bibliophilen (“Munich Society of Bibliophiles).[53] Maassen is best known as the editor of the historical-critical edition of the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Weber was a German publisher and art patron, whose grandfather was a cousin of Theodor Körner. Blei was an Austrian writer, among whose translations are Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales and Dangerous Liaisons by Illuminatus Pierre Choderlos De Laclos.

In 1933, Schulte-Strathaus married Heilwig Seidel, the daughter of the writer Ina Seidel (1885 – 1974), who in 1933, was among the signers of the Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft (“promise of most loyal obedience”), a declaration by 88 German writers and poets of their loyalty to Hitler. Ina was personally added by Hitler to the Gottbegnadeten-Liste (“God-Given List), assembled by Goebbels in 1944, and to which belonged the composer Richard Strauss. Schulte-Strathaus had met Hess through the German scholar and library scientist Ilse Pröhl, who had become Hess’ wife in 1927. Schulte-Strathaus also played a role in establishing the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question, conceived as a branch of a projected elite university of the party under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg.[54]

Anthony Masters, author of The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight, which claims that Hess’ trip was part of a scheme devised by British Intelligence officer Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, modelled on sorcerer John Dee, also claims that Hess selected the date of the flight after he was informed by his astrologer, Ernst Schulte-Strathaus, that there was going to be a rare alignment of six planets in the astrological sign of Taurus at the time of the full moon on May 11, 1941, exactly one day after his landing in Scotland. Hitler, who had not authorized the flight, saw it as a betrayal or the act of a mentally ill person. He ordered that all supporters should be arrested. On the morning of May 14, Schulte Strathaus was arrested and taken for questioning by the Gestapo. In the course of the investigation, parapsychologist Gerda Walther, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing’s assistant, was arrested and interrogated about her correspondence with Schulte Strathaus. During the interrogation, Walther explained that she had seen Schulte Strathaus as an “enthusiastic supporter of Schrenck.”[55] Schulte Strathaus transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.[56]

School of Wisdom

It was at the School of Wisdom that Carl Jung met Prince Karl Anton Rohan and became active in the Kulturbund. After his break with Freud, Jung became more active in Germany attending conferences at the School of Wisdom founded by Count Hermann Keyserling (1880 – 1946), who was married Countess Maria Goedela Bismarck, granddaughter of Otto Bismarck. In 1920, through a donation from Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse (1868 – 1937), Keyserling founded his School of Wisdom in Darmstadt, Germany, in order to synthesize the knowledge of East and West.[57] Ernest was the uncle of Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, became a student of the works of Keyserling.

Alice became interested in occultism through her favorite book, Les Grands Initiés (“The Great Initiates”), by Eduard Schuré, a member of Max Theon’s Cosmic Movement. A friend of Richard Wagner and Rudolf Steiner, Schuré was listed by Lanz von Liebenfels’ among the “ario-christian” tradition of mystics that included Éliphas Lévi, Joséphin Péladan, Papus, H.P. Blavatsky, Franz Hartmann, Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater. Alice became deeply religious, converting to the Greek Orthodox Church in 1928. She believed herself to be married to Christ, with whom she was “physically” involved, and through whom she met spiritual leaders such as the Buddha. She believed it was her duty to serve as the link between these various gods and the people of earth.[58]

Keyserling invited many of his friends to participate in this new venture, including psychologist, sinologist and translator of the I Ching, Richard Wilhelm, theologian Paul Tillich, German novelist and Noble prize winner, Hermann Hesse and Noble prize-winning Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, who was heavily involved with members of the Theosophical Society in England and India.

At Keyserling’s School of Wisdom, Jung also met Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881 – 1962), a German Indologist and religious studies writer. As Hauer boasted, “By the way, regarding the expression ‘conservative revolutionary’, I can tell you, if that expression is now popular, I am its source.”[59] In 1932, Hauer founded the German Faith Movement, a religious society aimed at replacing Christianity in German-speaking countries with an anti-Christian and anti-Semitic modern paganism based on German literature and Hindu scripture. Hauer had initially hoped that his cult might be adopted as the state religion of the Third Reich. Jung had met Hauer at Keyserling’s School of Wisdom in the late 1920s, where they discussed their common interest in yoga. Jung attended Hauer’s lecture on yoga at a conference of the International Society in Baden-Baden in 1930. A year later, Jung accepted Hauer’s offer to dedicate to him his book on yoga, Yoga als Heilweg.

Eranos Conferences

Through her association with the School of Wisdom, Keyserling befriended Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, who in 1933 founded the Eranos Conferences, an intellectual discussion group dedicated to the study of psychology, religion, philosophy and spirituality which met annually in Ascona, near the site of Monte Verità.[60] In the late 1920s, she was introduced to the theosophist Alice Ann Bailey (1880 – 1949). In 1920, a dispute arose over leadership of Annie Besant, whose position as president had been undermined by the fallout over the “World Teacher” Krishnamurti. Following independently channeled messages she became to receive in 1919, Bailey broke with the Theosophical Society. In 1928, following a “vision” she experienced in 1927, Olga Froebe-Kapteyn built a lecture hall near her Casa Gabriella, called, Casa Eranos. When Froebe-Kapteyn met Carl Jung at Keyserling’s School of Wisdom, he suggested the auditorium be used as a “meeting place between East and West.”[61] It was finally Jung who induced Froebe-Kapteyn to turn away from the group surrounding Bailey. When Jung saw her “Meditation Plates,” he told her that one could see that she “was dealing with the devil.”[62]

In her private notes on her meditation images, she speaks of her admiration for Germany. One of these images shows a swastika and is captioned “The Beginning of Creation.” According to Froebe-Kapteyn:

The Golden Swastika is a Sun symbol = a symbol of sun-energy and power. The black swastika or the lefthand swastika, as it is in Germany = a symbol of dark power = destruction. With both these symbols I was identified!!! Here lies the root, the deepest root of my identification with Germany!!! Both these black symbols of highest but destructive power mean possession by the Devil. Just as Germany is possessed by him, the dark aspect of the Self. Or by Kali the Destroyer.[63]

When Froebe-Kapteyn met Carl Jung at Keyserling’s School of Wisdom, he suggested her auditorium be used as a “meeting place between East and West.”[64] Discussions were opened by the first scholar that Froebe-Kapteyn invited, Heinrich Zimmer—brother-in-law of George-Kreis member Hugo von Hofmannsthal—with an address on “The Meaning of Indian Tantric Yoga.” Zimmer befriended Alexander von Bernus, a practicing alchemist, whose two books on the subject are still considered classics by specialists.[65] Bernus’ entourage included Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, and members of the George-Kreis. Bernus was also a close friend of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner also wrote articles for the journal Das Reich, edited by Bernus, which appeared between 1916 and 1920 and to which Emil Preetorius and Max Pulver also contributed, who would both later be speakers at Eranos.[66] Accommodation for lecturers, was usually in the Hotel Monte Verità, which from 1923 to 1926, was operated as a hotel until it was acquired in 1926 by Zimmer’s friend, Baron Eduard von der Heydt, who showed suspicious sympathies for Nazi Germany.[67]

By 1930, there had been ten meetings or seminars. Lecturers included Leo Baeck, Jung, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and Erwin Rousselle who were also to reappear at Eranos. Also included were Gustav Richard Heyer, Thomas Mann, Alfred Adler, Paul Dahlke, Leo Frobenius, Leopold Ziegler, Max Scheler, Ernst Troeltsch, Rabindranath Tagore, and, from the Stefan George circle, Rudolf Kassner and Oskar A.H. Schmitz. Of all her friends and all the artists and writers with whom she interacted, the one who influenced her most strongly was Ludwig Derleth, who while living in Munich became part of the George-Kreis and also the Munich Cosmic Circle.[68] Italian professor of German literature, Furio Jesi, has claimed that Derleth had devised pseudo-magical and anti-Semitic rites. Froebe-Kapteyn herself was allegedly an “extremely willing disciple” in these “anti-Semitic rituals.”[69] Thomas Mann regarded Derleth as a precursor of National Socialism and took him as the model for two of his fictional characters, first in The Magic Mountain (1924) and then again as Daniel zur Höhe, both in the short story At the Prophet’s (1904) and in Doctor Faustus (1947).[70]

Also participating in the first conference was the theologian and scholar of religion Friedrich Heiler (1892 – 1967), with whom Froebe-Kapteyn was particularly close. Heiler was also in contact with the influential occultist Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, the founder of the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, belonged to the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), and knew Theodor Reuss as well as Aleister Crowley and others. Heiler was also patriarch of the Gnostic Catholic Church, the ecclesiastical arm of the OTO.[71]

Invited to speak in at the 1934 conference was Rudolf Bernoulli (1880 – 1948), who lectured on the symbolism of the Tarot. Bernoulli was well acquainted with Schrenck-Notzing. Bernoulli co-founded the Hermetische Gesellschaft (“Hermetic society”), with Fritz Allemann, who for many years was vice-president of the Swiss Banking Corporation (today UBS). It was apparently through Allemann that Jung made the acquaintance of Oskar Rudolf Schlag (1907 – 1990), who is considered and one of the most gifted mediums of the twentieth century.[72] According to Schlag, Jung was well had been a member of the Hermetic Society, until—his expulsion was made necessary due to the rivalry between “Atma,” the guiding spirit of the Society, and “Philemon,” Jung’s spirit guide.[73]

Allemann was also in friendly contact with the Jewish Gestapo officer and Zen master Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim (1896 – 1988), and had several meetings with the Dalai Lama.[74] Among Dürckheim’s friends were Rainer Maria Rilke, Lasker-Schüler and Paul Klee, and Hanfstaengl’s protégé, Joachim von Ribbentrop von Ribbentrop. During the 1930s, Dürckheim had become chief assistant to Ribbentrop, Germany’s Foreign Minister. Then it was discovered that Dürckheim was of Jewish descent: his maternal great-grandmother was the daughter of the Jewish banker Salomon Oppenheim, and he was also related to Mayer Amschel Rothschild.[75] He was therefore considered a Mischling, and had become “politically embarrassing.” Ribbentrop decided to send him to Japan, where he coordinated the dissemination of Nazi propaganda in Japan, likening German military ideals to Japanese bushido and encouraging the idea that Japan and Germany would share the world.[76] Dürckheim was arrested by the Allies during their occupation of Japan and served more than a year in prison as a member of the Gestapo.[77]

Also speaking at the conference in 1934 was Jung’s friend Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, who a year earlier had joined both the Hitler Youth and Alfred Rosenberg’s Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (“Militant alliance for German culture,” and was subsequently inducted by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich personally into the SS and the SD.[78] After Hauer gave a number of lectures, including one on yoga, at Jung’s Psychology Club in Zurich, Jung was so inspired that in 1932 he broke off his own seminars on the active imagination visions of Christiana Morgan—mistress to both Henry A. Murray and Chaim Weizmann—in for order Heinrich Zimmer to lecture.[79] Jung invited Hauer and Zimmer to collaborate with him on an international journal with the publisher Daniel Brody, who later published the Eranos volumes. Keyserling also took part. Hauer also became close to Jung’s “muse” and mistress, Toni Wolff.[80]

Brit Shalom

Invited to speak in at the 1934 conference was Martin Buber (1878 – 1965), Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher, who despite his dedication to Zionism, was heavily influenced by the völkisch ideology. Buber was a direct descendant of the sixteenth-century rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, known as the Maharam of Padua. Karl Marx is another notable relative. In 1898, he joined the Zionist movement, and in 1902 became the editor of its central organ, the weekly Die Welt. In that year, he published his thesis, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems, on Jakob Boehme and Nicholas of Cusa. Buber also wrote Tales of the Hasidim, based on the written and oral lore of the founder of Hasidism, Baal Shem Tov. Buber also wrote The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, contrasting Hasidism with biblical prophecy, Spinoza, Freud, Sankara, Meister Eckhart, Gnosticism, Christianity, Zionism, and Zen Buddhism. However, Buber broke with Judaism. He maintained close friendships to Zionists and philosophers such as Chaim Weizmann, Max Brod, Hugo Bergman, and Felix Weltsch.

Buber was also a friend of Karl Wolfskehl of the George-Kreis and Secret Germany.[81] Through Wolfskehl, Buber was introduced to Rainer Maria Rilke, who read most of his books, beginning in 1908 with Legende des Baalshem (“Legend of the Baal Shem”).[82] Along with Margarete Sussman, the Frankist Fritz Mauthner and Auguste Hauschner, Buber was closest friends of Hedwig Lachmann’s husband, Gustav Landauer. George-Kreis member Richard Dehmel was the first love of Lachmann, whose libretto, a German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde, was used Salome by Richard Strauss, who collaborated with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a member Young Vienna and the George-Kreis. In 1919, Landauer briefly served as Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. He was murdered by Freikorps soldiers when the republic was overthrown. Soon after his death, Landauer was almost completely forgotten by European socialists and anarchists, though his memory and heroic example enjoyed a revival in Zionist and kibbutznik circles thanks to his friend of Martin Buber.[83] One of Hedwig and Gustav’s grandchildren was famous Broadway and Hollywood director Mike Nichols (1931 – 2014).

Along with Frieda and D.H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Alma Mahler, the wife of Gustav Mahler, Buber was a member of the sexual cult of Dr. Otto Gross [84] Buber worked closely with Dimitrije Mitrinovic, a contributor to Alfred P. Orage’s The New Age. Mitrinovic believed that only Europe and the Aryan race could “establish a functional world system in which each of the races and nations is called upon to play its natural and organic part.”[85] Despite the anti-Semitic overtones of his theories, Mitrinovic placed particular attention on the role played by the nation of the Jews, which “was ‘chosen’ for the ‘mission’ of becoming White… in preparation for their role as the inheritors or ruling race of the kingdom of the world.”[86] Towards his aims, Mitrinovic maintained correspondence with Henri Bergson, H.G. Wells, Maxim Gorky, Maurice Maeterlinck, Pablo Picasso, Filippo Marinetti, Anatole France, George Bernard Shaw, and Knut Hamsun. Mitrinovic founded the Adler’s Society Alfred Adler, who also spoke at Eranos. Mitrinovic also approached a number of potential Jewish contributors, including composer Arnold Schoenberg, Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem (1897 – 1982) and Martin Buber.[87] Nietzsche had a distinct appeal for many Zionist thinkers around the start of the twentieth century, most notable being Ahad Ha’am, Hillel Zeitlin, Micha Josef Berdyczewski, A.D. Gordon and Martin Buber, who went so far as to extoll Nietzsche as a “creator” and “emissary of life.”[88]

Buber was a member of Brit Shalom (“covenant of peace”), a group of Jewish Zionist intellectuals in Mandatory Palestine, founded in 1925. Brit Shalom supporters and founders included economist and sociologist Arthur Ruppin, Hugo Bergmann, Gershom Scholem, historian Hans Kohn, Henrietta Szold, Israel Jacob Kligler. Albert Einstein also voiced support. Judah Leon Magnes, one of the authors of the program, never joined the organization. Brit Shalom sought peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews, to be achieved by renunciation of the Zionist aim of creating a Jewish state. The alternative vision of Zionism was to create a center for Jewish cultural life in Palestine, echoing the earlier ideas of Ahad Ha’am, a purported member of the Alliance Israëlite Universelle and proposed author of the Protocols of Zion.[89] At the time, Brit Shalom supported the establishment of a bi-national state, also known as the one-state solution, as a homeland for both Jews and Palestinians. Ruppin held a senior position within the Jewish Agency as Director of the Palestine Land Development Company. Most Palestinian Jews and Arabs rejected the proposed binational solution, and Ruppin himself eventually became convinced it was unrealistic. The group disintegrated by the early 1930s.

As George Mosse and Paul Mendes-Flohr have argued, völkisch themes can easily be traced in Buber’s creed.[90] Buber’s Zionism breaks with a century of Jewish-bourgeois symbiosis, “that ‘purified,’ that is, soulless, ‘Judaism’ of a ‘humanitarianism’ embellished with ‘monotheism,’” as he state.[91] Buber, explains Maor, “advocated a new Jewish religiosity, based on his version of Hasidism, centered around the sanctification of the worldly aspects of life.”[92] As Zionists tended to regard increased Jewish spirituality with the degeneration resulting from exile, they aspired to revive “authentic” ancient Judaism, which was rooted in the soil and corporeality. Thus, Buber advocated that only a return to the material aspects of life could foster the “organic unity” of the people.[93] Buber wrote, “There is nothing that is evil in itself; every passion can become a virtue… Every act is hallowed, if it is directed toward salvation.”[94] Zionist sentiment, according to Buber, is aroused when the individual becomes conscious of “what confluence of blood has produced him, what rounds of begettings and births has called him forth.” The individual should then arrive at the conclusion that, “blood is a deep-rooted nurturing force,… that the deepest layers of our being are determined by blood,” which in turn allows him to leave his inauthentic society and look for “the deeper-reaching community of those whose substance he shares.”[95]

Buber was invited to speak at Eranos in 1934, alongside Jung’s friend Jakob Wilhelm Hauer.[96] A discussion between Buber and Hauer was recorded in the files of the SD, about a possible agreement between the Third Reich and the leaders of the Zionist movement, according to which the Jewish influence in Germany would be restricted.[97] Years later, when he was asked for his opinion on Hauer, Buber said, “Hauer is someone who lives according to an earnest and deeply religious worldview. This has led him to a passionate longing for a renewal of the German nationhood from its essential roots.”[98] Froebe-Kapteyn invited Hauer to come again in 1935, but he was obliged to refuse. As Froebe-Kapteyn later explained, Martin Buber’s participation in the 1934 Eranos conference led to difficulties with the German Ministry of Education, which in 1936 forbid German speakers to travel abroad. In 1935, Hauer was forced to issue a press communiqué denying his membership in the Eranos circle, and he stated that he had not been aware of any “Judaeo-Masonic machinations or occult exercises.”[99]

Before immigrating to Palestine, Buber’s protégés, Hans Kohn (1891 – 1971), Hugo Bergmann (1883 – 1975), and Gershom Scholem shared a critical stance toward the legacy of the Enlightenment, a stance they shared with the Conservative Revolution. Gershom Scholem would become a renowned twentieth-century expert on the Kabbalah, who is regarded as having founded the academic study of the subject. Scholem’s career as a researcher of mysticism originated in the mystical experiences had as a young man, and in idiosyncratic Kabbalistic interpretations. “Reason is a stupid man’s longing,” wrote Scholem.[100] The development of mystical or psychic abilities that were discredited by the Enlightenment, such as experience, intuition, and clairvoyance, could create a new mentality that might heal the ailments of modern times.[101] Bergmann and Kohn were attracted to mysticism as well. Bergmann immigrated to Palestine in 1920. Together with Buber, he founded Brit Shalom in 1925. Bergmann served as the director of the Jewish National Library between 1920 and 1935. He brought Gershom Scholem from Germany to serve as the head of the Judaica Division. Bergmann translated several of Rudolf Steiner’s books about Threefold Social Order into Hebrew. Kohn would later publish a biography of Martin Buber.

In his youth, Scholem carried out practical exercises based on Abraham Abulafia’s mystical techniques. In 1928, he published an essay entitled “Alchemie und Kabbala” in the journal Alchemistische Blätter, published by Otto Wilhelm Barth, probably the most important occult publisher and bookseller in Germany at the time, along with the Pansophist Heinrich Tränker, with whom Barth collaborated. As discovered by Konstantin Burmistrov, not only did Scholem possess many classics of occultism, including the works of Éliphas Lévi, Papus, Francis Barrett, McGregor Mathers, A.E. Waite, Israel Regardie, and so on, but his handwritten marginal notes show that he studied these works intensively. According to Burmistrov, the essay on “Alchemie und Kabbala” reveals the strong influence of A.E. Waite.[102] Scholem was also apparently interested in chiromancy, a subject he discussed with three women he called “witches,” all of whom were associated with Eranos: the graphologist and student of Jung and Ludwig Klages, Anna Teillard-Mendelsohn; Hilde Unseld, first wife of Siegfried Unseld, the influential publisher of Suhrkamp; and Ursula von Mangold, a niece of Walther Rathenau and later director O.W. Barth publishing house, which in 1928 had planned the publication of a journal with the title Kabbalistische Blätter.[103]

Scholem’s went to visit the occult novelist and Golden Dawn member Gustav Meyrink, and expressed a positive opinion about the parapsychological investigations of Emil Matthiesen (1875 – 1939).[104] Of great importance for Scholem was Franz Joseph Molitor, a member of Asiatic Brethren, and according to whom the order drew on the magic of the Sabbateans, “such as Shabbetai Zevi, Falk (the Baal Shem of London), Frank, and their similar fellows.”[105] According to Joseph Dan, holder of the Gershom Scholem Chair of Kabbalah at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Scholem was first and foremost a Jewish nationalist and not a mystic. However, there have been differing views on this point. Scholem was deliberately cryptic about his interest in the occult, feigning scientific disinterest: “I am certainly no mystic, because I believe that science demands a distanced attitude.”[106] As explained by Joseph Weiss, one of Scholem’s closest pupils, “His esotericism is not in the nature of an absolute reticence, it is a kind of camouflage.”[107]

According to Maor, “the influence of Buber’s ‘rightist’ völkism on young Scholem, Kohn, and Bergmann was decisive; they all adopted, for a while, some of the aggressive facets of his creed.”[108] Their völkism, according to Maor, “was not of the moderate type; it legitimated political violence and denigrated so-called bourgeois morality.”[109] Kohn’s long-standing attraction to bouts of violence and Nietzschean immoralism found its expression during the war in his identification with the vision of the redemptive power of violence. For Kohn, violence and power are morally condemned only when they are exercised in the service of particularist interests. When they are employed for the sake of the “absolute,” “coming in Divine grace,” on the other hand, they bring forth redemption.[110]

Scholem saw Buber as the herald of the Messiah, and as the only Zionist thinker who truly grasped Judaism’s depth.[111] In The Founding Myths of Israel, Ze’ev Sternhell explains that Scholem not only did not abandon Buber’s völkism, but even adopted its most hazardous aspect: its immoralism.[112] In an unpublished draft essay, Politik des Zionismus (“Politics of Zionism”), Scholem argued: “Morality is a little nonsense [Geschwätz] (when it is rightly understood; when wrongly understood it is most essential).” As explained by Sternhell, Scholem defined politics as a realm in which actions are principally regarded as means. In effect, politics is a closed system where external considerations are irrelevant. Scholem argued, “The demand for equivalence of the political and the ethical, not to speak of the popular demand for their identification… is a conceptual confusion.”[113] For that reason, Scholem wrote, “Sometimes I start to think that Friedrich Nietzsche is the only one in modern times who said anything substantial about ethics.”[114]

Operation Valkyrie

As noted by Justin Cartwright, “By the mid-1920s George was considered one of the most influential people in the world, cited in one international newspaper as the equal of Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson.”[115] In his critique of George-Kreis member Gundolf’s Caesar, German historian Eckhart Kehr had noted at the time that the biography, extolling a “Great Man,” appeared in 1924, and may therefore be explained as a response to the collapse of Germany the previous year.[116] Fellow George-Kreis member Ernst Kantorowicz, who was ousted from his professorship in 1933 by the Nazi race laws) used the swastika in 1927 on his important scholarly book about the First Reich, his biography of Frederick II. During World War II, Ludwig Klages—fellow-founder of the Cosmic Circle with Alfred Schuler and Karl Wolfskehl—repeated the slogan put forward by Schuler around 1900, that the world must “choose” between the “Aryan swastika” and that “castration symbol,” the “Jewish-Christian cross.”[117] Despite a few scattered critical remarks, Stefan George was pleased enough with the new “national movement” to state, in March 1933, that now for the first time he was hearing his views being disseminated outside his own circle.[118]

In February 1933, the Nazis had begun dismissing all of their political opponents as well as Jews from the Prussian Academy of the Arts, including Thomas Mann. In May, the Prussian Minister for Sciences, Arts, and Public Education, Bernhard Rust, informed George that the new government wished to appoint him to an honorary position within the Academy and to publicly describe him as the forefather of the Nazi Party’s “national revolution.” George declined both the offer, but said that he approved of its “national” orientation and did not deny his “ancestorship of the new national movement and did not preclude his intellectual cooperation.”[119] Some within the Nazi Party, however, were enraged by George’s refusal, and suspected his sincerity and even denounced him as a Jew.[120] It was intentional that George deliberately had his refusal delivered to Goebbels by Morwitz. Hearing that Goebbels planned a national celebration of his birthday, George left his home before then, briefly visited Berlin, where he said goodbye to his Jewish friends Ernst Morwitz and Georg Bondi, and in August left Germany for Switzerland, where he died the same year.[121]

Nevertheless, George and his entourage’s use of the swastika in some of his publications, such as the Blätter für die Kunst (“Journal for the Arts”), was derived from the influence of the Cosmic Circle. According to Michael and Erika Metzger, “When Stefan George died in 1933, there was a grim dissonance between the eulogies from inside and outside Germany, the former claiming George as the prophet of the Third Reich, which had taken power that year, the latter often interpreting his silence as expressing his utter contempt for the new regime.”[122] Twenty-five members of the George-Kreis, including Jewish members like Wolfskehl, attended the funeral. The laurel wreath later delivered by the German Foreign Office bore a swastika printed on a white ribbon. Some of the younger members of the George-Kreis were seen given the Nazi salute.[123]

As a number of George-Kreis followers had initially welcomed and supported the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Among those of George’s friends who joined the Nazi Party were Ernst Bertram, Walter Elze, Kurt Hildebrandt, Ludwig Thormaehlen, Woldemar, Count Uxkiill and Albrecht von Blumenthal. Rudolf Fahrner joined the SA. Ernst Bertram (1884 – 1957), a literary historian, who was in a love triangle with his lover Ernst Glöckner and George, was a close friend of Thomas Mann.[124] Bertram declared that the New Germany of George’s vision had been realized in 1933.[125] Sculptor and art historian Ludwig Thormaehlen (1889 – 1956) encouraged his friends to join the Nazi Party. With the George’s permission, Thormaehlen’s protege Frank Mehnert (1909 – 1943) sculpted a bust of Hitler which was successfully marketed by the Munich art dealer Eberhard Hanfstaengl (1886 – 1973), a cousin of Ernst Hanfstaengl.[126] Hanfstaengl became a “supporting member” of the SS as of February 1934.[127]

But other, predominantly Jewish member of the George-Kreis, such as Wolfskehl, Edgar Salin, Kantorowicz and Ernst Morwitz were expelled from Germany, without those who had remained behind protesting publicly. Before the mid-1920, George had regarded Morwitz as his sole heir and literary executor.[128] Wolfskehl, old, almost completely blind and impoverished, wrote some moving poems in exile in New Zealand, in which he professed to be the guardian of Secret Germany in exile. These poems include Zu Schand und Her (“To Shame and Honor”), which pays tribute to the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 as an act of liberation in the spirit of Secret Germany.[129]

Hitler assassin and George-Kreis member Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (1907 – 1944), a friend of Ernst Jünger, began to have doubts about Hitler because his belief in the ideas of his mentor Stefan George. Stauffenberg was one of the leading members of the failed plot of July 20, 1944, to assassinate Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power. Those closest to the “Master,” as Stefan George had his disciples called him, included several members of the assassination plot. George dedicated Das neue Reich (“the new Empire”) in 1928, including the Geheimes Deutschland (“secret Germany”) written in 1922, to Stauffenberg’s eldest brother, Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg planned to kill Hitler by detonating an explosive hidden in a briefcase. However, the blast only dealt Hitler minor injuries. The plotters, unaware of their failure, then attempted a coup d'état. A few hours after the blast, the conspiracy used Wehrmacht units to take control of several cities, including Berlin. This part of the coup d’état attempt is referred to by the name Operation Valkyrie, which also has become associated with the entire event. When Stauffenberg was executed, his last words were, Es lebe das heilige Deutschland! (“Long live our sacred Germany!”), or, possibly, Es lebe das geheime Deutschland! (“Long live Secret Germany!”).[130]

[1] Shahak & Mezvinsky. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, p. 65.

[2] Ibid..

[3] Kurt Sontheimer. Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlag, 1968), pp. 13-14; cited in Roger Wood. The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (University of Nottingham, 1996), p. 29.

[4] Steven M. Wasserstrom. “Defeating Evil from Within: Comparative Perspectives on “Redemption Through Sin.” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Vol. 6, 199., p. 52.

[5] Matthew Feldman. “Heidegger, Martin.” In Cyprian Blamires (ed.). (World Fascism. ABC-CLIO, 2006), p. 304.

[6] Armin Mohler. The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932 (ARES Verlag, Gmbh, 2018).

[7] Mohler. Die Konsetvative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932, p. 13.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Landes. Heaven on Earth, p. 363.

[10] Moeller van den Bruck. Das Drittes Reich, 3rd ed. (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1931), p. 6. Cited in Landes. Heaven on Earth, p. 363.

[11] Lerner. The Feast of Saint Abraham, p. 27.

[12] Gerald D. Feldman. Hugo Stinnes. Biographie eines Industriellen 1870–1924 (München: Beck, 1998), p. 553

[13] Dirk Stegmann. “Die deutsche Inlandspropaganda 1917/18.” In: Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 2/72, p. 78 f. m. Anm. 25.

[14] R. Opitz. Faschismus und Neofaschismus. (Frankfurt/M: Verlag Marxistische Blätter, 1984), p. 105.

[15] Dankwart Guratzsch. Macht durch Organisation. Die Grundlegung des Hugenbergschen Presseimperiums (Bertelsmann Universitätsverlag, 1974), p. 369.

[16] Sedgwick. Against the Modern World, p. 105.

[17] Jeremy Colangelo. “Clear Indistinct Ideas: Disability, Vision, and the Diaphanous Body in Joyce’s Ulysses.” Genre. 53, 1 (April 1, 2020), pp. 1–25; Dirk Van Hulle. “Authors’ Libraries and the Extended Mind: The Case of Joyce’s Books.” In Sylvain Belluc & Valérie Bénéjam (eds.). Cognitive Joyce (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018), pp. 65–82.

[18] Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York University Press, 2001), p. 60.

[19] Otto Weininger. Sex and Character (New York & Chicago: A. L. Burt, 1906).

[20] E. Kövics and Mary Boros-Kazai. “Coudenhove-Kalergi's Pan-Europe Movement on the Questions of International Politicsduring the 1920s.” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Vol. 25, No. 3/4 (1979), pp. 233.

[21] Pascal Themanlys. “Le Mouvement Cosmique.” Retrieved from http://www.abpw.net/cosmique/theon/mouvem.htm

[22] Guido Müller. “France and Germany after the Great War,” in Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Frank Schumacher, ed. Culture and International History (Berghan Book, 2003), p. 103.

[23] Jay Sherry. Carl Jung: Avant-Garde Conservative (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 84.

[24] Ibid., p. 93.

[25] Paul Gottfried. “Hugo Von Hofmannsthal and the Interwar European Right.” Modern Age, 49: 4 (Fall, 2007), p. 508.

[26] Müller. Europäische Gesellschaftsbeziehungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, n. 247.

[27] Guido Müller. “France and Germany After the Great War.” Culture and International History. Ed. Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht & Frank Schumacher (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), p. 104.

[28] “Poets Widow is Dead; Frau Hugo von Hofmannsthal Succumbs in London.” The New York Times (November 11, 1959).

[29] Jacob Taubes. To Carl Schmitt: Letters and Reflections (Columbia University Press, 2013).

[30] Bryan S. Turner. “Sovereignty and Emergency Political Theology, Islam and American Conservatism.” Theory, Culture & Society 2002 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 19(4): 103–119; Tamir Bar-On. Where Have All The Fascists Gone? (Routledge, 2016).

[31] Athol Bloomer. “Jacob Frank and the Zoharist Catholic Khasidim: A Hebrew Catholic Perspective.” A Catholic Jew Pontifications. aronbengilad.blogspot.ca (September 13, 2006).

[32] David Livingstone. Ordo ab Chao. Volume Two, Chapter 15: Haskalah.

[33] Joachim Radkau. Max Weber: A Biography (Polity Press, 1995), p. 29.

[34] “Hannah Arendt & the University of Heidelberg.” Between Truth and Hope. (October 30, 2016). Retrieved from https://betweentruthandhope.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/hannah-arendt-the-university-of-heidelberg/

[35] Victor Farias. Heidegger and Nazism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), p. 118.

[36] Jurgen Habermas. “Work and Weltanschauung: the Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective,” Critical Inquiry 15 (1989), pp. 452–54.

[37] Karl Löwith. “My last meeting with Heidegger in Rome,” in R. Wolin. The Heidegger Controversy (MIT Press, 1993).

[38] Martin A. Lee. The Beast Reawakens (London: Warner Books, 1998), p. 314; Tamir Bar-On. Where Have All The Fascists Gone? (Routledge, 2016).

[39] Terry Melanson. “Was Carl Jung’s Ancestor an Illuminatus?” Bavarian-Illuminati.com ((17/2/2009)). Retrieved from http://www.bavarian-illuminati.info/2009/02/was-carl-jungs-ancestor-an-illuminatus/

[40] Hereward Tilton. The Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in the Work of Count Michael Maier (1569-1622) (Walter de Gruyter, 2003), p. 23.

[41] Gerhard Wehr. Jung: A Biography (Boston/Shaftesbury, Dorset: Shambhala, 1987), p. 14.

[42] Gary Lachman. Jung the Mystic (Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition), p. 18.

[43] Jay Sherry. Carl Jung: Avant-Garde Conservative (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 84.

[44] Goodrick-Clarke. Black Sun, p. 335.

[45] Jay Sherry. Carl Jung: Avant-Garde Conservative (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 4.

[46] Richard Noll. The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung (Random House, 1997), p. 143.

[47] Goodrick-Clarke. Black Sun, p. 178.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Noll. The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement. p. 168.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Daniel Goleman. “Psychotherapy and the Nazis.” The New York Times (July 3, 1984).

[52] Sommer. “Policing Epistemic Deviance.”.

[53] Eberhard Köstler. Bücher Bücher Bücher Bücher. Aus der Blütezeit der Münchner Bibliophilie. pp. 264, 272; Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20110321234637/http://www.autographs.de/Imprimatur2009.pdf

[54] Dieter Schiefelbein. Das “Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage Frankfurt am Main” (Frankfurt a. M. 1993), p. 29.

[55] Gerda Walther. Zum anderen Ufer. Vom Marxismus und Atheismus zum Christentum (Reichl Verlag, St. Goar 1960), S. 473f., 591.

[56] Susanne Meinl. Bodo Hechelhammer: Geheimobjekt Pullach (Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2014), S. 55 ff.

[57] Hugo Vickers. Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece (St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2013).

[58] Ibid.

[59] Karla Poewe. New Religions and the Nazis (Routledge, 2006), p. 51.

[60] Hakl. Eranos, p. 26.

[61] Jay Sherry. Carl Jung: Avant-Garde Conservative (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).

[62] Hakl. Eranos, p. 134.

[63] Cited in Hakl. Eranos, p. 99.

[64] Sherry. Carl Jung.

[65] Hakl. Eranos, p. 56.

[66] Hakl. Eranos, p. 56.

[67] Ibid., p. 132.

[68] Hakl. Eranos, p. 21.

[69] See Furio Jesi Italian translation of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (Il Tramonto dell’ Occidente) (Milan: Longanesi, 1981), esp. xvii.; Hakl, p. 21; cited in Hakl. Eranos, p. 21.

[70] Hakl. Eranos, p. 24.

[71] Hakl. Eranos, p. 59.

[72] Hakl. Eranos, p. 93.

[73] Hakl. Eranos, p. 93.

[74] Hakl. Eranos, p. 92–93.

[75] Gerhard Wehr. Karlfried Graf Dürckheim: Leben im Zeichen der Wandlung (Freiburg, 1996), p. 75.

[76] “Nazi Agents in Japan Rounded Up.” The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848-1954), (November 1, 1945), p. 2.

[77] Levenda. The Hitler Legacy.

[78] Hakl. Eranos, p. 79.

[79] Gary Lachman. Jung the Mystic (Kindle Edition), pp. 164-165.

[80] Hakl. Eranos, p. 85.

[81] “Das Affenherz ist so etwas Vielgestaltiges.” Albert Schweitzers Briefwechsel mit Karl Wolfskehl. In Sinn und Form, 64:4 (2012), p. 516–531.

[82] Mandel, Siegfried. “Rilke’s Readings and Impressions from Buber to Alfred Schuler.” Modern Austrian Literature 15: 3/4 (1982), p. 263.

[83] Cedric Cohen-Skalli & Libera Pisano. “Farewell to Revolution! Gustav Landauer’s Death and the Funerary Shaping of His Legacy.” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 28: 2 (2020), p. 227, n. 123.

[84] Michael Minnicino. “The Frankfurt School and ‘Political Correctness’,” (Fidelio, Winter 1992).

[85] Andrew Rigby. Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrij Mitrinovic (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984) p. 80.

[86] Ibid., p. 78.

[87] Neil Rosenstein. The Unbroken Chain: Biographical Sketches and Genealogy of Illustrious Jewish Families from the 15th–20th Century (revised ed.), (New York: CIS, 1990)

[88] Jacob Golomb, ed. Nietzsche and Jewish culture (Routledge, 1997), pp. 234–35.

[89] Cesare G. De Michelis. The Non-Existent Manuscript: A Study of the Protocols of the Sages of Zion, trans. Richard Newhouse (Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2004) p. 115.

[90] Zohar Maor. “Moderation from Right to Left: The Hidden Roots of Brit Shalom.” Jewish Social Studies, 19: 2 (Winter 2013), p. 85.

[91] Martin Buber, “Judaism and the Jews,” in On Judaism, ed. N. N. Glatzer (New York, 1977), p. 13. Cited in Maor. “Moderation from Right to Left,” p. 85.

[92] Maor. “Moderation from Right to Left,” p. 86.

[93] Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Zionism, p. 85.

[94] Cited in Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Zionism, p. 86.

[95] Buber. “Judaism and the Jews,” p. 15. Cited in Maor. “Moderation from Right to Left,” p. 85.

[96] Hakl. Eranos, p. 79.

[97] Hakl. Eranos, p. 85.

[98] Hakl. Eranos, p. 82.

[99] Hakl. Eranos, p. 98.

[100] Diary entry, Jan. 29, 1915, in Scholem, Lamentations of Youth, 50. Cited in Maor. “Moderation from Right to Left,” p. 82.

[101] Maor. “Moderation from Right to Left,” p. 82.

[102] Hakl. Eranos, p. 156–158.

[103] Hakl. Eranos, p. 158.

[104] Hakl. Eranos, p. 158.

[105] Scholem. Du Frankisme, p. 39; cited in Marsha Keith Schuchard. “Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk,” p. 220.

[106] Elisabeth Hamacher. Gershom Scholem und die Allgemeine Religionsgeschichte (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), p. 60. Cited Hakl. Ouranos, p. 155.

[107] Yedioth Hayom (December 5, 1947); cited in Hakl. Eranos, p. 156.

[108] Maor. “Moderation from Right to Left,” p. 86.

[109] Ibid., p. 84.

[110] Ibid., p. 89.

[111] Ibid., p. 86.

[112] Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Zionism.

[113] Gershom Scholem. “Politik des Zionismus,” in Tagebücher, 2: 626; cited in Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Zionism, p. 90.

[114] Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Zionism, p. 90.

[115] Justin Cartwright. “Prophet of doom.” The Guardian (January 14, 2006). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jan/14/featuresreviews.guardianreview11

[116] Lawrence A. Tritle. “Plutarch in Germany: The Stefan George ‘Kreis’.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 1: 3 (Winter, 1995), p. 116.

[117] Viereck. Metapolitics.

[118] Peter Hoffmann. Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008), p. 66.

[119] Ibid.

[120] Ibid.

[121] Viereck. Metapolitics.

[122] Michael & Erika Metzger. Stefan George (Twayne’s World Authors Series, 1972), p. 41.

[123] Hoffmann. Stauffenberg, p. 73-74.

[124] Thomas Karlauf. Stefan George. The Discovery of Charisma (Munich 2007), p. 382.

[125] Hoffmann. Stauffenberg, p. 63.

[126] Ibid.

[127] Eugen Blume. Ludwig Justi und die klassische Moderne im Museum der Gegenwart am Beispiel der Sammlung der Zeichnungen in der Nationalgalerie zu Berlin zwischen 1919 und 1933. Ein Beitrag zur Biographie Ludwig Justis und zur Geschichte der Nationalgalerie (Berlin 1994), p. 167.

[128] Hoffmann. Stauffenberg, p. 41.

[129] Norman Franke. “Karl Wolfskehl und die Brüder von Stauffenberg. Rückblick auf das ‘Geheime Deutschland’.” In Kalonymos. Beiträge zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte aus dem Salomon-Ludwig Steinheim-Institut. 5:4 (2002), pp. 11–16.

[130] Eugen Georg Schwarz. “Das ‘geheime’ Deutschland.” FOCUS (1994).