On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month of the fifteenth year of the Genroku period, that is to say, on February 2, 1703, a remarkable procession passed through the winter streets of Yedo, now called Tokyo, in the early morning. Forty-seven Samurai, clad in the strangest armor, smeared with dirt and carrying bloodstained weapons in their hands, brought a severed head to the Sengakuji Temple in the suburb of Takanawa.

Forty-seven men had avenged the death of their master upon the man whom they held responsible, and now proceeded to the temple to lay the head of their enemy upon the grave of their master, Asano Takumi no Kami Naganori, as an offering and a sign of a duty fulfilled.

Forty-seven men, old men and youths, married and unmarried, had fulfilled this duty in the knowledge that by this deed they had condemned themselves to death, and so they all died, all forty-seven of them, shortly thereafter in the manner in which a Samurai must die, by thrusting the sword into their own entrails.

This event made an enormous impression upon Yedo at the time. Indeed, the fame of these men spread throughout Japan and became a symbol of the fulfillment of duty and heroism, not merely in their own time, but ever since. Even today, the Japanese bring their children to the burial place of these men, tell them the story of their suffering and struggle, their victory and their death, and thereby make them shining examples of loyalty and devotion to that which they regarded as their sacred duty.

It is not necessary here to recount the entire history of their deed and the events that preceded it. The reason why we cite this event from a foreign land and from a distant age is to show that the ideals we wish to uphold, loyalty and honor, also belong to the virtues of a people conscious of itself in other lands.

It is often good to cite an example from another country, from an entirely different culture, because the deeds described therein have not yet lost their shine for us through an excessively scientific investigation that gnaws away at everything we, as a people and as human beings, find beautiful, great, and noble. It is as though history can never leave our heroes in peace, or as though the natural formation of a myth is often made difficult for us by scientific treatment. Yet only that which lives in the soul of the people and is experienced therein as truth is valuable to us.

That the history of the Forty-Seven Ronin possesses such a value is surely evident from the ever-fresh flowers that adorn their graves, from the stream of pilgrims who, now more than two hundred years later, still visit the graves and make their profound bows, not merely before the earthly remains buried here, but before the spirit that filled these men, in the truest sense of the word, during their lives, and which they gave expression to through their deed and through their death.

What was this spirit? To explain it, we must go back far into the Middle Ages of the Japanese Empire, to an age in which the whole country seethed and boiled with the unceasing wars between the great and small feudal lords, to an age in which the honor and deeds of the warrior, but also humanity and charity, honor and loyalty, obedience and the fulfillment of duty, filled the souls of the Men and Women of this realm.

It was in this age that an estate was born, the estate of the Samurai, the caste of warriors, who recognized as their ideal a life governed by the unwritten laws of bushido, a concept which we might best translate as chivalry. Chivalry, this word, likewise denotes among us the virtues of a warrior caste, which, besides courage and the willingness to sacrifice one’s own life unto death, also encompasses the protection of all that is good.

Bushido is an attitude toward life that seeks to awaken and preserve the best in a man, and that endeavors to prepare him to endure even the heaviest sacrifices, should the higher purpose for which he fights demand them.

This spirit was born in times of war. It endured through centuries of peace. During those times it lived on as an idea, without the deed usually being called upon to put it into practice. But when this did happen, as in the case of the Forty-Seven Ronin, Samurai who, through the dispossession of their lord, had become a kind of wandering knights, ronin, it became clear that the idea had not only remained alive, but that the deed itself could still be sustained by this idea.

It will rarely have occurred in any country that the joy in sacrifice remained so alive, even in times of prolonged peace, that it could continue to exist without weakening. This has been the case in Japan, and that an educational system devoted to this attitude toward life lay at the foundation of it need surprise no one.

The sacrificial deed of these forty-seven men contributed its part to keeping this spirit alive. To the Japanese, it stands on a par with the historical readiness for sacrifice of a Kusunoki Masashige and a Nitta Yoshisada, who have retained their value for the Japanese not through their prowess as fighters, but through their loyalty to honor and conscience, to ideal and people.

These qualities made these men, in the eyes of their people, into heroes to whom divine honor was rendered, for whom temples were built, and who became the inspirers of a myth that offered the people an example of honor and loyalty, of noble virtue, an example that they were, are, and will remain.

That the Japanese have understood this deed in this way is clearly shown by the great role these forty-seven men played in the popular arts, in the theater, literature, and printmaking. Again and again we find their history, the Chūshingura, recurring in the prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; again and again theater programs announce performances of plays portraying their lives and deeds, albeit in romanticized form. Again and again popular novels and illustrated books appear, proclaiming their readiness for sacrifice and holding it up as an example.

And the closer the time approached to the great upheaval that took place in Japan with the arrival of the Europeans, an upheaval that in Japanese history was accompanied by an inner transformation signifying a return to the old ideals, the more numerous these expressions became. Thus we see here how an idea, a myth, can help to build a state, to keep alive those thoughts that once made a people great and that may do so again in the future.

For the idea underlying this myth, the idea of honor and loyalty, is one that belongs to all ages and all peoples who value their own strength.

With heavy hearts and sorrowful feelings we had taken our leave and watched Adolf Hitler depart from our midst. For us who remained behind, it was not so much the fact that we were still not free that weighed upon us, nor the prospect of a further cheerless, purposeless life behind walls and bars, but the knowledge that with our chief, our fatherly friend and counsellor, and at the same time our most faithful comrade through good days and bad, had departed from us.

Thus it was on the holy evening of 1924. We prisoners had gathered in the great hall. In a corner of the otherwise darkened room, the light of the Christmas tree shone brightly, a tree which, after much negotiation, we had nevertheless managed to obtain. Softly, the melodies of the songs flowed from the violin of one of our comrades, stirring so many memories. At first one of us sang hesitantly, then a second joined in, and finally we all sang the old songs. Then there was silence. Only here and there did a candle on the tree crackle softly.

Then Dr. Friedrich Weber spoke to us. Everything he said to us in that hour, all the love and kindness he bestowed upon us, would remain unforgettable to us and would always speak to us anew when, in later years, wherever we might be, we would once again stand beneath the lighted tree. Everything that Dr. Weber had wished to give to his family and relations that evening in love and affection, he gave to us instead in comradeship and loyalty.

We thought of Adolf Hitler in Munich; we thought of our own people at home. In that hour we understood the meaning and substance of the vanguard comradeship that bound us, in the narrow, somber fortress chambers, to the Führer and to our comrades throughout Germany.

Then the coverings were removed from the tables around the tree. Rich gifts had been sent to us by those we loved at home, but also by unknown and unnamed Party comrades and friends from throughout the country. Wishes that we had been permitted to express weeks before had been fulfilled.

In a surge of human feeling, they had granted us, as an exception for this evening, permission to stay up late. The ration of one liter of beer per man, or one bottle of wine per four men, had also been increased for the evening. In addition, there were bottles that had been put aside for weeks, containing all manner of things, which had nevertheless reached us by various clandestine routes.

That evening we remained seated together in the circle of our comrades for a long time; we sang, joked, and laughed. Yet from time to time one of us would disappear from our ranks, step quietly before one of the barred windows, and gaze wistfully toward that place where, beyond these gray walls, the distant world of freedom lay spread out, silent and festive, so near and yet so far. Many a thought passed through the holy night toward home, and many a thought came back to us from there.

Slowly the lights burned down, and then the holy eve of the year 1924 had come to an end.

That night we all lay awake for a long time. Many a question about the great “Why?” arose within us. But the great understanding also came over us, just as it must have come over our comrades more than a year before, those who had remained at the Feldherrnhalle and who, in the struggle with death, understood why they had to fall for the resurrection of Germany...

The second day of Christmas was to bring us a special surprise, and with it the finest gift of all. During the customary morning walk in the fortress garden, we suddenly saw, scarcely believing our eyes, a man at the entrance wearing a gray-white raincoat that seemed strangely familiar to us. As if at a command, we stood still and rigid, and then came a single cry:

“Adolf Hitler! Unser Führer!”

Yes, it was Adolf Hitler! Immediately after his return to Munich, he had attempted to secure the release of those of us who had remained behind, at least for the holidays, but the Bavarian government had refused. Therefore our chief would and must come to visit us in the fortress.

And so, early on the morning of the second day of Christmas, he had departed from Munich to surprise us in Landsberg on the Lech. All our hands reached out toward him at once. We did not know what to say for joy. We could only firmly grasp his right hand and look gratefully into his eyes.

Slowly Adolf Hitler walked through our ranks. He returned every handshake. For each of us he had a word, filled with affection and encouragement. And then he spoke of how he would not rest until we, too, his following, had been given our freedom once more, and we might again sacrifice and fight alongside him, until that Germany had arisen for which our comrades at the Feldherrnhalle had bled and fallen, so that we survivors, together with the entire German people, might once more celebrate a truly “Fröhliche Weihnachten” in a united and free German Fatherland.

That was in December 1924, at Landsberg Fortress.

“I would not leave unmentioned the reports that reached me concerning a tribe which even to this day inhabits the Crimea. It is said of them that they unmistakably reveal a Germanic origin in their language, customs, facial expression, and physical build. For a long time I had been eager to see a descendant of this tribe, or at least to obtain from him some written testimony concerning his language. For a long time I was unsuccessful. At last, chance fulfilled my wish.

Two representatives, who had come on behalf of their tribe to lay a case before the Sultan, happened to come into contact with my interpreters. These men, who had been instructed to bring to my attention anything that might be of particular interest to me, brought the two delegates to my table.

One of the two was tall and slender, with a dignified yet simple bearing, like a Fleming or a Dutchman; the other was stout, with a compact build, a Taurian Greek by descent and language, who had nevertheless acquired a thorough knowledge of the language of this Germanic tribe through his extensive commercial dealings.

When questioned about the nature and customs of their peoples, they unanimously stated that this was a warlike tribe which still inhabits several gau districts. Among this tribe lives the Khan of the (Crimean) Tatars. Whenever he takes the field, eight hundred horsemen ride out, forming his core force. They were said to possess two larger towns: Mankup and Scivaris....”

Thus writes Ogier de Busbecq, imperial envoy at Constantinople from 1560 to 1562, in his Remembrances, which appeared in epistolary form twenty years later. The account of the nobleman interested in scholarly matters then continues with a description of the language of these remarkable strangers and provides a list of numerous words which he had them pronounce, explain, and write down.

The men with whom the inquisitive diplomat came into contact less than four hundred years ago were Goths. And what was collected and recorded of the idiom they spoke belongs among the most important sources of Germanic philology.

THE MIGRATION OF PEOPLES

How did these sons of the Germanic North come to find themselves on the remote, warm Tauric peninsula, with its subtropical climate? What strange circumstances account for the fact that they outlived by approximately a thousand years their kinsmen who, after a brilliant march of conquest, disappeared everywhere along the shores of the Mediterranean?

By their departure from the Vistula region, the Ostrogoths gave the signal for the so-called Migration of Peoples. As early as about 250 C.E. they appeared on the lower reaches of the Dnieper. Somewhat later they must also have spread throughout the Crimea.

While the greater part of the people followed the call of their duke to new campaigns and victories, and soon established the realm of Theodoric, a small tribal group remained settled in the south of the peninsula and in the vicinity of Kerch. They were too few in number to remain independent. But as industrious farmers and courageous warriors, they were highly coveted subjects.

They served the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian with three thousand men. When the storms of the Huns had once again subsided over Central Europe, they came under the rule of the Khazars and other Hunnic-Bulgarian tribes. Shortly after the year 900, the Byzantine emperors took possession of Gothia as a bulwark of their Empire. Around 1250 they became a Tatar protectorate.

The original capital of the Crimean Goths was Doros. The settlement, situated on an island-shaped, gently rising plateau, of which excavations have uncovered a small portion of the ground plan, is known today in the speech of the Tatars as Eski-Kermen, that is, “old fortress” (20 km east of Sevastopol, 18 km southwest of the former capital of the Crimean Tatars, Bakhchisaray).

After the middle of the tenth century, probably as the result of a severe defeat at the hands of the Khazars, the toparch of the Goths moved his residence several hours’ journey farther east, to a high plateau which, not only by virtue of its size, permitted every possibility of expansion, but also, by its precipitous form, with sheer cliffs dropping vertically, afforded greater security and protection.

Mankup-Kale, as the natives call it, probably inherited the name Doros, just as in the documents of the Genoese merchants the ruler of this region is still called “Lord of Theodoros” (which is the full Greek form of the name).

Like Eski-Kermen, Mankup-Kale also contains numerous caves, whose construction was facilitated by the soft limestone. They served as storehouses and stables, and were later also used as burial places. Traces of wall paintings indicate that they were at times used as chapels as well.

Set into the threefold projecting rocky promontory of the plateau on its northern side, they form impregnable observation posts and guard stations. Numerous important remains still testify to the wall, the towers, a palace, and a church with its surrounding buildings.

In the only surviving, relatively late ornamental work on a portal, one already believes that traces of Ottoman influence can be discerned.

THE END OF GOTHIC INDEPENDENCE

Indeed, it was the power of the Turks, standing behind such influence, that ultimately brought an end to Gothic independence by force. In 1475 they conquered Mankup-Kale.

Until then, the creative originality of the Goths had found no equal and no neighboring counterpart. From the rich and celebrated discoveries of Crimean Gothic goldsmithing in the burial grounds along the southern coast and near Kerch, we gain some impression of their superior achievements.

This, together with their geographical isolation, explains the fabulous fact that only a few generations before the Thirty Years’ War, Goths still existed there in the flesh. Indeed, there are reports from which it may be inferred that they were still to be found there even in the eighteenth century.

Now herds of cattle graze on the heights, stretching almost level right up to the steep precipices. These high-lying plateaus, covered with short but aromatic grass and cut through by deeply incised valleys, are characteristic of the Jaila Mountains. Jaila itself actually means “pasture.”

Perhaps further centuries of a world-remote tranquillity would have passed over these places, so rich in memories, had not war—and the watchful eye of the soldier—drawn so close to them.

But the encounter with the oldest and proudest witnesses of our national history proved a great surprise to many a warrior in the Crimea. German scholarship, for its part, knows how to appreciate at its true worth the unparalleled opportunity to bring the life of a Gothic city back to life.

And despite the war, it has already set to work.

They may never understand the value of mere life, because they themselves have never committed to something with the awareness that the odds were ten to one against coming out of it alive. Therefore, they cannot really be blamed for thinking this way—and we don’t blame them, because we know that circumstances will eventually force them to grow wiser.

It is another matter entirely when they attempt to impose such thoughts on others. That does indeed arouse our indignation, and in such cases, we will not hesitate to express this indignation in a manner that those involved will not soon forget.

We do not tolerate insults toward our front-line soldiers—and certainly not toward those who have been awarded the Iron Cross. For ultimately, someone who has been at war and has not received the Iron Cross may very well have been brave and resolute in battle. But of someone who has received the Iron Cross, we know for certain that he distinguished himself honorably and fought courageously.

The Iron Cross may be worn by anyone who has distinguished themselves in war. The highest officers, as well as non-commissioned officers and enlisted men, wear the ribbon and medal of this decoration on their uniforms. This point was recently emphasized again by Reichsleiter and Reichsminister Alfred Rosenberg when he spoke in Amsterdam to the National Socialists in the Netherlands.

The Reichsleiter reminded his audience that one of the highest decorations from the previous World War, the “Pour le Mérite” order, could only be awarded to officers, whereas the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross may be worn by anyone who is a member of Adolf Hitler’s national army. In this context, we should also point out that the first and only Dutch recipient of the Knight’s Cross, Gerard Mooyman, held the rank of SS-Rottenführer when he earned his decoration.

This too demonstrates once again the socialist solidarity of all those who have placed themselves under the command of the Führer, as well as the socialist character of all the institutions created by him and led under his direction.

How much stronger will this bond be when, in the future, a generation takes the fate of our Germanic realm into its hands—a generation that has grown up within and through the Führer’s youth movement, forming a close-knit community of men and women who know what task they are destined to fulfill.

The Iron Cross already has a history stretching back more than 130 years. It originated in the struggle for freedom that the Germanic tribes waged in 1813 against Napoleon Bonaparte. This ruler’s campaign against Russia had failed, and this failure encouraged the other European peoples—who until that moment had been forced to bow to his power—to rise up against him.

King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia issued a call to his people, and his resistance to the foreign oppressor resonated with many of his countrymen, who took up arms to cast off the hated French yoke.

On March 10, 1813, in Breslau, the King established the Iron Cross, based on a design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. On April 2 of that year, he awarded the first Iron Cross 2nd Class—and thus the very first Iron Cross—to Major Karl August Ferdinand von Borcke, who was 37 years old at the time. The battalion under this officer’s command had distinguished itself so notably during the battle near Lüneburg that the King honored the Major in this way and at the same time promoted him to Lieutenant Colonel. A few months later, on August 26, 1813, he was further decorated with the Iron Cross 1st Class.

The Iron Cross was reissued during the wars of 1870 and 1914. In the war of 1914–1918, it was awarded either for merit on the battlefield (with a black-and-white ribbon) or for service in the homeland (usually with a white-and-black ribbon, though in quite a few cases still with the black-and-white one).

In the World War of 1914–1918, the following were awarded:

• 1 Iron Cross with the Golden Star (the so-called Blücher Cross, awarded to Field Marshal von Hindenburg)

• 5 Grand Crosses (to Emperor Wilhelm II; Field Marshals von Hindenburg, von Mackensen, and Prince Leopold of Bavaria; and General of the Infantry Ludendorff)

• 218,000 Iron Crosses 1st Class

• 5,196,000 Iron Crosses 2nd Class with the black-and-white ribbon

• 13,000 Iron Crosses with the white-and-black ribbon.

As is well known, the Führer himself was also decorated with the Iron Cross, both 1st and 2nd Class, during the World War of 1914–1918. Remarkably, the forerunner of National Socialism, Houston Stewart Chamberlain—a man of English birth who had become a naturalized German—was likewise appointed a Knight of the Iron Cross by the Kaiser, because he had, as a publicist, committed himself to the cause of Germany and its allies.

Several Dutchmen, too, who fought alongside Germany—mainly against France—during that war, earned the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class.

It was precisely the Germans who had been decorated with the Iron Cross who proved themselves the best patriots through their all-sacrificing courage and total willingness to serve. It is therefore not surprising that the hatred of the Marxist traitors to the nation, during the infamous November days of 1918—and even long afterward—was directed especially at them.

In the disgraceful postwar literature with which the Jews flooded Germany, the rabble who tried to rip the Iron Cross from the chests of the brave German men who had stood at the front for four years were glorified in a way that not even a dog would stomach.

Nevertheless, there were still enough patriots for whom the medal of honor retained its old value. As we noted earlier, when a Jewish official insulted the Führer, the propaganda department of the N.S.D.A.P. wanted to distribute a poster in response, showing Adolf Hitler with the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class clearly visible on his tunic. The fact that those in power banned this poster proves more clearly than anything else how dangerous they considered this argument to be for their position among the German people.

Henrik Herse also points out the value of the Iron Cross in the postwar period in one of his books. In Das Fähnlein Rauk, he describes a stage play about the war, written by a front-line soldier. Dissenters try to disrupt the performance with whistling. The curtain is lowered, and the lights are turned on. The theater director steps into the spotlight to address the audience. “On his chest, the war decorations tinkle softly,” writes Henrik Herse. Such scenes are not limited to novels—they truly took place in Germany in the 1920s. And time and again, there was a group of strong-willed individuals who stood proudly by their convictions.

The men then wore the Iron Cross as their badge of recognition. They knew: “There is one who also stood firm; he, too, experienced it all—he knows everything about it.” These men formed the core of the N.S.D.A.P., the S.A., and the SS.

Anyone well-acquainted with Mein Kampf also knows that the Führer, for various positions that needed to be filled, repeatedly drew upon men he had come to know at the front. In this way, these men, even after their duty at the front had ended, continued to form a strong community—one against which the enemies of the fatherland repeatedly broke their teeth.

And when the Führer took power in Germany, no one dared any longer to drag the Iron Cross through the mud. One could once again wear, with peace of mind, the visible symbols of hard and courageous service at the front without being attacked by criminal rabble in the streets.

When the enemies of the Reich again pounced upon the Germanic heartland and declared war on it, one of the Führer's first proclamations was to reestablish the Iron Cross. According to Article 2 of this decree—dated September 1, 1939, the anniversary of the Battle of Sedan—the Iron Cross is awarded solely for exceptional bravery in the face of the enemy and for outstanding leadership in commanding troops.

Through amendments dated June 3, 1940, and September 28, 1941, to the above-mentioned decree, the Führer organized the Iron Cross, as we know it today, into the following classes:

• The Iron Cross 2nd Class

• The Iron Cross 1st Class

• The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross

• The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves

• The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords

• The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds

• The Grand Cross of the Iron Cross

The Grand Cross of the Iron Cross is awarded solely for actions that decisively influence the course of the war. The Führer has to date awarded this decoration to only one man: Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, in the Reichstag session of July 19, 1940.

The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds was awarded for the first time to Colonel Mölders, because in the current war alone, he had already shot down 101 enemy aircraft. If we include his successes in the Spanish anti-Bolshevik liberation struggle, he had achieved a total of 115 aerial victories.

Since then, the award has been given eleven more times. The most recent recipient was SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen SS Herbert Gille, who was awarded this distinction by the Führer on April 25. SS-Gruppenführer Gille is the commander of the SS Panzer Division “Wiking,” which, alongside other Germanic volunteers, also includes many Dutchmen.

On March 31 of this year, the Führer awarded Field Marshal von Kleist the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, making him the 60th soldier of the German armed forces to receive it. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves was awarded by the Führer on June 9, 1944, to Lieutenant Colonel Horst Niederländer, the 491st soldier of the German Wehrmacht to receive it.

How many Knight's Crosses have been awarded in total is not known to us, but at the time SS-Rottenführer Mooyman received his, the total number of these bravery awards had not yet reached 2,500.

It can, of course, happen that a soldier who was already awarded the Iron Cross during the World War of 1914–1918 becomes eligible again for that decoration due to his conduct in the current war. In such cases, he receives a clasp bearing the year 1939, which is worn above the cross for the 1st Class, and on the ribbon for the 2nd Class Iron Cross.

The Führer personally awards the Knight's Cross and the higher honors to soldiers. The award certificates are written on parchment and signed personally by the Führer.

The Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class, as well as the corresponding clasps, are awarded on behalf of the Führer by the supreme commanders of the three branches of the armed forces and the Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, each for the branch they command. They are authorized to delegate this authority to the division commander or to an officer of equivalent rank.

In this context, we would also like to point out that, not long ago, at a political meeting held on Dutch soil, the Iron Cross was awarded for the first time by one Dutchman to another. The Foreman of the Germanic SS in the Netherlands, SS-Standartenführer J.H. Feldmeijer, presented SS-Obersturmführer Rollema with the Iron Cross 2nd Class at an SS meeting in Maastricht, in recognition of demonstrated bravery on the Eastern Front.

In itself, this is nothing special. The Foreman is also part of the SS hierarchy, in which one's nationality matters little—or actually not at all. What counts here is solely the good blood and the position one holds within the SS hierarchy.

That we nevertheless draw attention to this event is due to the fact that such moments so clearly demonstrate the equality which those with separatist aims are always loudly proclaiming and endlessly discussing—while within the SS community, it belongs among the facts that are taken for granted. Only the man who receives the Iron Cross matters here, as the Foreman himself remarked, because ultimately, the Iron Cross is awarded in the name of the Führer.

It is remarkable that the Iron Cross, in terms of form, has remained virtually unchanged. Only the front side now bears the swastika and the year 1939, while the back carries the founding year 1813. Furthermore, the ribbon that belongs to the Iron Cross is black-white-red, and the initials of the founder, King Wilhelm Friedrich III, have been omitted.

One difference between the Iron Crosses of 1813, 1870, and 1914 on the one hand, and that of 1939 on the other, is that the first three were Prussian decorations, whereas the latter is a badge of honor of the Greater German Reich.

In essence, we already view the Iron Cross in its current form as a Germanic badge of honor, even though this is not yet established in decrees, laws, or other regulations. But isn’t that also still the case with the Reich itself—yet it already lives in our hearts and minds, and certainly not least in the places where men of the same blood defend our living space against the attacks of our enemies?

One day, it will also be officially established on paper that the Iron Cross is a distinction of the Reich that is becoming reality these days—of Germania. For the men of the SS, this will be a proud and glorious moment, for it will signify recognition of their courage, their willingness to serve and sacrifice, and their perseverance shown in this current war, which will determine what the world will look like for the next thousand years.

Like a breathing sea, the night lies over the land.
All that was near has become distance and vastness. And the essence of things begins to speak.
Then, from the primal depths of thought, your image rises. Gently your hand touched the heart. And the boundless distances of all that has been and all that is yet to come become the present.
And you hold communion with all that is akin to the earth—with the sun, the wind, and the trees—and let them perceive the deepest meaning of the Divine:
Toward that which is more perfect...
For you are not “death,” nor are you an end...

Asleep, wrapped in night, lies the lake. The wind has folded its soft wings and dreams among the motionless reeds.
But in the unfathomable depths of the heavens sparkle the countless stars—
other suns,
other worlds,
swinging through the vastness of eternal creation in their solitary courses.
From a farmstead beyond the lake, a dog barks.
With a splashing sound, a fish leaps.
Silence.
The stars shine alone, letting their white light stream down.
God’s workshop stands open.

I sit upon an alder stump and watch a farmer’s wagon as it slowly rattles along the road.
Through meadows and fields stretches the gray-yellow ribbon of the road. The eye can follow it far into the distance, until it disappears in the sunlit shimmer of the horizon.
The grinding of the iron-bound wheels and the ringing tread of the horses’ hooves grow fainter.
Now all is silent again.
The humming of the bees hangs in the quivering air as the very sound of midday silence.
Where might this farmer’s wagon be bound—from where has it come...?
I do not know the will of the man who guides it, nor have I ever seen the hamlets and villages hidden behind hills and forests. Thus the only certainty left to me is uncertainty itself: the nameless distances toward which it travels, and from which I saw it come.
But would I truly have learned more had I asked the farmer about the beginning and the end of his journey...?
He would have given me names—words without meaning for my understanding.
Only experience transforms a name into the image of something real.
I seek the farmer’s wagon.
But however intently I strain my eyes, I can no longer see it.
The distance has taken it in.
Blue and boundless, the summer sky stretches over the land, and it is as though the man, the wagon, and the horses had never been.
Only the track in the road and my memory remain...

Is the peaceful body from which life has departed anything more than a swiftly fading trace and a memory...?
Is life itself dead because the senses can no longer perceive its living presence...?
The mysterious knowledge slumbering in the primal depths of the soul tells us that there is no end.
The end is only the narrow boundary of our senses.
Life itself—the soul—lies beyond all the senses;
it is God,
the Primordial Eternal,
the Incomprehensible,
the Infinite...

The eternal beginning of all that is, the eternal transformation toward a goal hidden from our senses—
you are
eternal becoming.
Kind Friend,
you are the night that grants repose,
and at the same time the radiant day
to which it gives birth forever.
Friend Hein,
you are the smiling consolation of the heart when it is on the verge of despair.
For in you it recognizes the imperishability of life.

Strange it was when I first felt your nearness, and beautiful it was when I encountered you a little later.
It was one of those scorching summer days in the Champagne that make the juice boil within the yellow grapes.
Once.
Now there were no grapes left. The earth had been torn apart, and the sun blazed upon the shimmering chalk, drawing from its burning pores even the last moisture that might have refreshed us.
Then, all at once, the enemy’s guns began to thunder, booming like a thousand crashing kettle drums. And our young bodies were the drumheads—and had to endure.
There was one among us whom fear shattered. He lay praying and cried out to a strange god that he might be spared, promising in gratitude to devote his life to that god’s service.
Then our hearts grew hard, and we forbade our eyes to look upon him.
And then you passed by and extinguished him.
But we went forward into the assault, bearing your radiant image in our heart—and it made us unconquerable.

And when was it that I first saw you face to face...?
It was a little later. At night. Ten paces from the enemy we lay, preparing to take him by surprise.
We had become one with the chalky soil of the Champagne, and, as motionless as the white fragments of stone around us, we lay there and crept forward, inch by inch.
Without a sound.
Five more paces...
There was a shallow shell crater. The three of us were to find shelter there for a while until the others came up.
We slipped into the hollow. For a brief moment we felt our hearts pounding, hard and fast.
Then hell broke loose once more. Crashing explosions, smoke and fire, and raging fury engulfed us. In a thousand places the earth burst apart, swallowed us, and spat us out again.
And there was no way back.
Then suddenly you crouched beneath us. You looked at us, and then your gaze turned toward the raging of the unleashed forces. And in your eyes there seemed to be the reflection of a faint smile.
Cold dread crept into my heart, and I hated you as only a soul in its last extremity can hate “Death”—for I saw in you the destroyer of all things. My teeth chattered with fear and horror.
But then the defiance of my seventeen years awoke within me. My fists clenched, and I forced myself to look into your shining eyes, determined to master them.
Yes—and what happened then...?
Beneath your gaze my fear and horror melted away. A great stillness came over my heart—almost joyfully so.
Then I followed your gaze into the fury that surrounded us, and a blazing sentence burned itself into my soul, as though your narrow lips had spoken it:
The brave man does not die...!
Without quite knowing why, I began fumbling in my pocket for a cigarette, put it between my lips, lit it—and laughed.
And the other two smoked as well—and laughed.
So we waited, hour after hour, until dawn broke and the raging demons crept back into hiding.
And in that hour you became our friend—and our comrade.

Then I encountered you again, when you came to the lonely woman who was my mother, and found me sitting beside her deathbed.
During those long hours, bitterness sought to consume my heart, for in my mother’s final struggle with pain I saw her struggle against you.
Then you came, softly as the young day spreading its radiant promise over forests and lakes.
I looked into the tranquil unfathomableness of your eyes and saw a thousand mysteries of life reflected in their depths. And I saw how you freed my mother’s hands, hardened by a lifetime of toil, from all suffering, and gave them rest—
how, for one brief while, you summoned the joys of her past from their hidden depths into the present hour, showing them to her like a sunlit meadow of flowers.
And the quiet serenity of that vision cast its light upon my mother’s features, furrowed by suffering, until she smiled like a young bride. Timidly her hands began to gather the flowers from your secret meadow, to delight the one she loved.
Then you laid your beautiful hand upon my mother’s weary eyes, and it was like the passing shadow of a summer cloud borne before the sun by a gentle wind.
And when I looked up, you were gone, my friend.
My mother lay still.
Her mouth was smiling, as though she beheld the dawning of a new day.
Her hands held invisible flowers from a distant land.
And her face had become young again, filled with an unspeakable beauty.

In the hour when you led my mother from the realm of the living into the realm of Life, I learned to love you.
For I beheld your secret:
They call you “Death,”
but you are Life itself in the infinite manifoldness of its transformations!
You lead the body, grown weary, into rest, gently wrapping it in the light winding sheet of passing time and of forgetfulness.
But the soul’s eternal vitality you lead into that existence beyond our understanding, of which we know only through intuition.
And you bless with youth those whose days have reached their fulfillment.

That amid the body’s pain
the heart’s inadequacies wither,
that in the soul’s suffering the strength to overcome it grows—
that through pain and suffering we become strong,
grow into ourselves,
become essential,
and ready—
that is what we must recognize in every hardship if we are to master it.
To be essential,
and ready—
that is everything!

Lofty as the crowns of the birches, and as solitary as time itself, the erratic boulder of ancient stone lies upon the moor.
Brown heather has grown about it, and the strange juniper bushes cast upon it the long shadows of the morning sun.
Once, when this earth was still young, the wandering glacier of the North had carried it here.
But beneath the warmer sun of a new age of the earth, the ice melted.
The boulder remained.
Its surfaces have been worn smooth by that journey of thousands of years, by the rains and storms that have swept across it.
The face of the earth will change,
again and again—
but the erratic remains—
a landmark of God.

With awe, the hand rests upon the cool smoothness of its surface and feels the rune-sign of the ancestors.
Know this,
descendant of a thousand generations:
Upon this stone from the Northland, long ago, in the gray dawn of antiquity, a man carved this rune—a man whose blood
still lives
within your veins.
And you—
you may carry it onward, toward the eternity of your great Volk.
Times came, and times passed—
peoples withered away, and new generations blossomed—
but the sacred blood of the ancestors lives—
lives in you!

Leaning against the stone and gazing into immeasurable distances, I see you standing there, great Friend.
Your voice resounds within my heart:
For man’s existence, everything begins, and everything ends, in the Blood.
Within the sacred circle of blood, both past and future are enclosed for him, according to God’s immutable law.
Whoever walks through the darkest days with head held high, and, begetting life, gives his own life to the future,
according to the creative will of the Primordial Eternal—
he begets his own existence into the realm of the timeless.

The path of your Volk through the past was nothing more than the first span of its youthful steps into time.
And you—
you are one of the instruments of the Primordial Eternal,
to raise your Volk
toward fulfillment—
to bear it upward
into the realm of human eternity.
Do you know this?
Do you think of it...?
Always...?

Whoever knows the path of his Volk through the ages, within him the immortal soul of his Volk is awake. Deep do the roots of his being reach, down to the eternal wellspring of the past, from which alone comes the strength that builds the future.
Whoever knows his ancestors,
knows himself.
And whoever knows himself,
his soul blossoms beyond earthly existence
and bears fruit in the realm beyond all understanding.

I stood beside my father’s coffin. But this quiet man, self-contained and estranged from the things of this world, was no longer my father.
With you he had departed,
Friend Hein,
and upon the countenance of his body you had written the testimony of his life.
And I saw:
my father’s life’s work had come to a worthy completion, to the very last hour granted him.
Now that work had been placed into the hands of his children.
And in silent pride they accepted the gift of his charge,
pledging in their hearts to grow strong through it, to preserve it, to labor unceasingly for its fulfillment, and, when their own hour came, to pass it on to the young hands of their own blood.

I saw the shades of the mothers and fathers of my lineage gathered there, to receive my father.
No tears of his children fell upon our father’s grave.
For the graves of our lineage do not loose or divide;
they lead us to one another and bind us together—
because the distant ancestors speak as powerfully within the living kin
as do the descendants yet far away—
and therefore none of our blood ever loses his way—
his own way.
Nor shall there ever be one among us who imagines what lies beyond the limits of mankind with the colorful fantasies of his dreams—
never one
who does not know the eternities of Life.
All weakness lies in the blindness of thought,
which leads men to falsehood about what is to come.
Strength lies in the certainty of that which endures.

Darkly the wall of evening clouds rises behind the trees.
The first stars begin to glow. A warm wind passes over the grasses and shrubs.
In the deep shadows of the alders, a young woman whispers with a man:
“I shall always be with you, my beloved, wherever you may be... You will feel my presence and be glad.”
“And if I fall...?”
The man’s question, rising from the deepest ground of human existence, calls to you.
You lay your beautiful hands upon the trembling shoulders of the man and the woman, binding a sacred sacrifice to a sacred gift.
Then the young woman lifts her face to her beloved.
“I carry your child...”
“Many will despise you...!”
“My love is stronger than all contempt.
My strength is greater than every obstacle.
My duty is as unbending as my pride.
And the new life within me—
your life, beloved—
is so beautiful
that everything around me will become good.
Cold and barren hearts may despise me,
but my Volk will bless me—
and bless you through the life of our child,
whom you awakened within me.”
Through the treetops the moonlight shimmers.
Softly, a nestling chirps in its sleep.

You believe you see an end, yet you are gazing upon the birth of something new.
Life is unceasing becoming...!
Whoever ends his days without children
and without grandchildren
remains unfulfilled.
And his ancestors, too, remain unfulfilled.
Children—
they are your duty!
And your joy,
and your fulfillment.
This earth has nothing more beautiful to offer,
nothing that brings greater joy,
than love
and the existence of children,
that come from it.
Children—
they are the divine meaning of life, for you are to give them more in the goods of body, of heart, and of soul, than you yourself once received.
Children
are God’s thoughts of creation—
begotten unto life—
born into this life through man.

Man:
you are the progenitor of your lineage!
Woman:
within your womb
rests the holy chalice,
chosen by God
to preserve the purity of the blood.
Within your body you safeguard the well-being of your Volk.
Your body is the living Grail of your Volk,
and within the blood sheltered by its living walls,
the Divine weaves.
Within you, those whom you have brought into the world bless you throughout the earthly eternity of your lineage.

From far away, out of the grayness of dawn,
the waves of the sea roll in.
With a rushing sound
they sweep upon the sand, passing away in play among shells and seaweed.
Without end,
the sea roars.
The ears of mankind hear the song of the Eternal.
The air is moist, cool, and salt-laden.
Pregnant with the sea,
made fruitful in the primal womb of the earth,
it passes over the lands in cloud and wind,
awakening life.
Silvery white in the first light of dawn,
a gull glides above the waves.
Its piercing cry is a battle cry—the battle cry of Life to all that lives in the flesh.
With folded wings, the gull plunges into the foaming surf—in the swiftness of thoughtit rises again, a gleaming fish in its beak—and, borne upon the wind, sails toward the sun.
Softly, the sand trickles.
The dry grasses of the marram rustle.
And the clouds of the sea roar on—
from eternity to eternity.

We are a hard people.
There is no need to say what has made us hard.
We are.
That is enough.
And we shall become harder still.
Ever harder.
Our bodies, and our souls.
We have cast aside
every foreign work and every false glitter,
and we look about us
with clear eyes,
with wakeful hearts,
and with living senses.
We have won for ourselves
this earth on which we stand.
We stand firmly.
Upon both feet.
As though rooted in the ground.
And there is nothing more precious to us
than this sacred earth
and all that comes to us from it.

As resolutely as we won this earth for our bodies, so resolutely and relentlessly have we fought for the space that belongs to our spirit and our soul—the realm of our inner freedom.
For we know:
spirit and soul die
when they are forced to live in foreign soil.
There the soul dies,
the body decays.

We are bold enough not to look backward—
not to ask yesterday’s truths
whether they may still be valid for us today.
Whatever was truly truth yesterday, and the day before,
is truth today, and forever, and for all eternity.
And this truth, the only truth, we shall never need to seek.
It already lives, awake within us.
As there is but one truth, so there is but one measure
by which to test that truth:
the divine order of nature and its immutable laws.
Everything else has no authority over us!

We know:
this “death”
is a poisonous dream-flower of diseased minds.
Before our bodies die,
we live anew
through our work and through our deeds—
we live anew
in our children,
so long as our Volk lives.
That is our eternal life upon the earth!
Of our eternal existence in the realm beyond the senses we possess only an intuitive knowledge—yet we are reverent enough not to make the images of our own thoughts the substance of our faith.
We know:
to all who are of our Volk’s blood, God has ordained, as the very core of their being, that they should live heroically, bear what necessity demands with serenity,
and laugh
when the heart would tremble.
We know:
the death of the earthly body is God’s hour of creation within Life.
And to know that
is knowledge enough.

Firmly our bodies stand upon this radiant earth.
With mighty wings, the liberated vitality of our being soars through the sunlit expanses of its own domain.
We stand without fear, and laughing.
For in you,
great Friend,
we have recognized the Prince of Life,
the youthful, radiant form of the Primordial Eternal.

As boundless as the spaces through which the stars move, is our soul.
Our eyes gaze into the distances of the Eternal.
Our soul bears the wings of immortality.

The colonists opposed this unwelcome influx of newcomers. The Jews, however, had been shrewd enough to acquire shares in a company that imported goods from New Amsterdam and therefore required substantial capital. The shares had been inexpensive, and by purchasing even a single share the Jews acquired rights in this colonial possession.

Jewish Spies

By the year 1690 New York had already become a Jewish city. During the revolution that broke out shortly thereafter, the Jews were the English’s best spies. Nor should it be forgotten that in 1740 the English Parliament resolved to admit the Jews to citizenship, a measure that also applied to the American colonies.

Thus it need not occasion surprise that the Jews devoted particular attention to the negroes, for they saw in them a willing instrument against the white population. By 1750 one-sixth of the population of New York already consisted of negroes, while in the South their proportion had risen to fifty per cent. Most slave traders were Jews. By this means the Jews amassed enormous fortunes in America.

The Black Peril

After the Civil War in the United States of America (1861–1865), in which the Northern states emerged victorious, slavery was abolished. The white owners of the plantations saw in this “liberation” of the negroes, with reason, a great danger, and one that has persisted to the present day. This is best illustrated by the fact that in 1938 no fewer than 9,361,577 negroes lived in the Southern states alone; in the State of Mississippi there were more negroes than whites.

The negro was also granted the right to vote, thereby enabling the whites of the Southern states to be kept more effectively under control. The blacks were instructed and organized by Jewish agitators. General disorder increased. Hardly a single white person was any longer safe, for alcohol caused the negro to lose even the last remnants of self-control; he committed outrages against the whites, and in the end also against white women.

White Defense

Thus it came about that the finest elements among the whites of the Southern states of the U.S.A. united. Since such associations were prohibited, they organized in secret.

They set themselves the task of restoring and maintaining order. This organization of race-conscious whites called itself the Ku Klux Klan. It became an effective instrument for the self-defense of the white population against the negroes. The name is derived from the Greek word kyklos, meaning “circle,” together with the Scottish word “clan,” denoting a kinship group or tribe. The organization was founded on 24 December 1865 by six former soldiers and officers in the State of Tennessee.

Until now we have always been told that the Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization of rebels, criminals, scoundrels, and murderers that spread unrest among the population and administered its own justice in secret tribunals. It is owing to the efforts of Othmar Krainz that the true purpose of this organization for the protection of the whites has been brought to light.

Provocations Against the Klan

The Jews regarded the power of this organization as a thorn in their side, for they saw that the “negroization” they had initiated was thereby being checked.

Jewish agitators first of all resorted to provocation. They obtained Ku Klux Klan robes, dressed hired criminals in them, and sent them out on raids. As a result, the organization was accused of robbery and arson. The New York newspapers were already for the most part in Jewish hands and eagerly seized upon these sensational reports. They branded the Ku Klux Klan as a criminal organization against which the State was obliged to act.

Since the votes of negroes could be bought with money, and since they constituted the majority in the Southern states, the Ku Klux Klan was outlawed as “hostile to the State.” The entire world press conducted a campaign against the organization. The Klan was generally described as a Vehmgericht, which, in itself, proves that its original character was indeed understood.

The prohibitions, however, failed to destroy the organization. Its members merely closed their ranks more firmly. They now also directed their principles against the Jews, who in America are called Kikes.

For that reason, the Jews remain to this day the fiercest opponents of the Ku Klux Klan. Naturally, the Jew continually demands that Parliament enact legislation requiring the members of the Ku Klux Klan to be hanged or banished. The Jew knows that every organization founded upon the racial principle is directed against him.

On 4 March 1933 a medal was struck and sold in New York bearing the head of Roosevelt on one side and the Star of David on the other. Around the rim appeared the words, “Health, Wealth, Prosperity,” while in the center of the Seal of Solomon stood, in Hebrew characters, the Jewish greeting of good fortune. They hope thereby to achieve the good fortune of ruling the whole world from America.

For this reason the Ku Klux Klan stands in their way. It is therefore opposed by Jewry, for the organization has set itself the task of preserving the white race.

It was in Philadelphia that my attention was drawn to something so unusual for a European: a parade through the city by the Shriners.

Along the avenue of skyscrapers there marched over the gleaming asphalt a remarkable sort of army, theatrically attired, advancing rhythmically in long ranks eight abreast under the command of mounted leaders. Strange banners were carried in their colourful ranks, together with slogans upon brightly coloured transparencies, mysterious emblems, symbolic devices, and fluttering pennons. All this was intended to impress upon the uninitiated spectator the “venerable” secrecy of the Shrine. Here an American Masonic organization passed by in full regalia.

Their exceedingly curious uniform was, to say the least, picturesque: a blood-red tarboosh, or fez, with a low-hanging tassel, the colour of which differed from one division to another; a loose mantle reaching below the knees, such as the Negus of Abyssinia was accustomed to wear; white gaiters over half-boots, with a toy dagger at the side.

These parade-loving Shriners belong to a high degree of American Freemasonry, to which only men of social standing are admitted. Since they are said to be the spiritual fathers of the Ku Klux Klan, they deserve more detailed attention here. Every year they gather in a different state for a demonstrative national convention, where they feast heartily, drink liberally, and deliver speeches.

And these Shriners are by no means an ordinary Blue Lodge, nor merely a chapter adorned with blood-red ritual symbolism. No, they are infinitely more important than that—at least in their own estimation. To them the word shrine signifies a sanctuary in the sense of a mausoleum, such as the world-famous monument erected by Artemisia for her husband Mausolus at Halicarnassus. Yet neither their outward appearance—nor whatever their ritual may be intended to symbolize—bears the slightest resemblance to such an idea. Every Shrine entrance is more suggestive of a mosque, while the interior recalls one of the courts of the Alhambra.

No European can understand this American hocus-pocus unless he is familiar with the highly peculiar cultural history of North America, and especially with that form of association which may be likened to the Vehmgericht, as it appears, for example, in the romantic history of the European colonization of the United States. From this developed the secret political societies, such as the Sons of Liberty. The political romanticism of eighteenth-century America, the systematic organization of artisans and farmers by the aristocratic Whigs, and the development of corporate student life at America’s youthful universities and colleges—these constituted the historically evolved setting for the colourful drama of those secret societies in the revolutionary and ardently youthful America of the eighteenth century.

The village inn where they held their meetings they called “Hampden Hall,” as though to emphasize the lofty political character of their aims, although their imitation of the Vehmgericht is immediately apparent.

As early as 1772 there existed in Philadelphia a nationalist society calling itself the Sons of Tammany—a forerunner of the powerful Tammany organization of the New York Democrats!—named after the semi-legendary chief of the Delaware tribe. By the middle of the nineteenth century we encounter the militant Know Nothings, marking the transition from secret society to political party. In response to the steadily increasing immigration from Europe, particularly from Ireland, a militant American nationalism of a distinctly anti-Catholic complexion asserted itself under the slogan:

“Americans must rule America.”

The four-year Civil War of the United States (1861–65), fought between the “white” states of the North and those of the slaveholders in the South, ended in the victory of the Northerners, or Unionists, and the abolition of slavery. The Jew Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati, headed the great secret organization known as the Underground Railroad!, whose purpose was to place fugitive slaves beyond the reach of the law.

After the Civil War, the old habits of violence and of taking the law into one’s own hands had more reason than ever to persist in the devastated and exhausted South.

Political adventurers who, after the war, flocked to the Southern states in order to acquire political influence in Washington with the aid of the negro vote, soon came to dominate their governments. The resistance of the dispossessed Southern whites then found expression in secret organizations bearing fantastic names: the Knights of the White Camelia, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood, and, more famous than all of these, the old Ku Klux Klan.

The remarkable feature of the Ku Klux Klan is that, although founded in May 1866 by a small group of young men in a village in Tennessee merely for amusement—”to give the niggers a fright”—it retained the character of a practical joke for fully two years before, by whatever mysterious influence, it became a powerful and dangerous political instrument.

According to Woodrow Wilson’s History of the American People, the name is a corruption of the Greek kyklos or kyklops, the mythological giants with a single eye in their foreheads who forged the thunderbolts beneath Mount Etna.

According to others, however, Ku Klux Klan is simply an onomatopoeic expression, comparable to the childish “bang, bang, boom.” The name came to be applied not merely to this particular order but to all organizations of a similar character, of which the White Camelia was perhaps the most important.

That society was formed in 1867 in the French-speaking capital of the State of Louisiana and spread with lightning speed throughout all the Southern states of the former Confederacy. Almost all whites in those states, whether members of the secret societies or not, took part in one way or another in the Ku Klux Klan movement.

By moonlight, groups rode through the countryside clad in ghostly white robes, with a small red St. Andrew’s Cross enclosed within a circle upon the left breast, white bearded masks beneath tall pointed hoods of stiff cardboard, and even the horses’ hooves wrapped to deaden the sound.

Whenever they encountered groups of negroes, or met with resistance near their homes, deafening cries were suddenly raised amid heavy pistol fire. The negro is by nature highly superstitious. They frightened him almost to death. From time to time a lynching was also organized.

The organization soon spread from district to district, at the same time assuming a serious political character. It became a greatly feared form of rural Vehm justice. In certain districts the movement occasionally fell into the hands of unscrupulous bandits and outlaws, whereupon it became deadly even to its own members. The old Ku Klux Klan, which had so quickly degenerated, prompted the North to adopt the most vigorous measures of repression.

In 1871–72 a series of legislative measures was enacted in order to crush the secret societies once and for all by the full authority of the State and to supervise the elections in the terror-ridden South. The slogan of the Ku Klux Klan now became: to protect the white people of the South against injustice from the North and against plutocracy, and to defend the Constitution of the Union Republic. Its title also assumed a half-mystical, half-political character: The Invisible Empire of the South!

Yet its activities frequently amounted to little more than murder and violence until, after 1872, the government in Washington gradually gained the upper hand.

When the central organization was finally dissolved, the Invisible Empire stood under the command of the “Grand Wizard,” General N. B. Forrest. Each Southern state constituted a “Realm” under a Grand Dragon; several realms together formed a “Dominion” under a “Titan”; and so forth. The smallest unit was a “Den,” under a Grand Cyclops.

The modern Ku Klux Klan was re-established on Thanksgiving Night in 1915 by William Joseph Simmons, a travelling evangelist, commercial salesman, and, above all, a skilful promoter of secret societies. Around this “night of re-establishment,” during the war itself, an enormous publicity campaign was organized, while an entirely new ritual feature was introduced: the solemn lighting of a Flaming Cross upon the summit of Stone Mountain, not far from the city of Atlanta in the Southern state of Georgia. A charter granted by that state actually conferred upon the new organization the legal status of an American corporation.

Thus legally established, the Grand Wizard Simmons, by means of his vast propaganda apparatus, appealed to “the whole civilized world”—that is to say, the United States—to recognize that his organization was above all “a high-class, mystical, social, patriotic, and charitable association,” wholly “devoted to the fulfilment of the sacred duty of protecting our women and upholding the principle of white supremacy”—in short, a duty of genuine patriotism and pure Americanism.

Its campaign was now directed not only against the negro, but also against the Catholic, and above all against the Jew, who sought to become the leading businessman in the “Black Belt,” that is, the Southern states. Unlike the old Ku Klux Klan, the revived movement spread throughout the United States during and after the First World War. But in 1928 the organization suddenly suffered a severe setback as repeated scandals, corruption, and the wholesale sale of groups of members to political parties came to light. A judicial investigation revealed an almost unbelievable state of degeneration—truly American, in the author’s view. And the Ku Klux Klan disappeared as quietly and mysteriously as it had arisen scarcely fifteen years before.

Until when…?

Our farmers are clever—devilishly clever, one might well say—for at times they even outwit the Devil himself. You may think that impossible, but it has been proven true.

I heard it myself from a very old man who had long since taken up residence in the little front room of the almshouse—and a man like that does not tell lies, as you may well imagine.

Well then.

There once was a farmer who got the better of the Devil. This is how it happened.

One day the farmer was walking about his yard, perhaps repairing the oak fence or cutting a new stake for the turning post of the gate—we do not know exactly which—when it struck him that his farmhouse was rather too small and was even beginning to sag here and there.

One of the carved horse-head finials on the roof had already lost its snout in a storm, and the bargeboards had become rotten in places.

“All the devils!” grumbled the farmer. “I wish I had another house.”

That was, of course, rather imprudent. In those days one did not invoke the Evil One with impunity.

The farmer was therefore greatly alarmed when, at that very moment, a hellish figure appeared before him, reeking of sulfur, and in a harsh voice asked what sort of house he had in mind.

But on the other hand, the farmer was not so disconcerted that he was unwilling to seize the chance of unexpectedly acquiring a better homestead.

So he looked past the Evil One as best he could and asked about the terms.

His fears proved justified. The bargain concerned his soul—and not a hair less. Indeed, he was expected to throw in the entire harvest as well.

“Then I shall starve,” said the farmer, “and the house will do me no good.”

The Devil saw the sense of that. So the farmer need only surrender half the harvest for two consecutive years.

Which was a reasonable proposal.

“Very well,” said the farmer. “But what about my soul?”

“That is forfeit,” replied the Evil One, “unless I refuse to accept the harvest. In that case I shall have no claim upon your soul either.”

“Very well,” said the farmer, “but let us agree that I shall keep whatever grows beneath the ground, while you shall take whatever grows above it.”

The Devil, who knew little about farming, readily agreed, and they proceeded to negotiate the farmhouse that he was to provide.

The farmer asked for no small thing, though we cannot blame him for that, since after all his soul was at stake.

The timbers were to be of oak, resting upon great fieldstones. The windows were to be clear and set in leaded panes. There was to be ample room for the livestock, and the roof was to be thick and watertight. Carved horse-head finials were to adorn both gables, and the floor was to be laid with small cobblestones in neat patterns. There was to be space in the chimney for many hams, and a little room for the weaver must not lack.

What demands that farmer made!

His wife was to have room for so many pewter plates; the fireplace crane was to be so large; the double doors so wide; so many oak posts were to support the roof—there seemed no end to it.

But the Devil was thinking of the harvest he would reap and found everything acceptable. He had a sheet of parchment brought and drew up the agreement, which the farmer confirmed with his mark.

Now that was a bargain!

When the farmer awoke the next morning, he found himself in his new home. He looked out through the leaded windowpanes, knocked the ashes from his pipe against the sturdy oak posts, and saw the copper kettle hanging from its great hook.

Then he went outside to inspect the roof, the walls, and the doors. He saw that everything was in perfect order and that the Evil One had not stinted on a single piece of timber or a single cartload of stone.

What pleased him most of all were the carved horse-heads. Proud and untamed, they stood out against the clouds as though they cared nothing for the whole contract. That was exactly to the farmer’s liking.

For at once he set about evading the agreement by means of a farmer’s cunning.

The first year he sowed turnips.

And when the Prince of Darkness came after the harvest to collect his share, he received nothing but withered leaves.

The Devil raged like one possessed, but there was nothing he could do; the agreement was written down in the deed.

“Then next year we shall do it the other way round!” he roared.

And so it was.

But this time the farmer sowed grain.

And when the Evil One came, the farmer was busy threshing, and nothing remained for him in the field but the stubble.

At this the Devil became so furious that, with a dreadful shriek, he plunged into the earth of the field—and the farmer never saw him again.

For now the Devil had forfeited the little soul as well!

Nowhere are farmyards kept so meticulously. Where in the South does one see such neatly raked homesteads, such well-kept stalls for livestock—not only for cows and horses, but also for the smaller animals, for chickens and ducks? All alike receive the same good treatment from the farmers of the North.

I have instinctively begun by taking the countryside as the point of comparison. This is chiefly because it is in rural life that individual cleanliness is expressed most clearly, whereas in the city it is more difficult to determine. Yet even there the difference in cleanliness between the Germanic and the non-Germanic is especially striking.

This is not mere conceit, nor an exaggerated glorification of our race; it is a fact that anyone with a measure of critical judgment can readily establish. And now the question arises: Does the cleanliness and neatness so clearly evident in these outward circumstances also apply to the body of the Germanic man as compared with the non-Germanic man?

To this I dare answer with an unequivocal yes. For although there will be those who wish to cite examples to the contrary—that there are indeed many in the Germanic world who are far from scrupulous about cleanliness—in most cases there is a perfectly adequate explanation.

If we remain within our own country, which as early as the seventeenth century was already famous for its genuine “Dutch cleanliness,” we know well enough that in certain parts of the Netherlands much is left to be desired in this respect. One need only think of Peel Workers by Antoon Coolen, the book in which he portrays the lives of the Brabant laborers in the Peel. Among several of his principal characters, things are anything but fresh and clean. But are we therefore to conclude that washing and bathing in our country generally leave much to be desired?

Quite the contrary, for no one would maintain that these people represent a particularly Germanic branch of the Dutch stock. But—others may object—I have also encountered examples in other provinces of our country of conservative people who came into contact with water only rarely.

Naturally there are regions where water and soap are little used, but here it is largely the lingering influence of the old churches that is still making itself felt.

Thus we possess accounts from the Middle Ages stating that especially pious clergymen utterly scorned the bath, which at that time was in common use among both high and low alike. Thus Archbishop Bruno of Cologne scarcely ever took a bath, while Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen, during the last five years of his life, would not so much as cast a glance at one, as an act of penance. Healthy clergymen were permitted to enjoy the bath only to a very limited extent.

And why, you may ask? The bath was regarded as something worldly—it was counted among the pleasures of the flesh, a great danger to chastity and the holiness of the spirit. Yet many a clergyman of that age must have envied the healthy splashing of his faithful followers. Other ecclesiastical circles, however, held a more wholesome view and, despite its worldly character, nevertheless ventured into the refreshing waters of the bath.

But from the early Middle Ages we are likewise told of a washbasin that was in general use for cleansing both the hands and the feet. These basins were made of wood, earthenware, or metal. They were to be found not only at the courts of princes and high-ranking nobles, but also on the humble farmsteads of ordinary peasants, where similar basins served the same purpose.

The peasants regarded it as a duty of good manners to give their guests the opportunity to wash their hands, both before and after the meal. They themselves faithfully observed the same custom. It is remarkable that these washbasins, in which only separate parts of the body were washed, apparently were not used before the Middle Ages. The reason is that there is no Old Germanic name for them at all.

This, however, by no means implies that the Germanic peoples were afraid of water. Quite the contrary! Probably no people of that early age attached so much importance to the care of the body as the Germanic peoples. Strange though it may sound to many, it was considered good custom in Germania to take a bath every morning upon rising. Father, mother, and their numerous children all splashed about in the early morning with evident delight.

And it is none other than Tacitus who has handed down this account to us.

TRADITION AND FOLKTALE

But this is not the only thing Tacitus tells us about the bodily care of the Germanic tribes. He also relates a most remarkable custom of the Chatti, who at that time inhabited the region of Hesse. The young men of this tribe allowed their hair and beards to grow, but as soon as they had reached manhood they were permitted to care for them, just as other men did. They attained this manhood only after they had slain one of their enemies.

While they were in mourning, however, the care of their appearance was neglected. They neither combed nor washed themselves when they stood in close communion with death and thereby with the divine leader of the host of the dead, Wodan.

This custom does not stand alone. We encounter something similar in the folktales. The hero of the tale must on no account wash himself or comb his hair so long as he remains in contact with the powers of the underworld. Thus, in Grimm’s tale of Bearskin, the Devil commands him: “For the first seven years you must not wash yourself, you must neither comb your beard and hair nor cut your nails.”

It is highly characteristic of the tenacity of certain deeply rooted customs—and likewise of this report by Tacitus concerning the Chatti—that they later reappear in the folktales. These ancient Nordic traditions make it abundantly clear that bodily care had from earliest times been the established rule.

Nor did the bathing tub first come into use around the beginning of our era. And certainly not soap, which is so closely connected with it. For in Bronze Age graves, dating from about 1400 B.C., especially those of women, cosmetic boxes have been found containing residues of grease and pigments. It has not yet been established with complete certainty whether these are traces of soap, but it is highly probable.

The Batavians were particularly skilled in the manufacture of soap. They not only mastered the art of producing soda soaps, but after gaining possession of the salt springs on the Werra and near Wiesbaden, where they found the natural raw materials for their sodium soap, they introduced this new “product” as well. They were also capable of making liquid soap.

Is it any wonder that, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, they began to trade in this product? The Romans were their principal customers. They preferred to purchase two varieties of soap from them, namely Sapones Chatticae and Sapones Mattiacae.

Tacitus was not the only witness to the Germanic tribes’ great fondness for water. Other Roman historians likewise recorded this characteristic of their adversaries. Thus Caesar tells of the baths the Suebi took in the rivers, while Dio Cassius relates that the Marcomanni and the Quadi refused to live in towns because they would then have to forgo their customary baths in running water.

Another of these Roman writers reports how Alamannic soldiers once passed the time bathing in a river, only to be surprised by the Romans and either killed or, where possible, driven into flight. Nor were the Batavians found wanting. In close formation they swam across the Rhine, armed and accompanied by their horses, whenever war required it.

The swimming prowess of the Alamanni should likewise not be overlooked; they considered it a sporting amusement to swim while carrying their shields. The Franks, too, did not hesitate, whenever necessity compelled them, to swim across the Rhône with their shields.

All these examples of skill in swimming and endurance in the water surely demonstrate that we are not dealing with tribes who feared the water. On the contrary, they delighted in hardening the body, in part through regular swimming and bathing. It gave them pleasure to cleanse themselves with abundant water. And whoever contemplates the noble features of the Germanic peoples as depicted in the reliefs carved by Roman sculptors must concede that those represented there could not have belonged to a slovenly and unclean people.

Further evidence for the customary care of the body is likewise embedded in the Old Germanic language itself. There existed native words for all the various acts connected with washing—words that had not been borrowed from Latin or from any other language. And what could speak more convincingly for the indigenous character of the custom?

From the various examples cited above of the Nordic tribes’ fondness for water, particular attention has been drawn to the men’s preference for swimming and bathing in rivers. But it is self-evident that they could not maintain this practice during the harsh winters of the North. On the other hand, it is far less plausible to suppose that, out of fear of the cold, they simply remained clothed throughout that season.

In those days it was by no means unusual in Germania for a household to possess a bathtub. It had already become a matter of good manners to offer a guest, after a long journey, a refreshing bath. Only among the very poor was such a tub absent. Indeed, it was commonly said that one could “smell the poverty” from such people because of the odor they gave off.

A word that vividly expresses this connection between poverty and foul smell is the Middle High German swach. It came to mean “very poor,” but its original sense points to the offensive odor emanating from the body.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BATH

The bathtubs commonly in use were generally round in shape. One sat or squatted in them while bathing. The medieval baptismal font owes much of its form to these wooden or metal bathtubs of earlier times. In fact, it served much the same purpose. For the newborn child was held in it during baptism and thus, in a sense, received its first bath.

The bathtubs that later came into general use more closely resembled those of the present day. They were made oblong, allowing a more comfortable posture while bathing. Originally, however, these tubs were not kept in a room specially set aside for bathing. The metal bath, usually made of copper, was carried to whatever place it was needed at the time.

This reminds me of the film The Bath in the Barn (1943), in which the wealthy proprietor of a Viennese lingerie firm takes his bathtub with him wherever he travels. It swings merrily behind his carriage, and whenever the gentleman halts for the night at the home of a village mayor, he has his little black servant prepare the bath in his bedroom—at exactly the right temperature and with precisely measured quantities of perfume, whose fragrance pleasantly delights his pampered nose and enables him all the more to enjoy this refreshing bath after his dusty journey.

Even in the Middle Ages people enjoyed the pleasure of such fragrant baths. Rose petals were scattered upon the water for this purpose, and among the wealthy this was by no means an uncommon custom.

The Germanic peoples knew yet another kind of bath, one that differed considerably from the ordinary bathtub: the sweat bath. It probably did not arise from a natural inclination but rather as a therapeutic remedy. From the earliest times it had been recognized that profuse perspiration had beneficial effects in the treatment of certain illnesses.

The construction of such a sweat bath was originally very simple. It consisted of a wooden enclosure in which every crack and crevice between the beams and planks was carefully sealed to prevent any loss of heat. In one corner a stone stove was built. Once it had been thoroughly heated, water was thrown onto it, whereupon it immediately turned to steam.

The bather then waved a bundle of leafy branches back and forth to set the hot air in motion so that it flowed over the body. At the same time, he or she vigorously struck the body with this leafy whisk. The pores opened, and before long perspiration streamed from the body in rivulets. Finally, a plunge into an ice-cold bath followed to guard against catching cold.

This sweat bath was an invention entirely peculiar to the Germanic North. And as soon as other peoples—the Slavs, Finns, Latvians, and the Romance-speaking peoples—adopted the institution, they also adopted its Old Norse name. This, then, is convincing evidence that Germania must have been the cradle of the sweat bath.

Naturally, the sweat bath underwent various changes and improvements in the course of time. Ingenious designs were devised in order to achieve the greatest possible beneficial effect. But simplified forms of the bath also came into use. The ordinary household sweat bath consisted simply of a round tub over which a canvas cover was stretched. After all, why should it not serve the purpose just as well?

To obtain an even greater therapeutic effect, herbal infusions were likewise prepared. The infusion was poured into the bathwater, so that the medicinal properties of the herbs could take effect. The herbal bath served not only as a remedy but also as a cosmetic treatment.

Particularly striking in the Middle Ages was the craving for luxury and extravagance, especially in connection with bathing. Large public bathhouses were established, and there were not only separate baths for men and women, but mixed baths as well, which were by no means uncommon.

It goes without saying that this luxurious form of bathing was chiefly an affair of the upper classes. With the degeneration of urban civilization, it became a source of both physical and moral corruption, while the great wars likewise undermined the bathing customs of the countryside, turning what had once been the pure Germanic bathing tradition into a breeding ground of contagion and debauchery.

This, however, represented a departure from the original Germanic spirit.

In the same saga, Thorstein says:

After your death, there will hardly be anyone who will honor me, but everyone must seek their path according to the fate assigned to them.

A phrase we frequently encounter in this context is also found in the Saga of the People of Kjalarnes, where it is said:

But now it must go as it is destined.

When Thorarin, in Njal’s Saga (ch. 13), wishes to marry a woman who had driven her first husband to his death, he is warned against it, but his response is:

There will likely be nothing to be done about it: it will have to come as it is destined.

This acceptance of fate, however, should not be interpreted as a kind of fatalism. The acceptance of fate shares with fatalism only the recognition of the inescapable nature of fate. However, while the fatalist simply gives up and allows fate to take its course, the attitude meant here is one of someone who, despite fate being determined, still does what must be done under the given circumstances.

This difference in attitude depends not only on philosophical reflection but even more so on the character of the individual involved. The Oriental person is naturally a fatalist; the Germanic person is not. This is repeatedly evident in the Nordic sagas.

For instance, in the Saga of King Sverrir Sigurdsson (ch. 16), we read the following:

A farmer spoke as he accompanied his son to the warship and gave him good advice. He told him to be tough and brave in his trial as a man.

For a good name outlasts people by far. Or tell me, how would you act if you went into battle and knew in advance that you were going to fall?

The son answered:

What else could I do but strike all around me with both hands?

The farmer continued:

But what if someone could tell you with certainty that you would not fall?

The son answered:

How could I not give it my all to move forward?

The farmer then said:

In any battle in which you are involved, only one of two things can happen: either you fall, or you survive. Therefore, be brave, for everything is determined by fate. He for whom it is not determined that he must die will not go to Hel (the ruler of the realm of the dead), and he who is destined to go there cannot escape it. But the worst thing is: to flee.

This conversation gives us a clear picture of the mindset that was apparently common in that time. Everything was determined by fate, but even if one knew that death was imminent and would strike in all circumstances, it was still not a reason to refrain from acting.

The father, at the end, provides a rational argument for this: avoiding the fight would be dishonorable. But the son already intuitively responds from the beginning that he would fight to the utmost, even if there was no way out.

However, the most remarkable thing is that we are not dealing here with ideas nurtured by a small circle of philosophers, but with a worldview that had permeated the entire society and was fully embraced even by the ordinary farmer.

People saw others as collaborators and executors of fate, but they also recognized themselves in this role.

In the Laxdæla Saga (ch. 58), Thorkel is attacked and defeated by Grim. Grim then says:

Things have turned out differently than you probably thought, for now your life is in my hands.

Thorkel said he would not beg for mercy,

for fortune has been against me.

Grim replied:

I have caused enough misfortune, even if I leave this undone; a different fate is laid out for you than to die at this encounter of ours, and I will spare your life; reward me as you see fit.

Grim apparently did not feel that it was he who granted Thorkel his life, but considered himself only the executor of Thorkel’s—here favorable—fate.

But the reverse also occurred, namely, that one allowed an unfavorable fate for someone else to be fulfilled by not intervening.

In the same saga (ch. 49), Thorkel and his shepherd boy saw several men laying an ambush for Kjartan. The boy wanted to warn Kjartan, but Thorkel held him back, saying:

You fool, do you want to give someone life if death is destined for him?

As mentioned, the inescapability of fate was felt most strongly at the hour of death, and for the state in which someone found themselves shortly before their death, there was an expression that has been passed down in Dutch with the word veeg, which, although rarely used, still means “near death.”

In the ancient North, the condition preceding death was called feigd.

During this period, just before the moment when fate, which deeply influenced a person’s life, became most apparent, powers of fate, such as the fylgjen (guardian spirits) and the valkyries, visibly appeared to people. This was a direct intervention of fate in human life, and although our ancestors did not have the widespread fear of the afterlife that is common today, the word feigd still had a sinister connotation.

The one doomed to die lived in a peculiar intermediate state. It was believed that such a person was deprived of the guardian spirit that had accompanied them throughout their life and lived in a state of blindness, causing them to overlook all impending dangers.

This blindness was also a clear sign by which someone destined to die could be recognized.

Here we are apparently dealing again with an Indo-European concept, as the ancient Romans also had a proverb:

Whom Jupiter (the god of fate) wishes to destroy, he first blinds.

The belief that a vege (doomed) man must soon die is repeatedly found in the sagas.

In the Reykdæla Saga (ch. 6), Askel says that things have turned out as he thought, and that the journey would have been better left undone. However, Vemund remarked that everyone must follow their fate; everyone could be content with their lot, and each must die if they were feigd.

In Njal’s Saga, Thord, the son of a freedman and the foster father of Njal’s sons, kills Atli’s murderer. When this becomes known, his foster son Skarphedin says:

He was surely already doomed to die, the one who fell at the hands of our foster father, who has never seen human blood before.

We also find examples of the belief that a veeg (doomed) man no longer has a clear perspective on things.

In the same saga (ch. 129), Njal and his sons are standing in front of their house as enemies approach for an ambush. The enemies consider that they will face a difficult fight if these three await them in front of the house, and Njal’s sons also believe that it would be better to meet the enemy in open field.

Njal, blinded by his veegness, prefers to defend against the enemy from behind the walls of his homestead.

When his sons disagree with him, he laments:

Now it will happen that my sons will overrule me and no longer heed me. When you were younger, you did not do that, and you fared better for it.

Helgi does not realize that his father is wrong and says:

Let us do as our father wishes; that will be best for us.

But Skarphedin doubts it and replies:

I’m not so sure about that, for he is indeed veeg. But I would gladly give my father the satisfaction of burning with him, for I am not afraid of death.

They then go inside, and the leader of the enemies remarks:

Now they are doomed, now that they have gone inside.

Indeed, most of them perished in the burning homestead.

We also hear of other attitudes. There were people who tried to escape the influence of fate, and there are various indications that they sought to achieve this through magical means.

These individuals apparently saw fate as an impersonal power standing above and beyond humans, and they evidently believed that they could become a counterforce to fate through magic. They likely thought that by invoking a law of cause and effect, even if not fully realized, they could introduce new causes that would cancel out the consequences of fate.

But outside of this exceptional group, people generally accepted fate as an untouchable force that, through its decrees, fulfilled the sacred order. They were so convinced of this that many statements in the North, as seen from the examples above, simply say:

It is determined.

without mentioning the cause of this determination.

These statements appear so frequently that we may regard them as expressions of a widespread belief.

The magical attitude toward fate undoubtedly stemmed from the often-felt tension between a fixed destiny and free will. But there are many indications that people sought the solution in a different direction as well.

Many apparently held the belief that what fate bestowed upon people belonged to them, that it was, by virtue of their nature, their share in the world’s destiny. It was not a random fate striking them from the outside, but in every sense of the word, their own personal fate.

Those who thought this way did not desire any other fate than the one that was theirs, as expressed in the words of Gisli in the Saga of Gisli the Outlaw:

A warrior seeks counsel, but nevertheless, I want what fate has allotted to me.

And when Gisli must flee and leave his wife Ingjald behind, he composes (ch. 25):

Nevertheless, I gladly endure
the fate that comes to me...

...fear is entirely absent from me.

This willing acceptance of fate and the readiness to cooperate voluntarily in its fulfillment is also evident in the Frisian saga of Heriald Beroald, where it is said:

When matters stood thus, the sick Heriald suddenly noticed strength return to his arm. He rose from his bed, knowing that his time had come. He buckled on his armor, mounted his fiery steed, and entered the fray.

The consequence of this was that he fell in battle.

Here again, we see no attempt to escape the fate that was coming, but on the contrary, complete cooperation to fulfill it, even if it meant his own death.

This cooperation in carrying out fate was perhaps less a result of philosophical contemplation and more of a particular religious belief: that it was the duty of the gods and right-minded people to contribute to the unfolding of the sacred order of things.

This, of course, also meant assisting in the execution of fate’s decrees, and therefore cooperating in the fulfillment of one’s own fate, regardless of how it might turn out.

In order to know how to act in certain circumstances to align one’s actions with fate, a standard was naturally required, one by which actions could be judged.

From the wealth of information available to us, especially from the saga era, it becomes clear that in the Old Germanic period, this standard was honor, though this concept did not fully align with our modern understanding.

Honor commanded a specific attitude in all actions in life and was a factor that gave people significant influence in shaping their fate.

How important the concept of honor was in the old North is evident from the fact that the Old Norse language had more words for honor and its opposites, such as shame, than any other language in the world. For the concept of honor alone, there were no fewer than eleven synonyms; for the concept of shame, there were nine different words; and for concepts such as mockery, insult, and dishonor, there were no fewer than nineteen words available.

Honor in the North, and likely among other Germanic tribes before Christianity, was not an abstract concept. It was not a factor that was sometimes considered and sometimes not; it had unconditional demands that were fulfilled to their utmost consequences.

Even the death of the individual and their descendants was subordinate to honor, as evidenced by examples from Iceland and the Hildebrandslied.

The same compelling force of honor can be seen in Njal’s Saga (ch. 129). When Njal had gone inside his house, the leader of the enemies asked to speak to him and his wife, Bergthora, offering them a safe escape.

Njal’s response was:

I do not want a safe escape, for I am an old man and barely capable of avenging my sons, and I do not wish to live in shame.

When the leader then said to Bergthora,

Go outside, housemother, for I would not for anything let you burn inside,

she replied:

I was given to Njal when I was young; then I promised that one fate would befall us.

They both went back inside and perished in the flames.

Thus, honor was in all cases the standard for action, because a firm connection was seen between fate and honor.

In addition to this, there were other means to determine what fate had in store for the future—not to escape it, but to consciously cooperate in its fulfillment.

When, in the Nibelungenlied, the river nymphs predict that none of the Burgundians will return from their journey except the priest accompanying them, Hagen throws the priest overboard.

But when he sees the man swim back to shore, Hagen realizes that the prediction will come true and that they are all headed for death.

He does not turn back but, after crossing the river, destroys the ship to make any thought of retreat impossible and rides with his comrades to their death.

Although over the last thousand years the concept of an all-encompassing, impersonal necessity has almost completely disappeared, the old view still occasionally surfaces even in modern times.

Especially among poets, who live more from their inner selves than the average person, the connection between fate and the individual is often expressed.

For instance, in Schiller’s Wallenstein, we read the words:

The stars of fate are in your breast.

In Hölderlin’s Hyperion, the line appears:

To those whom fate speaks so loudly, they may also speak loudly back to fate.

The heroic stance toward fate is evident in Geibel’s words:

If there is anything greater than fate, it is the man who bears it unshakably.

This two-folio document demonstrates that the Church had already discovered, at the beginning of the seventh century, that popular belief could not be broken by force alone, but that a “bringing into conformity” of the old customs was considered necessary in order to secure acceptance for Christianity. The monk Bede likewise mentions this papal missionary letter in the first book of his important chronicle on the ecclesiastical history of the Angles.

The instructions to Mellitus read, in part, as follows:

“The temples of the gods among this people must certainly not be destroyed; only the idols within them are to be broken. Holy water should be consecrated and sprinkled upon these temples; altars are to be erected and relics brought there. For if these temples are well built, they must be withdrawn from the worship of demons and dedicated to God.

If the people see that the temples are not destroyed, they will abandon their error in their hearts. Sacrifices and sacrificial feasts may continue to be observed, only everything must be done in honor of God and the martyrs whose relics are preserved in the temples. For if certain outward pleasures are frankly permitted to them, they will more readily become accustomed to inward joys.

For it is impossible to deprive stubborn minds of everything at once, since even he who wishes to ascend to the highest point rises gradually and step by step, not by leaps.”

Almost a century and a half later, the old folk customs appear to have been the subject of extensive discussion at a synod presided over by the so-called “Apostle of the Germans,” namely Boniface, who at Dokkum in Friesland caused the oak of Wodan to be felled. Which folk customs these were becomes clear from the much-cited Indiculus Superstitionum et Paganarium.

By the Indiculus Superstitionum et Paganarium (“List of Superstitious and Pagan Practices”) is meant a document discovered in the seventeenth century by Holtenius in the so-called Pfälzer Codex (no. 577) of the Vatican. Apparently, it contains only the headings of the series of customs discussed at the Synod of Leptines in the year 743—presided over by Boniface—and especially commended to the attention of the clergy. Although nothing beyond some thirty paragraphs has survived, this overview nevertheless possesses great significance for folklore studies, because it allows us to see that a large number of these folk customs still survive today and have sometimes even been incorporated into church practice.

The thirty paragraphs are as follows:

I. De sacrilegio ad sepulchra mortuorum

(Concerning sacrilegious practices at the graves of the dead)

The Germanic clan burial grounds, and burial mounds in general, were sacred places, for the Germanic sense of eternity—which was the sense of the eternity of the lineage, of the bloodline—found expression in the veneration of the ancestors by the living. In this way, the grave became the sacred center of the blood-bound order of life.

Even today, on All Souls’ Day, lights are kindled upon graves in many parts of the Germanic world, and the surviving relatives visit the burial places of blood relations. These are customs that can in no way be explained from Christian doctrine alone, but which, though Christianized, still preserve memories of the old Germanic age.

II. De sacrilegio super defunctos id est dad-sisas

(Concerning sacrilegious practices surrounding the dead, namely “dad-sisas”)

For centuries, the Church persecuted funeral feasts, though without success, for they still exist today, and both minister and priest sit among the guests. During the Middle Ages, the minne (memorial toast) of the dead was drunk, and during the meal the deeds of the deceased were praised.

The dances that, according to early penitential texts, were still being held in the seventh and eighth centuries in connection with such gatherings were already distant echoes of the fully pagan age, when certain dances associated with the cult of the dead were almost certainly customary at the graves of important persons. Christianity, which demanded at the grave “fear and trembling” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” therefore denounced the popular customs surrounding burial as “pagan uproar” and “horrible sacrilege.”

III. De spurcalibus in Februario

(Concerning the impure festivities in February)

By “impure” or “immoral” festivities, the Church understood those customs connected with fertility—the “blessing of life”—especially the customs associated with the carnival season before Lent. The people often gave expression to their own will toward fertility, and to their desire for the fruitfulness of the fields, through highly vivid and sometimes drastic symbols and symbolic acts.

These nature-bound conceptions lay entirely outside the mental horizon of the monastic clergy, who, in their estrangement from healthy peasant life, denounced these traditional practices as “immoral.” Since the pre-Lenten fertility customs could not simply be eradicated, the Church transformed them into a Fastenabend, an eve of abstinence before Lent. Here again, Christianization signified an “inversion” of folk belief and its assimilation into the framework of Church doctrine.

IV. De casulis id est fanis

(Concerning little huts, that is, shrines or temples)

At the beginning of the seventh century, Pope Gregory the Great already advised the clergy working among the Anglo-Saxons not to destroy the old customs, but rather to reinterpret them. Among other things, he mentions the Germanic practice of building leafy huts around their sanctuaries—thus an ancient native custom, which should not be confused with the Jewish Sukkot.

The old Frisian Pentecost crown, the Lauerhütte associated with the Questen festival in the Harz, and the Pentecost huts of Hessian youth are connected with such festive structures of greenery and flowers.

V. De sacrilegiis per ecclesias

(Concerning sacrilege committed in and through the churches)

The old Germanic sanctuary was the place where countless folk customs connected with the well-being of tribe and clan were practiced. In order to draw the Germanic peasants toward the Christianized sanctuaries or newly built churches, the Christian clergy, too, were compelled to allow many of the old customs to continue under the new faith.

Later, however, it became necessary to suppress these pagan traditions once again as they gained an ever firmer footing. Thus, a fierce struggle was waged against the singing of pagan songs, the use of pagan musical instruments, and the growing custom of noisy or mocking special masses—such as the notorious “Feast of the Ass,” during which the chanting was imitated by braying.

The cuckoo-call of the church organ on Easter Sunday is a reminder of the Germanic proclamation of spring, and the rattles used in Thorn, a town in Limburg, likewise do not derive from Roman Catholic liturgy.

VI. De sacris silvarum, quae nimidas vocant

(Concerning the sacred groves, called “nimidas”)

The meaning of the word nimidas remains disputed, but this heading undoubtedly encompassed all those customs connected with the symbolism of the tree and with sacred places in the untouched forest. It therefore included both the processions and sacred journeys associated with green harvest branches, May trees, bridal greenery, Easter branches, Pentecost crowns, and similar customs.

Christianized forms of these traditions may still be found everywhere: the dragging of Easter branches at Denekamp, the St. Brigid’s tree at Noorbeek, and the little processional banners carried during the blessing of the fields, among many others.

VII. De his, quae faciunt super petras

(Concerning the sacred acts they perform upon rocks and stones)

Rocks situated at elevated points and favorably aligned with the position of the sun were used by our Germanic ancestors not only as “observatories,” from which the course of the sun could be accurately determined and the dates of the solar year established by means of marked signs, but rock formations and stone settings were undoubtedly also centers of worship. Thus, the famous Externsteine were almost certainly a Germanic rock sanctuary.

Many hills in the Netherlands, too, were sacred places, as may be inferred not only from their names, but also from their Christianization through the construction of chapels upon them, or from their deliberate desecration through the erection of gallows and wheels upon their summits.

The ancient spring fires were likewise kindled preferably upon the highest elevations, while many burial mounds and stone graves were laid out as sacred places at the highest points in the landscape. Even today, the Germanic peoples retain the urge to climb high rocks and mountains in order to experience there the grandeur and beauty of the earth in a natural sense of connectedness with the sacred powers that determine the order of life.

Under this heading must also be included those customs expressed in the carving or boring of particular grooves and hollows into stones regarded as especially suitable for such purposes. Thus, upon the capstones of certain megalithic tombs we find the well-known “elf-cups,” often arranged into remarkable figures that call to mind constellations of stars.

Various well-known sacred signs and runes are likewise found engraved upon rock faces and upon grave and boundary stones. In church portals throughout the Netherlands and elsewhere in the Germanic world, one also encounters “law-grooves” cut into the stone doorframes, which apparently are connected with immemorial legal customs.

In Brittany, great standing stones (menhirs) formed the destination and focal point of field processions. In certain places they still fulfill this role today in Christianized form. Even in present-day folk customs one encounters remarkable stones, such as the “Sacrificial Stone” associated with the ancient dragon-stabbing festival at Beesel.

Moreover, many “mysterious” stones are connected with legends and folk traditions, such as the chained “Devil’s Stone” at Utrecht, the Poppesteen near Burgum, the Reuzenpink on the Woldberg, and others. The stone table on the Rhenerberg and the stone of Voorthuizen were said to be “Wodan’s stones,” and so forth. All are indications that special stones have, from ancient times onward, played an important role in folk belief and folk custom.

VIII. De sacris Mercurii vel Jovis

(Concerning sacred rites for Mercury or Jupiter)

It goes without saying that—apart from those who defected to the Romans—the Germanic peoples never sacrificed to Mercury or Jupiter. Unable to comprehend the character of the Germanic deities, however, the foreign intruders conveniently equated them with the familiar gods of the Roman pantheon, just as classical authors had long been accustomed to do.

Symbolic gifts and thank-offerings made by the peasant after the harvest was brought in nevertheless survive in present-day folk customs in the form of the last sheaf, the rapeseed hare, the martelgaus, the “old wife,” and similar figures. In various regions, the Church placed itself in the position formerly occupied by the old sanctuary, and today still permits harvest offerings to be placed before the altar—offerings that were once dedicated to the Germanic gods.

IX. De sacrificio, quod fit alicui sanctorum

(Concerning offerings made to one of the saints)

According to Roman Catholic interpretations, this heading refers primarily to the “memorial gifts” dedicated to the ancestors and placed upon the graves. When the Church made it impossible to bring these consecrated gifts directly to the graves themselves, people began instead to place them before the statues of saints erected in Christian cemeteries. This transition was made all the easier because, in popular belief, the new saints were often understood as renewed forms of the old gods and mythical heroes.

In this way, many ancient pagan characteristics were eventually transferred to the Christian saints; indeed, even the old symbols became attributes of the saints. Even today, very many “offerings” are still made to “the saints” from motives entirely foreign to Christianity, as every pilgrimage chapel demonstrates all too clearly.

X. De phylacteriis et ligaturis

(Concerning amulets and talismans)

Alongside other sacred signs worn upon necklaces, the transitional age of Christianization also saw the appearance of many pendants in the form of Thor’s hammer. These came into use more or less as a protest against—or in imitation of—the small crosses worn by Christians.

The Church, in turn, took advantage of the growing superstition that spread after Christianization by attaching to it a flourishing trade in “consecrated amulets.” Among the most popular were written charms intended to ward off illness, fire, and flood damage.

XI. De fontibus sacrificiorum

(Concerning springs as places of offering)

Sacred springs were certainly widespread among our people. Countless legends and folktales speak of wondrous wells—such as those of Stavoren—and of Christianized springs, such as the Boniface Well at Dokkum.

Holy water, living water, symbols of pure and flowing life—such were many of these springs. Some were even believed literally to possess healing power, and medicinal spring water is still used today against various ailments. The manner in which the Church appropriated the symbolism of the water of life can still be seen in the rites of baptismal and holy water.

XII. De incantationibus

(Concerning magical incantations and chants)

Several Old Germanic “magic spells” have come down to us, such as the well-known Merseburg Charms:

ben zi bena, bluot zi bluoda, lid zi geliden ...
(“bone to bone, blood to blood, limb to limb ...”)

Various such formulas were Christianized by attaching a Pater Noster to them or by incorporating the name of Christ into the text. A classic example is provided by the Norwegian rune-song:

Hagall er kaldastr korna
Kristr skop haimenn forna.

The first line—“Hail is the coldest grain”—belongs to the older tradition. Hagall, “the All-Enclosing,” symbolized by the Hagal rune ᚼ, the “sixfold cross,” which may likewise be seen in every crystal of ice (hail!), represented for the Germanic peoples the sense of security within the divine order of the world.

The new concept of “Christ” had to be made comprehensible to them, and the Church accomplished this by associating “the White Christ” with an already familiar religious conception. Thus Christ—as so often happened—was transformed, contrary to biblical tradition, into a creator of the world.

We have already spoken above of the prohibition against the old songs within the new Christian worship.

XIII. De auguriis vel avium vel equorum, vel bovum stercore vel sternutatione

(Concerning divination by birds or horses, or by cattle—whether from dung or from sneezing)

Under this heading, it should be remembered that the Indiculus did not apply solely to Germanic peoples. Non-Germanic pagan customs were likewise opposed by the Synod of 743. Moreover, foreign influences had already long penetrated the disrupted religious life of the Germanic world during the early Middle Ages.

It is nevertheless certain that the Germanic peoples drew conclusions from various natural phenomena, such as the migration of birds. Even today, many a farmer still takes account of the “foreboding” that horses, according to modern investigations as well, appear to possess. Both horse and bird also function as symbols within the Germanic worldview.

The harvest cock still survives in folk custom and adorns the spires of church towers as the weathercock. The horse symbol likewise continues to play a role in many different forms in the present day—as the horse of Saint Nicholas Day, as the carnival hobby horse, as a gable ornament, and in other manifestations.

And is not the “stork-spoonbill” still regarded as a symbol of good fortune? Did not the Church itself adopt the “Dove of the Holy Spirit” from popular belief for the feast of Pentecost? And how many people still say “Bless you!” after a sneeze?

XIV. De divinis vel sortilegis

(Concerning soothsayers and foretellers of fate)

Under this heading may be included everything connected with the so-called “second sight,” so widespread especially in the Low German-Saxon regions, but also the immemorial folk wisdom founded upon centuries of experience and observation, carefully preserved and transmitted by “wise women” and the elders of the clan.

The Church partly destroyed this tradition by declaring the wise women to be “witches” and putting them to death, while partly continuing it by making saints such as Saint Andrew and Saint Barbara into holy patrons of fortune-tellers.

Above all, however, this heading probably referred to “rune wisdom,” namely the knowledge of the meaning of the ancient symbolic signs and emblems, together with Old Germanic astronomy. The dream of Siegfried, among other examples, points to the significance attached to dream symbols. Even today, numerous acts of “fortune-telling” survive within folk customs.

XV. De igne fricato de ligno, id est nodfyr

(Concerning fire rubbed from wood, called “nodfyr”)

For centuries, the Church struggled against the spring, midsummer, and midwinter fires, which according to ancient tradition were kindled with fire produced by friction. Precisely because these customs proved impossible to eradicate, the Church was compelled to absorb and transform many of them. The threefold Easter candle, the altar lamp, and the Easter fire are either adapted survivals or Christianized forms of older customs that still continue on a large scale today.

XVI. De cerebro animalium

(Concerning the brains of animals)

The same observations may be made here as under § XIII.

XVII. De observatione pagano in foco vel in inchoatione rei alicujus

(Concerning pagan practices at the hearth or at the beginning of any undertaking)

Within the Germanic homestead, the hearth was not merely the center of domestic life, but also the sacred center of clan existence. This sacred hearth-fire, as a symbol of the sun and of life, kindled from the fire of the midwinter solstice, occupied so important a place in the Germanic worldview that the hearth, as the symbol of the holy clan-community, long functioned, as it were, as the popular counterpart to the ecclesiastical altar.

This opposition between hearth and altar ultimately ended when the Church adopted the “eternal flame.” Around its “altar lamp” there gathered many conceptions derived from the ancient hearth-fire. The pot-hook, as a symbol of the hearth, still plays a role here and there in rural marriage customs (the so-called haal-leiden). [Translator note: In Dutch (Limburg) folklore, haalleiden at a wedding is the custom where the groom leads his bride three times around the hearth or the “haal” (the chain or beam above the fireplace), symbolizing her official entry into the new household.]

The second part of this heading undoubtedly refers to the popular belief that “a good beginning is half the work,” not only in human affairs but in nature itself. Very many weather sayings express this idea by regarding the weather on a particular day as determinative for the entire period that follows.

The Church acknowledged the special “prophetic” days of the peasant weather calendar by assigning saints to them at a very early date—and in this way Christianizing the oracular language of the “pagan sayings.”

XVIII. De incertis locis, quae colunt pro sacris

(Concerning the uncertain places which they regard as sacred)

One naturally thinks here of that “mystery” (secretum illud) which Tacitus associated with the Germanic religion. Undoubtedly, one characteristic of the northern sanctuaries was that the outsider would discover little outwardly remarkable about them. An enclosed place in the forest, a large and well-formed tree standing prominently in the landscape, a clear spring, or a rock or hill—these were the natural symbols of the Germanic worldview.

And even where additional symbolic signs had been artificially applied, they would scarcely have been recognizable to the uninitiated. Yet such places continued, for centuries after Christianization, to serve as destinations for annual field processions and “pilgrimages.” The Church therefore frequently provided these sites with a chapel and an accompanying legend in order to absorb the customs of the people into Christian practice.

It is noteworthy that when such chapels—as often happened—fell into ruin and were eventually demolished, the “pilgrimages of the faithful” quietly continued, just as they had in pre-Christian times. A remarkable example is furnished by the Placard concerning the Bevert Pilgrimage and Other Superstitions of 17 January 1647, proclaimed by the knighthood, nobility, and cities of Holland and West Friesland against the pilgrims who, despite every prohibition, continued to journey to Heiloo, where they held large open-air gatherings accompanied by numerous “superstitious” practices and dressed in linen garments.

The pretext for these observances was the scant remains of a certain chapel of “Our Lady at Need.” Yet there are many indications in both the customs and traditions, as well as in the very name of the place, that Heiloo had once been an ancient Germanic sanctuary.

XIX. De petendo quod boni vocant sanctae Mariae

(Concerning the prayers which the faithful address to Holy Mary)

It is not at all surprising that the Roman Church opposed popular devotion to Mary, mother of Jesus, for countless pagan ideas and customs had been transferred to “Our Lady.” One need only recall “Our Lady of the Holy Oak” at Aarschot and Our Lady of ‘s-Gravenzande, of whom popular speech said:

“Our Lady of ’s-Gravenzande is gracious unto us.
She has two wooden arms and two pear-tree buttocks ...”

Even Freyja’s distaffs (the constellation of Orion) passed over to Mary as “Mary’s distaffs”; “Freyja’s hair” became “Mary’s grass,” and so forth. Pagan Marian songs have likewise been preserved.

Among the pre-Christian customs adopted by the Church one may mention the blessing of herbs, corrupted in some regions into “Mary’s herb-wine,” as the feast of the Assumption is still occasionally called. The carrying of the image of Mary through the fields is a Christianized form of the old field processions held in honor of Freyja, Perchta, or Bertha.

Many attributes of “miraculous” images of Mary still allude to or preserve memories of native symbolic traditions, while Marian chapels and wells are clearly situated upon places that were sacred in ancient times.

XX. De feriis, quae faciunt Jovi vel Mercurio

(Concerning the feast days they celebrate in honor of Jupiter and Mercury)

The weekdays Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday still preserve Germanic heritage in their very names. Many feast days throughout the year likewise remained connected for a long time with the old gods, as may be seen from the symbolic signs found upon various peasant staff-calendars. The saints whom the Church placed upon these significant points of the yearly cycle later inherited many of these older symbols and emblems as their attributes.

XXI. De lunae defectione, quod dicunt vinceluna

(Concerning the waning moon, which they call “Conquer Moon!”)

The oldest systems of reckoning time counted by nights rather than by days. Even today, the English speak of a “fortnight” rather than “fourteen days.” For many purposes, such as warfare and public assemblies, people reckoned quite practically according to the time of the full moon.

The influence of the moon’s phases upon various functions of life is still not entirely disregarded in agricultural labor in many regions (sowing during the waxing moon!). Nor can the influence of the moon upon the inner life—sleepwalking and similar phenomena—be wholly denied.

During the Middle Ages, however, this folk wisdom degenerated into unrestrained superstition, and celestial phenomena frequently aroused terrible fears. The Church exploited these fears by using them to remind “sinners” of the horrors of the Last Judgment, thereby reinforcing the supposed necessity of its own mediating role—a position for which it exacted heavy payment in the form of indulgences.

After this uprooting of folk belief, scarcely anything remained of the old popular wisdom concerning the moon. Only a few legends of the “man in the moon” survive, together with rhymes such as:

“If someone falls within the moonlight,
the moon itself must be the cause.”

The cry “Conquer Moon!” mentioned in the Indiculus Superstitionum probably indicates that the waxing of the moon after its waning was understood as a fortunate victory of the night-light over the powers of darkness.

The Indo-Aryans believed they could discern a hare in the moon, thereby linking the moon with a symbol of fertility. Traces of this conception may also still be found within our own folk traditions. Equally clear is the importance attributed in folk medicine to the influence of the moon, preserved in praises such as the fourteenth-century Die cracht der mâne.

XXII. De tempestatibus et cornibus et cocleis

(Concerning storms, horns, and spoons)

Customs associated with thunderstorms are still practiced today, such as the burning of a palm branch taken from the consecrated bundle of herbs, and similar rites.

What precisely is meant by “horns and spoons” can no longer be determined with certainty. Judging from the rock carvings of Sweden, wind instruments were already being used in the worship of the Germanic peoples during the Bronze Age in highly developed forms. Beautifully ornamented bone flutes have even survived from the Stone Age. Small hand-drums likewise belong to the most ancient northern cultural inheritance, as do various rattling instruments.

The spoon also occupies a favored and distinguished place within folk customs as an object of symbolic significance—for example, bridal spoons. Spoons were likewise employed in acts of divination, such as the pouring of molten tin on New Year’s Eve.

The “horns” probably also refer to the horn-shaped ceremonial breads symbolizing either the primeval bow or the crescent moon. Finally, the horn may allude to the drinking horns used during communal festive meals (minne-drinking), while the spoons may likewise have been mentioned as attributes of these banquets, which included traditional porridge dishes, as has been shown by ancient guild and harvest feasts handed down through tradition.

Throughout the Germanic world, horns and spoons were richly ornamented and in some places have survived bearing rune inscriptions or family marks.

XXIII. De sulcis circa villas

(Concerning the ditches or moats surrounding the farmsteads)

The old Germanic farmsteads were surrounded either by earthen embankments and ditches or by moats and palisades, for the ancient hereditary farms (odal holdings) were defensible solar fiefs belonging to free men. The old Frisian peasant law concerning the “driving of swans” demonstrates how important an independent water boundary was considered, since the peasants liked to draw attention to it by means of these royal solar birds. The Groninger Almanak further records that the swans also bore the family mark, the symbol of the clan.

Boundary divisions likewise played an important role in the ancient legal customs surrounding the taking possession of a farmstead, as in the ritual circling of the property with the plow. Many annual customs also took place at or upon these boundaries, such as the erection of Pentecost greenery, the lighting of spring fires, and similar observances.

Since the Church opposed both the concept of the solar fief and the Germanic legal customs in favor of Roman law and the feudal system, it is hardly surprising that the highly significant boundary markers of the Germanic peasants likewise came under attack.

XXIV. De pagano cursu, quem Yrias nominant, scissis pannis vel calceis

(Concerning the pagan procession called “Yrias,” with torn clothes and shoes)

Among these processions—which, as we know from the chronicle of the weavers’ procession with the Blue Barge through the Low Countries, sometimes covered hundreds of kilometers, greatly wearing out clothing and footwear—there must undoubtedly be counted those processions containing solar, cyclical, and fertility symbols that already appear in the Bronze Age rock carvings.

These Bronze Age depictions already show processions with gigantic figures (surviving in characters such as Valuas and his Wife from Venlo), together with solar emblems, ships, and related imagery. In the Middle Ages, customs such as the Perchten processions, the masked figures associated with the burning of Winter, and the festivities of Carnival were probably also intended under this heading.

For centuries the Church opposed these customs in word and writing, while reinterpreting some of them—for example, the “burning of Judas.” In the Easter pole-dragging custom at Denekamp, “Judas” has even been divided into two separate figures: Judas and Karioth.

XXV. De eo, quod sibi sanctos fingunt, quoslibet mortuos

(Concerning the fact that they make saints of their dead whenever it suits them)

The sacred character of the clan led the Germanic peoples everywhere to elevate their own heroic figures into local “saints,” thereby enabling the continuation of ancestor veneration. The Church—which in those days was itself by no means sparing in the canonization of saints—naturally objected to the excessive presence of Germanic figures within its worship, since together with these suspect “saints” there entered a variety of pagan ideas and customs.

Only in exceptional cases did northern heroic figures attain the status of officially recognized saints of the Church, and even then only when the Church itself had a strong interest in doing so—as, for example, in the canonization of Charlemagne.

With the observance of All Souls’ Day, however, the Church did in some measure accommodate the continued veneration of the ancestors.

XXVI. De simulacro de consparsa farina

(Concerning figures made from grain or dough)

Many of these bread-forms still survive today in the festive pastries of midwinter, springtime, and Easter. They are ancient representations of Germanic symbols, such as the solar wheel, the cock, the horse, the sacred knot, the solar spiral, the tree of life, and similar figures. The molds used for speculaas still display these symbols in remarkable abundance.

The character of the Germanic “offering” as a symbolic gift of friendship—an expression of the faithful relationship between god and man—is clearly reflected in them. The Church Christianized a number of these symbolic baked forms and incorporated them into its own customs, for example as the so-called Christmas wreath or Easter bread. Other forms were reinterpreted and otherwise left to the people, such as the pretzel, which was declared to represent “the bonds of Christ” and still survives in folk custom under that meaning.

XXVII. De simulacris de pannis factis

(Concerning figures made of cloth)

Reference should here be made to paragraph XXIV. In the field processions, large figures were carried along which, much as is still often the case today, were probably constructed from wicker frameworks covered with cloth.

Besides the “giants,” one may think here of the reed hobby-horses of the carnival at ‘s-Hertogenbosch, as well as the straw figures covered with cloth used in the “burning of the fair,” the “driving out of Winter,” or the “expulsion of Death.”

XXVIII. De simulacro quod per campos portant

(Concerning the figures which they carry through the fields)

The Old Germanic field processions, with symbols such as the plow, the ship, the solar wheel, and similar emblems, still survive today in the field processions of the Roman Catholic Church. Only now, in place of the sacred symbols, images of various Christian saints are carried along.

Some impression of these portable peasant procession-symbols may be gained from the palmpasen decorations, now reduced to children’s amusement, many of whose faithfully preserved forms are striking for their color and beauty of design, as well as for their meaningful arrangement of symbols such as the solar wheel and the solar birds.

XXIX. De ligneis pedibus vel manibus pagano ritu

(Concerning wooden feet and hands according to pagan custom)

Among a people so distinctly characterized by joy in labor as the Nordic race, it could hardly have been otherwise than that the hand should very early have become a sacred symbol. The foot likewise acquired symbolic significance at an early period, as is evident from the depictions of feet found in the rock carvings. Within these symbolic series one also encounters representations of divine figures with exceedingly large hands.

The hand furthermore plays an important role in legal customs. Gloves, as well as wooden shoes, continued down to modern times in rural districts to be ornamented on special occasions—such as wedding gifts—with Germanic symbolic designs according to ancient custom.

Votive offerings to Christian pilgrimage chapels and similar places, though themselves of non-Germanic origin, were in the Germanic lands frequently surrounded by pagan folk beliefs and used in a non-ecclesiastical sense by the people. For this reason the Church also opposed such practices, although such offerings may still be seen everywhere today.

XXX. De eo, quod credunt, quia feminae lunam commendent, quod possint corda hominum tollere juxta paganos

(Concerning the belief that women can influence the moon and, according to pagan opinion, steal the hearts of men)

This paragraph clearly demonstrates how the terrible witch-delusion was prepared and unleashed by the Christian Church. A careful study of the sagas shows beyond dispute that “sorcery” was regarded with abhorrence by the Germanic saga-farmers, and that harmful magic was severely punished whenever the perpetrators were believed to be known.

It further appears that the healthy members of pure-blooded clans did not involve themselves in such practices at all, but that “witchcraft” was practiced only by eccentrics, bastards, or outcasts of foreign race, such as the Lapps (“Finns”). In general, sorcery was therefore called “Finn-work.”

Quite different, however, was the folk belief expressed in practices such as fortune-telling, clairvoyance, rune lore, folk medicine, and related arts. These gifts were indeed possessed by the finest members of the clan and accordingly held in high esteem. Wise women in particular cultivated such knowledge, but no Germanic person would ever have thought of accusing these honorable women of “witchcraft” or of some sinister crime.

The Christian clergy, however, which sought to dissolve the old clan bonds in order to establish the new religion, succeeded—after centuries of suspicion and ever-growing superstition—in declaring such gifted women to be “witches” and terrifying the people with fear of their supposed powers. In the dreadful witch mania that followed, hundreds of thousands of women of the finest Germanic stock and greatest natural ability fell victim to the murderous persecution of power-obsessed priests. Much knowledge of nature and much ancient inherited wisdom thereby disappeared forever.

The lower forms of superstition that penetrated many folk customs, however, were certainly not of original Germanic origin, but entered from other peoples and races after the unity of Germanic culture had been broken. The sagas themselves likewise demonstrate this: the younger the saga, the greater the role played within it by superstition and sorcery. During the flowering period of Germanic culture, superstition can therefore have played only a very minor role, and folk belief must have remained comparatively pure.

Thus end the thirty paragraphs of the Indiculus Superstitionum et Paganarium. They are indeed of great interest, for they demonstrate with unmistakable clarity how, despite twelve centuries of opposition, many of the old folk customs have continued to survive in one form or another. They further reveal that these customs were of pre-Christian origin and formed part of a religious tradition that was combated by the new faith through every possible means.

Thousands of years old, persecuted for a thousand years, and still not dead—the vitality of folk customs may well fill us with pride.

These mountain regions form natural boundaries. They offer no favorable conditions for life. Accordingly, the great centers of civilization lie at the foot of the mountain chains. Around the Alps, in a ring, live the great peoples of Europe.

From the Alps outward, one may sketch the following in broad outline: to the north and northwest lies the Germanic area; to the south and west, the Latin cultural sphere. The boundary between these regions runs just south of Brussels through Belgium. This is the zone where Germanic and Latin culture meet—a zone of friction. Such is the situation as we may observe it today.

Within the Germanic sphere lies our own country. We see that we are surrounded on all sides by Germanic peoples: to the south, the Flemish; to the west, the English; to the east, the Germans. Further north live the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia—Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes. The Germanic world thus encircles the North Sea and the Baltic.

All these peoples have lived in these regions for centuries. Over time, they gradually emerged from different Germanic tribes, and as these tribes fused into larger peoples, they acquired the names they now bear. England takes its name from the Angles, who settled there together with the Saxons in the fifth century A.D.; Denmark from the Danes. The Franks gave their name to the land still called France today.

Yet when such large tribal groups as the Franks and Saxons appear on the stage, Germanic history is already far advanced. We first hear of these peoples during the period of the great migrations, from the third to the fifth century.

In those centuries of upheaval, beginning in the regions around the North Sea and the Baltic, the Germanic tribes set themselves in motion. The Roman Empire, which had long held back their expansion, had grown inwardly rotten and collapsed. The Germanic peoples seized the opportunity to enlarge their domains. As agrarian peoples, they required land on which to establish their farms. Healthy and vigorous, they multiplied rapidly.

Northwestern Europe was like a beehive with its entrance blocked: once the obstacle was removed, the swarms burst forth. They moved in two directions, pressing along both sides of the Alps into the Roman Empire, which was overrun from east and west alike. By the end of the fifth century, all of Europe lay under the power of the Germanic peoples.

In our own land, after this great shifting of tribes, three groups met. Broadly speaking, the Franks settled south of the great rivers; along the coast lived the Frisians; in the eastern regions, the Saxons. Of the smaller tribes mentioned by Tacitus at the beginning of our era—such as the Batavians—we hear no more. They were small groups absorbed into larger peoples, just as the Hollanders, Utrechters, and Geldrians—once political entities—were absorbed into the Dutch nation, which emerged as a new political unit in history. Thus the names of the smaller tribes disappeared, preserved only in occasional place-names.

A few centuries after the beginning of our era, we observe a vast Germanization of Europe radiating from the Germanic core around the North and Baltic Seas. That region was like a “womb of nations,” as the Romans called it—a source overflowing and expanding outward.

The migrations of the first centuries A.D. were not without precedent. Already a hundred years before our era, the Cimbri had streamed southward from Jutland, spreading panic in the Roman Empire until they were finally destroyed near Milan and north of Marseille. Over the centuries, such Germanic expansions repeatedly collided with Rome. Whenever this occurred, history records it as a moment of crisis. Yet when expansion took place at the expense of other peoples not under Roman rule—often themselves kindred to the Germanic peoples—Rome remained unaffected. Only when the expanding Germanic tribes pressed directly into Roman dominion did the clash enter Roman history.

For the gradual expansion of the Germanic world prior to direct contact with Rome, one must turn to Germanic prehistory, for which no written sources exist. Excavations and archaeological finds, however, provide sufficient evidence to trace this process in broad outline. When transferred to maps, they confirm what later Roman contact revealed: that from northwestern Europe, around the North and Baltic Seas, the Germanic tribes spread southward, southwestward, eastward, and southeastward. What appeared, after the beginning of our era, as a sudden storm following the collapse of Roman resistance had in fact been unfolding as a gradual movement for many centuries.

Around 1800 B.C., the Germanic heartland lay in Jutland and along the adjacent Baltic coasts. Over the centuries, it expanded southward until, by the beginning of our era, it pressed against Rome itself. There expansion was halted, pressure mounting until, in the age of migrations, it burst forth with force.

The eighteen centuries preceding our era that witnessed this southward expansion were also centuries of high culture. During the first millennium, bronze (copper alloyed with tin) replaced stone for tools and weapons; in the following eight hundred years, iron in turn displaced bronze. Throughout, this culture remained Germanic.

Yet even this expansion was not an isolated phenomenon. It had its precedent in the spread of Indo-Germanic culture by peoples closely related to the Germanics, commonly grouped under the name Indo-Germanics, since their migrations extended from Europe to India. What we observe between roughly 1800 B.C. and A.D. 500 is, in essence, a repetition. From the northern cultural zone of the late Stone Age, beginning around 4000 B.C., earlier waves of migration had already set out from the same region. The Indo-Germanic community, developing in the same area in which the Germanic group would later arise, spread outward in similar directions.

In the Netherlands, traces of this are found in the megalithic tombs (hunebedden), reminders that the higher grounds of our country were already inhabited by the forefathers of the Saxons and Frisians.

The probable development of these Indo-Germanic offshoots in Europe is illustrated in Figure 3, depicting the situation around 2000 B.C. In later centuries, these groups moved further afield: the Indo-Iranians advanced into India and Persia, founding kingdoms in which they formed the leading stratum and carried their culture with them; the Hellenes settled in Greece and along the coast of Asia Minor, creating classical Greek civilization, one of the noblest expressions of Indo-Germanic culture; the Italians advanced onto the Apennine Peninsula and founded the agrarian republic of Rome, which grew into a world empire, though in time eastern elements came to dominate as the original Indo-Germanic line declined; the Celts were pushed westward and were encountered by Caesar in Gaul at the dawn of our era; the Illyrians settled in the Danube basin. Each of these groups founded great cultures which, while sharing common origins and traits, nevertheless developed distinct characters of their own.

Recent discoveries have even suggested that, in the earliest phases of Egyptian and Sumerian civilization, influences of the northern cultural sphere—and its bearers—may be discerned, indicating that earlier waves preceded the Indo-Germanic expansions.

Thus, when we speak of the history of our people, it is misguided—as schoolbooks often do—to begin with the Batavians and the Romans, as though civilization itself began with Rome. To the last two thousand years there precede at least four thousand years of civilization, of which we now possess a considerable body of knowledge. Only against the background of those four millennia do the most recent centuries assume their full significance.

When we observe, in the Middle Ages, our people expanding overseas toward the Baltic and the Mediterranean; when, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Dutch sailed to the Indies and to America to found colonies; when, in the nineteenth century, the Anglo-Saxons—so closely related to our own Frisians—built a world empire through which Western European civilization became world civilization—none of this can be understood without reference to those earlier four thousand years. The key to the present lies in the past.

Later in the evening you would have discovered more such self-evident things. You would ultimately have wondered only that you had not known them already: that you did not know how, at night, the bells of drowned villages and little towns along Brittany’s turbulent southern coast are said to toll.

And you would have judged yourself a pitiable simpleton for not knowing all the miracles of the Breton saints. Are those miracles not great enough that you, too—yes, even you—ought to have known them? And finally, late in the evening, when once more you had raised with your host the glass of fermented sweet mead—Bennoz Doué d’e hoc’h, God bless you—you would have discovered that no greater heretic, no more dreadful unbeliever, could exist than yourself: you, disgraceful pagan, who did not know that Jesus’ grandmother was Saint Anne of La Palud, the Breton woman of Château Moëllien, whose spirit is still believed to linger there, working wonders for all who bring their needs to her with childlike faith.

Ah, how small you would have felt that evening, how all your Western self-assurance would have seemed a useless yet burdensome piece of baggage. What could you do with it in the land of saints, kindly spirits, and devout folk-tales, in this childlike believing Brittany? What use would your cynical baggage have been, Westerner? Would you have needed it merely to shake with laughter at that splendid anecdote—the story of Jesus, grandson of Anne, a simple Breton woman who suffered so much from her harsh husband that she fled his violence while expecting her child? Or might that strange atmosphere of Celtic, mysterious piety—that pervasive belief in benevolent spirits—have impressed you after all?

And perhaps, in Anatole Le Braz’s record of the story of Anne of Moëllien, you would have recognized the sweetly idealized memory of a wise woman from long-vanished times, whose remembrance was never erased from popular memory, though it acquired a new garment—the garment of Christian faith inserted between the oldest tradition concerning Anne and her present veneration. Nor would you have objected that she was also revered as Duchess Anne, twice queen of France, twice compelled to marry a French king, twice suffering deeply because she sought to protect Brittany from crude annexation.

Is it not a beautiful legend that this Anne—heroine of Brittany, so unhappy with her French husband—fled from him and, arriving in the Bay of Tréfentec, saw the light of a ship gently rocking on the waves though the surrounding sea churned wildly? On the stern stood an angel who said, “Make haste, come aboard so that we may raise sail.” She came. He spread his wings. They sailed away.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Where the wind carries us,” he replied. “God’s will is in the wind.”

Thus they sailed to the coast of Judea, where Anne bore a daughter destined by God to become the Virgin. She raised the child devoutly so that she might prove worthy to become the mother of Jesus. But when she had grown old she prayed: “I long for my Breton people. Before I die, let me once more behold the Bay of Plounévez-Porzay.” Her wish was granted. The ship of light returned for her, the same angel aboard, now dressed in black so that she would understand that her husband, the lord of Moëllien, had meanwhile died.

Back in her native bay she gave her possessions to her people and resolved to spend her last days in poverty. Then Jesus, her grandson, journeyed to Lower Brittany to seek her blessing before going to his crucifixion. Their farewell was deeply sorrowful: Anne wept tears of blood, and Jesus could not console her. At last he said, “Remember your Bretons, grandmother. Speak, and for your sake I shall grant them whatever you desire.” She dried her tears and said: let a church be dedicated to her on that spot; as far as its spire might be visible and its bells audible, all suffering bodies and souls, living or dead, should find peace.

And so it came to pass. Jesus planted his staff in the sand, and immediately a clear spring burst forth from the barren dune. Ever since, those who drink devoutly from its waters are said to find relief from illness and solace for troubled souls. Each year, toward the end of August, a stream of pilgrims travels to Tréfentec for the procession of Saint Anne—the maritime pilgrimage of the fishing population of Douarnenez. It is the pilgrimage of the sea. It is the sea itself—the sea goddess—that the people honour on that hot August Sunday.

Is it not the feast of Ahès, daughter of Gradlon? Is she not the sea goddess herself? Did she not come to this spring with her companions, the maidens of drowned Ker-Is, to wash her royal linen? Are her features not still glimpsed in the water, and does the moss on the hill not preserve the scent of her wild hair? In ancient times, writes the poet Anatole Le Braz, before Jesus’ grandmother was born, she alone was worshipped in this region. She had no chapel in the dunes; worship took place in the open air. Yet even then the people gathered in the heat of August, for then she revealed her beauty freely, unveiling all her charms, her translucent flesh trembling under the caress of light before her enraptured worshippers.

In those distant years believers assembled on the hills, stretched out their arms toward her, sang songs in her honour, and lost themselves in rapture. There is no doubt that Ahès was one of the names by which this goddess was invoked. The myth has endured—even in its older form it survived Christianity’s touch. She is still remembered as having a rolling gait and long streaming hair that sometimes shone like the sun, sometimes like the moon; her eyes were changeable yet captivating. She dwelt in an endless palace whose windows glittered like great emeralds. Passionate and insatiable in love, she preferred strong, rough men of the people. When a fisherman passed beneath her window with his nets over his shoulder, she beckoned him inside. She would change lovers many times in a single night, dance naked before them, and sing them into a sleep from which they never awoke. Her kisses were fatal. Those she touched with her lips remained forever silent. She was a corrupter of souls—irresistible yet disastrous. Who, asks Le Braz, fails to recognize in Ahès the living personification of the sea?

This is Brittany in full: intensely devout, intensely Catholic, intensely pagan.

If the midsummer bonfires did not blaze on 23 June—officially in honour of Saint John—the sun, people say, would not appear in the coming year. And so flames rise everywhere into the summer night. They even burned in 1793, when the Goddess of Reason forbade religion along with all popular custom. The sacred tantad fire was banned on pain of harsh revolutionary punishment. Yet when the hour came—though no wood had been stacked on the hills—the sky suddenly reddened from a vast blaze visible far out to sea. It was the farm of the revolutionary who had demanded the ban that burned. Saint John himself, people said, had taken revenge. No culprit was ever found.

Yet these fires were not always for Saint John. Throughout Brittany, says Le Braz, every village, hamlet, and isolated farm consecrates symbolic logs, invokes sacred flames, and kneels around the ashes in ancient rites whose meaning has been lost though the gestures remain unchanged over millennia. One place above all preserves the centre of solar worship: Traoun-Mériadek near the Trégor coast. Mériadek, a legendary figure—variously noble kinsman of King Conan or bishop of Vannes—is claimed exclusively by local tradition as their saint, an immigrant from Saxon England like many Bretons. His brother Primel followed a rolling stone westward to Plougasnou, while Mériadek remained in the Traoun valley. Officially he yielded to Saint John-of-the-Finger, yet the underlying sun cult persisted.

The procession on 23 June, though Christianized by banners and statues, remains essentially pagan. Breton pardons—local devotional festivals—are lay processions. Priests play little role. They are solemn occasions, not carnivals: remnants, says Le Braz, of ancient funeral feasts, marked more by prayer than laughter. Even the evening dances retain a simplicity suggestive of sacred origin.

Some clergy distrust this piety as fundamentally pagan. Le Braz cites the pilgrimage of Sant Iguinou, where neither priest nor ecclesiastical emblem appeared, yet whose solemnity was overwhelming. The Breton soul, he concludes, resembles its stubborn soil: uproot the weeds, leave the ground fallow, and they return in full strength.

Indestructible forces lie in the Celtic character. Their gods resemble those of other Indo-European peoples, yet nowhere have they been retained so tenaciously as in Brittany. Elsewhere such spirits became literary ghosts; here they remain active presences—benevolent spirits with a Catholic veneer yet fundamentally pagan. Many saints retain territorial jurisdictions and specialized miraculous powers: Maudez cures boils; Goméry fevers; Tujen rabies. Only Yves Hélory, a historically attested canonized saint, enjoys broader miraculous authority.

Processions remain primarily local affairs. Old territorial gods persist beneath Christian names. Sometimes rivalry produces conflict: at the pardon of Saint Gelvest the Little, protector of crops, pilgrims from rival dioceses fought annual pitched battles. Armed with heavy bagpipes used as clubs, men clashed while women fought with nails and teeth. Injuries were frequent; the wooden statue of the saint was invariably smashed, and women fought over splinters believed to ensure a good harvest. Eventually the festival was suppressed.

Brittany, then: a land of remarkable religious emotion, where mystery has found a last refuge in an increasingly sober Europe that calls primitive what for the Celt remains a living part of the soul. That Brittany should be so may well be a matter of racial disposition.

These Celts will remain Catholic pagans to the end. They will continue their processions, set out wine and cakes for friendly spirits, bake pancakes for the beloved dead between All Saints’ and All Souls’ nights, and recount encounters with spirits who intervene visibly in human affairs. Yet they will also blame the mischievous spirit paotr when a fine fish escapes the fisherman’s net at the last moment.

Such is Brittany in 1944. Has it changed much over the centuries? Probably not, though modern technology has certainly reduced its isolation. Conversion to Christianity must be considered: Brittany is emphatically Catholic—perhaps the most Catholic region of France—yet Celtic pagan customs persist with remarkable tenacity.

Has the environment contributed to the formation of this remarkable religiosity? Granted that in its essence it must be chiefly a matter of race, of inward disposition. Yet that the surroundings—harsh and in large parts unfruitful—and the sea, which at all times exacts its toll from the living in terrible measure, have played their part, goes without saying.

But above all the mysterious ancient graves in the south of Brittany must be mentioned: the immense dolmens, the stone alignments, the standing stones, the obelisks, the burial mounds, which lend the landscape an unreal aspect and which at low tide even emerge from the drowned land of Er-Lannic. Again and again they have nourished the popular imagination—an imagination which (and here the question of race, of the Celtic temperament, speaks once more) has proved susceptible chiefly in a religious, more precisely in a mystico-occult, direction.

How far all this extends, what precisely may be said of it without lapsing into exaggeration, is in itself a theme but vaguely defined. For—the concluding observation—the Breton processions and the legends of saints and spirits have in large part been recorded; the ancient burial mounds and stone avenues have been inventoried. Yet the interrelation, the explanation of and the answer to these things, is still largely lacking in Celtic studies, if we take as our measure what we know of our own Germanic forebears.

Thus the veil of mystery over Brittany has scarcely been lifted. And perhaps that is just as well for the Bretons. Mysteries reduced to index cards—would that not be a contradiction? Were I Breton, I should accept them as they are, without demanding a “rational” explanation.

Democracy has always eagerly made use of the soldier’s boot as a symbol of the soldier and of the military state of mind. The many caricatures showing a coarse boot, trampling everything underfoot with ruthless brutality and mercilessly crushing whatever lies beneath its iron-studded sole, are still well known to us all.

This image was perhaps most vividly realized in the Soviet-Russian film Battleship Potemkin, released some years ago. In one of its scenes, the entire screen is filled with rows of soldiers’ boots, descending the broad steps leading down to the harbor of Odessa in a terrifyingly uniform rhythm. For a long time, one sees nothing but these boots, rising and stamping down again in perfect unison.

When this image finally disappears, the nerve-wracking cadence continues to echo, and before these symbols of violence and oppression we see the fleeing masses — men, women, and children alike. This scene, from that deeply suggestive film, is so immediate in its effect that for a long time afterward the viewer cannot help but associate soldiers’ boots with violence.

This, of course, was the aim of that democratic caricature: the soldier’s boot crushed everything that made life beautiful, even the most sacred things. Thus, soldierdom and culture were set against one another as two irreconcilable opposites.

How does the SS stand in relation to this?

The SS is an organization built upon military foundations; all of us wear the soldier’s boot. Practically all its members stand, in these very moments as the military decision draws ever closer, in the ranks of the Waffen-SS. At the same time, the SS has always stood as a bulwark for the protection and defense of our cultural values and has proven that it does everything within its power to promote art and science.

In this regard, we need only point to the scholarly conferences it has held, the exhibitions it has organized, and the archaeological excavations carried out by personal order of the Reichsführer-SS himself. To this end, he also founded the research society Das Ahnenerbe.

In our understanding, therefore, there is no opposition between culture and soldierdom. What, then, is the true relationship between these two concepts for us?

Von Clausewitz on War

The soldier is above all a bearer of arms. His entire existence is oriented toward the fact that at some point he will stand face to face with the enemy. Without war, there is no soldier.

To understand, therefore, what it means to be a soldier, we must first and foremost make clear to ourselves what is meant by war. For it is only war that grants to soldiery its highest consecration. The classical theorist and philosopher of war is General Carl von Clausewitz, who, in his work Vom Kriege (On War), grasped and explained the deeper meaning of war in an unsurpassed manner.

In the first book of that work, Über die Natur des Krieges (On the Nature of War), von Clausewitz gives the following definition:

“War is thus an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”

In this formulation, the goal, the means, and the deeper motivating factor of the concept of war are clearly and precisely defined. At first sight, this definition seems fully to justify the opposition drawn by democrats and pacifists. For indeed, the imposition of one’s own will upon another—through acts of violence, no less—appears difficult to reconcile with the prevailing idea of culture. The caricaturist who depicted the soldier’s boot as a symbol of cultural destruction and an instrument hostile to civilization would seem, at first glance, to have been vindicated by the great military philosopher himself.

But matters are not so simple. As so often, appearances deceive. For von Clausewitz was not satisfied with this definition alone; he sought to penetrate more deeply into the essence of war. War, he observed, does not exist in isolation. The circumstances from which it arises, under which it unfolds, and which are likely to follow its conclusion, all influence it and help to determine its character. In this lies a limitation upon the otherwise entirely correct definition. Clausewitz therefore proceeds further.

“The political purpose,” he writes, “as the original motive of war, will be the measure of it.” With this statement, a new element is introduced into our understanding of war—namely, that of politics. The background of war is political. The will that we seek to impose upon our adversary through war is not an arbitrary will, not mere caprice; it is our political will.

Developing this line of thought, von Clausewitz arrives at his famous conclusion: that war is the continuation of politics by other means, and that we must therefore not regard it as an independent entity, but as a political instrument.

Culture

Following Clausewitz’s reflections, we have now penetrated somewhat deeper into the nature of the concept of “war.” Let us now try to clarify what we mean by the word culture. We speak of cultivated plants, of bringing wild land under cultivation, but likewise of cultural creations, cultural treasures, and cultural nations. The meaning of this term is therefore very broad, and it is not simple to determine the underlying sense common to all these usages.

The word derives from the Latin “colere” — to tend, to care for, to bring to growth and fruition — and is closely related to cultus, meaning worship, religious observance, and the preservation of ancestral traditions.

The concept of culture, therefore, contains two essential meanings: on the one hand, the care and preservation of a people’s inherited spiritual heritage; on the other, the nurturing and unfolding of values that are already latent within it. Thus, cultivated plants are those that have been bred and tended so that their yield and quality are raised to the highest possible level.

Only through cultivation is the uncultivated state overcome, and the original form brought to a higher development.

When we apply this meaning to the life of a people, it follows that culture must always build upon something that precedes it — upon what is original and natural. Culture, in this sense, means the careful development and flowering of a people’s own character and way of life.

It has often been claimed that there exists a fundamental opposition between nature and culture, yet nothing could be less true. Nature and culture are not opposites but continuations of one another: the latter cannot exist without the former. Culture is the intensification, the deepening, the flowering of what is natural.

A phenomenon in social life that does not arise organically from the natural life of the people cannot be called culture, but at most civilization.

There thus exists a real contrast not between nature and culture, but between civilization and culture. The very words express this distinction. In the sense we use it, civilization refers to external refinement — the smoothing of manners and appearances, the cultivation of the surface — without any corresponding transformation of the inner life. Culture, by contrast, grows from within, nurturing and developing the best inherent qualities and capacities of a people.

Politics

To be able to speak of culture, however, a second element is necessary. This follows directly from the preceding reflections. There must be a guiding and directing center—one that makes possible and furthers the unfolding of the people’s inherent powers. That this leading element must be most intimately connected with the people, indeed must arise from it, goes without saying.

The cultivation of a people’s life—the giving of leadership and direction to popular currents, the unification of the people’s forces, in short, the advancement of culture—is what we call politics in the true sense of the word.

Here, then, we find the point of contact between the concepts of soldiership and culture, which for the democrat seem mutually exclusive.

Culture is the aim of politics; it is the result of political activity. War is nothing other than a form of politics determined by circumstance—politics expressed in another guise, “politics by other means.”

The ultimate goal of war, therefore, is the same as that of politics: the unfolding, advancement, and safeguarding of a people’s native culture.

War is thus not an end in itself but a means. But politics, too, is not an end in itself, and equally a means.

Seen in this way, there is no opposition between soldiership and culture; rather, they belong together in the closest sense. We are therefore soldiers in the ordinary sense, but also political soldiers, united in one great purpose: the preservation and advancement of our Germanic culture.

The State

The organ that bears political life, and that likewise wages politics by other means—war—is the state. Soldier and statesman alike are the executors of its will: the promotion of their people’s culture.

To be a soldier, therefore, always means to cooperate—albeit by different means than the politician—in the realization of the political ideal, that is, in the furthering of culture.

To be a soldier means, therefore, to be a protector of culture. This line of thought is summarized by the Führer in Mein Kampf as follows:

“It’s therefore the first obligation of any new movement based on a racial worldview, to put forth a clear and logical doctrine of the nature and purpose of the State. The fundamental principle is that the State is not an end in itself, but the means to an end. It’s the pre-condition of a higher form of human civilization, but it’s not the cause. This cause is found exclusively in the existence of a culture-creating race.”

The soldier, in this respect, is likewise an executor of the state’s mission. That he may often do so unconsciously changes nothing of its essence.

The SS, however, must be fully conscious of this. The SS man is a political soldier; he must be completely permeated with the awareness that his being a soldier is not something isolated or self contained, but that it gains its meaning and purpose through the political ideal: the culture of his people.

The SS man seeks to contribute to the advancement of that culture by all means—even by the means of the soldier, which must often be destructive and are therefore regarded by the superficial democrat as directed against culture itself.

Yet this destruction is no end in itself; no more than war is an end in itself, or politics, or even the state. None of these are ultimate ends, nor ever shall be, so long as National Socialism lives.

All these things are means—means that we, in the SS, consciously employ to bring the innate gifts of our people, given by nature, to their fullest development in the Reich.

At the wide-open window of the royal hall stood Redbad.
Fire blazed in the hearth and cast its glow upon his tall figure. Stern lay the lines of his angular face, his gaze lost in the hazy gray of the twilight.

The king let the fortunes and misfortunes of the past days pass before his mind. The weight of responsibility pressed heavily upon his shoulders. The lonely king held judgment over himself and over his land, forced to bear alone, through the nights, the full burden of sorrow and misery.

The battle at Dorestad was lost. Generations to come will prattle about it, as they prattle about all battles; they will record it, as every event in the wars between nations is recorded. But never will they know what thoughts burned in the mind of the man who saw the flower of his people wither before its time. Never will they know how his heart broke when he let his shining sword flash down upon the heads of the fair-haired warriors who fought in the ranks of the enemy. Do men have even the faintest notion of the struggles with which a king must contend, the faintest notion of how much anguish it costs him to guard rightly the interests of those who follow him?!

The king of the Frisians turned his head and stared long into the fire. From the flames shapes detached themselves and stepped before him. He raised his hand to his brow. Out of the play of fire appeared Aldgisl. The dead king stood there as if in the flesh. Redbad spoke to him:

“You sought to break enmity through friendship when you allowed Willibrord into your land. You expected that he would keep what he promised. But the missionary of the foreign faith sowed only discord and hatred. He has thrown Friesland into turmoil. Then I grasped the sword, calling each man to arms against the enemy who threatened the freedom of our land. Free must Friesland be—free as the bright waves of the sea, free as the thunder when it rolls across the forests. Yet too great, alas, was their number. The enemy has triumphed—know this, O king, he has triumphed!”

Despair rang in his words.

“The tribe bleeds out when we must time and again take up the struggle against the Franks, who far outnumber us. We are worn down, when the enemy, with tenfold power, falls again and again upon our lands to destroy the freedom of the North. For countless are the hosts that the man in Rome consecrates each time to serve his vile lust for power.”

A long silence fell in the vast hall. Perhaps the man pondered the words in which despair had spoken. Might he lose faith—faith in victory, and in life itself?
Once more the image of the dead king rose before his sorrowful eyes, and he continued the conversation:

“I must guard the freedom of the land, must save the life of the people from foreign force. Yes, the fields must be ploughed and sown again, the seed cast into the fertile earth, and the meadows defended against the threat of the sea. Friesland must endure—its dikes may not decay!”

“Indeed, O King, Friesland must live! That, too, was your aim. You sought to reconcile the enemy when you saw how great his might was. I offered resistance with the sword. Are we not both sons of the sea, sprung from northern soil? Who has acted most in the spirit of our people?
They honor Willibrord in their hymns; me the priests curse, because I sought to set bounds to the folly with which, upon their coming, they wished to deliver the people over. But they have unleashed the Frankish army upon this land and now reap the harvest of blood shed by our swords. Hear my word, Aldgisl: from this moment I will follow your example, if I am able. May the bishop of Sens make his entry into Friesland. I myself will receive baptism! For Friesland must endure!”

The king drew the sword from its sheath and stepped into the circle of the fire’s glow. The blade gleamed in the light. Its sharpness had not yet been lost, but never again would a small band of warriors with sword in hand stand, defiant, against an enemy’s overwhelming might. For the sake of life itself he had resolved to extend the hand of peace to the foe. This resolve thrust aside all other thoughts. And the deep contempt he had cherished for the crucified God sank away in this hour of despair.

That the king of the Frisians, who had for so long resisted the teaching of the Church, should now receive baptism from the hand of the bishop—this must be made into a triumph of the Cross. The preparation for it had been entrusted to cunning priestly hands.

There lay the open square, which the bishop had chosen as the place of baptism. Nowhere in Friesland was a house of worship to be found. A radiant morning descended upon the land. Men and women had gathered together to witness the ecclesiastical spectacle. High there rose, set up by the servants of the Church, the wooden cross.

Willibrord, bishop of Traiectum (Utrecht), strode across the square with his ally, Wolfram of Sens, and a retinue of priests. In secret triumph the envoys of Rome made their way to the platform where the baptism of the king was to take place. Before the eyes of all, the holy water of baptism would be poured over the king’s head, and the people would see with their own eyes how even this king had abandoned his resistance and would embrace the Cross.

The neighing of horses and the trampling of hooves announced his coming. Beside him rode Grimoald, his son-in-law. Following them came warriors armed with spears and swords. When the king leapt from his horse and advanced toward the bishops, who had already gathered around the erected cross, the unbending pride of the North flashed from his eyes. Was the untamed warrior truly about to bow his head? His gaze swept sternly over the men and women who stood assembled in a circle, as he stepped before the wooden cross. With dread he felt that their resistance too had been broken. Alas for you, Frisian freedom!
Then Wolfram, bishop of Sens, lifted up his voice. Loudly his words rang out across the square:

“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti! Behold, in us, the vicars of God on earth, the world enters upon great times. Kings and rulers of the earth begin to understand the message of Salvation!”

With burning zeal for conversion he cried out these words, that they might pierce clearly into every ear.

“Men and women of Friesland! Even as your king this day casts himself into the arms of the Redeemer, and by the waters of baptism shall become a Christian, so must you also fall at the feet of the almighty God, who gave His Son to the world for the forgiveness of your sins, for the rescue from guilt and damnation!”

None of the bystanders understood the meaning of his words. The priests in their rough woolen robes, standing behind the speaking bishop, cast their eyes humbly upon the ground. To the left and to the right, armed Franks kept a watchful eye upon the ceremony. Like a dreadful menace the cross rose up.
Redbad’s eyes wandered toward the bishop, rested a while on his colorful priestly vestments, then lifted upward to meet the uncertain gaze of Rome’s envoy. Then they returned again. Once more it became clear to him how vast the difference was between a king and a priest. Behind his lofty brow his thoughts pressed on: an unbridgeable gulf separates the kings of Germania from the priests of Rome. (Had this awareness only now awakened in him? His thoughts merely confirmed what he had always unconsciously felt.)

The bishop laced his baptismal sermon with Latin phrases. The words used in the ceremony fluttered like timid night-birds across the square and found no lodging in anyone’s heart. Thus their effect was lost, like the vanishing scent of incense. In the half-light of a church Latin psalms might indeed work their deceptive charm on human souls; but in the broad clarity of the radiant day the power of Rome’s sorcery was broken.

The climax of the ceremony seemed to have passed. Redbad’s gaze swept sharp and steady over the host of his people, who inwardly took as little interest in it as he himself. The priest painted the blessedness of the baptized, and then sketched a harsh picture of the hellish torments of the damned—those who would not hearken to the word of the High Priest in Rome. Now Wolfram of Sens turned to Redbad himself:

“So receive then, O King, the water of baptism, that you, cleansed from all sins, may one day enter Heaven with the throngs of the faithful, and sit at the right hand of the all-knowing God from eternity to eternity—while all may descend to Hell who have died unbaptized!”

Here Redbad hastily broke in upon the bishop, speaking in an angry voice:

“You have said, priest, that I shall come to Heaven if I let myself be baptized? Then tell me this, priest—where are my forefathers, who have long been dead and were never baptized?”

A shudder of consternation ran through the ranks of the priests at this unexpected disruption of the ceremony. But the bishop, carried away by his zeal for conversion, still blurted out the words:

“They are all with the devil in Hell, for they died as heathens!”

Then it happened: Redbad trampled the earthen font with its holy water, so that the shards flew loudly in every direction. And he hurled his free word into the priest’s face:

“Then hear me, priest: I would rather go to my forefathers with the devil in Hell, than to Heaven with you priests!”

That was the true word, great king—the faith in your own blood triumphed over foreign powers! Thus did you take the fate of the fair-haired sons of the North into your strong hands! Good it was that you once more lifted the sword and cast the enemy into the dust, to save the freedom of Friesland!

Your people were free when they bore you to your final resting place, beneath the great burial mound—a resting place worthy of a king.

This is hardly surprising. The contemporary individual—and especially the city dweller—is completely estranged from the old symbols, not merely in the present moment but for generations, even centuries.

The danger inherent in this kind of “bringing closer” lies in the fact that, owing to this misunderstanding, folk forms are misused in wholly irresponsible imitation and in senseless combinations of inherited motifs and signs. The kitsch now appearing everywhere demonstrates that this danger is anything but imaginary.

For this reason, more important are serious, thoroughly researched works on the study of symbols, which, in addition to illustrations, also provide explanatory text. Yet these, too, generally fail to convince. Although they often present far-reaching systems of classification and compete in offering precise definitions for a wide range of symbolic representations, they nevertheless leave an unavoidable impression of arbitrariness and of a chaotic intermingling of diverse and significant factors.

WHAT SEPARATES US FROM THE SYMBOL

When interpreting symbols from ancient Germanic times and from what is often called “timeless” peasant art, one must never forget that these symbols, although they emerged from the racial soul of our ancestors, do not necessarily correspond to the spirit of the present age and therefore cannot simply be “understood” by the contemporary individual. On the contrary, our strong attraction today to ancient Germanic and peasant life arises largely from the sense that, in these forms, we perceive the spontaneous expression of a genuinely nature-connected mode of existence—one that was lost to us with Christianization and to which we now passionately long to return.

Our thinking, however, is no longer wholly nature-connected. It is no longer unbiased or all-encompassing. Consciousness has indeed sharpened and become more concentrated, but it has also narrowed, submitting itself to a newly schooled logic and to systems of thought that have become increasingly specialized in the service of a superficial civilization and have turned away from nature. For this reason, we are no longer capable, through rational means alone, of encompassing symbolic primal values. These values were originally deeper, more general, and more comprehensive than what contemporary reason is able to grasp.

If we fail to find a way to revise or supplement our modern mindset with those values that have been displaced from our present consciousness, we can be certain that we will inevitably intermingle contemporary modes of thought with the inherited legacy of our ancestors. Such unconscious falsifications are currently widespread in the study of symbols.

PURIFICATION OF THE METHOD

P. E. Schramm, in his introduction to the study by Berent Schweinekoper, Der Handschuh im Recht, Amterwesen, Brauch und Volksglauben (1938), set forth several conditions necessary for achieving a reliable method of symbol research.

It is not sufficient merely to distinguish between symbolic objects (symbols in the narrower sense) and symbolic actions—a distinction that is generally acknowledged. Of equal importance are the origin of a symbol (whether rooted in folk tradition or bound to a particular spatial context), the century in which it appears, the course of development of its content and form, and the transformations, shifts, or even reversals it may have undergone over time.

Furthermore, a clear distinction must be made between genuine symbols and representations or signs that may appear externally similar but are in fact of a different nature.

It is therefore meaningless to consider a motif or sign in isolation, without examining its binding and origin in relation to people, time, and culture.

Accordingly, research must begin not only by distinguishing among different types of symbols but also by investigating the spatial context from which a symbol originates, the role it played within that space and among a particular people or tribe, the changes it underwent over the centuries, and the manner in which its content developed or was altered. When this procedure is applied systematically to all symbols within a clearly defined ethnographic area, it becomes possible to gain an overview of symbolism as it is bound to people and land—that is, to arrive at an understanding of the specific local meanings of generally employed symbolic representations and signs within the Germanic world.

The most effective approach to such research proceeds through comprehensive series of studies devoted to individual symbols in their spatial and temporal binding. In the field of legal symbolism, exemplary work has already been carried out along these lines—for example, in studies by von Schwerin on the symbolism of the sword.

However, of even greater importance at present than research into the particular meaning of a Germanic symbol as bound to place, time, and people is the investigation of its general, original meaning—that is, the content that may be regarded as the symbol’s primordial value. This refers to the initial, undivided meaning the symbol possessed before the emergence of the diversity described above.

That diversity necessarily represents a progressive process of particularization, delimitation, restriction, and derivation from the primordial value. It reflects an increasing concentration of consciousness and, with it, a considerable loss of breadth and depth. There is a gain in clarity and rationality, but a loss of cosmic connectedness and of unconscious divinity. It marks a movement from the sacred toward the profane.

MODERN AND FOREIGN HINDRANCES

We must therefore seek to recover the primordial values concealed behind these symbols—values that were once unmistakably conveyed by them.

We cannot rely on what someone in the countryside today might say about a particular symbol. On the contrary, we can be confident that, in many cases, what is offered is a wholly subjective interpretation: a chain of coincidences or a local historical peculiarity that bears little relation to ancient Germanic meaning. Moreover, since Christianization, numerous new meanings have been imposed upon original forms by various cultural currents, and some of these reinterpretations have undoubtedly passed into rural symbolic traditions as well.

The study of symbols is therefore extraordinarily difficult.

Above all, we are compelled to articulate consciously, and to express in contemporary language, experiences and feelings that once lived almost unconsciously within the folk soul and were understood without recourse to words—words that are, in nearly all cases, misleading. For when a symbol truly lives, it speaks for itself and neither requires nor tolerates an “explanation,” which can never be more than an arbitrary limitation and can convey only an intellectual description of something that lives a thousand times more richly and deeply in the heart.

To clothe the meaning of a symbol in words is inevitably to obscure it—to violate it, even to strangle it—by means of inappropriate concepts inseparably bound to our words through contemporary patterns of thought and association.

The symbol is, in the first instance, a matter of the soul—indeed, exclusively a matter of the soul—both of the individual soul and of the folk and racial soul. Yet it is precisely from this perspective, from that of psychological science, that the symbol has proven most difficult to approach. The science of the soul has, particularly in the past few decades—a period marked by the development of prehistory, folklore, and racial studies—lost its path to the soul life of the Nordic race.

The way toward understanding the inner life of our own ancestors was further obstructed in 1927 by the sensational and widely publicized appearance of L’Âme primitive by the researcher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. His alien mode of thought influenced an entire school of ethnologists and contributed to the notion that so-called “primitive” humanity should be denied rational capacity altogether.

ETHNOLOGICAL ERRORS

This perspective—according to which Hottentots, Papuans, and the ancient Germans are considered “equal,” that is, uncivilized, irrational, and superstitious beings plagued by fear and entangled in black magic—was inherently blind to all cultural values that could not be “understood” according to contemporary logic. These ethnologists were incapable of recognizing that the same action does not have the same meaning when performed by different peoples. They recognized only the savage, the barbarian, the heathen. What kind of heathen they were was of no importance; whether red, black, yellow, or white played no role. These beings were alike in backwardness and therefore “all” did the same things. They worshipped trees and springs, carved crude idol images, made sacrifices, kept sacred animals, and practiced solemn ancestor worship.

Since many black tribes still live in the Stone Age, one merely needed to study their customs in order to know how our ancestors acted and thought during their own Stone Age. And if stone axes, fire drills, and sacred stones from the South Seas could be displayed whose forms greatly resembled similar objects from our cold North, then the essence of the “primitive soul” was clearly proven. At least, that was the assertion of the Parisian school of Lévy-Bruhl.

It has been very difficult to overcome this line of thought, which was indeed seductive. But racial science has taught us that “race” does not mean only “body,” but also “soul.” Rosenberg expressed this succinctly when he stated that the soul is race seen from within, while race is the outside of the soul. Body and soul are both expressions of the same blueprint determined by race, that is, by hereditary traits. Therefore, Nachenius repeatedly emphasizes that race is “style,” meaning attitude. And no attitude is conceivable without the harmony and unity of body and soul.

Thus, it follows that it is not decisive what two people anywhere in the world do, but rather what animates them, what they feel, think, and intend when they do it. This depends entirely on their attitude toward life, that is, on their worldview, which is inseparably connected with their blood and inherited from generation to generation.

Accordingly, when examining what a person does, the decisive factor is their blood, their race, because what matters is the manner in which and the purpose for which something is done.

We must therefore take the inspiration, the soul of a race, a people, or a person as the starting point for our conclusions, and not consider or compare an external action, an object, or an art form in isolation with other forms that may outwardly resemble it, whether only slightly or even very strongly!

PSYCHOLOGICAL ERRORS

The disastrous confusion in folk studies concerning the “primitive” soul had already been preceded by an even greater deviation within psychology itself. Psychological science, scarcely fifty years old at the time, had, since 1900, been preoccupied almost exclusively with the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud.

This is not the place to examine this matter in greater detail, but it must be noted that, for Freud, all psychic energy that did not serve the drive for self-preservation always and everywhere possessed a sexual character. From cradle to grave, the soul is tormented by sexual inclinations and “repressed complexes.” Faith, art, and culture are expressions of sexual drive, just as are all human relationships, including those of the child to the parents. Repressed sexuality constantly threatens to overwhelm the soul by erupting from the unconscious, disturbing it, and making the nerves ill. Dreams, however, permit the analyst of the soul to assess these impending dangers. They are, as it were, symbolic messages sent from the unconscious to the conscious, revealing what is occurring and living in the depths of the soul.

Everything therefore depends on the ability to “interpret” these dreams—that is, to decipher the symbols rising from the depths of the soul in order to understand what is taking place beyond the reach of consciousness and yet invisibly influencing our life and actions.

It scarcely needs to be stated that such an “interpretation” could not succeed within the embittered and sexually obsessed mind of Freud—and certainly not with regard to the soul of the Nordic race. His entire theory was more a literary form of speculative thought than a scientific method, a fact of which he himself was well aware, to the extent that he ultimately showed little confidence in his own theory.

For the study of symbols, it is of the utmost importance that this Freudian way of thinking has been overcome and refuted, allowing us today to talk about the unconscious, about dream symbols and the life of the soul, without immediately triggering a flood of sexual insinuations!

In this respect, the work of C. G. Jung, the founder of “depth psychology,” is of groundbreaking significance. Jung not only broke through the fatal circle of perpetual sexuality, but also brought to light several highly important characteristics of the unconscious life of the soul for the study of symbols. His teaching has therefore become significant both for racial psychology and for prehistory and folk studies. Hans Burkhardt repeatedly refers to Jung in Die seelischen Anlagen des Nordischen Menschen (A Racial-Psychological Investigation, 1941), as does Fr. Adama van Scheltema in Symbolik der germanischen Völker (Handbuch der Symbolforschung, vol. II, 1941).

JUNG’S DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY

It is highly encouraging that the somewhat stalled research into symbols has found new possibilities through the science of depth psychology—possibilities that were urgently needed. This need was by no means satisfied by the increasingly fantastical and unmotivated elaborations built upon the few scientifically responsible certainties of object-collecting and classifying symbol research.

The psychologist Jung is a strong personality and a healthy mind. He took a stand against the “dark greats from the East” (Blavatsky, Besant, Krishnamurti, etc.), whose ideas seized the instincts of the masses and, “from below,” laid siege to the universities, from which they had been expelled three centuries earlier.

He sees our inner life threatened and undermined by the perversity of Havelock Ellis and Freud, and our sense of reality rendered suspect by Einstein’s theory of relativity. He exposed the “comedy” of Christian “moral mist” and established that superstition, in essence, is nothing other than perversity. Accordingly, he seeks to lead the European individual to self-knowledge by rejecting all dogma and opening the soul to “primeval experience,” without allowing it to fall into the hands of Western charlatans through astrology, theosophy, and spiritualism.

In this way, he aims to replace the sickly modern interest in the dark and unhealthy manifestations of contemporary inner life with a healthy interest in the deeply hidden and precious heritage that has been preserved intact for thousands of years: the treasure of the soul instead of the sediment, as he himself puts it. This soul is found above all among the people, among “the quiet ones in the land, who are often laughed at, who, less corrupted by academic prejudices than the dazzling heights of society, allow themselves to be carried along by the unconscious urge of the soul.” Great renewals never come from above, but always from below, just as trees never grow down from the sky but always up from the earth, although their seeds once fell from above to below (Jung, Problems of the Soul of Our Time).

REDEMPTION FROM MATERIALISM

The greatest merit of C. G. Jung, however, lies in the fact that he was the first to oppose the metaphysics of matter produced by the nineteenth century with the reality of the soul. Materialism understood the “soul” to be a product of matter, a chemical reaction. Soul, mind, and psyche were regarded as phenomena of the brain or of the hormonal system. Others preferred to speak of instincts or drives, but to attribute an independent existence to the soul was, for materialism, sheer absurdity.

Just as, in the Middle Ages, it would have been considered madness to deny the substantial uniqueness of the soul or to doubt that all matter ultimately originated from a divine, matter-independent spirit, Jung reminds us that we do not, in the final analysis, know what matter or spirit truly are.

He does not deny the close connection between spirit and matter, body and soul, nor does he deny that the content of our consciousness is largely governed by the perceptions of the senses. He readily admits that the soul first appears to us as a faithful reflection of everything we call material, tangible, and earthly. He is not blind to the power of drives and instincts. Yet he takes a firm stand against the modern materialistic belief that the physical is ultimately the sole reality and the sole cause of all things.

He found the courage to establish a new “psychology with soul,” that is, a psychology in which the soul is recognized as a reality closely connected with matter, yet autonomous and inherently unique.

THE SOUL AS REALITY

C. G. Jung refers to the Old Germanic origin of the word soul (Gothic saiwala, Proto-Germanic saiwald). The word means “moving force,” “life force.” An original symbol for this was fire or flame, as the source of mobile warmth. Warmth and breath (wind) are likewise signs of life.

A person’s name is also a symbol of the soul, namely the recognition of self-awareness. Originally, a person’s name was indeed their essence. Hence the Germanic custom of inheriting ancestral names.

This already shows how strongly, in ancient conceptions, the soul was understood as a source of life, as an objective reality. For the “primitive” ancestor—that is, for the spirit of our forefathers still entirely bound to nature and not yet constrained by “civilization”—the soul was not something wholly subjective and personal, as it is for us today, but something impersonal, living in itself, something to which one could listen and with which one could speak.

This original conception is by no means narrow-minded, foolish, or backward, but is essentially confirmed by modern experience, even if we behave as though we do not know this.

One need only consider the following. We cannot suppress most of our feelings; we cannot control our own moods; we cannot command or prevent dreams. Our thoughts often make the wildest leaps without our being able to restrain them. Ideas arise within us that we never sought or consciously summoned.

Indeed, soul and consciousness are very different things. In reality, we are deeply dependent on our unconscious soul life functioning healthily and not abandoning or obstructing us, for otherwise our nerves would soon fall into disorder. From where do all good or bad “inspirations” arise? From where come inspiration, enthusiasm, ecstasy? They well up from the unconscious, which already lives in the smallest child long before even the slightest demonstrable self-awareness exists (hence the absence of memories from the first years of life).

Thus, the primitive, nature-connected person feels in the depths of the soul the source of life, the divine breath of existence. He is not as arrogantly foolish as modern humanity and does not imagine himself to be the lord and master of life, but feels his dependence on the unconscious living within him. This feeling is his faith in the deeper and higher, which he believed must be honored as an eternal value.

SUPRAPERSONAL WISDOM

And not without reason. For although the idea of the immortality of the soul may sound like medieval nonsense to modern, materialistic ears, it is essentially a primitive truth whose original meaning still applies today. The question therefore arises: what is this immortal soul?

Where does it reside? Even if it were more than a mere chemical reaction, this has never been explained, for we experience our thoughts in the head, our feelings in the region of the heart, and other emotions in the abdominal cavity.

In other cultures, however, these matters are understood very differently, as countless researchers have established. Does the soul occupy a mathematical point or an entire starry world? We do not know. We know only that all ancient cultures attributed higher knowledge to the soul than to human understanding. The soul participated in eternity, in contrast to self-consciousness, which remained bound to the temporal, the everyday, and the material.

Thus, in all ancient cultures, certain dreams were regarded as symbolic messages from the unconscious soul to the conscious soul life, to the self—as divine tidings, bearing a wisdom drawn from the experiences of eternity.

Primitive foolishness? Psychology teaches otherwise. The fact that the nature-connected person attributed such significance to the unconscious soul life is not as fanciful as Western rationalism would like to believe. Today we know, on the basis of an abundance of experimental material, that unconscious soul life contains information which—if it could be made conscious—would result in an immeasurable expansion of knowledge.

The human unconscious also contains inherited forms of the life functions of the ancestors, so that even in the child there exists an adaptive readiness for the functions of the soul long before any “consciousness” or conscious soul life is present. Yet even in adult, conscious life, this unconscious, instinctual function of the soul remains constantly present and active. One should therefore not regard the doctrine of unconscious soul life as a modern aberration. Ancient cultures worked with it in practice for thousands of years, just as the East continues to do today.

Nor is this conception new within Western science.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz spoke two centuries ago of an unbewusst Seelisches; a hundred years later, Immanuel Kant addressed “the immeasurable field of dark representations.” Pierre Janet, Théodore Flournoy, Josef Breuer, and Carl Gustav Carus further developed the concept of the unconscious. Contemporary psychology builds upon their work.

THE UNCONSCIOUS

The difference between conscious and unconscious soul life lies primarily in the fact that consciousness, although intensive and concentrated, is also superficial and oriented toward the present and the immediate environment. Moreover, it possesses only personally acquired experience—that is, at most a few decades of an individual human life. Everything beyond this is artificial and consists of our familiar “paper memory,” with all its alarming errors and distortions.

The unconscious, by contrast, is of an entirely different nature. C. G. Jung describes it approximately as follows. The unconscious is not concentrated and intensive, but dim to dark. It is extraordinarily extensive and capable of juxtaposing the most disparate elements in the most paradoxical ways. Alongside an indefinite multitude of perceptions that remain below the threshold of consciousness, it contains an immense reservoir of deposits from the lives of the ancestors, which have contributed to the “diversity of species” simply through their continued presence.

If one were to imagine this unconscious as a person, it would be a being beyond gender and age, endowed with the experience of one or two million years and thus possessing, in effect, the insight of an immortal.

Such a being would have lived through the lives of individuals, kin groups, tribes, and peoples innumerable times, and the rhythm of becoming, flourishing, and perishing would be among its most vivid inner experiences.

This “personality,” however, is not self-aware; it merely dreams within us. Nor is it truly a person at all, but rather something like an endless stream—a sea of images and living forms that only occasionally rise into consciousness through dreams.

To dismiss this unconscious as an illusion would be as grotesque as declaring comparative anatomy or physiology to be nonsense, for our tangible body itself still bears numerous traces of ancient development.

What is illusory is the attempt to explain the unconscious exclusively from the outside and solely by means of consciousness, as Freud sought to do.

THE ESSENCE OF THE DREAM

Personal consciousness floats like a ship upon the endless, dark sea of unconscious soul life. This ocean can at times be threatening, even life-threatening. In cases of mental illness, the small vessel of the ego, of consciousness, is cast about aimlessly and is sometimes completely engulfed. At times, the waves of the unconscious surge high over the ship. Depending on the severity of the condition, one then speaks of “losing oneself,” “going mad,” “being possessed,” or “losing one’s soul.”

For this reason, it is beneficial to understand the messages that rise from the fathomless depths to the surface of this sea and thus to the boundary of consciousness.

Rendering these messages comprehensible is the task of the scientific interpretation of dreams. “Dreams are deceptive,” preached rationalism. “Dreams are merely the fulfillment of unfulfilled and repressed desires,” taught Freud’s metaphysical materialism. These convenient explanations have long since proven inadequate.

We now know that we in fact know very little. What, truly, is the unconscious? We do not know—and precisely for this reason we give it the grand name “the Unconscious.” We know it no better than the physicist knows what matter ultimately is. We possess only theories, concepts, verbal constructions. One day a theory collapses; words lose their meaning. Matter and soul, however, continue to exist as before and are no less real because of this.

The same holds true for the value, for the symbolic content, of dreams. Individual interpretations and theories of dream interpretation perish, but for centuries—indeed, for thousands of years—dreams have continually presented the same ancient motifs, guiding forms, and symbols, drawn from the inherited experience of innumerable generations.

“Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of unconscious soul life, beyond the control of consciousness. They are pure nature and therefore unadulterated truth. For this reason, they are particularly suited to restoring our natural and original attitude toward life when consciousness has strayed too far from its foundation,” says C. G. Jung. “Engaging with one’s dreams is a form of reflection upon one’s own essence.”

DREAM AND SYMBOL

Unfortunately, there is as yet no absolutely reliable method for the interpretation of all dreams, and the observation that one cannot rely on speculation and fantasy is entirely justified.

However, there is at least one usable method that leads to practically applicable and often striking results, leaving aside exceptional cases.

A dream should be examined entirely without bias and without modern superstition, as though it were an “unknown object.” It must be turned over repeatedly, discussed, and approached from all sides through the associations that arise.

In ancient cultures, this was done with significant, so-called “great dreams” in public assemblies. Ancient accounts of such practices have been preserved. From the insights gained in these gatherings, the meaning of the dream was usually approximated, more or less successfully.

Psychology has refined and developed this procedure in highly ingenious ways, building upon the comparative study of extensive dream material from antiquity to the present and making use of findings from ethnology, folklore, mythology, and archaeology.

For the study of symbols, however, not all dreams are useful—on the contrary.

Only those dreams are considered here that the primitive peoples themselves regarded as “great dreams,” that is, dreams that rise from great depths and therefore originate in an ancient past. These stand in contrast to dreams that float more or less on the surface of the unconscious and consist largely of fragments that have fallen down from consciousness—pieces of personal experience. With these “great dreams,” any intuitive “guessing” of meaning is pointless.

Modern associations of thought are of no help here. What is required is the specialist who fully commands the treasury of symbols and motifs, mythology, and comparative ethnology.

For this reason, says C. G. Jung, such dreams cannot be learned to interpret from books. Methods and rules are useful only for those who cannot work without such aids. What matters is mastering the level of the dream as a personality with both heart and intellect; one must literally be “equal to” those depths.

Only years of preparatory study and extensive practical work can create the conditions necessary for achieving reliable results in this domain.

Jung has been accused of undermining culture through his teachings and of surrendering our highest values to a primitive soul life. He has rightly responded that this fear arises from a fear of nature and of primal reality.

Freud had transformed the unconscious into a sexual monster, a destructive demon. But, according to Jung, the unconscious is not a demonic beast; it is a morally, aesthetically, and intellectually insensitive natural being, which becomes dangerous only when the relationship of consciousness to it is fundamentally distorted. On this basis alone, there can be no question of a demonic character in ancient symbols. They are invariably signs of life and health.

Yet even the most general, ancient, and therefore relatively “fixed” symbols are, according to Jung, characterized by a certain indeterminacy of content. If their content were not indeterminate, they would not be symbols but signs or symptoms, as he states in The Reality of the Soul.

The “great dreams” and general symbols cannot be explained on the basis of the “personal unconscious” alone, which contains everything forgotten or repressed in individual existence, as well as perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that never rose above the threshold of consciousness.

In addition to these personal elements, the unconscious contains the inherited contents of ancestral life already discussed: mythological images and motifs, as well as various unconscious connections no longer accessible to logical thought. Yet these arise within us everywhere and at all times, even in the absence of historical tradition or any other mediating link.

MYTHOLOGICAL ARCHETYPES

These ancient mythological connections—these original representations and motifs—prove, upon closer examination, to consist of a multitude of characteristic images or figures that continually recur. Examples include heroic figures, monsters, the father, the mother, the old wise man, etc.

Jung calls these figures “primitive images” or archetypes. They are general forms that arise from timeless primordial depths and have taken shape as ideas.

Among these messengers that rise up to alert consciousness, one repeatedly encounters religious representations. This is hardly surprising, says Jung, since the strongest and most original activity of the spirit—namely, the religious—has, more than any other spiritual experience, been suppressed in modern humanity, driven out of conscious life and banished to the primordial depths of the soul.

When these archetypes resurface, they therefore contain fresh, unadulterated, and most universal primal values in symbolic form. This is especially the case because the process by which these images rise into consciousness occurs so rapidly and automatically that practically no distortion takes place. Their correct understanding depends entirely on the scientific training, talent, and intuitive capacity of the researcher.

For no person can derive more from a symbol than they themselves are capable of investing in it, and no one can sense what is not already present in their own soul as an inheritance from their ancestors.

For this reason, the study of symbols, it is argued, cannot be undertaken by anyone other than trained, racially conscious Germanic researchers.

SYMBOLISM OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLES

Professor Jung has not fully recognized the necessity of the racial standpoint. Nevertheless, being predominantly of Nordic spirit, he resolved the problems he posed in accordance with that spirit, which naturally lends his teaching its particular value. However, he did not feel a specific attraction to ancient Germanic symbols, a fact that must be regarded as unfortunate.

By contrast, the outstanding researcher and renowned interpreter of ancient Nordic art, Adama van Scheltema, has indeed engaged very intensively with these symbols, making use in the process of Jung’s insights. In his most recent work, Symbolik der germanischen Völker (1941), he supplemented his art- and style-theoretical conclusions and his ethnological research with results drawn from Jung’s depth psychology.

In my view, however, he did not sufficiently distinguish between ancient Germanic and pre-Germanic conceptions, and for this reason a revision is also required at this point. I shall address this matter in greater detail in a separate article.

Nico de Haas in Hamer (September 1942).

Almost all Indo-European peoples have a belief in a “sacred order of things” established and maintained by a power above humans and gods. Inextricably linked to this belief is the notion that fate, which befalls humans and the world, is irrevocably fixed and cannot be changed by any human being. Not even the gods themselves are exempt from this fate, nor are they able to alter it.

Although deviations from this rigid standpoint appear over time, these likely occurred because people were unable to reconcile a fixed fate with other concepts, such as the idea of free will, which came to hold great appeal in later periods. In addition, some gods were later no longer regarded as subject to fate but instead were identified with it, becoming determiners of fate themselves. Apart from such interpretations, however, we find everywhere that originally there was a belief in a higher power that determined all events and against which nothing could be done. This concept later transformed, in part, into the Indian doctrine of karma, which has persisted.

India and Persia

Both the Indians and the Persians believed that a power of fate ruled over the world, the gods, and human beings in all realms of material and spiritual existence. Although we also encounter the view that a person’s fate is partly the result of individual acts of will—as expressed in the Yājñavalkya (I.130): “Just as the movement of a chariot does not come about by a single wheel, so the fate (daivam) of a person does not come to fruition without action”—this is only an apparent deviation, because human actions themselves are dependent on fate. The emphasis remains on the belief that everything occurs through the power of fate. This fate cannot be overcome (Mahābhārata IX.65.30) or diverted by heroic strength (ibid., XIII.29.19), because fate is always the most powerful. Even the gods are powerless against it. Indra, who intended to save Kandawa from downfall, could not carry out his plan when he realized that Kandawa’s downfall was determined by fate.

Persia and Zurvan

In Persia, Zarathustra sought to replace the power of fate with the god Ahura Mazda. From the first century BCE onward, however, belief spread in an omnipotent fate god, Zurvan, gradually limiting the influence of Ahura Mazda, who according to Zarathustra had been the highest power. It was no longer Ahura Mazda but Zurvan who dispensed blessings and curses. This development probably represented a return to an older belief that existed prior to Zarathustra’s religious reform.

Greece and the Power of Fate

The Greeks likewise believed from ancient times in the existence of an all-controlling, predetermined fate. Numerous confirmations of this belief can be found in Homer’s Iliad. When Sarpedon says to Tlepolemos (Book V, line 653), “Here on this spot you will undergo death and black fate at my hands,” he presents himself as the executor rather than the cause of fate. In Book VI (line 487), Hector declares, “No one will send me to the shadows against the will of fate.” Even where Homer does not allow individuals to speak, he repeatedly emphasizes that fate determines everything. In Book XI (line 332), he writes, “Dark fate drove them forward,” and in Book XVIII (line 251), “I think none of mortals ever escaped fate.” Even Zeus could not change fate. When Hector’s destiny was weighed, it was clear that he was doomed to death, and the god could not alter it.

Moira, Fatum, and Roman Fate

It was believed that each person received a fate at birth, known as moira. This term signified the portion of life allotted to an individual, encompassing all its vicissitudes and, above all, an inevitable death occurring at a fixed time. From this concept arose various developments among the Greeks, including personifications such as Ananke, Tyche, and Nemesis. In Rome, the three Fatae were known, and—primarily in the language of poets and philosophers—the concept of fatum. In Cicero, fatum signifies “the eternally established order of nature,” while in Ovid, Horace, and Virgil it denotes “unchangeable fate.” The Fatae are depicted as three women, sometimes as one man with two women, and occasionally as a single woman resting her foot upon a wheel. Among the Romans, the older notion that fate stood above the gods largely disappeared. Instead, the gods—especially Jupiter—were thought to determine the fortunes of peoples and nations through pronouncements of their will.

Fate among the Germanic Peoples

Among the Germanic peoples, belief in a predetermined fate likewise existed and persisted even into Christian times. Nowhere was submission to an all-controlling fate taken more uncompromisingly seriously (Gehl, Belief in Fate, 234). This belief was not inseparably connected with belief in the gods. Even in the period of the Icelandic sagas, one or two centuries before Christianization, those who claimed to believe only in “their own power and strength” nevertheless held an unwavering belief in inevitable fate. Conversely, there were no believers in the heathen gods who had lost faith in fate. One gains the impression that all—believers and nonbelievers alike—were equally fate-believing (Baetke, 64). Fate thus formed part of worldview rather than religion, though the distinction between the two was less sharply drawn than in modern times.

The gods were generally not regarded as determiners of fate, with rare exceptions such as Odin granting military success, nor were personifications of fate endowed with divine status. Consequently, they were not objects of worship, although traces of reverence for the three Mothers may reflect an echo of the three weaving Norns, who themselves did not act freely but according to necessity.

Even the gods were subject to all-controlling fate. They could investigate its decrees but could neither determine, alter, nor prevent them. In myth, Odin in particular is repeatedly portrayed as pondering the future and seeking to fathom what fate will bring to gods, world, and humankind.

Words for Fate

The significance of belief in fate among the Germanic peoples is evident in the many words they possessed for this inevitable force. Many referred specifically to death-fate, while others denoted destiny more generally. Over time, as belief in fate declined, many of these terms disappeared. In modern languages, few words remain in the older sense of inescapable fate. Dutch still preserves lot and noodlot, as well as bestiering and beschikking, alongside vaguer expressions such as bestemming and toekomst. Most of these terms now carry the sense of fate determined by divine intervention. The word beschikking is related to the older Dutch schicksel, corresponding to the still-used German Schicksal. Scandinavian languages preserve many of the older designations, alongside newer ones.

Early Testimonies

One of the oldest written records of belief in fixed fate appears in the Icelandic Edda, a collection of poems transmitted orally for centuries before being written down. In the Song of Skírnir (stanza 13), we read:

“The day of death is destined for me;
fate has determined my life’s course.”

From the southern Germanic region we have the Hildebrandslied. When the old Hildebrand realizes that the opponent he is fighting is his own son, and when this son does not believe that his father stands against him, Hildebrand is compelled, for the sake of honor, to fight his son to the death, thereby endangering the survival of his lineage. He does so because he sees no alternative, believing that cowardice would be worse. When he utters the words wewurt scihit, ominous fate unfolds. Although written records from these southern regions were strongly influenced by Christianity, and pagan ideas are therefore sparingly expressed, an Old English saying nevertheless survives that reveals the older belief:

“Wind is strongest in the air,
thunder the greatest of sounds,
Christ’s deeds are great—
fate (Wyrd) is the mightiest.”

Wyrd, corresponding to the Scandinavian Norn Urðr, also appears in wewurt. The reference to Christ was likely added later. Originally, the saying probably expressed the belief that fate was stronger than the gods.

Fate in the Sagas

The belief in an all-powerful fate is further demonstrated throughout the northern sagas, especially the Icelandic sagas describing the experiences of early settlers and their descendants before and during Christianization. Again and again, these texts show that the future was not thought to depend on human desires but on fate, which even determined human actions.

From a human standpoint, fate manifested in three forms: fortune, misfortune, and neutral events. In modern usage, fate is often equated with doom, but in ancient thought all three aspects were emphasized equally. Whatever befell a person was part of the execution of fate’s decrees, though human nature tended even then to focus most strongly on unfavorable experiences. Alongside this, however, frequent references appear to favorable fate, often linked to an individual’s inherent luck, comparable to mana. This luck was believed strongest among ancient and royal lineages and could benefit entire peoples, though it could also be lost, sometimes necessitating the king’s sacrifice.

Just as the actions of a fortunate person were believed to bring further good fortune, those of an unfortunate person were thought to result in misfortune. This belief persists to some extent today in expressions such as “he was born for misfortune” and “everything goes well for him.”

Although death was not feared, long life was considered fortunate. If a person’s time had not yet come, they would continue to live even in situations where survival seemed unlikely. In the Saga of Harald the Skald-King (chap. 1), Ingjald’s farm is surrounded and set on fire by enemies. When safe passage is denied, Ingjald urges the young men Ottar and Avaldi to escape so that they may “live longer.” He himself remains behind, bound by honor, and thus seals his fate. The saga records of the young men that they passed through fire and weapons “destined to live longer.” Similar examples appear in the Laxdæla saga (chap. 15) and in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, in the account of King Olaf the Holy (chap. 99), where Thorkel survives because he was “destined to live longer.”

Even in situations where death was not involved, everything was considered dependent on fate. In Njáls saga (chap. 6), Hrut asks the king of Norway for permission to return to Iceland. When the king inquires about the reason and asks whether Hrut expects to be more honored in Iceland than at his court, Hrut replies, “Perhaps not, but everyone must accept what is destined for them.” Gunnar expresses this even more strongly in the same saga (chap. 31) when he wishes to sail to Iceland and King Harald suggests that he may not return. Gunnar responds, “That is up to fate, my lord.”

Fate determined every aspect of human life, including one of its most significant points: death. It is repeatedly emphasized that there is no escape from death, no matter what precautions one takes. In the saga named after him, Njál (chap. 68) warns Gunnar to be cautious in the face of imminent danger. Gunnar responds, “If it is destined for me, I will meet my death, no matter where I am.” Similarly, Grim reacts when Hallmund dies by saying, “Everyone must depart when their time comes.” We still hear similar sentiments today in common sayings such as “No one goes before their time.”

In the saga of the Góði Snorri, Arnkel decides to go abroad. He may take his movable property with him, but the immovable property that he cannot sell must be left behind. He accepts this with the words, “So let it go with the lands that cannot be sold, as fate determines.”

The extent to which fate, as it was believed, intervened in personal actions is evident in the words spoken by Gisli to Aud after she told him about her conversation with Thorkel. He said, “I see no counsel here that is valid, but I will not be angry with you for it. For everyone speaks what fate prompts them, and what must happen, happens.”

What befell a person—the fate that was his—was not regarded as important as it may seem to us today. Much more important was the attitude a person adopted toward fate. For the Icelander—and this attitude probably applied to all Germanic peoples in pagan times—it was not so much a question of what became of his life, but whether he ultimately triumphed over it, whether he died as a hero or as a weakling. What fate had allotted to a person could not be escaped. It had to be accepted, but everything depended on the attitude with which it was borne. Even deeds performed during one’s life did not carry as much weight as the attitude one adopted toward fate.

In the Saga of Hǫrðr, it is said, “That he became a criminal was partly the fault of his companions, but on the other hand, no one can escape their fate.” When the majority of his band rejected his plan to cease hostilities, Hǫrðr said, “What is destined must happen, and indeed, it is not easy to resist this. But I have no desire to continue participating in these hostilities any longer.” The saga writer then expresses satisfaction with him: “Everyone praised his bravery, friends and enemies alike, and in his time there was no one more heroic and wise than Hǫrðr.”

A whole series of folk customs involving symbols was declared superstition, witchcraft, or witch mania—charges that all too often brought persistent practitioners to ruin and loss of life.

Thus, church and state, both fully convinced of the superiority of their ideas originating from the South and East, collaborated in the eradication of the original customs, practices, and religious heritage of the Germanic North.

For they regarded this North as barbaric, dark, rough, and unrefined—without laws, style, or an ordered way of life. They believed that the entire greater Germanic cultural sphere, and whatever lay around it, was inherently incapable of true culture. They thought that the arrival of their soldiers and priests could only lead to the ultimate victory over these “wild areas.” They were also convinced that breaking native and original, unchristian life was a useful and beautiful, “God-pleasing” work. And so, they destroyed much.

The Ancient Symbols

It is remarkable, however, that a large number of the original sacred symbols have nevertheless been preserved to this day. Some were incorporated into the church’s formal vocabulary; some reemerged and were preserved in early Germanic so-called Romanesque and Gothic art; others were first demonized and later Christianized. Nevertheless, the meaning of the majority has been lost.

It goes without saying that the new faith could never accept these old signs positively unless they could be assimilated into Christian symbolism. In many cases, the signs were therefore declared devilish and satanized, as with the mermaid, the serpent, and many runes.

Some symbols, however, were adopted positively: the tree of life, the sun wheel, the cross, the mill cross, the rooster, the eagle, and the heart, among others. At times, old pagan figures appeared in Christian guise; Saint Nicholas and the Three Maidens are striking examples. And the horse? Saint Martin and Saint Nicholas ride it, and as a gable sign it bears a Christian cross on its head.

The ancient symbols still live on here and there—but in the shadows.

Truth and realism compel us to face the fact that most—if not all—symbols died out long ago. What has continued to exist is their sign: their external decorative form. If any meaning remains attached to them, it is often a corrupted or degenerate significance that no longer bears any relation to the ancient Germanic worldview. Such signs have indeed become expressions of childish superstition—attempts to favorably influence Providence. This is evident among farmers who carve an “hourglass” to ward off livestock disease, or sailors who paint the same figure to prevent accidents.

Tradition and Technique

How have these signs survived? In part because, although the original meaning was lost, folk belief still clung to the mysterious forms for their new, degenerate function. But survival also occurred through persistence and tradition—because “grandfather did it that way too.” Another significant factor is that many symbols, viewed purely as ornaments, were easy to produce: obvious, geometrically simple forms.

Consider the six-pointed star, the diamond, the circle, the spiral, or the eight-pointed star. The use of a pair of compasses and a ruler naturally leads even the simplest craftsman—especially such a craftsman—to these figures.

Moreover, as noted above, many figures were adopted by the church and thus, carried by different sentiments, continued to live on.

Humanistic Prejudices

These are given circumstances that must be taken into account. Often it is only through the combination of various signs that the meaning of individual ones can be determined. Frequently, one must be familiar with the folk art of an entire region to understand the significance of the figures on a single piece of household furniture. Not infrequently, the key to a certain group of representations lies hidden in a folk custom, legend, saga, or fairy tale. Sometimes a song leads us onto the right path.

Therefore, the path to understanding the symbol is not simple, though it has often been underestimated.

Even within scholarly circles, considerable debate has surrounded this issue.

As early as the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, attempts were made to decipher the symbols of the North. These efforts achieved little success, because although the humanistic researchers were highly educated, they were still captivated by the doctrine ex oriente lux (“light from the East”). Archaeologically, they were more familiar with the Mediterranean and classical cultures than with the Germanic sphere, and they were entirely ignorant of the high culture that had once flourished there long before the beginning of our era.

They therefore measured with inappropriate standards and foreign moral norms. It is no wonder that they made little progress.

Degenerated Science

By the 1880s, symbolism had become thoroughly misunderstood. Even science had by then absorbed the liberal mindset and believed that the art and culture of all peoples on earth were essentially the same.

Because this science regarded all people as equal and did not recognize racial differences as significant, it saw nothing absurd in equating the art and symbols of Africans, Mongols, and Germanic farmers.

Thus, through “ethnopsychological research,” entirely foreign and inferior meanings were attributed to Germanic symbols. Eventually, any deeper significance was denied altogether, and all such folk art “ornaments” were explained as manifestations of an innate playful urge—an irresistible “need to decorate.”

Where deeper meaning was conceded, it was limited to the familiar “warding off of demons,” because scholars found it impossible to view our ancestors as anything other than primitive savages who scratched and carved “magical signs” onto all their possessions, their houses, and their yards—seeing ghosts and devils everywhere, threatening their souls and salvation, just as the church had centuries earlier.

Yet it remains difficult to explain how such a harried, anxiety-ridden horde could ever have created the beautiful and serene works so abundantly visible in Germanic folk art.

This unresolved contradiction rarely troubled the folklorists. They preferred instead to hunt for “vegetation demons” and other shadowy beings.

The Essence of Symbols

Only quite recently has a clearer understanding of folk art and its symbols emerged. In fact, it was not until 1925 that Karl von Spiess published Bauernkunst: ihre Art, ihr Sinn (Peasant Art: Its Nature, Its Meaning), in which he recognized that so-called ornament in Germanic folk art is not mere decoration but symbolic expression. These symbols, he argued, articulate an original, nature- and soil-bound peasant worldview reaching back to pre-Christian times.

It was thus finally understood that nothing in this “primitive” art is meaningless.

In folk art, depicted objects are always more symbolic than realistic; they arise more from emotional life than from observation, and more from inner experience than from intellectual imitation of nature.

After von Spiess established the uniquely Nordic symbolic character of many folk art motifs, Konrad Hahm, in his 1928 work Deutsche Volkskunst (German Folk Art), emphasized the creators’ profound connection to nature. He demonstrated how the symbols of the peasant year cycle, festivals, and life stages—birth, marriage, fertility, and death—recur throughout this art.

he importance of rural customs and traditions for folk art symbolism was thus underscored, and much valuable work has been done in this field, especially by lay researchers. The role of symbols in annual festivals was illustrated by Hans Strobel in his book Bauernbrauch im Jahreslauf (Peasant Customs throughout the Year).

Despite a Thousand Years of Servitude

The essence of folk art and the origins of its symbolic content lie so far back in time that they are more accurately described as prehistorically Nordic than historically Germanic. In other words, the roots of folk art reach into the great flowering period of Indo-Germanic culture.

That this folk art continued well into the nineteenth century can be explained by the fact that, despite a thousand years of feudal servitude, despite the rise of the liberal bourgeoisie and the dominance of capitalist production, the Germanic farmer—through his bond with soil and nature—remained the bearer of a distinct worldview and way of life.

In folk art, this worldview is expressed symbolically: in representations of the sun’s course, eternal movement in creation, the drama of death and rebirth of light, and the fertility of Mother Earth—in short, everything constituting the meaning of life for the nature-bound farmer.

This affirmative worldview, embracing both life and labor, is also reflected in countless forms within Dutch folk art.

The Northern Cradle

While Spiess and Hahm helped us understand folk art as a deeply nature-bound peasant art, Hermann Wirth undertook pioneering—though highly controversial—work in symbolism with Aufgang der Menschheit (The Rise of Mankind) and Die heilige Urschrift der Menschheit (The Sacred Original Script of Mankind). Wirth provoked intense controversy and was attacked with extraordinary vehemence. Parts of his work have proven untenable, and some conclusions remain unprovable or have been refuted. We do not equate our insights with Wirth’s.

Nevertheless, after all criticism, an enormous pioneering achievement remains, along with a body of material of astonishing scope—though it must be handled with great caution.

It is certain that in a distant past there existed a unified primordial culture in which simple signs symbolized the solar cycle while simultaneously expressing a religious experience of time and space and a moral world order. This unity of cosmic and inner life must have arisen in a strong Northern cultural region, for solar-cycle symbols also express belief in eternal rebirth and resurrection.

Such belief—most sublimely embodied in the solar cycle of the divine year, in the principle of Stirb und werde (“die and become”)—can only be meaningfully expressed in sun symbolism where the sun itself dies, sets, and rises again. This condition is most striking near the polar circle.

This northern cradle is corroborated by the traditions of all Northern peoples, including ancient Persian and Hindu literature, in which the year is divided into day and night. The idea of birth, flowering, withering, death, decay, and rebirth in an eternal cycle appears in Northern solar symbols such as the ringed sun and the wheel cross.

To the Northern mind, the quartered sun wheel symbolized both the seasonal cycle—winter solstice, spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox—and the daily cycle: midnight, sunrise, noon, and sunset; or night, morning, day, evening; or winter, spring, summer, autumn; or child, youth, man, elder.

The Runic Calendar

The Northern division of the year into dark and light halves also carried profound symbolic meaning. Divided by the solstices along a north–south axis, the year symbolizes both rise and decline in nature and in human life.

The character of the runes likewise becomes clearer when understood as symbolic calendar markers. Originating in the North, they spread across wide regions of the earth, only later becoming writing symbols or degenerating into magical signs. The runes symbolized not only the sun’s course through year and day but also the cycle of all life and matter under the principle of Stirb und werde.

The sixteen-character alphabet corresponds to an eightfold division of the year, attested by the eight-spoked sun wheel as well as the sixteen-part rune series. Although Charlemagne introduced the southern twenty-four-hour day, free sailors preserved the eightfold division, as seen in the wind rose.

New Roads

In Germany, a Teaching Institute for Script and Symbol Research was established several years ago to document symbolic material and undertake systematic interpretation. Karl Theodor Weigel was appointed its director.

Weigel coordinated anthropological, folkloric, and prehistoric data and integrated them into his research. His early work, Lebendige Vorzeit rechts und links der Landstrasse (Living Prehistory on Both Sides of the Road), examined the general distribution of symbols. In Runen und Sinnbilder (Runes and Symbols), he argued for their prehistoric origins, building on earlier scholarship. He later published city studies—Goslar, Quedlinburg, and Nürnberg—demonstrating the faithful transmission of tradition by farmers and craftsmen. His subsequent work, Germanisches Glaubensgut in Runen und Sinnbilder (Germanic Beliefs in Runes and Symbols), provided valuable source material against what he termed the “demon myth.”

Eternally Living Symbols

Years ago, in continuation of this great developmental path of symbol research, efforts were also initiated in the Netherlands to compile comprehensive documentation in this field.

One such contributor was W. F. van Heemskerck-Düker, who, together with H. J. van Houten, recently published the illustrated volume Zinnebeelden in Nederland (Symbols in the Netherlands) with publishing house Hamer. Building on this work, the Volksche Werkgemeenschap (Völkisch Working Community) in cooperation with the Department of Public Information, organized the major exhibition Eeuwig Levende Teekens (Eternally Living Symbols) at the Municipal Museum in The Hague—a vast display spanning no fewer than twenty-four rooms.

What is the purpose of this exhibition? This becomes immediately clear from the central motto, which calls out to us in large letters:

WHAT ONCE WAS KNOWN, AWAKENS!

And so it is. In the symbols of our people, we possess a precious testimony—misunderstood for centuries yet carried forward in weakening tradition, now being reclaimed through the awakening of the Volk from the grip of rationalism and foreign influence. Not to revive ancient paganism in caricature, but to reflect upon the timeless values these symbols still express.

Thus, Dutch symbols are restored to honor as records of ancestral understanding of the mythical Eternal. They depict the most beautiful expressions that can arise from our own souls—the original Germanic worldview.

The exhibition addresses the entire people, especially those becoming conscious of their essence. Here one sees how unnamed workers, through patience and skill, created objects of beauty and meaning. Folk art’s distinctive character lies partly in simple tools, limited but carefully tested dyes, and the absence of monetary motives—even when winter evenings were devoted to a single object for years. Joy in labor and love often inspired the work.

Capitalist economics destroyed these conditions and thereby extinguished folk art. The farmer was drawn from isolation by radio and transportation; money now intrudes everywhere, even where folk art is practiced in solitude.

For this reason, one hopes that ever-searching designers in interior and furniture industries will refrain from plundering this heritage to fill sketchbooks with sun birds, runes, and wheel crosses.

Some symbols may indeed rise again with contemporary meaning and militant content, as some already have—the Odal, Yr, and Man runes, the swastika, and others. One may approve or disapprove of them, but they are not suitable as bedspreads, sofa cushions, or bourgeois ornaments. They belong no more on tobacco jars or fruit bowls than a Twentse Tuugkist (clothes chest from Twente) belongs as a bar cabinet.

May artisans show restraint, and may unsuspecting compatriots not contribute—through careless purchases—to the creation of a pitiful “Germanic kitsch.”

Just as our ancestors did not live off past achievements, neither should we. We must know, understand, and honor them—but not exploit them. We must shape our own time with our own will. That is life. This, too, is the message of the eternally living symbols.

The simplest and most effective thing to do is to encourage the public to behold for themselves.

That requires attention, calm, and the gift of receptivity. A work of art arises from the inspiration of the artist; it is born in solitude. The maker has listened to the rhythm of the whole; at times he has seen the earth more beautiful, clearer, and purer than most people ever perceive it. And something—or much—of this vision he has captured in lines and colors, in surfaces and forms.

That is why the creation of art is never mere craft or formula. Works of art are never manufactured to order, though they may occasionally arise from a commission. But such a commission presupposes wisdom on the part of the patron; without it, no collaboration is possible. Works of art emerge in a mood of sensitivity, openness, and receptivity to perfection—what is often called inspiration. Yet there is nothing magical in this; one might, however, speak of a mystical bond between painter and nature, if mysticism is understood in our sense as a state of special clarity of mind.

But spirit alone is not enough, neither for the painter nor for his painting. The stubborn reality of painstaking craft has its say as well. For the natural demand of the beholder is, and must be, that the work is well made, that the technique underlying it has been mastered. For how could the clumsy hand follow the spirit if it already failed in handling its tools?

In the greatest works we hardly think of such questions: the technique recedes entirely behind the image, which appears to us as the most complete solution to the subject, hardly as something that could have been otherwise. This is what all great art shares: we accept it as the only conceivable expression of its theme, a solution to which we would wish to add nothing, from which we would wish to take nothing away.

The last years have brought us few true works of art and many experiments. All these trials are quickly forgotten, and when we now look back on the productions of the “-isms,” we can only wonder how these soulless contrivances—these purely cerebral and often wantonly insolent market pieces—could ever have been taken seriously. That there were even buyers willing to pay for such brazen things seems astonishing.

Yet, far removed from the clamor of charlatans, true artworks have continued to appear. Often in the solitude of a rural setting, as the distillation of the eternal cycle of unchanging nature. Unchanging—yes, but revealing itself in countless ways, ever new and fresh in its visions of her manifold forms. One of the few who remained faithful to his own nature, who pursued his path unshaken by the corruption of the times, was J. C. Nachenius. And so, now that reflection on the eternal values of our folk begins to glimmer like the dawn of a new age, we turn our attention to his work—this time especially to his landscapes.

We shall not lapse into empty description here. Cataloguing a work cannot bring us closer to its inner essence. Instead, we ask for true attention to these images, which can, of course, only offer a pale approximation of the far more beautiful and noble originals. For these landscapes speak of the grandeur of the open country, of the spacious freedom of nature, and of the unity of the organically grown and the built.

Some works abound in inexhaustible detail, yet remain clear and transparent. Others impress with their gentle atmosphere and intimacy of vision. The viewer must take time, must win for himself the stillness in which these qualities may be discovered and inwardly experienced. For to enjoy art is to be active: to cooperate, to be willing to be shaped..

In this case, it will not be difficult. These works do not burn into the soul like sharp acids. They act rather as healing and restorative. They bring beauty, freshness, and above all, character. Compare the various species of trees and the ways in which they are depicted. And beyond them, the sky—boundless and distant, yet filled with a play that will never cease to fascinate.

Each viewer will experience something different. Many will feel the impression: how beautiful is the earth, how good and rich is nature. Others will discern in these tree forms something of the fate of humankind, and seek in them more than lies within the reach of painting or graphic art. But all will undergo the enchantment of these pure and honest works, which so fully accord with our own being and therefore are able to speak so directly to our souls.