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21-642: The Germanenorden was founded in Berlin in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch and several prominent German occultists including Philipp Stauff , who held office in the Guido von List Society and High Armanen Order as well as Hermann Pohl, who became the Germanenorden's first leader. The order was a clandestine movement that wished to create a small but devoted group and was a sister movement to the more open and mainstream Reichshammerbund . In 1916, during World War I ,

42-663: A charge of defamation of religious societies and disturbing the public peace. Fritsch was sentenced to one week in prison, and received another ten-day term in 1911. In 1890, Fritsch became, along with Otto Böckel , a candidate of the German Reform Party , founded by Böckel and Oswald Zimmermann, to the German Reichstag . He was not elected. The party was renamed German Reform Party in 1893, achieving sixteen seats. The party failed, however, to achieve significant public recognition. One of Fritsch's major goals

63-453: A cross as its symbol in 1916. The rituals of the order were influenced by theories about the Aryan race , Freemasonry and the operas of Richard Wagner . Theodor Fritsch Theodor Fritsch (born Emil Theodor Fritsche ; 28 October 1852 – 8 September 1933) was a German publisher and journalist . His antisemitic writings did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in

84-636: A farmer in the village of Wiesenena (present-day Wiedemar ) in the Prussian province of Saxony , and his wife August Wilhelmine, née Ohme. Four of his siblings died in childhood. He attended vocational school ( Realschule ) in Delitzsch where he learned casting and machine building. He then undertook study at the Royal Trade Academy ( Königliche Gewerbeakademie ) in Berlin , graduating as

105-452: A hierarchical fraternal structure based on Freemasonry . The structure was adopted due to the assumption that Jews engaged in secret organizing, and that it would be best to counter their influence over the German public life by using the same method. The primary concern was to monitor Jewish activity and to be a centre for the distribution of antisemitic material. Secondary concerns involved

126-737: A hundred in 1917 to 1,500 by the autumn of the following year. The Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater when it was formally dedicated on August 18, 1918, was given the cover name the Thule Society , which is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), which was later transformed by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). The Germanenorden had

147-413: A letter in which he thanked him to be permitted "to cast a glance at the muddle of principles that lie at the heart of this strange movement", but requested not to be sent again such writings, for he was afraid that he might lose his patience. Fritsch offered editorship to right-wing politician Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg in 1894, whereafter it became an organ for Sonnenberg's German Social Party under

168-579: A practitioner of Sufism and astrology , Sebottendorff was also an admirer of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels . Convinced that the Islamic and Germanic mystical systems shared a common Aryan root, he was attracted by Pohl’s runic lore and became the Master of the Walvater's Bavarian province late in 1917. Charged with reviving the province's fortunes, Sebottendorff increased membership from about

189-519: A return to the traditional peasant values and customs of the distant past, which he believed exemplified the essence of the Volk . In 1893, Fritsch published his most famous work, The Handbook of the Jewish Question , which leveled a number of conspiratorial charges at European Jews and called upon Germans to refrain from intermingling with them. Vastly popular, the book was read by millions and

210-514: A technician in 1875. In the same year Fritsche found employment in a Berlin machine shop. He gained independence in 1879 through the founding of a technical bureau associated with a publishing firm. In 1880 he founded the Deutscher Müllerbund (Miller's League) which issued the publication Der Deutsche Müller (The German Miller). In 1905 he founded the "Saxon Small Business Association." He devoted himself to this organization and to

231-535: The Reichshammerbund (Reich's Hammer League) as an antisemitic collective movement. He also established the secret Germanenorden in that year. Influenced by racist Ariosophic theories, it was one of the first political groups to adopt the swastika symbol. Members of these groups formed the Thule Society in 1918, which eventually sponsored the creation of the Nazi Party . The Reichshammerbund

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252-533: The Germanenorden split into two parts. Eberhard von Brockhusen became the Grand Master of the "loyalist" Germanenorden. Pohl, previously the order's Chancellor, founded a schismatic offshoot: the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail. He was joined in the same year by Rudolf von Sebottendorff (formerly Rudolf Glauer), a wealthy adventurer with wide-ranging occult and mystical interests. A Freemason and

273-884: The Nazis as a legal means to election after the Nazi Party had been banned in the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch . He only served until the next election in December, 1924. In February 1927, Fritsch left the Völkisch Freedom Party in protest. He died shortly after the 1933 Nazi seizure of power at the age of 80 in Gautzsch (today part of Markkleeberg ). A memorial to Fritsch, described as "the first antisemitic memorial in Germany",

294-419: The assistance between members in business and the circulation of völkisch journals, especially Fritsch's journal Hammer . Applicants were required to prove their Germanic descent, and if they were married also their wife's. Through Bernhard Koerner, Stauff and Brockhusen, the order became imbued with the occult-nationalist ideas of List. Influenced by List's Ariosophy , it adopted a swastika superimposed on

315-405: The interests of crafts and small businesses ( Mittelstand ), as well as to the spread of antisemitic propaganda. When he changed his name to Fritsch is unclear. Fritsch created an early discussion forum, "Antisemitic Correspondence" in 1885 for antisemites of various political persuasions. In 1887 he sent several editions to Friedrich Nietzsche but was brusquely dismissed. Nietzsche sent Fritsch

336-494: The late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writings also appeared under the pen names Thomas Frey, Fritz Thor, and Ferdinand Roderich-Stoltheim. He is not to be confused with his son, also named Theodor Fritsch (1895–1946) and also a bookseller, who was a member of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the Sturmabteilung . Fritsch was born Emil Theodor Fritsche, the sixth of seven children to Johann Friedrich Fritsche,

357-710: The name "German Social Articles." Fritsch' 1896 book The City of the Future became a blueprint of the German garden city movement which was adopted by Völkisch circles. In 1902 Fritsch founded a Leipzig publishing house, Hammer-Verlag , whose flagship publication was The Hammer: Pages for German Sense (1902–1940). The firm issued German translations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew (collected writings of Henry Ford from The Dearborn Independent ) as well as many of Fritsch's own works. An inflammatory article published in 1910 earned him

378-471: Was erected in Zehlendorf (Berlin) in 1935. The memorial was the idea of Zehlendorf's mayor, Walter Helfenstein (1890–1945), and the work of Arthur Wellmann (1885–1960). The memorial was melted down in 1943 to make armaments for the war. A believer in the absolute superiority of the Aryan race , Fritsch was upset by the changes brought on by rapid industrialization and urbanization , and called for

399-709: Was eventually folded into the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation), on whose advisory board Fritsch sat. He later became a member of the German Völkisch Freedom Party (DFVP). In the general election of May 1924 , Fritsch was elected to serve as a member of the National Socialist Freedom Movement , a party formed in alliance with the DFVP by

420-643: Was in its 49th edition by 1944 (330,000 copies). The ideas espoused by the work greatly influenced Hitler and the Nazis during their rise to power after World War I . Fritsch also founded an anti-semitic journal – the Hammer – in 1902, and this became the basis of a movement, the Reichshammerbund , in 1912. Fritsch was an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity . He published Einsteins Truglehre (Einstein's Fraudulent Teachings) in 1921, under

441-498: Was to unite all antisemitic political parties under a single banner; he wished for antisemitism to permeate the agenda of every German social and political organization. This effort proved largely to be a failure, as by 1890 there were over 190 various antisemitic parties in Germany. He also had a powerful rival for the leadership of the antisemites in Otto Böckel, with whom he had a strong personal rivalry. In 1912 Fritsch founded

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