Bavaria, the Thule Society, the SOSJ and the Making of a Revolutionary Faith Part V

Welcome to the fifth installment in my examination of the notorious Thule Society, the World War I-era German secret society long linked to the Nazi Party and more recently a pop culture staple. Due to the latter, I dedicated much of part one to dispelling some of the common misconceptions concerning Thule (especially in relation the Vril Society and like associations).

Part two briefly considered the ideological origins of Thule, addressing personalities and organizations that helped shape such things. With the third installment I outlined the background of Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff, the founder of Thule, which featured ample time spent in the Near East immersed in occult studies. With part four I finally began to examine Thule in earnest, mainly focusing on the beliefs, structure and early days of the Society.

a bust of von Sebottendorff

In this installment I must digress for a time before addressing Thule's most active, militant, and influential period. To fully appreciate this period one must also understand the Freecorp movement that sprang up in Germany during the wake of World War I. And to put the Freecorps in perspective, I must also briefly address the state of affairs in Germany at the conclusion of the Great War.

To say that the nation was devastated would be an understatement. The physical destruction and psychological shock the defeat brought to Germany was profound. This, combined with the specter of the Russian Revolution, spurred German workers and soldiers to start their own revolution. Despite much fear mongering over the prospect of Germany going red both before and after the German Revolution, said event never posed a serious threat of establishing communism in Germany and thus the revolution is now widely forgotten.

"That the revolution failed to take hold... is one reason for its obscurity. Also, the turmoil of late 1918 and early 1919 might better be called the German Revolutions. They were a series of localized uprisings, owing to the federal constitution of Germany and the mixed causes of the upheavals. It was not a centrally directed effort of the sort mythologized by the Russian Bolsheviks with their seizure of the Winter Palace, despite the best efforts of German Communists and Spartacists to run the movement. In its earliest phase the German Revolution was a 'spontaneous, popular upheaval in which exasperation, war-weariness and genuine revolutionary enthusiasm all played a part.'

"Although workers carrying red flags massed outside the Reichstag as early as October 26, 1918, the German Revolution began with the mutiny at Kiel of the High Seas Fleet on October 28 and ended with the crushing of the Bavarian Soviet Socialist Republic on May Day 1919 by paramilitaries, including units raised by the Thule Society.

"The German Revolution shared several common characteristics across its man local manifestations. It began with mutinous sailors, soldiers, and workers informally and hastily elected their own soviets or councils in imitation of the Russian model. At first these soviets were generally Independent Socialists in orientation, although they may have included individuals who could be termed 'nonpartisan.' In many areas the soviets enjoyed the reluctant but active participation of the majority Social Democrats, 'who were not prepared to abandon their traditional belief in parliamentary democracy,' and although they regarded the revolution as a deviation, 'sought to contain it and control it.' In the revolution's later stages, including Bavaria by April 1919, the soviets were often dominated by Communist hard-liners. Some soviets actually ran cities and districts for short periods; more often they coexisted uncomfortably alongside Germany's traditional governing institutions as they tried to find their compass after the empire played out its abrupt final act. The government ministries were usually dominated by Social Democrats, whose Reichstag delegate Philipp Scheidemann reluctantly proclaimed on November 9, with as much informality and haste as a mutinous sailor, the German Republic. He did so only to forestall Liebknecht from gaining the advantage should a power vacuum open up with the kaiser's abdication and flight to neutral Netherlands (which finally occurred November 10). Like the Labour Party in Great Britain, the Social Democrats would have been pleased to pursue a gradual program of democratization and socialization under the orderly auspices of a constitutional monarchy.

"From the day the largely unwanted republic was born, the Social Democrats found themselves keeping odd company to prevent it from being smothered by the far left, bent on erecting a dictatorship of the proletariat. Germany's first Reich president, the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, received a surprise phone call from imperial headquarters at Spa on November 9. It was Gen. Wilhelm Groener, offering a deal on behalf of the army to support the Social Democrats in their fight against Bolshevism in exchange for the new government's promise to preserve the integrity of the officers corps.

"However, this was not the end of the Social Democrats' need for military muscle. Most of the army's rank and file had little stomach for further service after the November 11 Armistice with the Allies. Many units simply evaporated upon reaching their home depots. Filing the vacuum left by the old imperial army in the troubled months to come were paramilitary units called Freikorps, often led by recently discharged officers and filled in part with soldiers who continued to savor combat or who feared the triumph of Bolshevism..."

(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pgs. 92-93)

a scene from the German Revolution

Luhrssen's depiction of the men who comprised the Freecorps is a bit simplistic. In general, rank and file soldiers from urban working class backgrounds were not especially attracted to the Freecorps. Instead, their ranks were often dominated by rural and middle class populations. The initial vision for this new breed of soldier came from General Ludwig Maercker, whose Volunteer Rifleman's Corps was among the most effective and best organized of the Freecorps.

"After the defeats of November, and the recent humiliating dissolution following the Marstall fiasco, who were these men... who had risen, seemingly like phantoms, from the ruins of chaos and disaster? Maercker was a Prussian of the old school who had spent most of the war on the Eastern Front, ending up as the relatively lowly commander of the 214th Infantry Division. But unlike most of his fellow officers, he had grasped at an early stage that the miseries of defeat offered the opportunity for a wholly new type of soldiering: 'A vast militia of bourgeoisie and peasants, grouped around the flag for the re-establishment of order.' The implied message was that this coalition of the middle-class and the rural worker would be set against the industrial working classes of the city, with their dangerous notions of democracy and socialism. As his own division began to melt away, Maercker seized the chance of preserving its loyalist kernel as the basis of a new corps of volunteers able to carry out the twin tasks of combating the Bolshevik enemy at home and defending Germany's crumbling borders from the rapacious grasp of the foreigner."

(A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis, Nigel Jones, pgs. 50-51)

General Maercker

Many of the individuals from middle class backgrounds who signed up with the Freecorps were students just young enough to have missed combat in WWI, but who had become enthralled with heavily romanticized depictions of trench warfare promoted by the likes of Ernst Junger and so forth. More than a few of these students had also been involved with the Volkisch movement during the war as well, meaning that at least some of them would have been exposed to Ariosophy even before they joined the Frecorps (the Volkisch movement and its esoteric cousin Ariosophy are were much of the occult ideology of Thule derived, as noted in part two).

The bulk of the Freecorps officers were drawn from the ranks of the original Storm Troopers, WWI era infantry who were something of precursor to modern day special forces. These heavily armed units were often used as shock troops to break Allied ranks, clearing the way for conventional forces. Because of this they were afforded special status within the German Imperial Army, which included the best rations, new uniforms, state-of-the-art weapons such as flame throwers, etc. As a result, these forces were far more loyal than the regular army and provided an idea backbone for the Freecorps.

WWI-era Storm Trops

Most historians have generally downplayed the occult undertones of the Freecorps movement, dismissing the ties certain Bavarian Freecorps had to the Thule Society as an isolated incident. In point of fact, many Freecorps openly displayed traces of a more esoteric agenda. An obvious example of this are the symbols adopted by various Freecorps as their insignia. According to Robert G.L. Waite in his classic Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918-1923, the most popular insignia adopted by the Freecorps was the totenkopf (death's head). Originally the totenkopf had been displayed by the aristocratic Prussian cavalry during the eighteenth century. During World War I the totenkopf was adopted by the Storm Troops as their official insignia. From there it likely spread to the Freecorps as former Storm Troops were enlisted as officers.

Conspiracy culture has spilled much ink over the years concerning the significance of the death's head (which is also the symbol of the notorious Yale secret society commonly referred to as Skull and Bones as well as the SS itself), so I will not address it here. Whether there was some type of occult association meant by the use of the totenkopf by the Freecorps is highly debatable. I am on a bit firmer footing in this regard when it comes to another symbol adopted by the Freecorps: the swastika. Many researchers have attributed the use of the swastika by the Freecorps to Ariosophy's occult underground.

"Most authorities say that Hitler first picked up the idea of using the swastika from the Ehrhardt Brigade in 1920... But two organizations that were Hitler's immediate predecessors in spreading the doctrine of Aryan supremacy, the Thule Society and the S-u-T, had popularized its use as a racist symbol in 1919. And before them, the racist Reichshammer Bundes had used it as its 'battle sign' as early as 1912... The Nazis did not like to be reminded that they had precursors. The memoirs of the founders of both the S-u-T and the Thule Gesellschaft... were placed in the closed archives of the NSDAP and stamped with the 'V' sign. Ehrhardt himself says that in January 1920 his men began to bear the swastika for the first time and comments, 'I cannot determine how this happened...'"

(Vanguard of Nazism, Robert G.L. Waite, pg. 207, n. 90)

S-u-T refers to Deutschvolkischer Schultz-und-Trutzbund, a far right wing organization linked to both the Freecorps movement and Ariosophy. S-u-T, Thule and the Reichshammerbund all had ties to the Germanenorden, the secret society that Thule derived from. These ties were all addressed in part two of this series.

While the Freecorp known as the Ehrhardt Brigade is generally considered the first such unit to display the swastika, some researchers have suggested that the Freecorp may have adopted it after serving with several Bavarian Freecorps affiliated with Thule during the Battle of Munich. But I've found nothing to confirm that these Thule-backed Freecorps actually used the swastika as an emblem at this point (though Thule itself certainly did). In some accounts I've read, the swastika was said to have first been employed by Freecorps participating in the notorious Baltic Campaign, which slightly predated the Battle of Munich. This is a highly intriguing possibility for reasons that will be explored in a future installment.

The occult nature of the Freecorps movement became more pronounced after the disastrous Kapp Putsch, the most well known attempt by the Freecorps to overthrow the Weimer Republic. It failed and the government made a half-hearted attempt to suppress the movement. This drove many of the Freecorps into secretive organizations.

"We can divide the rightist and racist groupings broadly into the open, legal, or semi-legal, such as the Organisation Escherich (Orgesch), the Organisation Kanzler (Orka), the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), and the Jungdeutscher (Jungdo); and the secret, illegal, underground or outright terrorist, like the Thule Society, the Deutscher Trutz and Schultz Bund (The German Offensive and Defensive League), and the Ehrhardt and Rossbach Freikorps with their myriad offshoots and successor organisations. An added complication is that some of the illegal groups which were banned by the Berlin government government were tolerated and even openly encouraged by the Bavarian authorities --particularly the Police. The open organisations tended to be marginally more moderate in their aims and methods than the terrorist groups..."

(A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis, Nigel Jones, pg. 206)

First let us consider some of these "overworld" organizations. More than a few of them have striking similarities to the modern day militia movement and other such paramilitary right wing groups.

"Free Corps commanders, wanting to keep the nucleus of their Corps intact, covered up their activity by organizing business concerns the operation of which required large groups of strong young men --trucking companies, bicycle renting agencies, road gangs, private detective bureaus, and traveling circuses. But the most popular subterfuge was to disguise their men as members of larger labor camps. Here the Free Corps reverted to the experience of their youth in the Wandervogel and the labor camps it had established. More important, they set the precedent for the future: the so-called Arbeitskommando of the Black Reichsehr period and the Arbeitsdienst of the National Socialists were both patterned directly on the Free Corps labor camps...

"During the early twenties, similar Arbeitslager or Arbeitsgemeinschaften were established in various places throughout the Reich. They were most prevalent in eastern Germany, especially in Pomerania and Brandenburg, where they were sponsored by the Pomeranian Landbund and located on the estates belonging to its conservative members. Here they formed the type of half-military, half-agricultural communities that General von der Goltz had hoped to establish in the Baltic.

"Peter von Heydebreck, for example, took his Wehrwolfe to Count Bruhl's estate and established his headquarters in an old castle. His men interspersed their work in the fields with military drill and maneuvers. At night they sat about the great fire in the hall of the castle and discussed ways and means of overthrowing the Republic..."

(Vanguard of Nazism, Robert G.L. Waite, pgs. 189-191)

a Freecorp "labor camp"

These Freecorps "labor camps" are especially reminiscent of latter day Christian Identity compounds such as Elohim City and the one established by the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). Elohim City was meant as a self sustaining architectural community that latter incorporated paramilitary training for some of its members. The CSA compound, which heavily incorporated paramilitary training into its activities, initially tried to sustain itself by logging cedar trees. Later on it became involved in the arms trade by manufacturing firearms. In general, the arms trade has proved to be a lucrative source of income for various far right wing American paramilitary groups over the years. I briefly outlined the Minutemen organization's involvement in such things before here. This is just one example.

Many of these Freecorps organizations would also take to raising funds via the arms trade as well.

"Actually, there was nothing particularly mysterious about the sources of their financial support. We have already seen that the Landbund sponsored them. Heavy industry also made generous contributions. Then, too, there was considerable profit in stealing and selling contraband arms. The government itself had inadvertently provided the Freebooters with this source of revenue. In order to meet the demands of the Allied Commission of Control, the Republic passed a law which dissolved the Free Corps and provided that 'compensation will be made for the surrender of all arms which had been legitimately acquired.' Since the officials did not tend to investigate the legitimacy of the acquisitions, the Free Corps were able to steal arms from the government and surrender them for a profit. Arms were also sold to the enemies of the Republic. Rossbach's biographer, for example, describes what he considers a 'somewhat humorous but nevertheless effective means' of raising money. Rossbach would sell German machine guns to the Poles, then a section of his Storm Troops would 'liberate' the arms and resell them to other Polish groups. The process was then repeated. 'They did a booming business.'"

(Vanguard of Nazism, Robert G.L. Waite, pg. 195)

General Gerhard Rossbach, one of the most notorious Freecorp commanders who was also accused of "debauching" his youthful charges a time or two; his most famous conquest was a young Ernst Rohm

In general the men of the Freecorps had a reverence for their firearms that bordered on mystical, not unlike the modern day patriot and militia movements. Underworld organizations involved in assassinations, of which much more will be said in a moment, committed the bulk of these offenses not against political opponents but Freecorps members who betrayed firearm caches.

"Since the great many, perhaps a majority, of all the judgments of the Femgericht were rendered against people who disclosed, or threatened to disclose, the existence of illegal arms, it is worth noting the reason for hiding and guarding arms so sedulously. It was not so much that the arms themselves had any real military value --most of them were in a bad state of disrepair. It was rather for a psychological reason. Arms are a symbol of power and, lacking power themselves, the men of the post-Free Corps groups clung all the more tenaciously to that symbol. The men expressed the idea differently. To them, weapons were 'sacred things,' or, more commonly, 'honor.' Thus Heinz ends his discussion of a typical Feme murder by writing a paragraph which contains the single sentence, 'Arms are honor.' And again: 'Arms are an indispensable condition of national honor... Colonial people are disarmed and therefore dishonorable.' The National Socialists used the same terminology. In the official secret handbook of the NSDAP, the side arms of the political leaders are not called automatics, they are invariably referred to as 'Ehrenwaffe.'

"The Feme was often directed against former comrades of post-Free Corps organizations. The very multiplicity of Bunds and secret societies led to competition, quarreling, and death. Since each society tried to grow at the expense of others, there were constant brawls over recruits and periodic purges of traitors who had deserted and disclosed the secrets and the arms depots to their new formations. Competition and conflict was intensified by the fact that many of the Freebooters were homosexuals and hence prone to jealousy and 'lover's quarrels...'

(ibid, pgs. 222-223)

I daresay the psychological function firearms served for the Freecorps is probably not unlike the dynamic between the modern patriot movement and their firearms as well. As for the rampant homosexuality amongst the men of the Freecorps (as well as the numerous hints of pedophilia), this is a topic that is unfortunately beyond the scope of this series. I felt it was worth mentioning here as it shows, if nothing else, that there was certainly a tolerance for ideas and lifestyles outside the mainstream within the Freecorps so long as the individual in question possessed the mythical "Freebooter spirit." But moving along.

While many of these "overworld" Freecorps organizations displayed traces of Volkisch influence there is little evidence of Ariosophy or other occult strands among such organizations. The same can not be said, however, for the underground organizations, which is hardly surprising. While the "overworld" Freecorps groups were largely designed to keep together the rank-and-file soldiers until they were again needed, the underground organizations were mostly comprised of Freecorp officers engaged in assassinations and other acts of terrorism. Thus, they were a much smaller, secretive and far more exclusive groups than their public counterparts. As such, they provided a more fertile ground for the esoteric aspects of the Volkisch movement.

As noted above, both Thule and another prominent organization linked to this militant network, the S-u-T, had direct ties to the occult secret society known as the Germanenorden. Then there was the Organization Council (O.C.), a network created by officers of the Ehrhardt Brigade, and later renamed the Viking Bund. The O.C. would certainly display more than a few traces of esoteric Volkisch tendencies, most notably in its attempt to recreate the Medieval Vehmic (sometimes spelled as "Feme" rather "Vehm") courts. Of them Wikipedia states:

"The sessions were often held in secret, whence the names of 'secret court' (German: heimliches Gericht), 'silent court' (German: Stillgericht), etc. Attendance of secret sessions was forbidden to the uninitiated, on pain of death, which led to the designation forbidden courts' (German: verbotene Gerichte). A chairman (German: Stuhlherr) presided over the court, and lay judges (German: Freischöffen) passed judgment.^[2] The court also constituted a Holy Order.^[6]

"Any free man 'of pure bred German stock'^[6] and of good character could become a judge. The new candidate was given secret information and identification symbols. The 'knowing one' (German: Wissende) had to keep his knowledge secret, even from his closest family (;vor Weib und Kind, vor Sand und Wind'). Lay judges had to give formal warnings to known troublemakers, issue warrants, and take part in executions.

"The organization of the Fehme was elaborate. The centre of each jurisdiction was referred to as a 'free seat' (German: Freistuhl), and its head or chairman (German: Stuhlherr) was often a secular or spiritual prince, sometimes a civic community, the archbishop of Cologne being supreme over all (German: Oberststuhlherren). The actual president of the court was the 'free count' (German: Freigraf, chosen for life by the Stuhlherr from among the Freischöffen, who formed the great body of the initiated. Of these the lowest rank were the Fronboten or Freifronen, charged with the maintenance of order in the courts and the duty of carrying out the commands of the Freigraf. The immense development of the Fehme is explained by the privileges of the Freischöffen; for they were subject to no jurisdiction but those of the Westphalian courts: whether as accused or accuser they had access to the secret sessions, and they shared in the discussions of the general chapter as to the policy of the society. At their initiation these swore to support the Fehme with all their powers, to guard its secrets, and to bring before its tribunal anything within its competence that they might discover. They were then initiated into the secret signs by which members recognized each other, and were presented with a rope and with a knife on which were engraved the mystic letters S.S.G.G., supposed to mean Stein, Strick, Gras, grün(stone, rope, grass, green).^[2]

"The Freistuhl was the place of session, and was usually a hillock, or some other well-known and accessible spot. The Freigraf and the Schöffen (judges) occupied the bench, before which a table, with a sword and rope upon it, was placed. The court was held by day and, unless the session was declared secret, all freemen, whether initiated or not, were admitted. The accusation was in the old German form; but only a Freischöffe could act as accuser. If the offence came under the competence of the court, meaning it was punishable by death, a summons to the accused was issued under the seal of the Freigraf. This was not usually served on him personally, but was nailed to his door, or to some convenient place where he was certain to pass. Six weeks and three days' grace were allowed, according to the old Saxon law, and the summons was thrice repeated. If the accused appeared, the accuser stated the case, and the investigation proceeded by the examination of witnesses as in an ordinary court of law. The judgment was put into execution on the spot if that was possible.^[2]"

a depiction of a Medieval Vehm court

Whether or not the modern incarnation of the Vehmic court had the same occultic trappings is difficult to discern, but it certainly matched if not exceeded the original's brutality.

"The original Femgericht (or Vehmgericht), readers of historical romances will recall, had been established in medieval Germany as a kind of vigilante society which dispensed crude but effective justice at a time when there was no efficient judicial system. During the period of their dissolution, the Freebooters revived the idea of the Feme and in its name meted out their 'folkish justice' to all those people they loosely classified as traitors. The chief resemblance between the medieval Femgericht and its twentieth century namesake was this: the only sentence handed down by the 'court' was death.

"While the Feme was used by virtually all the post-Free Corps organizations, it is chiefly associated with Captain Hermann Ehrhardt's mysterious 'O.C.' --the Organization Consul, of which Ehrhardt was the 'Consul' --for it was the former commander of the Second Marine Brigade who organized the Feme into a system dispensing death. In the days following the Kapp Putsch. Ehrhardt and a group of his most trusted lieutenants fled to Bavaria and established themselves as agricultural laborers on the great estates in the vicinity of Munich. Here, in the spring of 1921, the O.C. was formed. Pohner, the chief of the Bavarian police, was the chief patron of the organization. In addition to channeling police funds into Ehrhardt's coffers, he supplied false passports to members who had committed murders (that is, those who had 'carried out the stern justice of the Femgericht'). Such people, understandably, found it advisable to leave the country for a few weeks."

(Vanguard of Nazism, Robert G.L. Waite, pgs. 212-213)

This researcher has found nothing to conclusively prove that the O.C. and its Vehm revival had an inner occult doctrine. But Ehrhardt and his officers had certainly rubbed shoulders with the Thulists a time or two. As noted above, the Ehrhardt Brigade had participated in the Battle of Munich with several Freecorps linked to Thule. Later Ehrhardt and several of his officers had fled to Bavaria after the failed Kapp Putsch and established themselves near Munich, again putting him around the same circles as the Thulists.

As was noted in part four, Thule also had an interest in ancient German legal traditions and likely would have studied the Vehmic courts at length. And finally, individuals linked to Thule's parent organization, the Germanenorden, were used as assassins of the O.C. in at least one prominent incident, as noted in part two. All of this would seem to indicate that there was overlap between Thule and Ehrhardt's people, at the very least. That Thule's esoteric doctrines influenced Ehrhardt and the O.C. is hardly beyond the realm of possibility.

Captain Hermann Ehrhardt

At this point its interesting to note the similarities between the Freecorps' revival of the Vehmic courts and an organization founded by "former" military intelligence officer, Posse Comitatus founder and Sovereign Order of Saint John (SOSJ) affiliate (as noted before here) Colonel William Potter Gale known as the Committee of the States. Gale had an enormous influence on the modern day patriot movement, with his loose Posse Comitatus network and ideology being the chief influence behind the modern militia and sovereign citizen movements. Like the men of the Freecorps, Gale had an interest in the Medieval legal codes of his ancestors, namely the British common law.

In Gale's ideology, America's historic common law system had been usurped by Admiralty law, which some conspiracy theorists have described as a modern successor to the Roman civil law (of which Thulists believed had replaced German's historic Aryan legal codes, as noted in part four). Gale envisioned the Committee of the States at a citizen's council designed to reclaim common law rights and remove government officials who did not recognize this legal code.

"Though Gale denied he played a prominent role in the Committee of the States, he invented it and inspired its members to plot violence. Gale inaugurated the Committee on September 6, 1982, with a sermon from the pulpit of the Ministry of Christ Church, explaining how and why patriots should take control of the federal government. Like his original Posse manifesto, The cornerstone of Gale's plan was an 'indictment' charging that Congress had 'unlawfully' delegated power to the Federal Reserve; 'treasonously' appropriated money 'towards the support of alien and foreign governments'; and unconstitutionally ordered American troops into battle on behalf of the 'International Jewish Banking Conspiracy.' After detailing these and other transgressions, Gale presented his solution:

"'[Members of Congress] are employees on the public payroll... therefore they are subject to dismissal and removal from offices and replacement by a Committee of the States as provided for in Article Five of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union... This removal from office and replacement by a Committee of the States is hereby recommended and authorized!'

"The reasoning was sophomoric, but Gale's belligerent charisma and his pretended rank of full colonel in the U.S. Army made his assertions appear credible --at least to those Patriots who wanted to believe anything he said. Gale correctly assumed that the government would take notice of the committee's threats and he instructed his followers to form a citizen's posse in every county. 'Anybody who tries to interfere with the lawful operations of the Committee of the States should be faced by that armed posse and be declared outlaws and be apprehended upon sight.' Later versions of this advise instructed that the death penalty be imposed. Like the Posse Comitatus he announced in 1971, Gale manufactured the Committee of the States using equal parts vigilantism, historical misinterpretation, and outright fiction --all papered over by meaningless legalistic gloss."

(The Terrorist Next Door, Daniel Levitas, pg. 286)

William Potter Gale

And the same to could be said of the Vehmic courts of the Freecorps, though they were by all accounts far more effective at administering their sentences. These modern Vehmic courts were credited with some 354 murders between the years 1919 and 1922. By contrast, Gale's Committee of the States never really got off the ground. Mainstream researchers chalk this up to Gale's ineptness. On the flip side of the coin, Gale's health also began to deteriorate rapidly shortly after he founded the Committee and he shed his mortal coil by early 1988. This may well have effected his (and others?) plans for the Committee. But I digress.

Before wrapping up, I would like to point out a post-World War II manifestation of a Freecorp. This paramilitary organization, based upon its post-WWI predecessors, also displayed trappings of an occult nature. The Freecorp was closely linked to the Socialist Reich Party (SRP), an openly neo-Nazi political party founded in 1949 and banned by West German authorities (with ample prodding from the Allies) by 1952.

"... Freikorps Deutschland (FD). The FD was formed at a secret meeting in Hamburg on 17 August 1951 by the Bruderschaft, the SRP, an SS fraternal association, and other like-minded groups. Recruits went through a heavily ritualistic initiation ceremony as well as a tough physical course that included forced marches with 50-pound packs. The FD had one or two thousand members divided into Freischaren (volunteer companies) of 113 members each. Its public leaders were two ex-SS men, Hermann Lamp and Colonel Eberhard Hawranke, and a naval officer named Heinz Naumann. Behind them stood the former Vienna Gauleiter A.E. Frauenfeld, his friend and Naumann Circle-member Gustav Adolf Scheel, and Beck-Broichsitter. All swore allegiance to imprisoned Grand Admiral Karl Donitz as legal head of Germany."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 401)

the banner of the Socialist Reich Party

The Freikorps Deutschland also plotted to destabilize the German state just as its predecessors had during the interwar years, but it was banned by authorities before it could get off the ground. Unfortunately I have not been able to determine what this "heavily ritualistic initiation ceremony" may have consisted of, or whether it was linked to the earlier Freecorps. But this post-WWII Freecorp does show that in Germany by this time such organizations had become associated with the trappings of an occultic secret society. While these ritualistic trappings may have simply been adopted from the SS, the seemingly extensive ties the Germanenorden lodges, especially its Bavarian one, had to the Freecorps certainly make for the possibility that some of them employed equally ritualistic ceremonies, among other things.

And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment we shall continue with the saga of the Thule Society and the order's involvement in the Battle of Munich. Stay tuned.

Bavaria, the Thule Society, the SOSJ and the Making of a Revolutionary Faith Part IV

Welcome to the fourth installment in my examination of the legendary Thule Society and the bizarre personalities, organizations and events surrounding it. In all honesty, the first three installments of this series have not had an awful lot to do with Thule, so complex are its origins. In the first part I attempted to dispel several popular misconceptions concerning Thule that have appeared frequently in psuedo-histories, conspiracy theories and popular culture alike.

With the second installment I briefly examined the individuals, groups and ideologies that inspired Thule. For our purposes here, the key point one will wish to keep in mind from part two is the Germanenorden organization detailed therein. The Germanenorden was a secret society that spread throughout Germany and Austria in the years leading up to World War I and would remain active during the conflict. It was based upon ideas drawn from the Volkisch movement as well as rituals and an organizational structure liberally borrowed from Freemasonry (despite the fact that the Germanenorden was fanatically opposed to Freemasonry, viewing it as a once noble Aryan institution that had been "corrupted" by a Jewsish influence, or something along those lines). The Thule Society would begin as the Munich lodge of the Germanenorden and would maintain ties to the society and affiliated organizations such as the Reichshammerbund and the more secretive Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund.

During the third installment I outlined the background of the man who would found Thule: Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff. As was detailed there, von Sebottendorff was a kind of wandering European adventurer who comes off as a cross between T.E. Lawrence and the legendary Baron Munchhausen for much of his early life. Around 1900 von Sebottendorff would first arrive in the Near East, initially in Egypt and later Turkey, and would begin an extensive study of the occult. He would claim to become initiated into a Sufi order and an Oriental Masonic lodge that some researcher believe was affiliated with the Rite of Memphis-Misraim. Von Sebottendorff would also become schooled in pyramidism, Kabbalism and Rosicrucianism.

At some point during his two extended stays in Turkey von Sebottendorff became acquainted with extreme forms of Turkish nationalism such as Pan-Turkism and Pan-Turanism. This may have been due to von Sebottendorff's contacts in the Young Turks movement and possibly even the militant Grey Wolves paramilitary organization that would later become heavily involved in Turkey's Gladio network. Von Sebottendorff's exposure to Turkish nationalism, which was heavily influenced by the German Volkisch movement and vice versa, may have laid the foundation for von Sebottendorff's later racism after a rather cosmopolitan existence in the Near East the included numerous Turkish and Jewish acquaintances (the Baron was even initiated into his Masonic lodge by a Jew).

von Sebottendorff

Now that I've recounted von Sebottendorff's background I shall pick up with his return to Germany in 1913. Within three years of his return he would become an initiate of the Germanenorden as World War I raged on.

"... His activities and movements during the first half of the Great War are rather obscure. He claimed that he was at Breslau in 1913, where he financed the Gobel tank. Since this machine was a failure, his enterprise cannot have been rewarded. Besides frequent visits to Siegmund von Sebottendorff at Wiesbaden, several accounts link him with Dresden at this time. When Siegmund died in October 1915 Sebottendorff was living at Kleinzschachwitz, a fashionable suburb lying on the banks of the River Elbe. Here he built a large villa in spacious grounds (now Meusslitzer Strasse 41) for 50,000 gold marks. Sebottendorff then became the subject of unfavorable rumors and he suddenly left. He later claimed that he had been the victim of the slanderous campaign concerning the fortune of his second wife. One 15 July 1915 at Vienna, Sebottendorff had married a divorcee, Berta Anna Iffland. As the daughter of the late Frederick Wilhelm Müller, a wealthy Berlin merchant, she possessed significant funds in trust. Sebottendorff stated that Max Alsberg, the Berlin lawyer responsible for her estate, became hostile when relieved of his lucrative appointment following the marriage. Alsberg allegedly incited Heindl, a senior Dresden police officer, to defame Sebottendorff as a fortune-hunter. Sebottendorff also had trouble with the Berlin authorities on account of his Turkish nationality, which prevented his conscription into the German army.

"After a succession of moves to Frankfurt and Berlin, Sebottendorff and his wife settled in 1916 at Bad Aibling, an elegant Bavarian spa. From here Sebottendorff consulted Georg Gaubatz, his Munich lawyer, in order to secure the police files relating to his contested Turkish nationality. Gaubatz happened to show him a newspaper advertisement for the Germanenorden which summoned fair-haired and blue-eyed German men and women of pure Aryan descent to join the Order. Three cryptic runes stood beneath this message. Sebottendorff was intrigued and acquired membership. In September 1916 Sebottendorff decided to visit a chief of the mysterious Germanenorden at Berlin. This individual turned out to be Hermann Pohl. Pohl and Sebottendorff talked about the runes, the esoteric meaning of which seems to have interested the latter in the Order. Pohl explained that he had come to a study of the runes through Guido von List, and that he was convinced that racial miscegenation, especially with Jews, was responsible for obscuring the Aryans' knowledge of the magical powers of the runes. He believed that this gnosis could be revived once the race had been purified of foreign contamination."

(The Occult Roots of Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pgs. 141-142)

After his exposure to Turkish nationalism and his ongoing conflict with the Jewish lawyer Alsberg, it would seem that Sebottendorff was especially respective to Pohl's message at this point in his life. After their meeting he became a dedicated prompter of the Germanenorden.

"... Sebottendorff became more than a member; Pohl entrusted him with an address list of some one hundred volkisch radicals in Bavaria and the task of contacting each of them in hopes of reviving the Orden's dormant Bavarian Province. He may also have furnished Sebottendorff with one thousand marks, and additional sums later, to establish a newsletter and to circulate propaganda by whatever means.

"Sebottendorff worked tirelessly throughout 1917 from his home at Bad Aibling, corresponding with and meeting many of the people on the list. Eventually he gave lectures to small groups of perspective Orden members. By October, Sebottendorff moved to Munich and took a secretary, Anni Molz, who would become a member of the Thule Society. During ceremonies at the winter solstice, December 21, 1917, the Bavarian Province was officially rededicated. Sebottendorff was made master of the province, the nucleus of what soon became the Thule Society."

(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pg. 69)

The notorious German state of Bavaria proved to be an especially apt location to form a reactionary, far right-wing occult secret society during this era.

"Precedents for volkisch militancy were present in Bavaria well before Sebottendorff began his membership drive. In 1892, the Pan-German League established a branch in Munich. Among its leaders was Julius Lehmann (1864-1935), the proprietor of a prominent medical textbook publishing house called J. F. Lehmanns Verlag. He was 'perhaps the most significant personality of the volkisch movement in Munich' and official publisher of the league's pamphlets and printed material. In the years before World War I, Lehmanns Verlag became 'one of the leading producers of books on racial hygiene in Germany.' Lehmann would become a prominent associate of the Thule Society, and from there would attach himself to the Nazi Party, which viewed him as a distinguished member. During Hitler's unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch on November 1923, it was to Lehmann's villa that another Thule alumnus, Rudolf Hess, brought members of the captive Bavarian cabinet.

"Munich also possessed a chapter of the Orden's public sister organization, the Reichshammerbund, under Franz Dannehl. Dannehl would later join one of Thule's paramilitary groups, the Thule Combat League (Kampfbund), and become master of the Society in the early 1930s. The attorney Dr. Hans Dahn led the local branch of the National Liberal Party (German People's Party), which received nine seats in the Bavarian Diet (Landtag) in the election of January, 12, 1919. Dahn became 'a leader of Thule.'

"One of Sebottendorff's closest associates, the young sculptor Walter Nauhaus (1892-1919), already belong to the Orden at the time of their meeting. Nauhaus was the son of a German missionary, born in the Boer republic of Transvaal and South Africa. Following his father's death, he returned to Germany in 1906 and settled in Berlin. As a teenager, Nauhaus took up woodcarving and rambled through the countryside of Prussia and Thuringia with a volkisch youth group. He was discharged from the army for serious wounds in hand-two-hand combat on the western front during the early months of the war, and became a student of Guido von List's writings. In April 1917 Nauhaus accompanied his art teacher, Dr. Wackerle, from Berlin to Munich, where he soon opened his own studio.

"Sebottendorff became aware of Nauhaus through the list of volkisch activists handed him by Orden chancellor Pohl. Before long the freiherr and the artist collaborated on the Orden's recruiting campaign; Nauhaus sought members of his own generation, while Sebottendorff concentrated on older prospects. Among the earliest recruits who joined the Thule Society by the end of January 1918 were Dr. Georg Gaubatz, attorney for the Bavarian equivalent of the Audubon Society; Schulrat Wilhelm Rohmeder, chairman of the German School Association; and Johannes Hering of the Reichshammerbund. In the spring of 1918 the Society numbered only two hundred member; by the fall the number had swelled to 1,500.

"By the time he met Sebottendorff, Nauhaus had already organized a group called the Thule Society, whose members met to discuss the Edda and Nordic mythology. The group was an informal affair, unregistered with the authorities and numbering among its participants Nauhaus's friend, the graphic designer Walter Deicke, who would be executed along with fellow Thulists at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Sebottendorff only offered, 'A cover name for the society was proposed by Mr. Nauhaus, which was Thule.' Pleased by its Listian connotations, Sebottendorff accepted the suggestion, 'for not only was the name somewhat esoteric sounding, but an informed person knew immediately what it referred to.'

"Thule became a prominent word in the era's popular culture through the exploits of Danish polar explorer Knud Rasmussen, who launched several 'Thule Expeditions' before and during World War I from base camp Thule at the rim of Greenland. As an adventurer from a neutral nation engaged in one of the age's great heroic exploits, arctic exploration, Rasmussen earned great acclaim across Europe and the world. Opponents of the Thule Society not immersed in esoteric Nordic lore may have been lulled into a false security by associating the Society's name with the Thule Expeditions."

(ibid, pgs. 72-74)

members of the fifth Thule Expedition; Knud Rasmussen is on the bottom row, second from the right

At this point a digression is in order to briefly discuss the esoteric significance of Thule to the Volkisch movement and, later, esoteric Nazism. Traditions concerning the mythical Thule date back to the ancient Greeks and were later incorporated into the Atlantis myth.

"... For centuries, mainly on the authority of Plato, Atlantis was believed to have risen in the middle of what is now the Atlantic Ocean. It was Olaus Rudbeck, in the late seventeenth century, who first dissented from this common view, and identified the lost domain with his native Sweden. Rudbeck's assiduous reader Jean-Sylvian Bailly... had a correspondence with Voltaire in which he persuaded himself, if not his correspondent, that Atlantis had indeed been in the far North, probably on the islands of Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Nova Zemlya. When the earth was younger, Bailly says, its interior heat was greater, and life in the Arctic may well have been more tolerable than elsewhere; besides, the earth's movements being less rapid near the poles, the atmosphere was probably less turbid, and so the legend of a perpetual spring may well have been true. Bailly's 'Atlanteans' were thus the same as the 'Hyperboreans' of classical legend, having originated in the 'Garden of the Hesperides' near the Pole, and left evidence of their once happy climate in the fossil flora and fauna of the Arctic Circle.

"The oceanographic explorations of the nineteenth century and the laying of transatlantic telegraph cables from 1858 onwards failed to produce any evidence for a lost continent having existed in the mid-Atlantic Ocean at any time within reasonable human memory. Perhaps this is one reason why those still drawn to Plato's legend lean towards the idea of an Atlantis in the far North. Could it have been the same as the mysterious land of Thule, first charted by Pytheas of Massilia?... At sometime between 340 and 285 BCE, Pytheas made an adventurous voyage to the North, which took him to Scotland and for six days' sailing beyond. He observed that the longest day in northern Britain was nineteen hours, which shows that he must have reached the North Shetland Islands. His additional trip to 'Thule' is less easily mapped: it may have been to Iceland, or else in the opposite direction, to Norway. In any case, Pytheas reported that one day north of Thule, he reached a frozen sea.

"Classical writers tended to disbelieve Pytheas because of their own ignorance of the geography and conditions of the North. Tacitus, for example, could scarcely believe that people would live, from choice, in the rigorous climate of Germany. Yet there was a persistent tradition of a warm and open polar sea, and of a clement and habitable Hyperborean climate with warm summers: a tradition which, as the Arctic expert Vilhjalmur Stefansson says, has always been believed by explorers, and always doubted by stay-at-home experts. Christopher Columbus himself knew of such traditions, and claimed to have sailed three hundred miles north of Iceland, which very few people were willing to credit, the northern zone being deemed impenetrable. For centuries after, the history of Arctic exploration is the chronicle of Columbus' successors in the search for a westward passage to the Orient."

(Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, Joscelyn Godwin, pgs. 47-48)

Thus, the mythological Thule was adopted as an Aryan Atlantis. Volkisch and Pan-German activists would use it to attribute a divine calling to the Germanic peoples, implying that they were the keepers of an ancient tradition derived from a civilization far more advanced than anything in the ancient and modern world alike. This notion would be further elaborated upon in he interwar years by individuals such as Herman Wirth, Alfred Rosenberg (who has long been linked to the Thule Society) and the Baron Julius Evola (who would have an enormous influence on post-WWII esoteric Nazism as well as playing a role in Operation Gladio, as noted before here and here). In the post-WWII years the Aryan Thule would continue to hailed by neo-Nazi activists. But such a topic is far beyond the scope of this series.

The Thule Society would maintain strict secrecy from the time of its early inception, in keeping with the principles of the Germanenorden from which it derived, and would become a force in Munich by 1918.

"The Thule Society did not register with the municipal authorities until March 21, 1919. In keeping with its covert structure as a branch of the Germanenorden, Sebottendorff was not included in the municipal registry as an officer. The railroad official Friedrich Knauff was listed as chairman and Heinrich Meyer, a legal officer with the city of Munich, as deputy chairman. Thule registered a second time that year, after the liberation of Munich, on June 20. Despite the Thule's leading role in the recent counterrevolution against the Reds, the papers filed in June maintained the cover story that it had existed since January 1, 1918 as an 'order for research into German history and the development of the German sensibility.' What is true is that during 1918 and 1919 the Thule Society posed a harmless literary and scholarly circle, while 'in reality it served as camouflage for the Germanenorden.' The disguise was necessary originally because political meetings fell under Germany's wartime state-of-siege regulations. Secrecy was redoubled after war's end for fear of arousing the ire of successive Bavarian leftist regimes. The maintenance of the cover story after a center-right regime took control of Munich with Thule's aid indicates that the Society took seriously its identity as a secret society.

"The Sebottendorffs and their house servants were established by early 1918 in an apartment on Munich's Zweigstrasse, in the city center near the Deutsches Theater and the government district. The apartment became a gathering place for the growing Society. 'As a stone thrown into water causes ripples, so came additions in membership.' Sebottendorff presented himself as a man of mystery, speaking little of his past but able to peer into the future. 'Because he was a first-class psychologist he often succeeded in making predictions which were actually fulfilled.' By the coming of summer, when Thule had outgrown Sebottendorff's home, the freiherr rented a suite of five rooms for the Society in the former quarters of an athletic club. The suite had two separate exits (which would provide escape routes during police raids) and a capacity for three hundred guests. It was located on an upper floor of one of Europe's grand hotels, the posh Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten (Four Seasons) on Maximilianstrasse. Its owners, the brothers Walterspeil, were Germanenorden sympathizers. For reasons of secrecy, members of the Thule Society entered the Four Seasons through a servants' door off Marstallstrasse.

"Thule's quarters were dedicated on August 17, 1918. Orden grandmaster Pohl, along with his associate, G. W. Freese and a certain Mr. Hommel, attended the ceremony. Pohl invested Sebottendorff as Logenkopf (lodge head). On August 18, thirty men and women 'were accepted ceremoniously' into the Society's first grade. Sebottendorff also reported the dedication of a 'Nauhaus Lodge' (August 30), which presumably was the sculptor's study group on Nordic history within the Thule Society. Pohl remained on hand to address initiates on the esoteric significance of the 'sun castles' of the Bavarian town of Bad Aibling, and Johannes Hering spoke of German poetry.

"Each of the Society's rooms in the Four Seasons was decorated with swastikas by the Thule member Arthur Griehl. At ceremonies held every third Saturday, a choir performed under the direction of the Society's voice teacher Gertrude Riemann-Bucherer. Her husband was Studienrat Hans Riemann, an education official who did not join Thule until October 1919 and later became a prominent Nazi agitator in the Saxon city of Mittweida. Accompaniment on harmonium was provided by Hering or Friedrich-Wilhelm Freiherr von Seidlitz. Politics frequently took a backseat to occultism at the meetings. On one occasion, Sebottendorff lectured the Society on the psyche properties of pendulums. During the autumn of 1918, Thulists went on excursions to the 'sun castles' near Bad Aibling and the rustic locations said to have mystical significance and held at least one joint meeting with Julius Lehmann's Pan-German League. Male members of the Thule Society, called 'brothers,' sported a bronze pin of a swastika on a shield crossed by two spears. 'Sisters' wore a plain swastika of gold. All members receive copies of Runen and the Beobachter."

(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pgs. 74-76)

the famed Four Seasons hotel where Thule met during their heyday

Over the years there has been much dispute as to just how serious the Thulists were about esoteric and occult subjects. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, for years the only serious scholar to examine Nazi occultism, did not believe that Thule was serious about such topics.

"... While the founder of the Thule Society, Rudolf von Sebottendorff, was certainly interested in the occult, a detailed diary of its regular meetings from 1918 to 1925 maintained private secretary, Johannes Hering, mentions only two lectures on such topics. One 31 August 1918, Sebottendorff gave a talk on dowsing, of which Hering disapprove, commenting that occultism brought dubious members into the Thule from time to time; and on 23 February 1919 a certain Wilde lectured on occultism. All other lectures and excursions were devoted to such themes as megalithic culture, the original homeland of the Teutons, Germanic myths and poetry, the Thule legend, the Jews and Zionism, and current political issues..."

(Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pgs. 116-117)

the great Goodrick-Clarke

Thus, how one defines the Thule Society's involvement in occultism would seem to hedge on what one considers to be "occult" topics. Certainly subjects such a megaliths and mythology would be considered by many to be metaphysical-centric topics. Further evidence that Thule was more than a political organization, though political and economic concerns were certainly a component, is indicated by the inner study "rings" von Sebottendorff established.

"The inner campaign revolved around a number of study circles, 'the rings of Thule' as Sebottendorff called them. Inspired by lectures delivered at the Society by the economic theorist Gottfried Feder, who scorned international capitalism and the role played in it by the Jews, Sebottendorff 'wanted to win over the workers' and chose Karl Harrer to organize the Political Workers' Circle. From the onset, Feder offered to edify the circle with his talks. Although his ideas were later embedded in the Nazi Party's economic platform, Feder served the Third Reich only in a secondary capacity as undersecretary of state. The sometimes pragmatic Hitler, who sought to use the resources of German industry to wage a war of conquest, was loath to dismantle Germany's capitalist economy.

"Walter Nauhaus led a discussion group concerned with Nordic culture. Anton Daumenlang's circle examined the esoteric implications of heraldry and the racial significance of genealogy. Johannes Hering's ring studied proposals to replace Germany's Roman-derived civil code with the imagined laws of ancient Northern Europe. One of the law ring's members was a young student, Hans Frank. Frank later shaped Nazi jurisprudence in his capacity as president of the Association of German National Socialist Jurists..."

(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pgs. 79-80)

Hans Frank

So yes, some of these study rings seem to have been concerned with some most curious topics. The law ring and its focus on the difference between Roman civil law and the ancient laws of Northern Europe is most interesting. As we shall see in a future installment, leading figures in the Freecorp movement would attempt to put this concept of an ancient Germanic law into action via their revival of the Medieval Vehmic courts that have long fascinated conspiracy theorists.

a depiction of the Medieval Vehm court

As I'm sure regular readers of this blog are aware, the notion of separate legal codes with either Roman or Nordic origins is at the heart of the modern "Sovereign Citizen" movement as well. In that case, proponents claim that the United States is being subjected to commercial/Admiralty law, which derives from the Roman civil law, and that Americans can effectively "opt out" of these laws by claiming their common law rights. The common law was of course the ancient legal code of England, which in turn likely had origins with the German Anglo-Saxons.

While there are fundamental differences between Roman and Nordic legal systems, far right wing groups have long used these differences in the modern era as a rationalization for what amounts to vigilante justice. As we shall see in a future installment, there are remarkable similarities between the "justice" post-WWI German Vehmic courts attempted to impose and the stated aims of William Potter Gale's the Committee of the States. Gale (as noted before here) was the founder the Posse Comitatus, the movement from which the modern day militia and sovereign citizens groups derive, and its quite possible he was aware of these modern day Vehmic courts when he began to proclaiming the common law.

But its time to wrap things up for now. In the next installment we shall began to examine Thule's ties to the Freecorp movement and its role in the suppression of the Bavarian revolution. Stay tuned.