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Home , Arthur de Gobineau, Aryan, Kalpa (aeon), Lebensborn, Leon Poliakov, Master race

Comparative Civilizations Review

Volume 25 Number 25 Fall 1991 Article 2

10-1-1991

Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

M. Dorothy Figueria State University of New York at Stony Brook

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Recommended Citation Figueria, M. Dorothy (1991) " Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe," Comparative Civilizations Review: Vol. 25 : No. 25 , Article 2. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Comparative Civilizations Review by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

ARYAN ANCESTORS, PARIAHS AND THE LUNATIC FRINGE

DOROTHY M. FIGUEIRA

In going East . . . everyone . . . ought to feel that he is going to his "old home," full of memories, if only he can read them.1 If we follow them [the Indian poets] cautiously, we shall find that with some effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps.2 De l'lnde . . . descend un torrent de lumiere, un fleuve de Droit et de Raison.3

I Historians of the have made irresponsible claims to the influences of Eastern cosmic theories and practical methods for spiritual development upon National .4 Mythologizers of as well as sober scholars have drawn a causal relation- ship between early philology, Indian and National Socialist ideology.5 In a journalistic work translated from the French as The Soul of (1961), Amaury de Riencourt speculates that, with the help of Indian philosophy, fought and destroyed the Greco-Roman and Semitic heritages of European culture in the twentieth century.6 A direct line is drawn from early European study of philology which recognized the relationship between German and Sanskrit, to those Romantic poets and philosophers entranced with India, through Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hous- ton Stewart Chamberlain culminating with . The suggestion that the entirety of German history, especially Roman- ticism, contributed in the formation of the Third Reich is not a radical proposal.7 Riencourt modifies this topos by suggesting a direct movement from the Romantics to the National Socialists. Raymond Schwab's La orientate (1950) also recently reedited,8 draws a direct connection between Schopenhauer, India and National Socialism. Schwab maintained that Schopenhauer used India as a cudgel to beat the Semitic tradi- tion. Schopenhauer's critique of the is perceived

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as having an insidious racist and hegemonic agenda. Once again a causal relationship between early philologists, Schopenhauer and subsequent racists and anti-Semites is proposed. Leon Poliakov's Le Mythe aryan associated Indomania, Ger- manenwahn and anti-Semitism in one breath. He cites F. Schlegel as the first author of myth9 and interprets Herder's enthusiasm for Indian philosophy as symptomatic of Germany's impatience to release itself from Judeo-Christian fetters.10 Poliakov maintains that Schopenhauer allowed Germany to see itself as a child of India and .11 Poliakov then draws a connection between Schopenhauer's pro-Indian (for Poliakov, synonymous with pro-Aryan) sentiments and his anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish arguments.12 Thus, Jakob Grimm can appear as an influential propagandist of the Indo-German and Aryan .13 To be fair to Poliakov, he does not single out the ; most of European history presents a single history of the Aryan myth, which he does not distinguish from anti-Semitism. For Poliakov, all anthropology, linguistics, philosophy and history is the prehis- tory of the destruction of the . Terribles simplificateurs} Yes, but these theses prove elucidative, nevertheless. Given the recent reeditions in English of both Schwab and Riencourt and the publication of other works sug- gesting a deep connection between India and National Socialism, it appears that this trend in scholarship is flourishing. It is not surprising that the more recent of such works can call upon Orientalist criticism to lay claims to an a priori racist/imperialist agenda at work in all East-West literary and philosophical rela- tions.14 In the following pages, I would like to examine specific Indian symbols which found their way into Nazi ideology and iconography in the hope of deciphering the role such influences played. Historians trace the rise of National Socialism to the influences of , anti-, cultural and .15 The vision of the , a national collectivity inspired by a com- mon creative energy, was promulgated as the unique essence of the German people. Mosse has speculated that this ideological preoccupation resulted from Germany's delayed political unifica- tion and the Romantic reaction to modernity.16 When Germans began to conceive of their national unity, they did so in cultural terms. Sturm und Drang, the identity of all Germans in folk songs https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 2 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

Dorothy M. Figueira 3 and the Romantic idealization of medieval Germany laid claim to a spiritual unity, if there never was a political unity. Racism, too, had a place in volkisch ideology. By exploiting racial differences, Germans lent validity to the claims of national distinctions and superiority. In this direction, they were aided and abetted by Darwinism, purporting that the superior would prevail over in- ferior races. How, then, did Germans identify the Volkl Where did the notion of the enter into their understanding of their cultural identity? In the Petersburger Sanskrit Worterbuch, the term is defined as treu, ergeben, andfromm. Aarya, belonging to Treuen can signify "ein mann des eigenen Stammes." The Petersburg dictionary cites the term's from areioi (Herodotos refers to a people named arioi, dwelling in present-day ) and Diodorus' mention of the Areianoi. In 1763 the French translator of the Zend , Anquetil Duperron translates ' and Diodorus' asariens and in 1776, Johann Friedrich Kleuker translates their name into German as Arier. In the late eighteenth century,17 Sir William Jones sought to discover the relationship between Sanskrit and the Classical and modern European languages. With , scholars such as F. Schlegel, Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm and Aug. Fried. Pott would add their respective theories. Which Volk was the Urvolk? What was the Mutter- from which Tochter-V'dlker sprang? Which Ursprache did this Volk use and, finally, where was their Urheimat? As Grimm and Pott would maintain, the Aryans in India and Persia were the Urvolk, Sanskrit the Ursprache, and the Central Asian Highlands the Urheimat. It was believed that these Aryans moved south and west, differentiated and isolated themselves. Theodor Benfey (1868) thought they migrated in the opposite direction, from to . German linguists then sought names for the newly discovered linguistic family, such as Japhetische, Sarmatisch, Kaukasisch, Indisch-Teutsch, Mittellaendisch, Sanskritisch, Indogermanisch, Indokeltisch, Indoeuropaisch, and Arisch. They identified its Ursprecher as Teutarier, Arioteuten, or Viros. If the relationship between Sanskrit and modern European languages was mis- takenly thought to be that of an Ursprache to a Sprache, then those who spoke these languages were Indians and their descendants included, among others, the Germans.18 Schlegel (1819) used

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Arier in the sense of "our German ancestors while they were still in Asia."19 The Aryan language was the language of the Ur-Aryans. The Aryans were, therefore, the equivalent of the Uruolk from which the collected linguistic and Volk- family descended. To support his argument, Schlegel developed what we know to be false , such as the German Ehre deriving from the Sanskrit root ari.20 Significant in this regard is the fact that Schlegel's knowledge of Sanskrit was incomplete and colored by a crisis of which coincided with his study of the language.21 also thought that the old Germans were named Arier, although he personally preferred the alternative term In- dogermanen.22 "Aryans," the Ur-inhabitants of Iran and India, comprised the group of peoples from the language family which speak the Indogermanic language and which, according to bibli- cal genealogy, had been named Japhetic. With A. F. Pott's article "Indogermanischer Sprachstudium" in the Allgemeine Encyclopadie der Wissenschaften und Kiinste, the term indoeurop'disch gained parlance.23 For the sake of clarification, since this term suggested that all European languages came from the same branch, Pott spoke of a Sanskritsprachstamm, with Sanskrit now thought to be the oldest language. The racial use of the term "Aryan" can be found in Gobineau, Retzius, Poesche and Penka. For Gobineau, the Aryan race ranked superior to all others due to its cultural sophistication; he recognized Aryans as the passive material from which "Culture" was formed. Although formally a monogenist, Gobineau still ac- cepted the biblical creation myth. For the Urheimat, Gobineau held to the theory of an Asian migration,24 in which the Aryans wandered into India, met and mixed with the indigenous . He noted how far-sighted the Indian Law-givers had been when they recognized in this intermingling the decline of Indian cul- ture. For this reason, Gobineau maintained, they instituted the system of castes. Gobineau attributed the capacity of to Aryan blood.25 Closest to the Aryan was the , and so forth in declining order. Gobineau held that Buddhism and struck the death blow to Aryanhood, through its wanton disre- gard for caste. Nevertheless, Gobineau placed India as the excep- tion in universal history. It was the only high culture with long- term success at separating the races. Most significantly, Gobineau, the aristocrat (and Viking, for that matter) posited India as the https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 4 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

Dorothy M. Figueira 5

Gegenbild to Europe—especially nineteenth-century Europe which was careening toward bastardization through the over- throw of class structure. Gobineau did not use the term Arier for Jews.26 He held to Noah's genealogy and, for him, the Semites belonged to the white race. It should be noted that Gobineau's theories, unlike those of the other Aryan race theorists, were hardly circulated or accepted by his contemporaries. Theodor Poesche, Karl Penka, and George Vacher de Lapouge27 maintained that there existed a linguistic classification of Indo-European languages necessitating an Indo-European community of speakers, a Volk family. These theorists routinely combined linguistic classifications with race classifications.28 For Poesche and Penka, the Urtype was dolichocephalic (German- Scandanavian) and bracycephalic (Celt, Slav). Who was Urherr and who was the Urknecht in their system? In England, the Ger- mans (Anglos, Saxons and ) subjugated indigenous ; in , the Germans () the Celtic ; in South- ern Europe, the Germans the indigenous or Iberians; in the East, the Germans subjugated the . These Germans were the in India: they were strong, and blue-eyed in the north due to light and climate. Poesche situated their Urheimat in Lithuania; Penka in ; Lapouge by the North Sea. In early , this Urvolk wandered to India, but they found the climate unconducive. They eventually left; those who had ties with the dark indigenous population remained. Thus these Aryans effected a selection of the fittest, when the colonizers were decimated and forced to mix for survival. The present-day in- habitants of India have only a small percentage of Aryan blood coursing through their veins, since, early on in their stay, they diluted their race by mingling with the indigenous population. Poesche held that while modern Indian languages were mostly Aryan, the Volk physically could no longer make such a claim. To these Aryan theorists, the Indians were

Negroes and Mulattoes, who know how to retain the noble language of their paternal ancestors. Subtropical nature has physically and spiritually overrun the Aryan species and stifled its fullness.29 Poesche, Penka and de Lapouge were strictly Darwinian and, by accepting environment as the selection factor, they diametri- cally opposed Gobineau for whom India provided the last Aryan

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bastion which had protected itself from mixture. For these Aryan theorists, mixture was inevitable; the only way the Aryans would live in India was by sacrificing race in order to keep language and culture. The that the Aryans had degenerated paralleled the gen- eral devaluation of India in nineteenth-century European con- sciousness. By the end of the nineteenth century, the initial Romantic enthusiasm with India and her inhabitants had consid- erably ebbed. While for thinkers such as Herder and Goethe India had been the cradle of civilization, it now became, to cite Enrico de Michelis, the grave of the Aryans.30 In a similar down- ward spiral did the Aryans in India degenerate from their forebears. Although the Indians were not excluded from the Aryan race category, as it was stipulated in the Arierparagraph31 of the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums of April 7, 1933,32 by the time of the National Socialist iViirnberger Gesetzen of September 15, 1935, it could no longer be a question of Aryan and not Aryan,33 but deutsches oder artverwandtes Blut. Thus, the initial race theorists differed significantly from the National Socialists in that their mechanical race selection theory left little room for factors such as Will or, more importantly, Selbstzucht (self-discipline). While the racial fate of the Indian Aryan was determined by his passivity or fatalism, the fate of the German Aryan necessitated a .

II In actuality, the myth of the Nazi link with the Orient has less to do with the migrations of Aryan warlords than with National Socialism's complex pedigree of Theosophical provenance. Theosophy provided a mixture of Ancient Egyptian esoterica, American spiritualism, and Buddhism. Mme. Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875. By presenting a tirade against the rationalism and materi- alism of the modern , Mme. Blavatsky encouraged her readers to seek truth through ancient religion in defiance of contemporary agnosticism and modern science. She first directed them to Ancient Egype in Isis Revealed (1877). With her emigra- tion to India in 1879 and no doubt sensitive to the popularity of translations from Sanskrit scripture, she shifted her base of oper- https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 6 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe Dorothy M. Figueira 7 ations as well as the locus of Truth to India. Theosophy received in India its systematic formulation. (1888), primarily a plagiarism of contempo- rary works on Hinduism, describes the activities of God from the beginning of creation. Theosophy supported belief in a cyclical historical process. The present universe can be viewed as an ema- nation and subsequent progression. The first volume of The Secret Doctrine describes cosmogenesis where the primal unity of the unmanifest Divine Being becomes manifested through emana- tion and gradually fills the universe. All subsequent creation then passes through seven evolutionary cycles. Blavatsky illustrated cosmic cycles with a variety of esoteric symbols, of which the swas- tika, an Indian symbol of luck, was the most popular. In fact, it became the seal of the Theosophical Society. In the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky attempts to relate man to this vision of the cosmos (anthropogenesis). Dur- ing each cycle, seven consecutive root races, descending on a scale of spiritual development and increasingly enmeshed in the mate- rial world, rise and fall. One of these root races, the Aryan, had as its first underrace the ancient Indians, followed by those Indians who had been sent to Egypt (called Ario-Semites), the , and Celts. The fifth Aryan underrace, the Teutonic, currently reigned, possessing qualities such as scientific understanding, which is especially prevalent, we are told, in Germany. These Aryans were in the process of ascent; their process of spiritual advance lay before them. The agglutinated speech of the other races and their respective underraces became inflected in the Sanskrit of the Aryan race. Another tenet of Theosophy incorporated the Hindu belief in reincarnation and . The individual human ego was re- garded as a tiny fragment of Divine Being. Through reincarna- tion, each ego pursued the stages of the cosmic journey toward eventual reunion with the Divine Being, from whence it issued. One is countlessly reborn according to the principle of karma— where good acts earn superior reincarnation, and bad an inferior . The Jews belong to the second Aryan underrace, the so-called Ario-Semites, a mixture of those Aryans who wandered from India to Egypt and were called Ursemites. The Jews are also thought to have stemmed from the fourth root race, the Atlan-

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tans. Blavatsky identified the Jews with the pariahs (candala) of ancient India. They can just as well be the expelled chandala of Ancient India who were mentioned as the "Brick wall" by Veda- and . . . The Semitic languages are the bastard descendants of the first corruption of the eldest children of early Sanskrit . . . The Semites, especially the , are later Aryans, materially degenerate in intellect and perfection. To these belong all the Jews and Arabs. The first belong to a branch which descends from the Indian candalas.34 The concept of the pariah had been emplotted in eighteenth and nineteenth century literature and opera as the noble savage, an Enlightenment symbol for social equality.35 In contradistinc- tion to Enlightenment and Romantic imagery, in the modern racist configuration of Theosophy, the pariah retains its Indian status as a degenerate. A third metaphorization of the pariah, distinct still from those of the Enlightenment and Theosophy, is to be found in the fulminations of Nietzsche. Whereas the En- lightenment and Romantic pariah rebelled against his fate, Nietzsche's candala (Tschandalen) symbolized fatalistic resignation and passivity in the guise of charity. He too was a product of the shift which had occurred in the general reception of things In- dian; the pariah as a symbol for cultural progress had become an object of the despair with the European present. Nietzsche has popularized the figure of the candala in his dis- cussion of and Buddhism which he characterized as the world's two great nihilistic movements, "decadent" and rooted in the monstrous disease of the will.36 In Buddhism, how- ever, Nietzsche recognized a more consistent type of pessimism.37 It provided a " that was freer, more aristocratic and more cultivated than in Christianity, it was a religion."38 Nietzsche identified his vision of the with the candala ; the Christian through love and for his fellow man rendered himself an Untermensch. In opposition to Christianity, the Hindu faith, as expressed in the Laws of Manu exhibited a realistic acceptance of life (a "jasagende arische Religion,")39 which did not disguise its appreciation of power. Led by a non- moralizing elite made-up of the noble classes, philosophers and , Indians controlled the rabble which was always ruled by Zucht. Nietzsche understood Indian as promulgated in Manu in the following manner:

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Dorothy M. Figueira 9

Here is the task presented, not less than four races to breed once and for all: a priestly, , peasant and finally a servant race, the sudras . . . But also it is important for this organization to be formidable, not in battle with a brute, but with its opposite idea, the man of race, the mis- hmash man, the candala.40 Like the Ubermensch, the ancient Hindu possessed a feeling of completion, an affirmation of life and a triumphant, pleasant feeling about himself.41 His success was due to his ability to segre- gate himself rigorously from the "excrement of society."42 The Tschandala and his religion, on the other hand, reaffirmed the need for Nietzsche's alternative vision. These orders are instructive enough—in them we have at once Aryan humanity, completely pure, completely original—we learn that the idea "pure blood" is the contrary of a harmless conception. On the other hand, it becomes clear which people perpetuated hatred, candala hatred against this humanity, where it became a religion and a . . . Under this point of view are the Christian , as the Jewish root, only understandable as the breeding of race and privilege—it is the anti- Aryan religion par excellance: worthy of the candala—the preached to the poor and lowest, the collected revolt of all the down- trodden, the ill-bred, those who have come off poorly against the "race"—the immortal candala revenge as a religion of love. . .43

Nietzsche's Tschandala represented the individual who has been rendered weak in will by a weak religion. He did not identify the Tschandala with the Jew. The association of candalas44 with Jews was, therefore, an important development. Theosophists, as well as other occultists such as List and Lanz von Lebenfels, would make this connection and appropriate the figure of the candala in their racial ideology.45 Theosophy flourished in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Its vogue in Germany and derived from the fact that Theosophy provided a philosophical rationale for the Leben- sreform groups of Wilhelmian Germany. The end of the century saw the growth of the German Theosophical movement owing largely to the effort of Franz Hartmann (1838-1912). From 1892 onward, translations from Indian sacred texts alongside the works of Mme. Blavatsky were available in several journals. Hartmann's journal Lotusbliithen, which had a emblazoned on the cover, was distributed by Wilhelm Friedrich, a Leipzig publisher of esoteric works dealing with karma and trans- lations of the Bhagavad G\ta. Other journals include Paul Zillman's

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Metaphysische Rundschau (1896), which published articles on , phrenology, astrology as did Prana (1909-19); Harald Gravell van Jostenoode's Aryavarta, a volkish text imbued with a mixture of Buddhist piety; and, finally, Ostara. Not only was the German occult subculture well developed prior to the First World War, but, with the appearance of such publications, a definite evolution took place in occult ideology. While the earliest Austrian Theosophy was coupled with mystical Christianity, its later Viennese manifestation dealt more with myth, folklore and comparative religions. Theosophy's eclecti- cism with respect to esoteric lore and its non-Christian perspec- tive on the cosmos and man's origins, were well suited to volkisch speculation. provided a synthesis of Theosophy and German mythology. In Wotanism, List incorporated the "Hindu" concept of birth cycles (death and rebirth), as well as the belief that all creatures are emanations of a spiritual force. Man, as an integral part of this unified cosmos, must live in accordance with nature, i.e. in close identity with one's Volk and race. Friedrich published List's Sexualreligion (1897) describing the sexual religion of the Aryans and their practice of to maintain the purity of the race. Only the union of the pure could release primal energy and produce excellent offspring. In Die Gnosis (1903), List expanded upon his theories concerning the immortality of soul, reincarna- tion and karmic determination. With the publication of the Ger- man translation of The Secret Doctrine, List became more and more influenced by Theosophy. Hartmann would praise him for dis- covering the congruence between Germanic and Hindu doc- trines.46 List's blueprint for change called for the Pan-German empire establishing the subjection of non-Aryans to Aryan masters in a hierarchical state where professions rested solely on racial purity. Aryans were relieved from menial tasks in order to rule over non-Aryans. This vision, clearly based on Hindu caste edicts, did not differ significantly from the Nuremburg Laws of 1930's. In List's last work Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen (1914), the ancient German national past corresponds to Hindu or world cycle. List's apocalyptic hopes for the end of the present cycle and the dawning of new age struck responsive chords in Viennese society suffering from over-crowding,47 tuberculosis, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 10 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

Dorothy M. Figueira 11 and the dissolution of traditional social institutions. Theosophy and the bastardization of Hindu religious concepts offered an occult vision of the millenium. Toward the end of the war, List suggested that the German victims would be reincarnated as a collective messianic body. By using the principle of karma, he claimed that the 100,000 war dead would be reborn to form elite messianic corps armed for a subsequent national revolution, which, in keeping with his vision of the ,4H would usher in the new age.49 As an Austrian reaction to the demands of Slavic nationalists, the Pan-Germanist movement led to the emergence of the Ariosophists. Racism was a vital element of the Ariosophist doc- trine. Gobineau's theory of the Nordic Aryans' superiority and his pessimistic prediction of their submergence by non-Aryan peoples corresponded well with accepted Darwinian postulates. Aryans need not succumb to the fate of deterioration but could prevail against threats of decline and contamination by maintain- ing their racial purity.50 The Ariosophists, who were initially ac- tive in Vienna before the First World War, were responsible for contributing the occult component to the German nationalist cause. In addition to endorsing belief in the obsolescence of the social order by their support of the belief that the modern world was based on evil principles, they substituted for their disen- chantment with the contemporary world a vision of an ideal world. Thus they combined the German volkisch nationalism and racism with "Hindu" notions borrowed from the Theosophy of Mme. Blavatsky and Nietzsche, with a view toward proselytizing the coming era of German world rule. Ariosophy's amalgamation of current racist theories with theories of karma resulted in a Manichean worldview grounded in gnostic fatalism.51 Just as belief in karma justified caste exclusion for Indians, likewise it supplied a basis for Ariosophical thought whose primary concern consisted in distinguishing the darker races from the Aryans who possessed a pan-psychic energy which was believed to be identical with God.52 By positioning the Aryans closest to the Divine, the Ariosophist Lanz von Lebenfels viewed human history as a conflict between Aryan divine men and Untermenschen, specifically referred to as the Tschandalen. The fall of man resulted from the Aryans' racial compromise. Good was pitted against evil, the blond against the

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Tschandala. Lanz specifically identified these Tschandalen with the Jews. The Jews as a race among all historical and prehistorical races and from the dross of all the ruined of all cultures of mixed-together candala peoples.53 According to Ariosophy, the time had come to reverse the ascen- dency of the inferior races in Europe. By advocating the extermi- nation of inferior races, Lanz exceeded Nietzsche's rhetorical fulminations against Christian , which called for sterilization and castration.54 The Pan-German periodical,Ostara, dealt with such problems as economical racial issues. Among stock themes of this journal are found the caste laws according to Manu, documentation concerning the Manichean struggle of dark races against , racial somatology, antiparlamen- tarianism and racial sexual differences.55 For a population dis- tressed by the effects of defeat, economic collapse and revolution upon their traditional values, the second Ostara series (1922),58 offered solace: "all oriental and ancient states had declined with the appearance of mob-rule and the dictatorship of the blond "Ario-heroic" ruling class." Some historians, seeking to account for his Manichean vision of Aryan versus Jew, maintain that Hi- tler was deeply influenced by a disciple of Lanz, Dr. Karl Lueger,57 and was a regular reader of Von Liebenfels' Ostara.58 Hitler was certainly receptive to the comic book Manichean vision of the conflict between Blonds and the dark races and it is gener- ally believed that he was more influenced by the conflict between Aryans and Tschandalas of Ostara and similar pamphlets than by Gobineau and Nietzsche. Furthermore, one can find echoes of Lanz' theories as they were articulated in Ostara in the Third Reich's decrees banning interrace marriages, extinction of in- ferior races through polygamy, and SS homes.59 However, the suggestion of any direct influence of occult- nationalistic groups on Hitler must be tempered. In , Hitler made contemptuous attacks on the "volkisch wandering scholars" of these lodges and noted that Germany's salvation de- manded a mass political party which could be effectual in battle and not the antiquarianism and ceremonial antics so prevalent in these organizations.60 In this sense, Hitler acknowledged Ariosophy as a symptom rather than a significant influence. The NSDAP would diverge in its views on ideology and action from https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 12 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

Dorothy M. Figueira 13 these organizations, although a direct line of symbolic succession can be seen in their mutual symbol, the swastika, which can be traced back through List to Theosophy. These various occult groups, however, all did conform to a certain stereotype and, as such, reflect the ideological climate of their day. Their doctrines cited exalted and ances- tors, whose ancient gnostic rule had brought the Aryans wisdom and power until it was supplanted by an alien and hostile culture. They contributed to the mythological mood of the subsequent Nazi era by the fact that the NSDAP originated from their ranks. To suggest that they directly influenced people in positions of political power exaggerates their importance.61 During the Third Reich, such organizations were officially dissolved; the general Nazi policy was to suppress lodge organizations and esoteric groups. Three elements of Indian provenance form a bridge between the nineteenth-century "Indian" occultism and Nazism: the term "Aryan," the swastika, and the candala. These elements and their transformation into objects of militancy coalesce and bear fruit in groups such as the Germanen Order, founded in 1912 and the later Society. Rudolf von Sebottendorf revived the Ger- manen Order in 1917.62 Advertised as a Germanic lodge for German-blooded men, its symbol was the swastika.63 For Sebottendorf, the term "Aryan" could be etymologically broken down in the following manner:

Ar rune = eagle. Sons of the eagle, the son . . . according to the stone watch-towers of Stonehenge and Oudry in , a high culture of the Aryans 1000 years before can be established.64

Unlike Theosophists, who viewed humanity as an all-inclusive fraternity, such occult racist groups conceived of Aryans in a biological sense. They imitated Theosophy's use of the swastika which became the German wheel of the sun. Sebottendorf appropriated the term Tschandalen from Lanz von Liebenfels and used it in the Miinchner Beobachter, soon to become the Volkischer Beobachter, whose motto was "Nieder mit den Tschandalen." The subsequent National Socialist use of the term Tschandala derived from this implementation by Lanz, and not from Nietzsche (Gotzendammerung and ), although Nietzsche's concepts would have suited Nazi ideologues.65

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There are clearly connections and cross-fertilizations between occult and political groups. However, the facts do not support the claim of a direct causal connection between Theosophy, Ariosophy, the Thule and Nazism. The anti-Semitism of Theosophy's founder supplied a religious rationalization for oc- cult anti-Semitism and a strong racist substructure; Ariosophy would take the vision of god-men and make them German- Aryans, the Thule Society would take the Ariosophist ideas of racial supremacy and seek to implement them. The entire spec- trum borrowed the occult interpretation of human history as apocalypse and was fully grounded in the idea of spiritual superiority. The bonds between filiation and influence are not without their murkiness. The discovery of Indian culture in the 18th century, along with such forces as the French Enlightenment, did in fact effect the destruction of biblical myth regarding the origin of man. How- ever, this rejection of the biblical worldview need not necessarily be viewed as establishing the sine qua non equivalent to anti- Semitism.66 Rather, it announces the beginning of the scholarly writing of history. India, among other countries, became an ob- ject of study. However, when India entered into discussions of the Nationalist camp of the , it did so in an incestu- ous fashion. Germany had been sacrificed by the Imperialistic Western powers who had, by means of the Versailles Treaty, given Germany a colonial status. Oswald Spengler (1924) would typify Germany as "ein europaisches Indien."67 For Arthur Moel- ler van den Bruck,68 Germany needed to fight the same battle against British imperialism as India. The revolutionary group of the National Socialists broke with Hitler in 1930 with this anti- imperialistic orientation as one of their points of division. They articulated their purpose in the Grundmanifest of the Schwarzen Front:

For us, consent with the Indian fight for freedom from English domina- tion and capitalist exploitation has been and is important. This is so mainly from the fact that each weakening of a contractual power of Versailles is favorable, as is the sympathetic agreement with each fight which leads the subjugated peoples against their exploitative usurpers. It is a compelling result of our concept of nationalism, a volkisch peculiarity, that we assume the burden of other peoples and nations.69

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In contradistinction to this ideology of solidarity, Hitler's position was, however, perfectly clear. He advocated the supremacy of one race of high value over the world. An alliance of the down-trodden nations is a dumb slogan . . . When today the Indians live under the rule of England ... or the Blacks under the rule of any European people, so is this grounded in their inferiority . . .The Freedom fight of the Blacks, Indians and so forth is an attempt to break the natural order . . . The admiration of Gandhi is, in my estima- tion, a racial perversity.70 In this respect, Hitler repudiated volkisch politics in favor of a Capitalistic race-imperialism based on the European model.71 Thus, with this judgment, India ceased being the symbol of a fictitious German past. In subsequent National Socialist ideology, India came to represent an apocalyptic vision of Germany's fu- ture.

Ill It was primarily through the rantings of the official National Socialist party ideologue, , that this shift oc- curred. In the Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert, Rosenberg discussed India at length. There we learn that the ancient Indians lived their lives not for love, but for the sake of duty and honor.72 Theirs constituted the first racial cultural wave which, originating in , had crossed the mountains of India pushing back and surpassing the inferior races, prevailing over un-Aryan supersti- tions and magical cultic practices. The Aryan Indians kept apart from the dark inhabitants, by instituting a policy of separation. Thus racial purity was responsible for the great achievements of these Indians. Non-Aryan magic disappeared, when Aryan spirituality, based on the aristocratic self-consciousness, over- came the un-Aryan magical sacrifice-based religion.

After this separation of blood and blood, the Aryans constructed their picture of the world, which, in its depth and breadth even today has been surpassed by no philosophy.73 However, this supremacy was eventually overturned as the Aryans lost their sense of color and blood. In other words, the Aryans died in their quest for the individual self.74 Aryan blood

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was diluted through infelicitous mixing of the races, "after long- lasting proximity with the ever more penetrating representation of the low-caste indigenous population."75 With their supremacy thus overturned, Indian Aryans became less creative as bastard art (in the form of such things as phallic worship) took over. Although traces of Aryan genius occasionally blossomed in the lyrics of Kalidasa and the philosophy of Shank- ara, it could not stem the tide. It was not simply the issue of blood which precipitated the Aryans' downfall, but rather their spiritual values, specifically the concepts of Atman I Brahman, which de- stroyed their sense of race, as it had once destroyed their person- ality.76 In the misguided quest for the individual Self, the Aryan oversoul perished.77 With the loss of personality and racial con- sciousness followed also the loss of honor. In terms reminiscent of Nietzsche, India has fallen prey to influences which sapped its spiritual strength.78 Buddhist and Christian compassion as well as Indian pessimism brought about the of the Aryan Untermensch,79 Com- passion, loss of individual racial Self, inaction and the ultimate consequent of fatalism characterize the of the Aryan in India.80 The land of our dreams and hopes for cultural invigora- tion perished due to its own spiritual flaw. Those advocating In- dian spirituality in the West, those indulging in the fatuous quest for redemption might well take notice of where their flirtation is leading them.81 India's consists in the disappearance of the Indian Aryan. The society which had once given us the genius of Sanskrit epic and the sophistication of speculative philosophy has now degenerated into race chaos. India was "used up" (verbraucht) and weak.82 The figure of Gandhi epitomized India's implicit call for inaction and fatalism. The Indian situation was bad enough: its rejection of the world led to the Aryans mixing with indigenous populations, which led to spiritual weakness and loss of a racial "will to self-assertion" (Selbstbehauptungswillen) and Gandhi with his pacifism struck the death blow.83 Rosenberg took particular issue with the Gandhi-rapture ('Gandhi-Verziickung) which was raging in the volkisch-nationalist camp. The admirers of Gandhi were particularly deleterious to German Aryans. Germans following Indian philosophical fatalism and its modern historical praxis can only lose their own https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 16 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe Dorothy M. Figueira 17 nature, and hence their myth of race. In this regard, Rosenberg admitted his indebtedness to Houston Stewart Chamberlain.84 Either there would be a universal reawakening or Germany would follow India's course and redescend into chaos.85 Al- though Germany's contributions to myth ranked above all other nations, like India it would fall prey to mongrelization. Germany was fortunate in that, having observed the racial decline of its Aryan forbears, it could avoid a similar destiny.86 As did Nietzsche, Rosenberg viewed this mulattoization of the world to be also supported by Christianity. Like Buddhist com- passion, Jesuitical-Roman spineless pity was un-Germanic and degenerate. Humanitarianism, as advocated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, presented a fatal error which only compounded Oriental abstract .87 The vision of man's equality, articulated for example in the early nineteenth-century pariah literature, is subverted in the later image of the candala. The enlightened project of Humanitat, with all its presupposi- tions, must be repudiated, lest it justify the enfranchisement of Negroes, the incurably sick and the insane.88 Thus, in place of the Nordic "desire for the enhancement of life" ("Lust an der Steigerung des Lebens"), in which one can recognize Nietzsche's Herrenmoral, Rosenberg found the "world conquest of the decrepit Aryan Indian" ("Weltiiberwindung des gealterten arischen Inders") whose acme in Buddhism repre- sented the "appearance of the ruin of the Nordic racial spirit in the tropical Indian environment."89 Buddhism struck the final blow to Aryanhood, by breaking all remaining bonds to family, line, Volk and State, and furnished ideological ferment for the disintegration of racial barriers (Auflosung der Rassenschranken). Both Rosenberg and Giinther present India as a projection of the European situation. All the topoi for the critique of civilization could be collected in the description of the Indian Aryan's de- cline: moral universalism, Nietzsche's Sklavenmoral, Individu- alism, the destruction of family, sexual self-destruction and the big city, which was seen by the race hygieneticians of the late nineteenth century as the Rassengrab. India, once metaphorically the cradle of German civilization, now became the symbol of its grave. It functioned, thus, as both an example and a warning to the Nazis. Just as the Aryans in India fell, so would those in Europe, if the situation were not reversed.

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An aristocrat such as Gobineau portrayed India as an example of successful conservation of a white through the strict separation of races in castes. Aryans in India were not ruined, their descendants rule today as brahmans and ksatriyas. The duration of Indian culture was based on conservation of Aryan master elements, the gradual decline of the Indian Aryans through mixture was as an unavoidable natural process. The Darwinian race theoreticians of the late nineteenth cen- tury perceived in the decline of the Indian Aryan proof that a physical type cannot subsist in an environment to which it is not suited and, from the case study of India, they drew anticolonialist conclusions. Rosenberg saw in the fall of the Indian Aryans a parable for the fall of race through the lack of the will to self- assertion. The Indian Aryan did not understand the myth of race sufficiently and, therefore, did not sufficiently fulfill caste rules; they mixed with indigenous populations, lost their moral identity, made cities, disappeared in race chaos, and finally died. They represented "a racial disgrace, whose product today as miserable bastards in the water of the Ganges seek a cure for their crippled existence."90 Rosenberg, unlike Gobineau, did not recognize this dilution of blood as an historical movement which, at best, could be retarded. Rather, through a will to self-discipline (Zucht), he believed that race could be turned around and once again raised. Race was not, as in Darwin, a passive enduring work determined by environ- ment, but a process legitimizing the mastery of the Nordic races over lesser races, the British over the Indians, the German over everyone else. Hitler had rejected any bond between volkisch Germany and national liberation movements. The lunatic fringe had trans- formed the nineteenth-century image of the Aryan ancestor into that of another popular exotic character, the pariah. By attribut- ing the Aryan's demise to his spiritual values, loss of will to self- assertion and blood chaos, Rosenberg provided the ideological framework to "rationalize" Hitler's race-imperialism. State University of New York at Stony Brook

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REFERENCES

1. F. Max Miiller, India: What Can It Teach Us (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1883), 49. 2. Rig-Veda : the Sacred Hymns of the , trans, and ed. F. Max Miiller, 6 vols. (: William H. Allen, 1856), 3:ix. 3. Jules Michelet, La de I'humanite (: Chamerot, 1864), 485. 4. Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians (New York: Avon, 1963) posited the idea of the importance of the Thule Society and its contacts with Gurdgieff. J. H. Brennan, The Occult Reich (New York: New American Library, 1974) posited the influence of Tibe- tan Buddhists on Hitler. See also R. Alleau, Hitler et les societes secretes (Paris: B. Grasset, 1969); T. Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny (New York: Bantam, 1973); J. M. Angebert, The Occult and the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1974). 5. For a critique of this scholarship, see Jiirgen Liitt, "Indische Wur- zeln des Nationalsozialismus?" Zeitschrift fur Kulturaustausch 3 (1987): 468-79. 6. Amaury de Riencourt, The Soul of India (London: ) 268: "The oriental Renaissance was bearing bitter fruits, and it is still an open question whether all this could have happened without the dis- covery of Aryan India in the ." 7. Of particular use in this regard are the works of Georg Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1964); Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1966); The Nationaliza- tion of the Masses: Political and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1980); Masses and Men: Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality (New York: Howard Fertig, 1980); Toward a : A History of European Ra- cism (New York: Harper and Row, 1978). Also important in this context are the works of Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe, foreward by Reinhold Niebuhr (New York: Library, 1979); The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe. Trans. Edmund Howard (London: Heinemann, 1971); The History of Anti-Semitism. Trans. Miriam Kochan (New York: Vanguard, 1968) and Leon Poliakov and Josef Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener. Documente, 2nd edit. (: Grunewald Verlag G.m.b.H., 1956). 8. Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, trans. Gene Patterson- and Victor Reinking, forward by Edward Said (New York: Colum- bia University Press, 1984). 9. Leon Poliakov, Le Mythe aryan, essai sur les sources du racisme et des nationalismes (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1971) 214, 384. 10. Leon Poliakov, Le Mythe aryan, 210. 11. In the same manner, Nietzsche allowed Germans to see themselves

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as descendants of Iran and disciples of Zarathrustra (Leon Poliakov, Le Mythe aryan, 210). 12. Leon Poliakov, Le Mythe aryan, 217. 13. Leon Poliakov, Le Mythe aryan, 223. 14. This critical approach, borrowing heavily from the premises of Edward Said's (New York: Pantheon, 1978) has most recently been articulated in Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987); Ronald Inden, "Orientalist Constructions of India," Modern Asian Studies 20, 3 (1986). 15. Clarence C. Brinton, "The National Socialists' Use of Nietzsche," The Journal of the History of Ideas, April 1940, (1): 131-150 and Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of Press, 1981). 16. G. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, 1-10. 17. Eighteenth-century linguistics was based upon biblical monogenesis: the Semitic branch stemmed from Sem, the Hamitic (Afri- can) from Hem and the Japhetic (Caucasian, Asian-European) from Japhet. Differences were attributed to the milieu theory which held that climate, nourishment and lifestyle altered physical attributes. Thus, George Louis Leclerc, the Comtede Buffon (1707-88) and Johann Fried- rich Blumenbach (1752-1840) held that the Urtype (Adam/Noah) evolved through into different races. Along with Cuvier, Lamarck speculated that there occurred periods of catastrophe in which biological and geological material, normally relatively stable, became enormously plastic. Darwin, basing his thoughts on Lamarck's theory of the species, held that the species passed through change due to environment and therefore functioned dynamically. 18. , Kritische-Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. E. Beh- ler, 24 vols. (: Schoningh, 1966) 14:18ff. 19. F. Schlegel, Uber den Anfang unserer Geschichte und die letzte Revolution der Erde 1819 in Kritische-Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, 8:520: ". . . unser germanischen Vorfahren, wahrend sie noch in Asien waren." 20. F. Schlegel, Kritische-Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, 8:520. 21. F. Schlegel, Kritische-Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, 14:279: "War es irgendein wunderbarer Begriff von der hohen Wiirden und Herrlichkeit des Nordens, wie wir ihn in den indischen Sagen iiberall verbreitet finden?" Schlegel answered, "Der erste bestimmte Abfall von Gott." See this author's article, "The Politics of Exoticism and Friedrich Schlegel's Metaphorical Pilgrimage to India," Monatshejte vol. 81, Winter 1989 (4):425-434. 22. Hans Siegert, "Zur Geschichte der Begriffe "Arier" und "arisch" in Worter und Sachen Zeitschrift fur Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft Vol- ksforschung und Kulturgeschichte, Band 22, neue Folge Band 4, Heidelberg 1941 (2): 73-99. 23. A. F. Pott, "Indogermanischer Sprachstudium," Allgemeine Encyc- lopddie der Wissenschaft und Kiinste, ed. Johann Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber, 84 vols. (Leipzig: J. F. Gleditsch, 1840) 18.2.1. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 20 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

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24. Gobineau depended heavily upon the research of Christian Las- sen. 25. Joseph , Versuch iiber die Ungleichheit der Menschenrassen, trans. Ludwig Schemann, 4 vols. (Stuttgart: F. From- mann, 1939-40) 2:208. 26. The first time that the term Aryan was used in the "not-Jewish" sense was in the Satzung of a Wiener Turnverein of 1887: "Mitglieder konnen nur Deutsche (arische Abkunft!) sein." See Hans Siegert, Zur Geschichte des Begriffs "Arier", 98 cited in Sieferle, 466. 27. In the preface to L'Aryan, son role social (Paris, 1899), George Vacher de Lapouge judges the term "Aryan" as inadequate, acknowl- edging its use in the title of his work as a concession to the public which was accustomed to it. 28. It was with F. Max Miiller, that the distinction between linguistic and racial classification was articulated. In his Antrittsrede to the Univer- sity of Strassburg in 1872, Max Miiller noted that there were only Aryan and Semitic linguistic families, but no Aryan race, blood or skulls. In other words, he firmly stated that you cannot base ethnological classifica- tion on linguistic principles and warned against the mixing of linguistic and anthropological terms. See Uber die Resultate der Sprachwissenschaft, Vorlesung gehalten in der kaiserlichen Universitat zu Strassburg am xxiii. mai MDCCCLXXII (Strassburg: K. J. Trubner, 1872) 17: "Es giebt Arische und Semitische Sprachen, aberes ist unwissenschaftlich . . . von Arischer Rasse, von Arischen Blut, oder von Arischen Schadeln zu sprechen, und dann ethnologische Classificationen auf linguistischen Grundlagen zu Versuchen." Miiller had nothing against an anthropologist speaking about dolichocephalic races, etc. He was not against race theory perse. On the contrary, he was member of the Gobineau Vereinigung. See G. Deschner, Gobineau und Deutschland, diss, Erlangen 1967. 29. Theodor Poesche, Die Arier, Ein Beitrag zur historischer Anthropologic (Jena: H. Costenoble, 1878) 150: "Neger und Mulatten, die sich die herrliche Sprache einiger Vorfahren vaterlicherseits zu erhalten wussten. Subtropische Natur hat in Indien leiblich und geistig die arische Art iiberwuchert und in Ihrer Fiille erstickt." See also Die Arier, 154. 30. Enrico de Michaelis, L'Origine degli Indo-Europei, Biblioteca di Sci- enza moderne 12, 1903, cited in Ludwig Wilser, Indogermanische Probleme. Politisch-Anthropologische Revue 1904-05 (3): 45. 31. Aryans were thus defined: "Der Arier (auch Indogermanen, Japhetiten) sind einer der drei Zweige der kaukassischen (weissen) Rasse; sie zerfallen in die westlichen (europaischen) d.s. dies Oestlichen (asiatischen) Arier, d.s. die Inder () und Iranier (Perser, Afga- nen, Armenier, Georgier, Kurden). Nichtarier sind daher: l.die An- gehorigen des beiden anderen Zweige der kaukassischen Rasse, nam- lich die Semiten (Juden, Araber) und Hamiten (Berber). Die Finnen und Ungarn gehoren zur mongolischen Rasse; es ist aber kaum die Absicht des Gesetzes, sie als Nichtarier zu behandeln.", cited in Sieferle, 459-60. See also Haensel/Strahl, Politisches ABC des Neuen Reichs (Stuttgart, 1933), 13-14 under the rubric Arier.

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32. The general purpose of this law was to exclude from the Civil Service all Jews who before the First World War were not civil servants or could not show proof of active duty. 33. Reichbiirger- und Blutschutzgesetz. Meyers Lexikon, Bd. 1,1936, sp. 557 stated that the designation "deutschbliitig" superceded "arisch." 34. Helena Petrovna [Hahn-Hahn] Blavatsky, Die Geheimlehre, die Ver- einigung von Wissenschaft, 4 vols. (Vienna: Donau Verlag, 1955) 1:332: "Sie konnen ebensogut die vertriebenen Chandalas des alten Indiens die von Veda-Vyasa und Manu erwahnten "Ziegelmauer" sein . . . die semitische Sprachen sind die Bastardabkommlinge der ersten Korrup- tionen des altesten Kinder des friihen Sanskrit . . . Die Semiten, in- sbesondere die Araber, sind spatere Arier—entartet in Geistigkeit und Vervollkommenheit in Stofflichkeit. Zu diesen gehoren alle Juden und Araber. Die ersteren sind ein Stamm, der von dem Chandalas Indiens enstammt." 35. See this author's article "Pariahs and Prostitutes: Exotic Exemplars of Bourgeois Virtue in Nineteenth Century Europe," Rivista di Letterature moderne e comparate, vol. 42, Oct.-Dec. 1989 (4):349-363. 36. F. Nietzsche, Werke in Drei Bdnden, ed. Karl Schlechta, 3 vols. (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1954-56) 3:770. 37. F. Nietzsche, Werke in Drei Bdnden, 2:649. 38. F. Nietzsche, Werke in Drei Bdnden, 3:712. 39. F. Nietzsche,Nachlass, ed. Schlechta, 3:701. 40. F. Nietzsche, Werke in Drei Bdnden, 2:980-2: "Hier ist die Aufgabe gestellt, nicht weniger als vier Rassen auf einmal zu ziichten: eine pries- terliche, eine kriegerische, eine handler und ackerbauerische, endlich eine Dienstboten-Rasse, die Sudras . . . Aber auch diese Organisation hatte es notig, furchtbar zu sein—nicht diesmal im Kampf mit einer Bestie, sondern mit ihrem Gegensatz-Begriff, dem Zucht-Menschen, dem Mischmasch-Menschen, dem Tschandala." 41. F. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 56. 42. This reference does not appear in the Schlechta edition but in F. Nietzsche, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Mon- tinari (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967) 13:378: "Der offizielle Begriff des Tschandala ist genau der eines Auswurfs und Excrements des vor- nehmen Classen." 43. F. Nietzsche, Werke, ed. Schlechta, 2:980-982: ". . . Diese verfiin- gungen sind lehrreich genug—in ihnen haben wir einmal die arische Humanitat, ganz rein, ganz urspriinglich—wir lernen, dass der Begriff "reines Blut" der Gegensatz eines harmlosen Begriffs ist. Andrerseits wird klar in welchem Volk sich der Hass, der Tschandala-Hass gegen diese "Humanitat" verewigt hat, wo er Religion, wo er Genie geworden ist . . . Under diesem Gesichtspunkte sind die Evangelien Christentum, als jiidischer Wurzel und nur verstandlich also Ziichtung, der Rasse, des Privilegiums das—es ist die antiarische Religion par excellance: das Tschandala—werte, das Evangelium den Armen, den Niedrigen ge- predigt, der Gesamt-Aufstand alles Niedergetretenen, Elenden, Mis-

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sratenen, Schlechtweggekommenen gegen die "Rasse"—die un- sterbliche Tschandala-Rache als Religion der Liebe . . ." 44. According to Manu, even among outcasts, the candalas were the lowest like swine or dog and excluded from the village. 45. A popular theme for this lunatic fringe consisted in speculation of the descendance through sudra men and brahman women. 46. "Rundschau in der auslandischen theosophischen Literatur," Neue Lotusbliiten, 1910 (2): 370. 47. The population of Vienna tripled between 1870-90. 48. The equivalent to the Age of Bronze in . 49. "Neuzeitliche Einherier" und "Wer ist der Starke von Oben?" in Johannes Balzli, Guido v. List, der Wiederentdecker uralter arischer Weisheit (Leipzig und Vienna, Guido von List Gesellschaft, 1917) 116-24; 125-33. 50. Social Darwinists published between the 1890's and 1910. Ernst Hackel, the eminent zoologist who warned against the mixing of races, founded the Monist League in 1906 to popularize a racist version of the among Germans. 51. Later racist theorists, such as Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927), based their theories on skull measurements and other physical characteristics such as hair color and , rather than the earlier racists, like Gobineau, who relied on linguistics as the standard of racial distinction. 52. To draw these distinctions, heraldic devices, in which the Aryans had recorded the karma of their families were studied. Seejorg Lanz von Liebenfels, "Grundriss der ariosophischen Geheimlehre," Zeitschrift fur Menschenkenntnis und Menschenschicksal, 1 (1925-26): 4-11. 53. Cited in Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab. Die sek- tierischen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus (Vienna/Cologne/Graz, 1985) 146: "Die Juden als ein von alien historischen und vorhistorischen Rassen und aus den Schlacken aller untergegangenen kulturvolker zusam- mengemischtes Tschandalenvolk." 54. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-Aefflingen und dem Gotter-Elektron (Vienna: Moderner Verlag, 1905) 147-52. 55. Note that Sir William Jones' translation of the Lams of Manu (1794) had been translated into German by Johann Christoph Hiittner under the title Hindu-Gesetzbuch (Weimer: Industrie Comptoirs, 1797) and had been examined in racist sense by a F. Gernandt, "Aus dem Hindu- Gesetzbuch des Manu" in the Politisch-Anthropologische Revue 3 (1904): 264-68. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism. The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935 (Wellinborough, Northam- tonshire: Aquarian Press, 1985), 242, suggests that this might have been Lanz' source. Lanz used Tschandala for lower classes and mongrelized inferiors, see Ostara 1, April 1908 (22): 6, 16. 56. Die Ostara und der Blonden, vol. 1. 57. Lueger was a mayor of Vienna in the 1890's and one of the first European politicians to make a career out of anti-Semitism.

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58. Jeffrey A. Goldstein, "Anti-Semitism in Occultism and Nazism," Yad Vashem Studies 1979 (13): 64, see also G. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, 197. 59. Die Ostara, vols. 22, 23 of April 1908, issues devoted to the Laws of Manu and race theory of the Indo- Aryans. 60. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Munich: Zentralverlag des NSDAP, 1934), 394-8. 61. The one exception to this rule was Karl Maria Wiligut (pseud. Weisthor) whom Goodrick-Clarke refers to as the private magus of Himmler (Goodrick-Clarke, 177) and head of the Department of Race and Early History within the Race and Settlement main office of the SS, among whose duties was to produce German . 62. For an account of proto-Nazi history, see Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Bevor Hitler kam, Urkundliches aus der Friihzeit der Nationalsozialischen Be- wegung (Munich: Grassinger, 1934). 63. The Germanen Order's official newsletter had swastika on cover, also on various pieces of organization jewelry. Although current among various volkisch organizations, it was through the Germanen Order and the Thule Society, its successor organization in post-war Munich, that this device came to be adopted by the Nazis. 64. Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Bevor Hitler kam, 250: "Ar Rune = Adler. Sohne des Adlers, der Sonne . . . Nach den Sternwarten von Stonehenge und Oudry der Bretagne lasst sich eine hohe Kultur der Arier auf 1000 v. Chr. feststellen." 65. The modern racist can easily see something biological in Nietzsche's discussion of race, the Tschandala, pure blood, Jewishness and spiritual Ziichtung. 66. Elizabeth de Fontenay suggests this very concept in "Fuir l'histoire? La pitie dangereuse," Presences de Schopenhauer ed. Roger Pol-Droit (Paris: Grasset, 1989), 84-85. According to this author, Schopenhauer, Herder, Schelling, and F. Schlegel investigated India for no other pur- pose than to uproot Christianity from its Hebraic roots. 67. Oswald Spengler, Neubau des deutschen Reiches (Munich: C. H. Bee, 1924) 14. 68. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Das Recht der jungen Volker (Munich: R. Piper, 1919). 69. "Die sozialisten verlassen die NSDAP," Das Grundmanifest der Schwarzen Front (1930). In ,Aufbau des Deutschen Sozialismus (Prague: Heinrich Grunov, 1936), 138: "Fur uns war und ist die Zustim- mung zum Kampf des indischen Volkes um seine Freiheit von englischer Herrschaft und kapitalistischer Ausbeutung eine Notwendigkeit, die sich ebenso sehr aus der Tatsache ergibt, dass fiir eine deutsche Be- freiungspolitik jede Schwachung einer Vertragsmacht von Versailles giinstig ist, wie aus der gefiihlsmassigen Zustimmung zu jedem Kampf, den unterdriickte Volker gegen ausbeutende Usurpatoren fiihren, da es eine zwingende Folge unserer Idee des Nationalismus ist, dass das Recht der Erfullung volkischer Eigenart, das wir fiir uns in Anspruch nehmen, auch anderen Volkern und Nationen zusteht . . ." https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol25/iss25/2 24 Figueria: Aryan Ancestors, Pariahs and the Lunatic Fringe

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70. Cited in Otto Strasser, "Hitler, Gandhi und das junge Deutsch- land," Die Kommenden Aug. 8, 1930: 376: "Bund der unterdriickten Nationen ist ein dummes Schlagwort . . . Wenn heute der Inder unter der Herrschaft Englandes lebt . . . oder der Schwarze unter der Herrschaft irgend eines europaischen Volkes, so ist dies in deren In- ferioritat begriindet. . . Der Freiheitskampf der Schwarzen, Inder, usw. ist der Versuch der Durchbrechung einer natiirlichen Rangorden . . . Die Bewunderung von Gandhi ist in meinen Augen eine rassische Per- versitat." 71. See Otto Strasser, "Hitler, Gandhi und das junge Deutschland," 377. 72. Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert: eine Wertung der Seeluch-Geistigen Gestaltenkampfe unserer Zeit (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1943) 149: ". . . der alter Inder—und der war es, der Indien erschuf— sein Leben liess nicht um der Liebe, sondern um der Pflicht und Ehre willen. Ein ungetreuer wurde auch iin arischen Indien verdammt, nicht weil er lieblos, sondern weil er ehrlos geworden war. 'Besser das Lebens fiihlt man nur einen Augenblick, den Verlust der Ehre aber Tag fur Tag' (O. Bothlingk, Indische Spriiche)." 73. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert, 28: "Nach dieser Scheidung zwischen Blut und Blut gestalteten die Arier sich ein Bild der Welt, das an Tiefe und Weitraumigkeit auch heute von keiner Philosophic iiberboten werden kann." 74. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 30. 75. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des. 20. Jahrhundert 31: ". . . nach langdauernden Auseinandersetzungen mit den immer wieder ein- dringenden Vorstellungen der niederrassigen Eingeborenen." Rosen- berg was also influenced by Hans F. K. Giinther who described the proc- ess of Aryan racial degeneration in Die nordische Rasse bei den Indogerma- nen Asiens (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1934), 41: "Die Kastengesetzgebung wurde als Rassenschutz dadurch beeintrachtigt und schliesslich sinnlos, dass sie das Aufheiraten von Frauen aus der nachstniedrigen Kaste in die hohere zuliess . . . Auf solche Weise verdunkelte in zunehmendem Masse das arische Indertum sich selbst und entfremdete sich selbst dem Geiste seiner Vorvater. Durch Aufnahme nichtarischen Blutes wurde so im Lauf der Jahrhunderte aus dem Indertum das Hindutum, aus indi- schem Geiste der Hindugeist, der vom Indogermanentum schliesslich nur noch etwas Uebertragbares, die Sprache bewahrte." This process of degeneration corresponded to a gradual darkening of the Aryan, even in the highest caste. Through the crossing of races, the mixture of castes, and the environment, the Aryan race of India met its downfall. The "lastende feuchte Hitze Indiens," infant mortality and higher sickness in general contributed to the spiritual Widerstandswillen of the Aryans. See Die nordische Rasse, 50: "Sie hat also eine immerwahrende Qual immer von neuem dem ererbten Geiste mutiger arischer Lebensfrische ent- gegengewirkt, bis diesem mutigen, lebensfrohen, dieseitigen, echt In- dogermanischen Geiste beim Zusammenbruch wurde der Erbstamme des eingewanderten Indertums das Mark entzogen."

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76. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 149-50: "Mit der auf das Erdenleben iibertragenen Philosophic des Atman-Brahman ver- neinte—wie fruher ausgefiihrt—der Arier seine Rasse, damit seine Per- sonlichkeit, damit aber auch die Idee der Ehre als seelisches Riickgrat seines Lebens." 77. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 30. 78. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 147: "Wir sprechen von Indien als von einer weichmiitigen im All zerfliessenden, Menschenliebe und Mitleiden als Hochstes lehrenden Weltanschauung . . . Und doch ragen in diese liebe—und mitleidvollen Erzeugnisse der indischen Spat- zeit ganz andere, altere Anschauungen hinein, die nicht personliches Gliicksgefuhl und Leidlosigkeit als einzig erstrebenswertes Ziel aner- kennen, sondern Pflichterfullung und Behauptung der Ehre." 79. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 342: "Und als eine solche Tragik wird Schopenhauer unserer Ehrfurcht stets gewiss sein, als das Beispiel eines heroischen—und in seiner Gewaltigkeit echt abendlandischen—Kampfes um das Wesen der Welt; ein Mensch hat hier alles auf eine Karte gesetzt, und diese hat fehlgeschlagen. Die ver- zweifelten Aufraffungen zur Hohe enden immer mit einem Zuriickfal- len ins Nichts. Aber auch der doch ganz unindische Schopenhauer be- kannte, das Hochste, was ein Mensch erreichen konne sei ein "heroischer Lebenslauf." Das ist ein nordisches Bekenntnis, wie es schoner nicht gefunden werden kann und deshalb ist Artur Schopenhauer—unser." 80. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 267: '[Der Inder] legt ein derart grosses Gewicht auf sie; dass er in letzter Konsequenz zu der auch ausgesprochenen Anschauung gelangt, die Tat als solche konne einem Wissenden, des Atman-Brahman Teilhaftigen, nichts anhaben. Er ist "nicht durch das Werk befleckt, das bose." "Alles Fleischliche sei sowieso nur Trug und Schein, was mit ihm geschehe, gleichgiiltig. Das ist die letzte Konsequenz Indiens." 81. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 660-61: "Jeder Europaer erblickt in Alt-Indien ein Land seiner Traume; inmitten einer Zeit technischer Bestialisierung tauchten nicht die Schlechtesten unter in die Gedanken Jajnavalkyas, Cankaras, entziickten sich an dem Helden , dem Gotte Krischna, dem Dichter Kalidasa. Dies hatte zur Folge, dass diese Indiensucher Europas Erlosung durch Alt-Indien predigten und gar nicht bemerken, dass dieses arische Indien einst gerade an den das Herz endlos erweiternden Gedanken der spaten zu- grunde gegangen war." 82. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 622. See also 661-62: "Wir sehen hier offen ein europaisches Lebensgefiihl eingreifen, das allerdings sofort wieder durch die Bemerkungen abgeschwacht wird, dass weder Hautfarbe noch Ahnen den Brahmanen machten, sondern Charakter. Hier offenbart sich die ganze Tragik selbst des iiber die 300 Millionen seiner Volksgenossen hinausragenden Inders. Denn, wollte er die Entfaltung der Arier schildern, so musste er bekennen, dass der Arier bis auf ganz geringe Spuren untergegangen ist. Hinterlassen hater

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Heldengesange, eine tiefe, grosse Philosophic, spater ins Extreme, Ufer- lose, Dschungelartige getrieben, das Rassenchaos forderte." 83. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert 36, see also 621-62: "Durch ein zu weites Atemholen sind die Blutadern des Rassenkorpers gesprengt, arisch-indisches Blut fliesst aus . . . Die Zuchtkraft arisch- indischer Denk- und Lebensformen also Ergebnis von nordischer Rasse und indischer Natur ist zwar ungeheuer, aber die rassische Substanz, aus deren Seele einst die Gedanken und Staaten entstiegen, ist bis auf geringe Ueberreste verschwunden. Deshalb zeugte Indien auch nur den miiden Gandhi mit seinem Pazifismus, nicht einen einer Neuschopfung ermoglichenden Feldherren." 84. 's English-born son-in-law and a political philosopher who developed racial themes of Aryan superiority. 85. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert, 82. 86. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert, 104. 87. Alfred Rosenberg, Blut und Ehre: ein Kampf fur deutsche Wiedergehurt (Munich: Franz Eher, 1939). 88. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert, 201-3. 89. Hans F. K. Giinther, Die nordische Rasse bei den Indogermanen Asiens, 51f: ". . . Zerfallserscheinung nordischen Rassengeistes in tropisch- indischer Umwelt." 90. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhundert, 36: "eine Ras- senschande, deren Erzeugnisse heute als armselige Bastarde in den Was- sern des Ganges eine Heilung fur ihr verkriippeltes Dasein erflehen."

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