Jakob Wilhelm Hauer’s New Religion and National Socialism
By Karla Poewe and Irving Hexham
Department of Anthropology and Religious Studies
University of Calgary
© 2003
This paper was eventually published as :“Jakob Wilhelm Hauer's New Religion and National Socialism.” Karla Poewe and Irving Hexham. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 20 (2) 2005: 195-215.
Abstract
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881-1962) was a missionary to India and, later, both a professor of religious studies at Tübingen and a founder of a new religion called the DGB. According to Hauer, his movement was the essence of National Socialism. Because some contemporary scholars try, nevertheless, to separate Hauer’s scholarship and the DGB from National Socialism, this paper reviews existing literature about the Hauer phenomenon. It does so in light of our research at the Federal Archives of Koblenz and Berlin. Then Hauer’s personal development and determination to further Nazism are traced. Together the literature review and Hauer’s view of religion show that his religious thought and his Nazi politics are inseparable
New Religions and the Nazis
Karla O Poewe
Published 2006
19 Pages
Völkisch National Socialism and Arabic Islam
The main thesis of this paper is that Nazi political religiosity has its origins in the pagan phenomenon called the völkisch movement. This movement consisted of uncountable religious-cum-political groups called Bünde whose leaders and followers were closely interconnected with one another and with the developing Nazi Party. From there völkisch thought penetrated the German Protestant Church and found followers among some Catholics. Given this development, an obvious question follows, namely, can National Socialism be blamed on Christianity and is Christian anti-Judaism the ultimate source of the Holocaust?
Scientific Neo-Paganism and the Extreme Right Then and Today: From Ludendorff's Gotterkenntnis to Sigrid Hunke's Europas Eigene Religion
Karla O Poewe
1999, Journal of Contemporary Religion
Publisher: .ucalgary.ca
Publication Date: Jan 1, 1999
Publication Name: Journal of Contemporary Religion
ABSTRACT
During the Weimar Republic, flourishing new religions were harnessed to usher in the cultural revolution from the right that was soon dominated by the Nazis. J. William Hauer’s Deutsche Glaubensbewegung, an umbrella group for numerous new religions from versions of Hinduism to Nordic Neo-Paganism, all collaborated, at some point, with Hitler and his party. This paper shows the continuity of core ideas from Mathilde Ludendorff’s Gotterkenntnis to Hauer’s Glaubensbewegung and, importantly, Sigrid Hunke’s Unitarier.
It shows, further, theclose connections between these forms of neo-paganism and the present day European NewRight. The paradoxical co-occurrence in fascism of a religious populism and a metapolitical elitism, philosophical vitalism and dreams of national or European rebirth, has its roots in these French and German forms of neo-paganism.
THE SPELL OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM:
The Berlin Mission’s Opposition to, and Compromise with,the Völkisch Movement and National Socialism: Knak, Braun, Weichert.
BY Karla Poewe
© 1999
This paper was published as: “The Spell of National Socialism: The Berlin Mission's Opposition to, and Compromise with, theVölkisch Movement and National Socialism: Knak, Braun, and Weichert.” In Ulrich van der Heydenund Juergen Becher, Eds. Mission und Gewalt: Der Umgang christlicher Missionen mit Gewalt unddie Ausbreitung des Christentums in Afrika und Asien. (Missionsgeschichtliches Archiv, Band 6)Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Introduction: Cultural Context
From the time of the first major internments of Berlin missionaries by the British in 1915,the Berlin Mission defined and redefined its place in the larger scheme of things which includedthe international Christian community, the mission field in the colonies of Britain, and Germanyitself. Berlin missionaries did not see Germany as belonging to the Herrschervölker
(dominatingnations) like England, France, and Russia. Nor did the Berlin Mission see Germany as having aninterest in conquest politics (cf. Dumont 1994). In their view, internment belied the universalisticideals heralded during the 1910 mission conference in Edinburgh (Richter 1915:93, 95, 97; Knak 1940). Furthermore, far from seeing internationalism as succeeding, Berlin missionaries notedthe simultaneous striving toward nationhood of neue Völker (new peoples) (ibid.).
Of particular concern were the Afrikaaner whose nationalism, like that of Germany in the nineteen twenties and thirties, took on religious qualities (Knak n.d.a:227).The Berlin mission saw itself as beleaguered on all fronts: by the English and French in the trenches of the First World War where their recruits fought, died, and were lost to the mission; and by the English and Afrikaaner in South Africa where the first mentioned enhanced their Imperialism and the last mentioned their religious nationalism. The worst battle of the mission was fought, however, in Germany itself where, after 1933, national socialism, the völkische Bewegung (völkish movement), and the various “new” Nordic and German religionstogether attacked Christianity as right for its downfall. Germany of the thirties was awash with virulent movements. There was first the party specific movement of the national socialists. There was the broadly based völkische Bewegung (Mosse [1966] 1981). Within this, and very much in tune with Nazi ideology, which it refined, were the “new” or “other” religious movements loosely referred to as “deutscher Glaube”(German Faith) (Meyer 1915), “deutschvölkischer Glaube
” (Faith of the German folk) (Boge1935), “Rasseglaube” (Race Faith) (Braun 1932), the “Deutsche Glaubensbewegung” (GermanFaith Movement) (Hauer 1933), various Wirklichkeitsreligionen (Reality Religions) (Mandel1931), the “Deutschreligion” (Bergmann 1934), “Gotterkenntnis” (God-cognition) (Ludendorff 1935), various “Nordungenkreise” or Nordic religions (Boge 1935), to mention but a view(Bartsch 1937; Poewe 1999). Also included in Germany’s “other” or “own” religions must be the Deutsche Christen who rejected the Old Testament and Pauline Gospel as foreign, that is, as Jewish, and/or they argued for an Aryan Christ.
New Religions and the Nazis
Karla Poewe,2006 Oxford: Routledge,pp. 111-127
Chapter 8
Hauer and the War of Attrition against Christianity
Introduction
By 1933 religion in Germany was muddled. There were three major forces atplay: the Catholic Church, the Protestant church, and the diverse groups of German faithlers, völkisch, and free religious. With the Reich Concordat passedin Cabinet on July 14 and signed in Rome July 20, the Catholic Church ceased tobe part of the religious confusion. Not so the Protestant Church. It was gravelydivided into various factions from the Young Reformers who wanted anindependent church but one unconditionally loyal to the state, to the DeutscheChristen (German Christians) who had no use for the Old and New Testamentand made Jesus a fellow Aryan
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