12-22-2005, 11:02 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Review of:
Hale, Christopher. _Himmler's Crusade - The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race_. Wiley, 2003.
See also:
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas._The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology : The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935_NYU Press, 1994.
...These two books in various ways suggest reflecting on the mesclun of ideas from the ancient Medterranean world that had thoroughly permeated Europe, in these examples, Germany and Austria. From one amazon.com review:
"What's particularly interesting about Goodrick-Clarke's work is he compares the Ariosophists List and Lanz to the ancient dualist philosophies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism in their extreme division of reality into two eternally conflicting forces of good (Aryans) and evil (Jews).
...The political motivation for the rise of occultism in Germany and Austria was the situation of the Austro -Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg monarchy. Prussia had permanently excluded Austria from a role in a united German state by Bismark's military victories before 1871. However the Austrian Empire encompassed not only Hungary but also many nationalities of Slavic, non-German descent, in addition to Jewish minorities. The status of Germans as a whole in Austria was tenuous and the conservative elements of the populace were more inclined to fall for unorthodox metaphysical beliefs that would allow them to fight against the tides of political liberalism in the Empire. Hitler, it is to be noted, was not actually born in "Germany" proper but in the Austro-Hungarian Empire near the German border. Goodrick-Clarke takes care to note that Hitler despised the Hapsburg monarchy, while his sectarian occultist predecessors admired it as a bastion of German mystical/mythica l tradition. In Vienna, during the late 1800s and early 1900s before World War I, two radical German nationalists, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz (who self-styled himself with the aristocratic title of von Liebenfels) researched and published a considerable amount of literature dealing with Germany's so-called repressed history. List believed that ancient, pagan, pre-Christian Germany was a center of culture kept alive by a secret order of initiates, the Armanenschaft, who established a decentralized aristocratic hierarchy and kept the German race pure through eugenic practices..."
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>In the nationalistic genesis of these kinds of reinvented traditions one can see parallels with the Hindutva movement: it's "repressed history", its high priests, the Brahmins; its allegedly super ancient indigenous origins; its motif of maintaining "racial purity" (Muslims get out), etc.</span>
Joanna Kirkpatrick<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Joanna Kirkpatrick considers herself scholar on Hindus.
Hale, Christopher. _Himmler's Crusade - The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race_. Wiley, 2003.
See also:
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas._The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology : The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935_NYU Press, 1994.
...These two books in various ways suggest reflecting on the mesclun of ideas from the ancient Medterranean world that had thoroughly permeated Europe, in these examples, Germany and Austria. From one amazon.com review:
"What's particularly interesting about Goodrick-Clarke's work is he compares the Ariosophists List and Lanz to the ancient dualist philosophies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism in their extreme division of reality into two eternally conflicting forces of good (Aryans) and evil (Jews).
...The political motivation for the rise of occultism in Germany and Austria was the situation of the Austro -Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg monarchy. Prussia had permanently excluded Austria from a role in a united German state by Bismark's military victories before 1871. However the Austrian Empire encompassed not only Hungary but also many nationalities of Slavic, non-German descent, in addition to Jewish minorities. The status of Germans as a whole in Austria was tenuous and the conservative elements of the populace were more inclined to fall for unorthodox metaphysical beliefs that would allow them to fight against the tides of political liberalism in the Empire. Hitler, it is to be noted, was not actually born in "Germany" proper but in the Austro-Hungarian Empire near the German border. Goodrick-Clarke takes care to note that Hitler despised the Hapsburg monarchy, while his sectarian occultist predecessors admired it as a bastion of German mystical/mythica l tradition. In Vienna, during the late 1800s and early 1900s before World War I, two radical German nationalists, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz (who self-styled himself with the aristocratic title of von Liebenfels) researched and published a considerable amount of literature dealing with Germany's so-called repressed history. List believed that ancient, pagan, pre-Christian Germany was a center of culture kept alive by a secret order of initiates, the Armanenschaft, who established a decentralized aristocratic hierarchy and kept the German race pure through eugenic practices..."
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>In the nationalistic genesis of these kinds of reinvented traditions one can see parallels with the Hindutva movement: it's "repressed history", its high priests, the Brahmins; its allegedly super ancient indigenous origins; its motif of maintaining "racial purity" (Muslims get out), etc.</span>
Joanna Kirkpatrick<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Joanna Kirkpatrick considers herself scholar on Hindus.