Thule Gesellschaft

The Thule Society was a political secret society that was founded by Rudolf von Sebottendorf in August 1918 in Munich towards the end of the First World War and, in its strongest phase, had around 1,500 members in the winter of 1918/19.

It was named after the legendary island of Thule, which is said to have been located far to the north. The Thule Society was ethnically anti-Semitic. The group fought the November Revolution of 1918, the Free People's State of Bavaria proclaimed by Kurt Eisner (USPD) and the subsequent Munich Soviet Republic, which the Thule Society saw as the outcome of a Jewish world conspiracy. After 1919, it quickly lost its importance and disbanded in 1925. More recently it has become the starting point for a wide variety of conspiracy theories and fictions.

The society went back to the anti-Semitic Germanenorden founded in 1912, which split in 1916. At the beginning of 1918 the adventurer and occultist Rudolf von Sebottendorf, who had returned to Germany in 1913 after a long stay in the Ottoman Empire and got married richly, collected the remaining Bavarian followers of the order in Munich. On 17./18. August 1918 the new secret society with the name "Thule Gesellschaft, Orden für Deutsche Art" (Thule Society, Order for German kind) was officially founded. On August 3, 1919, it was entered in the register of associations under the name "Thule-Gesellschaft zur Erforschung deutscher Geschichte und Förderung deutscher Art e.V., Sitz München" (Thule Society for research in German History and promotion of German Kind, headquarters Munich).

From 1919 to 1924, the meeting place was the Munich luxury hotel "Vier Jahreszeiten". In the winter of 1918/19 the Thule Society had around 1,500 members, 250 of them in Munich. Most of them were academics, aristocrats and business people. A swastika with a halo behind a bare sword was chosen as the emblem of the company, the mottos were “Keep your blood pure” and “Remember that you are a German”, the members' greeting to each other was “Heil und Sieg”.

The society developed a massive, above all anti-Semitic propaganda activity by describing the Jews as the mortal enemy of the German people and presenting the sometimes confused and restless conditions of the government as alleged evidence of a Jewish world conspiracy that had to be fought. The aim of the Thule Society was the establishment of a dictatorship and the expulsion of all Jews from Germany.

The organ of publication was the Münchener Beobachter (Munich observer), which was taken over by the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) in 1920 and renamed the Völkischer Beobachter.

In addition, Sebottendorf tried to enforce ariosophical teachings in the society. He incorporated them into his speeches, and study groups were set up on related topics such as Nordic culture and heraldry.

After the proclamation of the Free People's State of Bavaria on November 8, 1918 by Kurt Eisner, whom the opponents of the revolution defamed as a traitor, destroyer of Bavarian traditions and, last but not least, as Jews who allegedly immigrated from Galicia, the Kampfbund Thule became the military arm of the Thule Society. This took place in December 1918 in the preparations for a coup, in an attempt to kidnap Prime Minister Eisner.

The Thule Society was indirectly involved in Eisner's murder on February 21, 1919: the murderer Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley had previously been a member of the society for a time. He was expelled because of his Jewish mother and wanted to prove his nationality by murdering Eisner.

In January 1919, the Thule activist Karl Harrer, a sports journalist for the Munich observer, was involved in the founding of the German Workers' Party, of which he became chairman. It was renamed the NSDAP in 1920. However, Harrer had already come into conflict with Adolf Hitler and left the DAP. A number of people who later gained importance in the NSDAP were registered as "guests" of the Thule Society, including Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess and Hans Frank. Hitler himself was never a member of the Thule Society.

The Thule Society also took action against the Munich Soviet Republic proclaimed in April 1919. Thule activists infiltrated the Munich Red Army and the Communist Party and gathered information. As alleged railway officials, they were able to use this means of transport, since Thule chairman Friedrich Knauf, as railway inspector, obtained appropriate IDs for them. The information obtained was passed on to the SPD-led government, which had evaded to Bamberg.

During the communist rule in Munich, Sebottendorff offered shelter in the rooms he rented in the Hotel “Vier Jahreszeiten” to nationalist organizations that had lost their previous premises. These included the National Liberal Party, the Pan-German Association, the German Armed Forces Association and the German National Action Aid Association.

On April 26, 1919, the "Vier Jahreszeiten" hotel as the headquarters of the Thule Society was stormed by the Soviet Republican military police and about 20 people were arrested. On April 30th, seven Thule members under the control of the military police, including Prince Gustav Franz Maria von Thurn und Taxis and three other nobles, were shot dead in the Luitpold grammar school. This so-called hostage murder attracted international attention and triggered an uprising among the previously calm population in Munich, which was organized by the Thule Society and, in addition to the invasion of counterrevolutionary freikorps, contributed to the suppression of the Soviet Republic.

After the violent end of the Munich Soviet Republic, the Thule Society disintegrated and lost its importance in the nationalist movement. Sebottendorff, who had organized the counterrevolutionary activities of the society, was held responsible for the fact that the membership lists had fallen into the hands of the military police and withdrew from the society.

In the first few years the society had around 200 members. With fewer than 20 members remaining to gather for memorial sessions, it was dissolved around 1925 due to a lack of support. In 1932 it was deleted from the register of associations.

There were several unsuccessful attempts to establish a new company, the last one in 1933 by Sebottendorf, who also tried to advertise himself as a forerunner of National Socialism with his book Before Hitler came (1933). However, this met with resistance from the National Socialist regime, his book was outlawed and in early 1934 he was briefly imprisoned and then deported from Germany.