Lucifer’s Court

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Kurlander
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
German Population ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter explores the Nazis' interest in Germanic paganism, witchcraft, Luciferianism, and Eastern spirituality in their attempt to find a suitable Ario-Germanic alternative to Christianity. The Third Reich embraced a range of pagan, esoteric, and Indo-Aryan religious doctrines that buttressed its racial, political, and ideological goals. That is why Nazism posed a different threat to Christianity than secular liberalism or atheist Marxism. Nazi religiosity was a ‘fluid and incoherent thing which expresses itself in several different forms’. Part of a shared supernatural imaginary, these various religious strains were to some extent embraced and exploited by the Third Reich in the process of building spiritual consensus across a diverse Nazi Party and an even more eclectic German population.

The Nazi Magicians’ Controversy: Enlightenment, “Border Science,” and Occultism in the Third Reich

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Kurlander
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
German Population ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Meaningful Relationship ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Scientific Value

AbstractOver the past two decades, a number of scholars have called into question the existence of any meaningful relationship between Nazism and the occult. This article paints a different picture. First, virtually all Nazi leaders appeared to recognize the widespread popularity of occult practices and “border-scientific” thinking across the German population and within the Nazi Party itself. Second, although Adolf Hitler's Reich Chancellery, Joseph Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, and even Heinrich Himmler's Gestapo consistently advocated anti-occult policies or pro-enlightenment campaigns during the first six years of the Third Reich, most Nazi officials worked to differentiate between popular or commercial occultism, which they deemed ideologically “sectarian,” and acceptable “scientific” occultism, which was generally tolerated and intermittently sponsored by the regime. Third, the regime's reticence to eradicate even popular or commercial occultism—indicated by the fact that the environment for professional debunkers became more hostile with the outbreak of World War II––reflected the popularity of supernatural and border-scientific thinking within the German population. Indeed, whereas some Nazis intervened on the side of occultism for reasons of public opinion, many did so because they truly believed in its “scientific” value.

Working towards the Third Reich

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Attfield
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Third Culture ◽  
National Library ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
The Third ◽  
Fast Fading ◽  
The Third Reich

The epilogue contributes to efforts to map continuities in musical thought between the Weimar and Nazi eras, and deals with issues of advocacy. There was not the straightforward rise to influence that is sometimes implied. Walter Abendroth had to overcome Pfitzner’s cantankerousness and fast-fading relevance. Heuss’s work was paraded by Fritz Stege in both the Zeitschrift für Musik and Rosenberg’s Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (‘Combat League for German Culture’). The Austrian musicologist Robert Haas encountered resistance against the project that, above all, symbolized his intended mediation of the Nazi party, the Austrian National Library, and the International Bruckner Society: the ‘complete edition’ of the composer’s scores. Gustav Wyneken transformed his image of Halm from the cosmopolitan socialist and impassioned music critic of the early 1920s and emphasized Halm’s place in the national pantheon of ignored symphonic composers. Halm became the latest composer-leader in a tradition of syntheses towards which his own work on the ‘third culture’ had pointed.

Performing the Nation: Sports, Spectacles, and Aesthetics in Germany, 1926–1936

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 616-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Rossol
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Aesthetics ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Set Up

National Socialist propaganda has created an aesthetic legacy that is difficult to shake off. Filmic images of well-trained athletes preparing for the Berlin Olympics or mass scenes from Nazi Party rallies have become familiar features in history documentaries. While many of us lack personal memories of the Third Reich, we think we know what Nazism looked like. In addition, Walter Benjamin's concept stressing the use of aesthetics in politics has become commonplace in interpretations of Nazi representation. “Gesamtkunstwerkof political aesthetics” or “formative aesthetics” are terms used to analyze festivities and spectacles in the Third Reich, suggesting that the Nazis developed a specific style with a focus on aesthetics, symbols, and festive set-up. This allegedly distinctive Nazi style is emphasized even more by contrasting it favorably with celebrations of the Weimar Republic. Once again, the German republican experience is placed in “the antechamber of the Third Reich.”

“These Scoundrels Are Not the German People”

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-90
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Death ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German People ◽  
Reign Of Terror

This chapter discusses the Nazi seizure of power from 1933 to 1935. The chapter extends the argument that Jewish veterans used their record of fighting to counter antisemetic attacks into the early years of the Third Reich, demonstrating that Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 did not bring “social death” for the Jewish Frontkampfer. The reign of terror the Nazis unleashed on Jews, Communists, and other groups stood in marked contrast to their failed attempts to marginalize Jewish ex-servicemen, whose record of service in the front lines in World War I enabled them to claim and negotiate a special status in the new Germany. Jewish veterans did not break with their identity as Germans, and continued to demand recognition of their sacrifices from the German public as well as the Nazi Party.

scholarly journals ‘IN PURSUIT OF THE NAZI MIND?’ THE DEPLOYMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THE ALLIED STRUGGLE AGAINST GERMANY

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Pick
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Military Intelligence ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War

This paper discusses how psychoanalytic ideas were brought to bear in the Allied struggle against the Third Reich and explores some of the claims that were made about this endeavour. It shows how a variety of studies of Fascist psychopathology, centred on the concept of superego, were mobilized in military intelligence, post-war planning and policy recommendations for ‘denazification’. Freud's ideas were sometimes championed by particular army doctors and government planners; at other times they were combined with, or displaced by, competing, psychiatric and psychological forms of treatment and diverse studies of the Fascist ‘personality’. This is illustrated through a discussion of the treatment and interpretation of the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess, after his arrival in Britain in 1941.

scholarly journals A Devil of the Details: The Life and Crimes of Nazi Wilhelm Frick

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Kost
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Instrumental Role

Wilhelm Frick, the Minister of the Interior in the Third Reich, has never garnered the same notoriety as some of his Nazi peers—in spite of the fact that he played an instrumental role in Jewish persecution. From his co-authoring of the Nuremberg Laws to his involvement in the Third Reich’s police and concentration camps, Frick’s background in law, policing, and politics helped him become a lethal and influential tool for the Nazi Party. This paper argues that Frick served as a judicial architect of the Holocaust and facilitator of the Final Solution, who has—somehow—remained   largely unknown.

scholarly journals Et spyd gennem myterne? Om at fortælle i arkitektur og udstilling om de nazistiske partidage i Nürnberg

1970 ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Søren Kjørup
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich

“A ‘spear’ of glass and steel bores through the voluminous brick-walls and breaks the axiality” – this is the drastic description by the Austrian deconstructivist architect Günther Domenig of the main element of his eminent transformation of an unfinished Nazi congress hall to house a documentation centre and an exhibition about the huge Nazi party rallies in Nuremberg through the 1930s. The very exhibition, however – Faszination und Gewalt, which opened in 2001 – does not manage to fulfil its declared aim: “To throw a critical light onto the showcase of ‘The Third Reich’.” Why not? Maybe because the curators were so anxious that visitors might get seduced by seeing Nazi propaganda that they foregrounded the horrors that followed after the rallies (the Holocaust and the world war) instead of showing their downside while they were going on. And maybe because they were unable to free themselves from the image of the 1934 rally in Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda “documentary” Triumph des Willens. 

The Ruins

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-74
Author(s):  
Martha Sprigge
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Uncertainty ◽  
Air War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Soviet Occupation Zone

This chapter analyzes music by composers who participated in a widespread artistic preoccupation with Germany’s ruined cityscapes during and shortly after World War II. These first musical responses to the war—written at a time of great emotional, physical, and political uncertainty—had a significant impact on musical mourning practices in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany, which became the German Democratic Republic in 1949. The chapter focuses on three examples by composers who wrote musical responses to the air war and went on to have successful careers in East Germany. These composers had very different experiences in the Third Reich: Rudolf Mauersberger was a member of the Nazi Party; Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau were political and religious exiles. Yet they each used music to make sense of wartime trauma, by transforming the aftermath of the bombing—the rubble—into an aesthetic object—or ruin.

The Protestant Churches in Saxony-Anhalt in the Shadow of the German Christian Movement and National Socialism, 1945–1949

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 877-903
Author(s):  
Luke Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
The Third ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Confessing Church ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Church

The two major Protestant churches in Saxony-Anhalt, the Church Province of Saxony(Evangelische Kirche der Kirchenprovinz Sachsens[KPS])and the State Church of Anhalt(Landeskirche Anhalts[LKA]), undertook denazification processes against “compromised” pastors and church hierarchs after 1945. Where the Church Province faced secular criticism about “lenient” denazification, the Anhalt Church enjoyed state support, largely because it admitted political representatives to its review commission. Hierarchs in the KPS explained their leniency with reference to the resistance of Christians in the Third Reich, a particular theology of church and state relations, and forgiveness. The verdicts handed down, nonetheless, were premised primarily on each clergyman's affiliation to the former German Christian movement and not on Nazi party membership; denazification was therefore “de-German-Christianization.” (The German Christian movement was a heterodox movement heavily influenced by Nazism.) However, quite apart from de-German-Christianization, there was also pragmatism within both(mutatis mutandis)the KPS and the LKA. Both desired a fully manned and unified pastorate in a time of acute need. Most churchmen withstood denazification as a result. One pastor in Anhalt exemplifies the process. Formerly a member, Erich Elster renounced the German Christian movement as a “false path” after 1945. He continued in his pastoral duties, albeit with an admonishment to preach orthodoxy. The general continuity of churchmen did not provide for unity in any case, and it even led to recrimination and in places a post-war perpetuation of the Third Reich “church struggle”(Kirchenkampf)that had pitted German Christians against members of the Confessing Church.

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