Guido von List Society
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The Guido von List Society (Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft), was an occult völkisch movement in honour of the teachings of Guido von List. It published his works under the series Guido-List-Bücherei. It was founded primarily by the Wannieck family, (see Friedrich Wannieck) in 1908. It was also supported by many leading figures in Austrian and German politics, publishing, and occultism.
After the Nazis had come to power, they banned Liebenfeld's writings, and some members of Guido von List's Armanenschaft were even deported to Nazi concentration camps (see also Persecution of Heathens).
However, Germanic Paganism was still practiced by Nazis. The main reason for the persecution of the Armanenschaft was Himmler's personal occultist, Wiligut. Wiligut identified Irminism as the true ancestral religion, claiming that Guido von Lists Wotanism and runic row was a schismatic false religion.
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[edit] Founding and Influence
A look at the signatories [1] of the first announcement concerning support for a Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft (Guido von List Society), circa 1905, reveals that List had a following of some very prestigious people and shows that List, his ideology and his influence had widespread and significant support, including that amongst public figures in Austria and Germany. Among some 50 signatories which endorsed the foundation of the List Society (which had an official founding ceremony on March 2nd 1908) were the industrialist Friedrich Wannieck (president of the organisation and publishing house Verein "Deutsche Haus" ("German House" Association) [1] [2] in Brünn, and chairman of the "Prague Iron Company" and the "First Brno Engineering Company" - major producers of capital goods in the Habsburg empire) and his son Friedrich Oskar Wannieck, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, Karl Lueger (mayor of Vienna), Ludwig von Bernuth (health organisation chairman), Ferdinand Khull (Committee member of the German Language Club), Adolf Harpf (editor of Marburger Zeitung), Hermann Pfister-Schwaighusen (lecturer in linguistics at Darmstadt University), Wilhelm von Pickl-Scharfenstein (Baron von Witkenberg), Amand Freiherr von Schweiger-Lerchenfeld (editor of the popular magazine "Stein der Weisen" and a distinguished army officer), Aurelius Polzer (newspaper editor at Horn and Graz), Ernst Wachler (author and founder of an open-air Germanic theatre in the Harz Mountains), Wilhelm Rohmeder (educator at Munich), Arthur Schulz (editor of a Berlin periodical for educational reform), Friedrich Wiegerhaus (chairman of the Elberfeld branch of the powerful "Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband" DVH (German Nationalist Commercial Employees' Association) and Franz Winterstein (committee member of the "German Social Party" DSP at Kassel).
Among these men included occultists such as Hugo Göring (editor of theosophical literature at Weimar), Harald Arjuna Grävell van Jostenoode (theosophical author at Heidelberg), Max Seiling (an esoteric pamphleteer and popular philosopher in Munich), and Paul Zillmann (editor of the Metaphysische Rundschau and master of an occult lodge in Berlin)
List's influence continued to grow and attract distinctive members after the official founding of the society in 1908 . From 1908 through to 1912, new members included the deputy Beranek (co-founder of the "Bund der Germanen" in 1894), Rudolf Berger (a committee member of the "German Nationalist Workers' League" in Vienna), Hermann Brass (chairman of the defensive League of Germans in North Moravia [est. 1886]), Dankwart Gerlach (an ardent supporter of the romantic Youth Movement), Carl Friedrich Glasenapp (biographer of Richard Wagner), Colonel Karl August Hellwig (an organiser in Kassel), Bernard Koerner (an heraldic expert and populariser of middle-class genealogy ), Josef Ludwig Reimer (Viennese author), Philipp Stauff (a Berlin journalist), Karl Herzog (DHV Manheim branch chairman), Franz Hartmann (a leading German theosophist), Arthur Weber (a theosophical editor), Karl Hilm (occult novelist), General Blasius von Schemua, the collective membership of the "Vienna Theosophical Society" and Karl Heise (a leading figure in the vegetarian and mystical Mazdaznan cult at Zürich).
As the list demonstrates, the growth of nationalism within Germany during the late 19th to early 20th century, culminating in the Third Reich of Nazi Germany, provided an ideal audience of people who were already predisposed to accept List's ideas and unidentifiable personal gnosis of the Armanen way.
The register shows that List's ideas were acceptable to many intelligent persons drawn from the upper and middle classes of Austria and Germany. So impressed were they that these men were prepared to contribute ten crowns as an annual society subscription. The main part of the Society's assets derived from the Wannieck family, which put up more than three thousand crowns at the Society's inauguration. [2]
The societies inner circle were called the High Armanen Order or Hoher Armanen Orden.
[edit] Modern organisation
The Guido-von-List-Society (originally founded 1908)) was renewed through contacts, in 1967, between Adolf Schleipfer and the still living last president of the society, Hanns Bierbach.
In 1976 Adolf and his then wife, Sigrun Schleipfer (nee Hammerbacher), now referring to herself as "Sigrun Freifrau von Schlichting" or "Sigrun von Schlichting") (daughter of Völkisch writer Dr. Hans Wilhelm Hammerbacher) founded the Armanen-Orden.
Adolf revived this organisation in 1967 after find some of List's works in an antique bookstore in the mid-sixties, and was inspired to found the Armanist magazine, Irminsul (magazine) in hop[es of attracting suitable people for a revived Listian order.
Also in 1967 Adolf was appointed the new president and continued to publish Irminsul (magazine) as the "Voice of the Guido von List Society."
They have also been, for many years, reprinting List's works.
[edit] References
- ^ A list of the signatories is printed in GLB (Guido-List-Bücherei) 3 (1908), [p.197f]. GvLB is a series (eight in total beginning in 1908) of "Ario-Germanic research reports" which were based upon his occult interpretations of ancient national Germanic culture. Six of these volumes were published by the Guido von list Society itself. The two exceptions were first published by Adolf Burdeke in Switzerland and Leipzig.
- ^ Membership lists are printed in GLB 2 (1908), pp. 71-4 and GLB 5 (1910), pp. 384-9. The articles of the List society are printed in GLB 1, second edition (1923), pp. 68-78. Karl Herzog joined the society circa 1912. Karl Herzog to Philipp Stauff, letter dated February 3rd 1912, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, NS26/512a
[edit] References
- Balzli, Johannes - ‘Guido v. List - Der Wiederentdecker uralter arischer Weisheit (Leizig and Vienna, 1917)’
- Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology. Gardners Books. ISBN 1-86064-973-4. ; originally published as Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (1992). The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology; The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3060-4.
- Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4.
- Flowers Ph.D., Stephen (aka Edred Thorsson) (1988). The Secret of the Runes. Destiny Books. ISBN 0-89281-207-9.
