The Science of the Swastika

389 Pages·2008·5.28 MB·English

by  Bernard Mees

The Science of The SwaSTika

The Science of
The SwaSTika
Bernard Mees
central european University Press
Budapest new York
©2008 by Bernard Mees

Published in 2008 by
Central european university press
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iSBn 978-963-9776-18-0 cloth
library of Congress Cataloging-in-publiCation Data
Mees, Bernard (Bernard Thomas)
The science of the swastika / Bernard Mees.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-9639776180 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Swastikas. 2. Symbolism (Psychology) 3. national socialism. 4. nationalism—
Germany—history—20th century. i. Title.
DD256.5.M3975 2008
929.9—dc22
2008025537
Printed in hungary by
akaprint nyomda
Table of contents
Preface ........................................ vii
inTroDUcTion:
“issues concerning the Teutons” ....................... 1
chaPTer 1:
The Tradition of Völkisch Germanism ................... 11
chaPTer 2:
history and intuition ................................ 33
chaPTer 3:
The origins of ideographic Studies ..................... 53
chaPTer 4:
Germanic resurgence ............................... 69
chaPTer 5:
national Socialism and antiquity ....................... 111
chaPTer 6:
intellectual Prehistory ............................... 135
chaPTer 7:
academic responses ................................ 167
chaPTer 8:
The expansion of the ahnenerbe ....................... 189
chaPTer 9:
into the academy .................................. 217
chaPTer 10:
epilogue, aftermath ................................ 259
conclUSion:
The Secret Garden ................................. 271
abbreviations ..................................... 281
Picture credits .................................... 283
Bibliography ...................................... 285
index ............................................ 349
Preface
hidden away in the stacks of many western libraries are a range of works
printed in German blackletter: on Vikings, dead languages, skull shapes
and runes. There was a time when such writings were considered es-
sential additions to any proper liberal arts collection. They represent the
remnant of a tradition that is largely now lost, its last memory quickly
receding. indeed last year the University of Melbourne abolished the
teaching of Viking Studies, bringing to a close a teaching tradition of
some 50 fruitful years—the university’s former associations with eu-
genics, Sanskrit and Gothic are even longer forgotten. This book is an
investigation into that old world of philological and historical study, of
old literatures, old symbols, pots and bones. once these things were
especially popular in universities other than just in central europe, and
they thus represent a key, albeit murky chapter in the history of western
ideas.
in writing this book i used knowledge that i gained from my Uni-
versity of Melbourne doctoral dissertation on Sinnbildforschung, submit-
ted in 2001. i owe considerable gratitude for the help and guidance of
my doctoral supervisor Steven r. welch and his associate charles Zika.
other teachers and colleagues at the University who had considerable
influence on the current work include Tim Mehigan, ronald T. ridley,
Mindy Macleod, neile a. kirk and John S. Martin—and i should also
acknowledge Bernard Muir, w. ann Trindade and the late ian rob-
ertson for their valuable support, encouragement and advice over the
course of the last ten years or so. The manuscript was also improved
by the input of three referees who were gracious enough to pass useful
comment on it: Malachi h. hacohen, Suzanne l. Marchand and Uwe
Puschner. research for the work was undertaken in Germany, england,
the United States and australia, and i must also acknowledge here the
viii The Science of the Swastika
financial support of the Diebold foundation as well as those who found
the time to help me with many and varied matters along the way, partic-
ularly reinhold Bollmus, Jutta and klaus Burghard, Thomas l. Mar-
key, Gerd Simon and Maria wilkinson.
i have recently begun teaching a course in another part of intel-
lectual history—at rMiT University, a place that seems very far away
from the world of ancient sun symbols and spears investigated in this
work. Yet the deeper theoretical questions and understandings i devel-
oped while writing this study seem to me still of particular relevance
to a proper understanding of the key intellectual currents of the previ-
ous century. The broader western intellectual tradition is notoriously
difficult to navigate where the holocaust and the years of nazi rule in
central europe are concerned. But this is what makes the area so sharp,
so fraught and often so crucial too, and the largely forgotten blacklet-
ter culture that informed so much of the intellectual debate of the time
such an important part of the twentieth-century history of ideas.
april 2008 Bernard Mees
inTroDUcTion:
“issues concerning the Teutons”
in intellectual history the cranks
and fools are important too
Martin Green
it is a cool Viennese evening. The trees of the ringstraße are all green
buds and white flowers, and the setting sun now daubs them in pinks
and lilacs too. a young doctoral student makes his way to the Universi-
ty—he has been advised to leave behind the heuriger this evening and
take instead the opportunity to experience a literary event, one not to
be missed. it is spring 1959 and the young australian has been invited
to a celebration of the latest work of the Viennese master of his field.
The student converses in the hall a while with a north German
colleague. The Viennese welcome someone from the new world, but
Prussians remain a plague. a hush eventually settles among the collec-
tion of students, instructors and professors: the old Germanic master
has arrived.
The event is managed like an opera; it begins with a sudden hush
and an expectant silence. The work being launched is on arminius, the
hero who saved ancient Germany from enslavement by the romans.
The old master argues to an enraptured audience that the character
Siegfried, the hero of the Song of the Nibelungs, is a symbolic refigur-
ing, 1,000 years later, of the ancient savior of Germany. it is part of the
master’s thesis that German “cultural morphologies”—the symbolic
expressions discernable in national literature—are essentially timeless.1
The atmosphere in the auditorium is electric. it is so charged, the
young man feels he can almost touch it. But suddenly he realizes that
this is not a literary occasion; it is a religious event. Billy Graham is
not here. instead, as thunderous applause breaks out, the young man
realizes he is in a place of the ancestors. he has joined the antiquarian
worshippers at the Semnonian grove.
To a new scene. now it is autumn, 1982, and a group of pro-
fessors have retired to a watering hole in a small resort town in west