Otto Rahn, the SS Ahnenerbe and the Jews

Otto Rahn - a German author and member of the SS Ahnenerbe - has recently been brought back to public attention by his inclusion in some television documentaries about the SS and Heinrich Himmler in addition to the long overdue translation of his two principle works ‘Crusade against the Grail’ (1) and ‘Lucifer’s Court’ (2) into English by Christopher Jones. Unfortunately while Jones is an excellent translator he is apparently an indifferent scholar or has some particular interest in Rahn as his forewords reveal.

Jones claims in his foreword of ‘Lucifer’s Court’ that an editorial addition of a quote from Schopenhauer against the jews supposedly indicates Rahn’s was someone indifferent or pro-jewish in some way. Jones also asserts - without indicating a reason or his evidence for doing so - that the quote was ‘added’ to make Rahn appear to adhere to the racialist principles of National Socialism. (3) Jones claims this is to do with marketing the work, but conveniently seems to forget that a work that had the imprimatur of Heinrich Himmler would necessarily have a good circulation if no-where else than SS and neo-pagan intellectual circles in the Third Reich.

Jones seems to be thinking - or at least trying to make out - that Rahn was an active opponent of National Socialism and didn’t believe in ‘Nazi racism’. Jones makes the unfortunate mistake of trying to disprove the overstated case for National Socialism equating paganism by using the tired old quote from Adolf Hitler about the impracticality (not the impossibility) of reviving the cult and worship of Wotan. (4) In doing so he places the statement outside of its context (i.e., it is impractical not necessarily undesirable or impossible) and doesn’t cite any of the literature on the relation between National Socialism and paganism. Had Jones paid attention to the literature on the subject of National Socialism and its religious controversies then he might have realised that National Socialism rejected orthodox Christianity implicitly (5) and in the SS (that remember Rahn had willingly cooperated with from 1933 and actually joined in 1936) (6) one tended to be an unorthodox Christian, a pagan or a deist of some sort (atheism was in fact banned by Himmler as being symptomatic of an egotistical nature).

A good example can actually be found in the additions Jones cites concerning the ‘marketing’ of Rahn’s work in 1936 with the addition of a chapter by the literary figure and member of the SS: Kurt Eggers (who wrote for the same publishing house). Jones doesn’t tell his readers that it is rather unlikely that Rahn would not have been aware of so famous an SS personality as Eggers and Eggers had written a strong anti-Christian work in 1935 that had been endorsed by one of the SS’ official publishing houses. (7) Or are we to suppose that Rahn was also unaware - as Jones would have it - of say the works of Minister of Agriculture Walther Darre or the NSDAP’s official ideologue Alfred Rosenberg who both argued frequently and in detail about the negative impact of Christianity on German religious life.

Jones would have us believe that Rahn was a naïve fool in essence and ‘didn’t know’ what he had joined. Now how on earth could Rahn have not been aware of what he had joined when he would have almost certainly had the acquaintance of his nominal Ahnenerbe superiors - such as Hermann Wirth - (8) who were also anti-Christian and well-known volkisch (if somewhat eccentric) historical scholars. (9) Jones would then have us believe that Rahn lived in a kind of intellectual vacuum and didn’t really known ‘until it was too late’ that his erstwhile friends were in fact his enemies.

This kind of magical thinking on Jones’ part is easily disproved both by pointing out the fallacy of assuming Rahn existed in an intellectual vacuum or was utterly naïve and by alerting to the reader to the fact that Rahn officially entered the SS in 1936: in other words just before he supposedly became ‘disillusioned’ with it in early 1939. (10)

I differ strongly with Jones’ quite frankly absurd claim that Rahn suddenly became disillusioned with an ideology that he had endorsed not a few years before when it offered him significant career advancement as a ‘Nazi intellectual shooting star’, but then suddenly became ‘anti-Nazi’ when accusations came to light that he was both of possible jewish ancestry and a homosexual. Although I would discount the first possibility on the grounds that to gain official entry into the SS - as he had done in 1936 - Rahn would have had to submit a detailed genealogy that was then checked by experts to prove his Aryan origin. (11)

The latter is possible as Jones says nothing of Rahn’s sexual inclinations and Goodricke-Clarke’s analysis of Rahn suggests that Rahn had some ulterior motive for suddenly resigning from the SS in February 1939 and then committing suicide. (12) That motive to me can only be one or both of two things: his possible homosexuality and/or his severe decline in career prospects following both Wirth’s and Karl Maria Wiligut’s fall from grace in the Ahnenerbe in 1936-1938 (when it came under the control of the more orthodox orientalist scholar Walther Wust). This is interesting, because Jones simply doesn’t mention it in spite of citing Michael Kater’s pioneering work on the SS Ahnenerbe in his ‘translator’s bibliography’, (13) which would suggest that either he has been careless or he simply has suppressed mention of the considerable power struggle that took place in the Ahnenerbe just after Rahn had officially joined the SS after having been involved in the Ahnenerbe as a civilian scholar from 1933.

I find it particularly noteworthy that Goodrick-Clarke mentions that Rahn was a regular visitor (or rather pilgrim) to see Wiligut (who was a celebrity neo-pagan author and novelist) in Berlin, (14) while Jones simply suppresses it and implies that Himmler forced Rahn to associate with Wiligut. (15) If Goodrick-Clarke is correct about this - and given Goodrick-Clarke’s evidently superior knowledge concerning National Socialism’s relationship with paganism and the ‘occult’ I am inclined to trust his research - then it blows a not inconsiderable hole in Jones’ claims to a disinterested and naïve Rahn and rather suggests that Rahn was a late casualty in this power struggle within the Ahnenerbe between the unorthodox scholars (of which Rahn was a representative) around Wirth and the orthodox scholars around Wust.

We know that Wust certainly manoeuvred to remove intellectual liabilities that had been acquired in the early days of the Ahnenerbe (16) and Rahn would certainly have been one of these - in spite of Himmler’s favour - as Richard Cavendish’s summation of the ‘Cathar Grail’ theories suggests. (17) Whether or not Rahn was a homosexual or not it is certainly far more plausible to suggest that with Wust’s takeover of the Ahnenerbe and his increasingly close association with Himmler (in spite of Himmler’s occasional personal appointments in the Ahnenerbe): (18) Rahn perceived - correctly or otherwise - that his career prospects were haemorrhaging quickly in Germany and his close association with the Third Reich’s other mainstream publishing meant that career opportunities abroad would have been closed to him unless he publicly repudiated Hitler and National Socialism as an anti-Nazi émigré.

Rahn, of course, did not do this in spite of the ready possibility he could have done so with Hermann Rauschning and Otto Strasser being obvious examples of the lucrative careers that could await such an émigré who had ‘naively’ joined the NSDAP only to repudiate it later. Jones doesn’t even entertain this possibility if Rahn had actually been opposed to National Socialism. Indeed Jones’ sole piece of evidence is that Rahn was associated with one émigré anti-Nazi author Adolf Altengartner during his tenure in the SS. (19) This is slim proof indeed and again one is forced to ask the question why Rahn - if he was as anti-Nazi as Jones claims - would have not looked to a wider network of anti-Nazi German thinkers and authors who would have been receptive to his anti-Christian ideas such as Ernst Junger. (20)

I would argue that Rahn far more likely fell from grace and the claims that Jones notes about him being of jewish descent and a homosexual were part of Wust’s campaign to discredit the last remnants of the unorthodox faction in the Ahnenerbe not unlike an attempted campaign by the SS weekly journal ‘Das Schware Korps’ against the legendary pro-Nazi - but staunchly Catholic - legal and political theorist of dictatorship, Carl Schmitt (21) or Goebbels’ own tactics in ‘Der Angriff’ during the Kampfzeit. (22)

It is possible to assert that Rahn was a homosexual on the basis of an analysis of his ‘Crusade against the Grail’, which certainly has strong homoerotic overtones in its obsession description of the courtly and platonic love of the Minnesingers that is further implied by the later direct association of the Minne with the Cathar ritual of the Consolamentum (by which one become one of the ‘pure ones’ or ‘bonhommes’) in ‘Lucifer’s Court’. (23) However such an argument falls outside of the purview of this article as tempting as it is to analyse the possibility here.

We - outside of the suggestive nature of his comments and work - have little to corroborate any suspicion of homosexuality and as has already been stated Rahn’s alleged jewish ancestry is extremely unlikely as it should have spotted a lot earlier had it been the case unless he had engaged in the same type of outright fraud as Erich von dem Bach Zelewski, which we have no reason to assume.

Thus we have to conclude with Goodrick-Clarke (24) that Rahn did commit suicide on the 13^th March 1939 near Kufstein on the basis of Rahn’s own SS file that Jones has apparently not consulted, but which lists his death as simply ‘exposure’ and as a suspected suicide. (25) Indeed my argument is strengthened by the fact that Wiligut resigned citing reasons of health (but really because his previous mental illness had come to light) in exactly the same month that Rahn did and we know from Himmler’s papers that Rahn and Wiligut had had an intensive and friendly correspondence. (26)

Can Jones’ claim of a naïve anti-Nazi Rahn stand?

The simple answer is that it cannot and should be quickly discarded by any serious student of National Socialism and its epoch.

Jones’ argument seems to me to be based on what has decided to argue rather than what the evidence of Rahn’s own writings and career suggest allowing him to - with a straight-face - assert that: ‘any rejection of monotheism is generally confused with anti-Semitism’. (27) This is patently absurd as Jones is here asserting that to criticise Islamic monotheism then one is naturally going to be charged with anti-Semitism: then what is Jones’ going to do about say Christian critics of Islamic monotheism such as Robert Spencer? Call them anti-Semitic in spite of their vocal support of Israel and jewish nationalism?

Obviously this is untenable and an asinine statement at best, but it does reveal that Jones is highly sympathetic to his subject and wants to make Rahn ‘fit’ a preconceived model, which is not unreasonably described by Jones’ own citation and thanks to Alain de Benoist (among others) who like Jones is sympathetic to Rahn and argues for a ‘tolerant’ form of ‘heretical religion’ based on a ‘Nietzschian revival of paganism’ (28) not unlike that which Jones then ascribes to Rahn. (29) Jones then makes another ludicrous claim when he asserts that ‘Nazi racism’ had its roots in the jewish ‘Biblical racism’ of Yahweh that Rahn rejected. (30) This is obviously fallacious as ‘Nazi racism’ had its origins in anthropology and biology that was often anti-Christian as Ehrenreich (31) and Steinweis (32) have pointed out.

Jones also fails to tell us how he has detected said ‘Biblical racism’ in such fundamental National Socialist-era anthropology textbooks as ‘Menschliche Erblehre’ (33) better known to students of the period as ‘Baur-Fischer-Lenz’. However the root of this thinking on Jones’ part is clear in the citation of Benoist who himself believes that ‘racism’ is derived from the Old Testament (34) and with Jones’ respectful and consistent citation of Benoist’s work (35): we may within reason suggest that Jones is simply applying his master’s logic as an a priori conclusion as opposed to following the evidence no matter where it takes you.

Indeed Jones logic is not dissimilar to that which Flowers and Moynihan used to argue the thesis that the Third Reich was more Christian than it was pagan (36) (both authors being long-standing neo-pagans), because ‘racism’ is supposedly ‘biblical’ in origin which is incorrect as Mosse pointed out as long ago as the mid-1960s! (37) After all how is one supposed to claim that: when the logical concomitant of ascribing to the theory of evolution is discrimination of fit and unfit on the basis of race, age, gender, species, ability, appearance among many others! What is Jones going to do next: argue for Creationism or Intelligent Design? (38)

As Flowers and Moynihan correctly observed the inverse case - i.e., that National Socialism was either outright paganism and/or an occult conspiracy - also often interprets Rahn in a not dissimilar fashion but uses him to argue that his connection to Himmler suggests the anti-Christian (and supposedly diabolic/occult) nature of the NSDAP, SS and Third Reich. (39) Flowers and Moynihan (40) also correctly originate this converse argument to Jean-Michael Angebert (41) who utilise Rahn as a key piece of ‘evidence’ in his thesis that the Third Reich was an ‘occult state’. (42)

This has then seeped into further descriptive claims by Baker who repeats Goodrick-Clarke almost word-for-word (43) although he claims that Rahn resigned for ‘unknown reasons’, which is incorrect as we can reasonably conjecture at Rahn’s reasons based on his close association with Wiligut and Wiligut’s ‘resignation’ in the same month that Rahn too left the Ahnenerbe and the SS with the much cited cloud of the twin allegations of jewish racial origin and homosexuality hanging over him.

Levenda also has much to say about Rahn and his anti-Christian sentiment that is so obviously found throughout his work and utilises it in much the same way that Angebert did to fancifully argue for an ‘occult’ and ‘pagan’ SS and Third Reich: (44) the origin of which theory - as Flowers and Moynihan have noted - (45) actually lies with British author Lewis Spence who - like many later authors on the subject of ‘Nazi Occultism’ - was interested in ‘ancient wisdom’ (he published his fanciful theories about Atlantis extensively before, during and after the Second World War) and believed in the power of the ‘occult’ in a strictly Christian context.

This use of Rahn by two opposing sides of the same debate has confused Rahn’s own thought process as the Christian ‘Occult Reich’ theorists have sought to associate Rahn as a strongly anti-Christian figure in the Third Reich with the implication of strongly-held pro-Nazi views, while the neo-pagans (of which Jones appears to be at least a fellow traveller) have sought to minimise Rahn’s allegiance to the National Socialist cause by claiming his suicide as form of desperate principled way out in the manner that Rahn himself described the Cathars using in his work (specifically inducing pneumonia). (46) It is indeed probable that Rahn did choose one of the methods of suicide he had described the Cathars using, but why he chose inducing pneumonia (in a slightly different method than he had described) remains unknown, but we may suggest within reason that Rahn wished to see the mountains that he undoubtedly loved one more time as he passed away and the nearest range he could find was the best substitute for Montsegur that was available to him.

References

(1) Otto Rahn, Christopher Jones (Trans.), 2006, ‘Crusade against the Grail’, 1^st Edition, Inner Traditions: Rochester

(2) Otto Rahn, Christopher Jones (Trans.), 2008, ‘Lucifer’s Court’, 1^st Edition, Inner Traditions: Rochester

(3) Ibid, pp. viii-ix

(4) Ibid, pp. ix-x

(5) For example, see Susannah Heschel, 2009, ‘The Aryan Jesus’, 1^st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton.

(6) For example, Anton Holzner, 1938, ‘Priester Macht’, 1^st Edition, Nordland Verlag: Berlin.

(7) Kurt Eggers, 1935, ‘Rom gegen Reich: Ein Kapitel Deutscher Geschichte um Bismarck’, 1^st Edition, Nordland Verlag: Berlin

(8) Heather Pringle, 2006, ‘The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust’, 1^st Edition, Harper: New York, pp. 55-56

(9) For example: Herman Wirth, 1928, ‘Aufgang der Menschheit: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Religion, Symbolik und Schrift der Atlantisch-Nordischen Rasse’, 2^nd Edition, Eugen Diederichs: Jena discusses the problem of Christianity and claims; largely by implication, that it was an intellectual plague of sorts.

(10) Rahn, ‘Lucifer’s Court’, Op. Cit., p. viii

(11) Richard Breitman, 1991, ‘The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution’, 1^st Edition, Alfred A. Knopf: New York, pp. 34-35

(12) Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 2004, ‘The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology’, 3^rd Edition, Tauris Parke: London, p. 189

(13) Rahn, ‘Crusade against the Grail’, Op. Cit., p. 222

(14) Goodrick-Clarke, Op. Cit., p. 188

(15) Rahn, ‘Crusade against the Grail’, Op. Cit., p. xii

(16) Pringle, Op. Cit., pp. 97-98

(17) Richard Cavendish, 1978, ‘King Arthur & the Grail’, 1^st Edition, Book Club Associates: London, pp. 166-167

(18) Katrin Himmler, Michael Mitchell (Trans.), 2007, ‘The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History’, 1^st Edition, MacMillan: London, p. 128

(19) Rahn, ‘Crusade against the Grail’, Op. Cit., p. xii

(20) On Junger’s association with anti-Nazi circles in spite of being courted by the Third Reich’s intelligentsia (not unlike Rahn) see Thomas Nevin, 1997, ‘Ernst Junger and Germany: Into the Abyss 1914-1945’, 1^st Edition, Constable: London, pp. 107-108

(21) Carl Schmitt, George Schwab (Trans.), 2005, ‘Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty’, 1^st Edition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, pp. xxx-xxxiii; George Mosse, 1966, ‘The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich’, 1^st Edition, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, pp. 283-285

(22) Russell Lemmons,  1994, ‘Goebbels and Der Angriff’, 1^st Edition, University of Kentucky Press: Lexington, pp. 120-123

(23) Rahn, ‘Lucifer’s Court’, Op. Cit., pp. 26-28

(24) Goodrick-Clarke, Op. Cit., p. 189

(25) ‘Otto Rahn’ in the SS file catalogue of the Berlin Document Centre

(26) Goodrick-Clarke, Op. Cit., p. 190

(27) Rahn, ‘Lucifer’s Court’, Op. Cit., p. vii

(28) Alain de Benoist, Jon Graham (Trans.), 2004, ‘On Being Pagan’, 1^st Edition, Ultra: Atlanta, pp. 5-10

(29) Rahn, ‘Crusade against the Grail’, Op. Cit., p. xiv

(30) Rahn, ‘Lucifer’s Court’, Op. Cit., pp. vii-ix

(31) Eric Ehrenreich, 2007, ‘The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution’, 1^st Edition, Indiana University Press: Bloomington, pp. 14-16

(32) Alan Steinweis, 2008, ‘Studying the Jew: Scholarly anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany’, 1^st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 66-71

(33) Cf. Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, 1936, ‘Menschliche Erblehre’, 2 Vols., 4^th Edition, J. F. Lehmanns Verlag: Munich

(34) Benoist, Op. Cit., pp. 106-107

(35) Rahn, ‘Crusade against the Grail’, Op. Cit., p. xv; ‘Lucifer’s Court’, Op. Cit., pp. ix-x

(36) Stephen Flowers, Michael Moynihan, 2007, ‘The Secret King: The Myth and Reality of Nazi Occultism’, 2^nd Edition, Feral House: Port Townsend, pp. 39-40

(37) Mosse, Op. Cit., pp. 98-101

(38) For a general introduction to this see John Phillipe Rushton, 2000, ‘Race, Evolution & Behaviour: A Life History Perspective’, 3^rd Edition, Charles Darwin Research Institute: Port Huron and Frank Salter, 2007, ‘On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration’, 2^nd Edition, Transaction: New York.

(39) Flowers, Moynihan, Op. Cit., pp. 34-35

(40) Ibid, p. 35

(41) The nom de plume of the French authors: Michel Bertrand and Jean Angelini.

(42) Jean-Michel Angebert, Lewis Sumberg (Trans.), ‘The Occult and the Third Reich: The Mystical Origins of Nazism and the Search for the Holy Grail’, 1^st Edition, MacMillan: New York, especially pp. 13-45

(43) Alan Baker, 2000, ‘Invisible Eagle: The History of Nazi Occultism’, 1^st Edition, Virgin: London, pp. 147-149; compare to Goodrick-Clarke, Op. Cit., pp. 188-189

(44) Peter Levenda, 2002, ‘Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult’, 2^nd Edition, Continuum: New York, most forcibly stated on pp. 204-214

(45) Flowers, Moynihan, Op. Cit., p. 23

 (46) Rahn, ‘Crusade against the Grail’, Op. Cit., p. 90