Lanz von Liebenfels

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Adolf Josef Lanz (aka Jörg Lanz), who called himself Lanz von Liebenfels (July 19 1874 - April 22, 1954) was a former monk and the founder of the right-wing magazine Ostara, in which he published anti-semitic and folkish theories.

1 Early life
2 Ideology
3 Work with Theozoology
4 Interactions with Aryan societies
5 Publications
6 See also
7 Further reading

[edit] Early life

He was born on July 19, 1874 in the Penzing district of Vienna in what was then Austria-Hungary, as the son of schoolmaster Johann Lanz and his wife Katharina, née Hoffenreich. His parents were middle class, and his fathers ancestors had been burghers in Vienna since the early 18th century.

Lanz became a monk in the Cistercian order in 1893, assuming the name Georg and living in the Heiligenkreuz monastery. In 1894, he claimed to have been "enlightened" after finding the tombstone of a knight templar, and began developing his theories of "blue-blond aryanism" and "lower races". He left the monastery in 1899; although Lanz claimed that this was due to "growing nervousness", the official documents recorded "carnal love" as the reason, something that may have contributed to his later anti-feminism.

[edit] Ideology

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 and Lanz von Liebenfels 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].

[edit] Work with Theozoology

In 1904, he published his book "Theozoologie" ("theozoology") in which he advocated sterilization of the sick and the "lower races" as well as forced labour for "castrated chandals", and glorified the "aryan race" as "Gottmenschen" ("god men"). Lanz justified his neognostic racial ideology by attempting to give it a biblical foundation; according to him, Eve, which he described as initially being divine, involved herself with a demon and gave birth to the "lower races" in the process. Furthermore, he claimed that this led to blonde women being attracted primarily to "dark men", something that only could be stopped by "racial demixing" so that the "aryan-christian master humans" could "once again rule the dark-skinned beastmen" and ultimately achieve "divinity". A copy of this book was sent to Swedish poet August Strindberg, from who Lanz received an enthusiastic reply in which he was described as a "prophetic voice".

One year later, in 1905, he founded the magazine "Ostara, Briefbücherei der Blonden und Mannesrechtler", of which he became the sole author and editor in 1908. Lanz himself claimed to have up to 100,000 subscribers, but it is generally agreed on that this figure is grossly exaggerated. Readers of this publication included Adolf Hitler and Dietrich Eckart, among others. Lanz claimed he was once visited by the young Hitler, whom he supplied with two missing issues of the magazine.

As a student of Guido von List, Lanz further expanded his theories; other influences included Otto Weininger, of whom Lanz was a fervent follower.

[edit] Interactions with Aryan societies

Lanz also founded the "Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft" ("Guido von List society") in 1905 and the "Ordo novi templi" ("Order of the New Templars") in 1907, which were supposed to "further the racial self-confidence by doing pedigree and racial research, beauty contests and the founding of racist future sites in underdeveloped parts of the Earth" ("das Rassebewusstsein durch Stammbaum- und Rassekundeforschung, Schönheitswettbewerbe und die Gründung rassistischer Zukunftsstätten in unterentwickelten Teilen der Erde zu fördern") and for which he bought the Werfenstein castle ruins in Austria. Neither organization really managed to attract a large member base, though; it is estimated that the order had around 300 members, the most prominent of which was the poet Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando. Lanz' claim that the organization was already founded prior to 1900 and that he met with August Strindberg in 1896 and managed to convince him to join the order have been shown to be fabricated.

After Hitler's rise to prominence in the 1920s, Lanz tried to be recognized as one of the ideological precursors to Adolf Hitler. After Austria had been annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, Lanz hoped for Hitler's patronage, but Hitler may have felt embarrassed by this early connection. Hence, Lanz was banned from publishing his writings. Most notably copies of Ostara were removed from circulation. After the war, Lanz accused Hitler of having not only stolen but corrupted his idea and also of being of "inferior racial stock". An alternative view is that Hitler was simply embarrassed by Liebenfels himself; there is no strong evidence that Hitler had ever had more than a casual interest in Liebenfels' work, nor with the occult movement as a whole, though the association has been repeatedly made by critics and occultists during and after the Third Reich.

[edit] Publications

In his publications, Lanz mixed folkish and anti-semitic ideas with aryanism, racism and esotericism. The following is a partial list of Lanz's publications:

Katholizismus wider Jesuitismus ("Catholicism versus Jesuitism"), Frankfurt, 1903
Anthropozoon biblicum, in Vjschr. für Bibelkunde 1, 1903/1904
Zur Theologie der gotischen Bibel ("Regarding the Theology of the Gothic Bible") in Vjschr. für Bibelkunde 1, 1903/1904
Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-Äfflingen und dem Götter-Elektron ("Theozoology or the account of the Sodom apelings and the God-electron"), Vienna, (1905)
Das Breve "Dominus ac redemptor noster", Frankfurt, 1905
Der Taxilschwindel. Ein welthistorischer Ulk, Frankfurt, 1905
Ostara (magazine), 89 issues, Rodaun and Mödling, 1905-1917 (38 issues were republished in Vienna between 1926 and 1931)
Kraus und das Rassenproblem ("Kraus and the race problem"), in Der Brenner 4, 1913/1914
Weltende und Weltwende, ("World's End and World's Turn"), Lorch, 1923
Grundriss der ariosophischen Geheimlehre ("Outline of the Aryosophic Secret Teachings"), Oestrich, 1925
Der Weltkrieg als Rassenkampf der Dunklen gegen die Blonden ("The World War as a Race Fight Between the Dark and the Blondes"), Vienna, 1927
Bibliomystikon oder die Geheimbibel der Eingeweihten ("Bibliomystikon or the secret bible of the initiated"), 10 volumes, Pforzheim and elsewhere, 1929 - 1934
Praktisch-empirisches Handbuch der ariosophischen Astrologie ("Practical-empirical Handbook of Aryosophic Astrology"), Düsseldorf, 1926 - 1934

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

For a full length relatively unbiased scholarly English biography of Lanz see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarkes The Occult Roots of Nazism.
Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, p. 169f, 175f
Ekkehard Hieronimus: Lanz von Liebenfels. Eine Biographie, Toppenstedt, 1991
Anton Maegerle, Peter Paul Heller: Thule. Vom völkischen Okkultismus bis zur Neuen Rechten, Stuttgart, 1995.
W. Daim: Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab, 1995