Vril-Gesellschaft

Vril-Gesellschaft is the name of a fictional secret society that is said to have existed in Germany from the beginning to the middle of the twentieth century. In a series of conspiracy-theoretical and pseudo-historical texts it is claimed that she was involved in the rise of National Socialism and that she used supernatural energies to develop innovative aircraft during the time of National Socialism (so-called "NS-" or "Reichsflugplatten"). There is no historical evidence for the existence of a secret society of this name and the services ascribed to it. Likewise, there is no evidence of the historical significance attributed by representatives of this legend to the “Vril Society” and some actually existing occult groups.

The word Vril comes from the novel The Coming Race (The Coming Race) by the English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), published in 1871, and was probably derived from the Latin word virilis ('manly', 'powerful'). In this novel, the narrator encounters an underground human race, the Vril-Ya, who have a psychic vital energy called Vril that is far superior to the human race. The Vril forces enable them to do telepathy and telekinesis and enable them to influence any form of animate or inanimate matter for healing, raising the dead or for destruction. Originally a people who lived on the surface of the earth, the Vril-ya were cut off from the rest of humanity by a natural disaster and moved to an underground cave system in which they found a new home. There they developed in a history marked by wars and social upheavals through the discovery of a new natural force - the Vril force - to an egalitarian, eugenics-practicing society that is superior to all other races. Through contact with the narrator of the novel, the Vril-ya learn about the people who live on the surface of the earth and ask him in depth about human society. The narrator manages to escape from the realm of the Vril-ya and at the end of the novel he warns his readers of the danger that the Vril-ya would pose to humanity should they ever return to the surface.

While the contemporary criticism interpreted The Coming Race as satire, other parts of the audience viewed it as an occult key. In these circles the view was held that Bulwer-Lytton was a member of the Rosicrucians and that the "Vril" force was an actually existing, universal life force. According to this view, the novel was merely a vehicle with which Bulwer-Lytton wanted to convey secret knowledge to his readers under the guise of anonymity.

Helena Blavatsky and other occult authors adopted the term "Vril" as a synonym for secret natural forces that could only be used through magic. In Blavatsky's first work Isis unveiled (The Unveiled Isis), (1877) "Vril" was represented as a real, independently acting force.

In her second book, The Secret Doctrine, in 1888, she described that the people of Atlantis had used Vril to build colossal structures. After the fall of Atlantis, a small group of surviving priests would have preserved this knowledge and passed it on only to a chosen few. This psychic energy is supposed to allow the mastery of the whole of nature. Several books mention a Vril-ya Club founded in London in 1904, which is said to have addressed this issue. Bulwer-Lytton's writings are passed on in the New Thought movement.

It was particularly momentous that the theosophist William Scott-Elliot, in his The Story of Atlantis, published in 1896, described the Vril in connection with airships, which it served as the driving force. This property of the vril, already described in The Coming Race, became a main reference for certain developments after the Second World War through Scott-Elliot's explicit Atlantis association.

As early as the mid-1890s, new scientific discoveries, e.g. the discovery of X-rays, to the view, also widespread among intellectuals, that natural science cannot yet claim to have finally solved the world riddle and that invisible natural forces and energies still existed. Occult theories were not only cited as counter-drafts to natural science, but common thematic points of contact were also seen. Many occult circles countered the discomfort caused by the materialism of scientific and technical modernity by trying to formulate a doctrine of the mastery of earthly and cosmic forces on par with the natural sciences.

Around 1900 the areas of occultism and mysticism experienced a great boom that lasted into the 1930s. Since theosophy was widespread at this time of the emergence of occult currents, the “Vril” concept was also common in Germany in occultist circles. Bulwer-Lytton's primal force emerged above all in contexts in which it was a question of creating a “magic technique”, the drafts of which expressed the desire for a union of science and religion.

A total of four translations of Bulwer-Lytton's book appeared in Germany between 1874 and 1924, including one which the anthroposophist Guenther Wachsmuth had obtained in 1922 at Rudolf Steiner's request. The term “Vril” was therefore known to a broader public in Germany until the 1920s. As a result, lay theories flourished claiming to be able to fill alleged scientific gaps without taking into account that Bulwer-Lytton was just trying to write a Jules Verne-style entertaining novel.

Before the Second World War, there was at least one private circle in Berlin whose members were specifically concerned with the “Vril” force. The few sources that prove the existence of this group of people later became one of the starting points for the development of the Vril Society legend.

One of the sources of evidence for the existence of such a group is an article by the German rocket pioneer Willy Ley, which he published in the American science fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction in 1947. In it he tries to explain to his readers why National Socialism fell on fertile ground in Germany, and attributes this to the great popularity of irrational beliefs in pre-war Germany. He describes various examples of pseudoscientific and esoteric currents and in this context also mentions a group that is particularly strange in his eyes:

“The next group was literally based on a novel. This group, which I believe called the Truth Society and was more or less based in Berlin, devoted their free time to the search for Vril. Yes, their beliefs were based on Bulwer-Lytton's 'The Coming Race'. They knew that the book was an invention, Bulwer-Lytton used this device to be able to tell the truth about this 'force'. Underground humanity was nonsense, Vril was not. Perhaps it had enabled the British, who were keeping it a state secret, to build their colonial empire. It was certainly owned by the Romans, enclosed in small metal balls that protected their homes and were known as lares. For reasons I couldn't see through, the secret of the Vril could be discovered by immersing oneself in contemplating the structure of an apple cut in half. No, I'm not kidding, that was what I was told with great solemnity and in secrecy. Such a group actually existed; she even published the first issue of a magazine in which she proclaimed her creed. (I wish I had kept some of these things, but the way things were, I'd already had enough books to smuggle out.)"

In 1930 two smaller pamphlets appeared, entitled Weltdynamismus and "Vril". The cosmic primal force, which were published by an occult circle that called itself the “Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft 'Das Kommende Deutschland' (RAG).

The RAG claimed in it that it had a well-developed technique that was suitable for using the “Vril” power. The structure and functional principle of the machine described, as well as the outlined political program, are almost identical in structure and content in a brochure published by two Austrian authors as early as 1928, which propagated a perpetual motion machine that the Austrian Karl Schappeller is said to have invented. The RAG plans only differ in a few details. Overall, the impression is given that it is an improved version of Schappeller's machine, the function of which is in particular not (pseudo-) physical, but occult-based. In one of the texts, in a longer section, the image of an apple cut in half is used as a model for the structure of the earth and its connection with the “space force”. This and the contributions of proven Schappeller supporters suggest that it was mainly supporters of the Austrian inventor who contributed to the RAG publications.

From another publication of the RAG, the "Zeitschrift für Weltdynamismus", it becomes clear that the RAG was founded in 1930 in Berlin by a certain Johannes Täufer. Täufer also drew for the brochure “Vril”. The cosmic elemental force is responsible, but nothing further is known about his person. The name is probably a pseudonym, and the assumption has been made that it could have been the publisher Otto Wilhelm Barth, who published two of the RAG publications. Fritz Klein, a patron of Schappeller, whose writings were recommended by the RAG, could also have hidden behind it.

A comparison between Ley's memoirs and the content of the RAG writings allows the conclusion that the “truth society” and the RAG could actually have been the same grouping. However, it seems to have had only short-term and marginal importance in the occult scene of the time. Neither the RAG can be found in official registers, nor are there any documents about its publications at the time in the archives of the Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag. Neither the Zeitschrift für Weltdynamismus nor the archive for alchemical research, which was published together with it, published further editions. For the period after 1930 there are no documents that prove the continued existence of the RAG or an influence on other circles. Neither can RAG's claim that it has a “Vril” technology be taken as evidence that it has actually succeeded in using it. Above all, however, it seems to be irrelevant for the invention of a Vril society after 1945 whether Willy Ley actually referred to the RAG: As will become clear below, later authors were at best inspired by Ley's statements for their own fantasies . Nonetheless, this group later formed a central building block for the justification of the legends of the secret work of a “Vril Society” in Germany from the 1920s to 1940s.