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Guido von List

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Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List (October 5, 1848 – May 17, 1919), was a poet, writer, mountaineer, rower and journalist but most notably was an occult and völkisch author who is seen as one of the most important figures in Germanic revivalism, Germanic mysticism, Runic Revivalism and Runosophy in the late 19th, early 20th Century and continues to be today.

He is the author of The Secret of the Runes (book), widely regarded as the pioneering work of Runology in modern occultism.

Contents

[edit] Biography

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Guido von List was born as "Guido Karl Anton List" in Vienna in the Austrian Empire to Karl Anton List, a prosperous middle class leather goods dealer, and Maria List (née Killian). He grew up in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna. Like the majority of his fellow Austrians at that time, his family was Roman Catholic, and he was christened as an infant in St Peter's Church in Vienna.

In 1862 a visit to the catacombs beneath the Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna) made a deep impression, and List regarded the catacombs as a pagan shrine. As an adult he claimed he had then sworn to build a temple to Wotan when he grew up.

On June 24, 1875, List was camping with four friends near the ruins of Carnuntum. As the 1500th anniversary of the Germanic tribes defeat over this Roman garrison in 375, the evening carried a lot of weight for List. Carnuntum became the title of List's first full-length novel, published in two volumes in 1888. After its success, it was followed by two more books set in tribal Germany; Jung Diethers Heimkehr (Young Diether's Homecoming, 1894) and Pipara (1895). These books led to List being celebrated by the pan-German movement. Around the turn of the century, he continued with several plays.

Between 1903 and 1907, Guido began using the noble title von 1 on occasion, before finally settling on it permanently in 1907. As this was only permitted for members of the aristocracy, he was put before an official enquiry. Here he produced evidence supporting his claim, which was accepted by the officials heading the inquiry. Documentation of List's alleged noble descent, if any, has since been lost.

During the final stages of World War I the naval blockade of the Central Powers created food shortages in Vienna. This caused poor health in the now 70 year old von List. In the spring of 1919 he set off to recuperate in Brandenburg, Germany, but his health deteriorated quickly, and he died of pneumonia in Berlin on May 17. He was cremated in Leipzig and his urn then buried in Vienna Central Cemetery, Zentralfriedhof, on the 8th of October 1919 in the gravesite KNLH 413 - Vienna's largest and most famous cemetery (including the graves of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss.) in Vienna's 11th district of Simmering. Philipp Stauff wrote an obituary which appeared in the Münchener Beobachter.

[edit] Ideology

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List was strongly influenced by the Theosophical thought of Madame Blavatsky, which he blended with his own Wotanist religion and Germanic Paganism to allegedly develop the direct precursor of occult Nazism.

Guido von List called his doctrine “Armanism” (after the "Armanen," supposedly the heirs of the sun-king, a body of priest-kings in the ancient Ario-Germanic nation). Armanism was concerned with the esoteric doctrines of the gnosis (distinct from the exoteric doctrine intended for the lower social classes, Wotanism).

According to The History Channel's "Decoding the Past" episode "The Nazi Prophecies," Guido von List, and not Lanz von Liebenfels, was the founder of Ariosophy. Ariosophy has been termed a theoretical precursor of the Nazi genocide.

The foremost expert on Guido von List in the English-speaking world, Stephen E. Flowers, refuses to connect that the theories of List and other early 20th century rune magicians led directly to the excesses of Auschwitz. One German academic, Stephanie von Schnurbein, in commenting on Flower's introduction to 'The Secret of the Runes', in Religion als Kulturkritik [(Winter, 1992), p. 136], states "Dabei erwähnt [Flowers] an keiner Stelle, daß List und die anderen Ariosophen Vordenker des Rassenwahns des Nationalsozialismus waren..." (In this work [Flowers] nowhere mentions that List and the other Ariosophists were intellectual predecessors of the racial madness of National Socialism...").

Although it is now considered conventional wisdom, although Flowers states that this is with “with little to no actual critical investigation,” that the ideas of List, Lanz, and others were directly implemented in the Nazi genocide, it has been argued that because the very term "Ariosophy" was analogous to its predecessor, "Theosophy," that the racial ideas in Ariosophy can be traced to Theosophy. Flowers states that ‘’ “no one has ever shown that racial policies of the NSDAP are based on so-called "Ariosophical" ideas.” ‘’

It has further been stated that even the writing of the most "extreme" of the Ariosophists, Lanz von Liebenfels (cited several times by List in ‘’ ‘The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Esoteric and Exoteric)’ ‘’, cannot be definitively linked to the applied anti-Semitism of the Nazis. Apologists for Lanz state that Lanz did not write unfavorably about the Jewish race, that he cooperated with Jewish scholars in many of his publications, and while it can be argued that individual Nazis became familiar with the mystical racism of Theosophy through the works of List and Lanz, it does not necessarily follow that List and Lanz were culpable in the crimes of the Nazis.

Defenders of List and Lanz claim that the Anti-Semitism that drove Nazi policies was much older and more deeply rooted among the peoples of central Europe than can be credited to the "fringe works" of mystics and rune magicians. It has been alleged, for example, that the roots of Nazi Anti-Semitism can be traced to the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Churches as it was the Roman Catholic Church Fathers who first invented ideas about the Jews being an inferior "race," and who drove Anti-Semitic policies right up to and all during the Second World War. (see David Kertzer, Popes Against the Jews [Knopf, 2001].

Image:Kand02.jpg List claimed that the Hermionen mentioned in Tacitus was a Latinized version of the German Armanen, and named his religion the Armanenschaft, which he claimed to be the original religion of the Germanic tribes. His conception of that religion was a form of sun worship, with its priest kings (similar to the Icelandic Godi) as legendary rulers of ancient Germany.

List claimed that the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Austria-Hungary constituted a continuing occupation of the Germanic tribes by the Roman empire, albeit now in a religious form, and a continuing persecution of the ancient religion of the Germanic peoples and Celts.

This conception bears strong resemblance to many other 19th-century romanticised ideas of ancient polytheistic religions in Europe; a comparatively similar text in the thematic elements and overall textual bias is the famous Oera Linda forgery from the Lowlands region of western Europe.

He also believed in magical powers of the old runes. In 1891 he claimed that heraldry was based on the magic of the runes. In April 1903, he had sent an article concerning the alleged Aryan proto-language to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Its highlight was a mystical and occult interpretation of the Runic alphabet. Although the article was rejected by the academy, the article would later be expanded by List and become the basis for his entire ideology.

Among his ideological followers was Lanz von Liebenfels. List's racial religious beliefs would strongly influence Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS in Nazi Germany. List's concept of renouncing Christianity, a Semitic religion intertwined with Judaism, and returning to the pagan religions of the ancient Europeans would in turn influence Neo-Nazism and White Nationalism strongly. Germanic paganism has, as a result, been linked to Nazism since the early twentieth century.

[edit] Runic revivalism

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The row of 18 so-called "Armanen Runes", also known as the "Armanen Futharkh" came to List while in an 11 month state of temporary blindness after a cataract operation on both eyes in 1902. This vision in 1902 allegedly opened what List referred to as his "inner eye", via which he claimed the "Secret of the Runes" was revealed to him. List stated that his Armanen Futharkh were encrypted in the Hávamál (Poetic Edda), specifically in stanzas 138 to 165, with stanzas 146 through 164 reported as being the 'song' of the 18 runes. It has been said this claim has no historical basis.

The Armanen runes are still used today by some Ásatrú adherents who consider the Armanen runes to have some religious and/or divinatory value.

[edit] Futharkh spelling

List noted in his book, The Secret of the Runes, that the "runic futharkh (= runic ABC) consisted of sixteen symbols in ancient times.".

As a side note to this, in the English translation of the work, Stephen Flowers notes that "(the designation futharkh is based on the first seven runes it is for this reason that the proper name is not futhark -- as it is generally and incorrectly written -- but futharkh, with the h at the end; for more about the basis of this, see the Guido von List Library number 6, The primal language of the Aryan Germanic people and their mystery language)".

[edit] Influence

Image:RunicArmanenFutharkCirclecopyrightVictorOrdellLKasen.JPG A look at the signatories 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 the man, his ideology and his influence had widespread and significant support, including public figures in Austria and Germany. Among some 50 signatories which endorsed the foundation of the List Society were the industrialist Friedrich Wanniek (president of the "Verein Deutsches Haus" at Brno 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 Wanniek, 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), Baron Wilhelm von Pickl-Scharfenstein, 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 Employee's Association) and Franz Winterstein (committee member of the "German Social Party" (DSP) at Kassel). Among these men included occultists such as Hugo Goring (editor of theosophical literature at Weimar), Harald Arjuna Gravell van Jostenoode (theosophical author at Heidelberg), Max Seling (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 after the official founding of the Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft on March 2, 1908. From 1908 through to 1912, new members included the deputy Beranek (a co-founder of the "Bund der Germanen" in 1894), Rudolf Berger (committee member of the "German Nationalist Workers League" in Vienna), Hermann Brass (chairman of the defence League of Germans in North Moravia [est. 1886]), Dankwart Gerlach (an ardent supporter of nationalist and romantic Youth Movements), Carl Friedrich Glasenapp (biographer of Richard Wagner), Colonel Karl Hellwig (volkish organiser in Kassel), Bernard Koerner (the heraldic expert and populariser of middle-class genealogy), Josef Ludwig Reimer (an author in Vienna), Philipp Stauff (a Berlin journalist), Kark 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 of Zürich).

As the list demonstrates, the growth of nationalism and Romanticism within Germany during the late 19th-early 20th century provided a receptive audience for List's ideas.

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.

A list of the signatories is printed in GLB (Guido-List-Bücherei) 3 (1908), [p.197f]. GLB is a series of "Ario-Germanic research reports" which were based upon his occult interpretations of ancient national Germanic culture.

[edit] Quotes

  • "One must flee those places where life throbs and seek out lonely spots untouched by human hand in order to lift the magic veil of nature" - Guido von List, 'Deutsch Mythologische Landschaftsbilder', 1st volume, P. 125.
  • "Now, because men of our contemporary age are caught up in the ascetic view of a life-denying religious system, but in spite of this cannot deny the primal laws of nature, a distorted morality had to be developed, which spreads hypocritical appearances over hidden actions. This has brought to a head all those outward forms of modern life, whose vacuousness and corruption are now beginning to disgust us." - Guido von list, 'Das Geheimnis der Runen'
  • "A star is extinguished, another will begin to shine - thus it is written in the Book of Nature" - Guido von list, 'Der Ubesiegbare'

[edit] Written works

For more information on the works of Guido von List see the section entitled "The Works of Guido von List" at the Guido von Lost website

  • Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes (book)) (1908)
  • Der Unbesiegbare
  • Gotterdammerung (1893)
  • Von der Wuotanspriesterschaft" (1893)
  • Die deutsche Mythologie im Rahmen eines Kalenderjahres" (1894)
  • "Der deutsche Zauberglaube in Bauwesen" (1895)
  • Mephistopheles" (1895)
  • Carnuntum )
  • Jung Diethers Heimkehr (1894)
  • Der Wala Erweckung (1894)
  • Walkurenweihe (1895)
  • Pipara: Die Germanin im Casarenpurur (Pipara: the Germanic Woman in the purple of the Caesars) (1895)
  • Konig Vannius (1899)
  • Sommer-Sonnwend-Feuerzauber (1901)
  • Das Goldstuck (1903)
  • Kunstmarchen anthology: Alraunenmaren: Kultur-historische Novellen un Dichtungen aus germanischer Vorzeit (Mandrake-Tales: Cultural-historical Novellas and Poetry from Germanic Prehistory). (1903)
  • Eine Zauernacht
  • Guido-von-List-Bucherei (GvLB) (A Series of works)
  • Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen (The Armanism of the Aryo-Germanic People; GvLB nos. 2a-2b, 1908 and 1911) - 2 volumes
  • Die Rita der Ario-Germanen (The Rita of the Aryo-Germanic People, GvLB no. 3, 1908)
  • Dir Namen der Volkerstamme Germaniens und deren Deutung (The Names of the Tribes of the People of Germania and their Interpretation; GvLB no. 4, 1909)
  • Die Religion der Ario-Germanen in ihrer Esoterik und Exoterik (The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic People in its Esoteric and Exoteric Aspects; 1909 or 1910)
  • Die Bilderschrift der Ario-Germanen: Ario-Germanische Hierogyphik (The Pictographic Script of the Aryo-Germanic People: Aryo-Germanic Hieroglyphics; GvLB no. 5, 1910)
  • Die Unbergang vom Wuotanismus zum Christentum (The Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity; 1911)
  • Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen in ihre Mysteriensprache (The Primal Language of the Aryo-Germanic People and their Mystery Language; GvLB no. 6, 1914)
  • Armanismus und Kabbala.

[edit] TV documentaries

The life of von List has featured in many TV documentaries on his life, occultic Germanic revivalism and the occult roots of Nazism. Some of these are as follows:

[edit] Documentary

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Balzli, Johannes - ‘Guido v. List - Der Wiederentdecker uralter arischer Weisheit (Leizig and Vienna, 1917)’
  • Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4.

[edit] Biographical

The following books have detailed accounts of List' life:

[edit] External links

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