Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels

Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, actually Adolf Joseph Lanz (born July 19, 1874 in Penzing, today Vienna, † April 22, 1954 in Vienna), was an Austrian clergyman and ariosoph. He coined the term Ariosophy and founded the New Templar Order. For a few years he was considered "the man who gave Hitler the ideas". This assessment, which is based on a self-styling and was disseminated in a biography from 1958, is regarded as inaccurate in recent studies.

In 1893 Lanz entered the Cistercian monastery of Heiligenkreuz in Wienerwald as brother Georg. His novice master was Nivard Schlögl, professor of the Old Testament and oriental languages, who took an anti-Semitic stance in his work.

During his time as a novice, Lanz quickly gained a reputation as a profound expert on the history of his country and his order in general, as well as his monastery in particular. From 1894 he wrote more than thirty historical and art-historical treatises, among others in scientifically recognized journals such as the reports and communications of the Alterthums-Verein zu Wien and the studies and communications on the history of the Benedictine order and its branches. At that time he was already occupied with astrology, neopaganism, occultism and the Grail myth. Under the influence of these studies, the writings of the occultist Guido von List and the polemics of the Pan-German leader Georg von Schönerer, Lanz developed into a radical German national and eugenicist by the turn of the century.

Lanz was ordained a priest in 1898. Less than a year later he was asked to leave the order. Lanz himself later stated that his constantly "increasing nervousness" and his poor health were the reason for his resignation in April 1899.

After leaving the Cistercian order, Lanz changed his identity. He has had a doctorate since 1902. From then on called himself Lanz-Liebenfels. In 1910 he changed this to Lanz von Liebenfels.

In Swabia and at Liebenfels Castle in Thurgau there was an aristocratic family with the name Lantz (or Lanz) von Liebenfels. However, there is no evidence that there was a family relationship between her and Lanz, and the most recent evidence of the existence of this family dates from 1790. It can therefore be assumed that Lanz also invented his membership of this noble family.

After leaving the monastery, Lanz went through a very creative phase. He wrote polemical writings on the influence of the Jesuits on the Catholic Church, had several technical inventions patented and wrote articles on anthropology, archeology and early history that revolved around the Aryan race. In addition, he made contact with pan-German and social Darwinist circles and wrote for Theodor Fritsch's anti-Semitic magazine Der Hammer.

According to his own statements, Lanz discovered the core of his later worldview as early as 1894 through the following incident: When looking at a tombstone on which a knight is depicted killing a monkey, he suddenly realized that the race of the Aryans or "Herrenmenschen" have to lead a constant defensive battle against the race of non-Aryans or "ape men". Since the Aryan race is weakened by mixing with minor races, comprehensive racial hygiene measures are required for its pure breeding and "refining". These in turn require, among other things, an unconditional subordination of the Aryan woman to the Aryan man.

After leaving the monastery, he devoted himself to extensive studies of contemporary anthropological literature on the Aryan race, including Origines Ariacae by Karl Penka (1883), The Homeland of the Indo-Europeans by Matthäus Much (1902) and The Teutons by Ludwig Wilser (1904).

Lanz's early articles were radical, but not yet eccentric. The combination of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-feminism and anti-socialism on which they are based had many supporters in their day.

In 1903 and 1904 he published a series of articles entitled Anthropozoon biblicum, in which he first developed parts of his "theozoology". With reference to accounts by Herodotus, Euhemeros, Plutarch and other writers of antiquity, he postulated that in early civilizations sexual intercourse with animals (sodomy) was practiced as part of cultic events. He tried to underpin this with the help of archaeological finds and interpretations of the Old Testament. On this basis, he formulated a theological doctrine according to which the fall into sin consisted in the originally divine Aryans having mixed with animals. Inferior races emerged from this, and these would threaten the legitimate supremacy of the Aryans, especially in Germany, where the Aryans are the most numerous in international comparison.

Lanz developed this doctrine further in his book Die Theozoologie or die Kunde von der Sodom-Äfflingen und dem Götter-Elektron, which appeared in 1905. In this he relied primarily on very idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible, various apocrypha and Gnostic writings, which he combined with motifs from contemporary natural science. He postulated that humans were originally of a divine nature, and referred to these early, high-ranking humans as Theozoa, or Godmen. Following a suggestion by the writer Wilhelm Bölsche, he continued to claim that the Theozoa had electrical sense organs and were able to communicate using electrical signals. This gave them the skills of telepathy and omniscience. Today's people emerged from a mixture of the Theozoa with the lower Anthropozoa, which Lanz also referred to as "apes". As a result of this mixing, they would have lost their electrical capabilities. He identified Adam as the progenitor of the Anthropozoa, while Christ was one of the last pure Theozoa. According to Lanz, the main aim of the Old Testament was to warn of the harmful consequences of mating with apes, and in general true religion consists in keeping the breed pure in order to preserve the remains of the divine inheritance, which is still particularly evident in the Aryan race are present. He now combined this with the idea of ​​eugenics, which was very popular at the time, by propagating a program of racial segregation and targeted human breeding in order to restore the divine abilities of the Theozoa.

In 1900 Lanz founded his own religious order, the Neutempler-Orden or Ordo Novi Templi. The order was intended as an association of race-conscious German-Austrians, to promote the beauty of the Aryan race and a healthy lifestyle as well as to support colonialism. Only "Aryan" men were allowed to join. He initially took over the liturgy, the regalia and the hierarchical structure from the Cistercians.

In 1907 Lanz succeeded in acquiring the Werfenstein castle ruins in Strudengau in Upper Austria as the order's archpriorate. Lanz developed his own liturgy, on the basis of which services were held in the restored castle. In 1914 a second priory was founded in Hollenberg near Aachen.

Other foundations took place near Lake Balaton in Hungary (1925), in Dietfurt near Sigmaringen (Dietfurt ruins, 1927), near the Baltic Sea resort of Prerow (1928), near Szentendre in Northern Hungary (1937) and near Waging am See in Upper Bavaria (1938). During this time the number of members grew to around 300 to 400. Soon afterwards, however, the order was dissolved in National Socialist Germany.

From 1905 Lanz published Ostara, a publication organ edited by him with ariosophical content. Initially Lanz published articles by other authors in addition to his own articles in the Ostara; but from 1908 he was the sole author. 89 editions had appeared by 1917, followed by a number of, mostly hardly changed, new editions.

Ostara temporarily reached a circulation of tens of thousands of copies. The Ostara was widespread in pre-war Vienna. It is considered certain that Adolf Hitler knew of the existence of the Ostara during his time in Vienna (1907–1913) and at least read some editions. His later friend and sponsor Dietrich Eckart was also a reader of Ostara.

In 1915 Lanz turned intensively to contemporary German astrology and studied and reviewed numerous current astrological and prophetic writings. Works by astrologers Otto Pöllner and Ernst Tiede were of particular importance to him. In 1914, Pöllner had published a book entitled Mundan Astrology, with which he founded a modern political astrology, which, for example, creates horoscopes of states and peoples in order to determine their future fate. Tiede analyzed the horoscopes of the rulers of all the warring states at the time and derived a prediction of the outcome of the war. In addition, there were a number of writings that made corresponding statements on the basis of the prophecies of Nostradamus.

Subsequently, Lanz developed his own "racial metaphysical" astrology. Following the approaches of Pöllner and C. Libra, he assigned a planet and a zodiac sign to all major countries, which, on the basis of his ariosophy, he saw in agreement with the culture and “spirit” of the race of the respective country. On this basis, he interpreted the current course of the war and, in combination with interpretations of the prophecies of Joachim von Fiores, made predictions about the outcome of the war. Finally he turned himself to prophecy and described a time of "messianic labor" that would follow the war and which ultimately culminated in demonic supremacy in the years 1960 to 1988 through increasing racial intermixing and further wars including a Mongolian invasion of Europe. From this, Lanz linked the millenarian vision that after this time of the hardest test of humanity a new Church of the Holy Spirit and a supranational Aryan state would be established in which a wise priesthood would rule. He named Vienna as the starting point for this new world order.

In the late 1920s Lanz further developed his astrological teaching on the basis of the Platonic World Year and interpreted the political and religious development of Europe on this basis.

After Lanz had spent his entire previous life in Vienna and the surrounding area, he emigrated to Hungary after the collapse of the Danube Monarchy in 1918, where, according to his own later statements, he took part in the resistance against the short-lived communist Soviet republic of Béla Kun and was almost executed for it. His experiences under the regime of the Bolsheviks of Jewish origin, Kun, made Lanz's hatred of Jews and socialists, which - as shown - can be proven for the years before, assume traits of paranoia. Lanz had already seen Judaism as a natural enemy of the German people in earlier years, but considered it to be comparatively harmless because it consistently rejects mixed marriages of its members with those of other religions. Until 1914, his most important enemy image was “the German women”, because women were only valuable to Lanz as “breeding mothers”.

After the victory of the counter-revolution in 1920, Lanz worked in a Christian-national press agency in Budapest, which was subordinate to the Foreign Ministry, and wrote reactionary articles for daily newspapers. With his book Weltende und Weltwende, published in 1923, he made the world conspiracy of Jews, Socialists and Freemasons postulated by him the focus of his other publications and anti-Semitism the focus of his program. During this time he praised the right-wing dictatorships in Spain, Italy and Hungary as harbingers of the global transformation he prophesied.

In 1925 Lanz presented a summary of his teaching with his outline of the ariosophic secret doctrine. He made extensive use of esoteric disciplines such as palmistry, astrology, esoteric heraldry, the cabalistic interpretation of names and number symbolism to show the alleged differences between the blondes and the dark. In this context, he followed up on Guido von List in particular. His theses were received by the fraternities among others.

From 1925 to 1933 Lanz worked together with Herbert Reichstein as the editor of ariosophical writings. He also gave courses, gave public lectures and continued to lead his order. In 1926 he acquired a church ruin from the 13th century on the north bank of Lake Balaton, which he expanded into a priory and also used as a summer residence.

From 1929 the Bibliomystikon or the secret Bible of the initiated appeared. It was a biblical commentary from an ariosophical point of view that Lanz had essentially written himself. The work comprised 10 volumes, some of which were printed as handwriting and were only published in a limited number. It is doubtful whether there was a second edition after 1945, as is sometimes claimed. Lanz left Hungary in 1933 and went to Lucerne, where he subsequently wrote numerous texts that were only intended for internal use in the order.

Since the mid-1920s, Lanz claimed to have been a major pioneer of Adolf Hitler and a “pioneer of National Socialism”. The desired recognition did not materialize: Hitler did not respond to Lanz's claims, instead mocking the esoteric and secret society members of the Lanz type in his work, Mein Kampf, published from 1925. Various party publications of the NSDAP also expressed themselves repeatedly negative to contemptuous of Lanz and his ilk. Lanz was prevented from further publications in the National Socialist state.

Deeply offended by this disregard, Lanz continued until his death to portray himself as the man "who gave Hitler the ideas". From 1947 to 1952 he reactivated his order, which had meanwhile been dissolved by the National Socialists, to a small extent and also brought out some publications again.

Before his death in 1954 he received the sacraments of the Catholic Church. His grave is in the Penzing cemetery.