On
this date, December 26, 1923, an avowed Satanist, Dietrich Eckart, who was also
known as the Spiritual Father of the Third Reich, passed away. He was known as
Adolf Hitler’s mentor. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and
other links.
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Dietrich
Eckart
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.dietricheckartgillespie.htm]
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Dietrich Eckart
(23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German journalist and politician and,
with Adolf Hitler, was one of the early key members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP)
and a participant in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
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| German NSDAP politician Dietrich Eckart (1868-1923) |
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Young
Eckart as a college student (1889)
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.dietricheckartgillespie.htm]
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Biography
Eckart
was born Johann Dietrich Eckart in 1868 in Neumarkt, Upper Palatinate (about
twenty miles southeast of Nuremberg) in the Kingdom of Bavaria, the son of
royal notary and lawyer Christian Eckart and his wife Anna, a devout Catholic.
His mother died when he was ten years old. Young Dietrich was expelled from
several schools; in 1895, his father died also, leaving him a considerable
amount of money that Eckart soon spent.
Eckart
initially studied law at Erlangen, later medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian
University of Munich, and was an eager member of the fencing and drinking
Korps. But he finally decided in 1891 to work as a poet, playwright, and
journalist. Diagnosed with morphine addiction and nearly stranded, he moved to
Berlin in 1899. There he wrote a number of plays, often autobiographical, and
became the protégé of Count Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler (1858–1922), the artistic
director of the Prussian Royal Theatre. Eckart was a successful playwright,
especially with his 1912 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, one of
the best attended productions of the age with more than 600 performances in
Berlin alone. This success not only made Eckart wealthy, it gave him the social
contacts needed to introduce Hitler to dozens of important German citizens.
These introductions proved to be pivotal in Hitler's ultimate rise to power.
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Dietrich Eckart
(1908)
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.dietricheckartgillespie.htm]
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Later
on, Eckart developed an ideology of a "genius superman", based on
writings by the Völkisch
author Jörg Lanz von
Liebenfels; he saw himself following the tradition of Heinrich Heine, Arthur Schopenhauer
and Angelus Silesius.
He also became fascinated by the Buddhist doctrine of Maya (illusion). Eckart loved and strongly
identified with Peer Gynt, but never had much sympathy for the scientific
method. From 1907 he lived with his brother Wilhelm in the Döberitz
mansion colony west of the Berlin city limits. In 1913 he married Rosa Marx, an
affluent widow from Bad Blankenburg, and returned to Munich.
After
World War I, Eckart edited the antisemitic periodical Auf gut Deutsch
("In good German"), working with Alfred Rosenberg and Gottfried Feder.
A fierce critic of the German
Revolution and the Weimar Republic, he vehemently opposed the Treaty of
Versailles, which he viewed as treason, and was a proponent of the
so-called stab-in-the-back
legend (Dolchstoßlegende), according to which the Social
Democrats and Jews
were to blame for Germany's defeat in the war.
In
January 1919, Eckart, Feder, Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer founded the Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei (German Workers'
Party - DAP), which to increase its appeal to larger segments of the
population, in February 1920 changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party – NSDAP);
more commonly known as the Nazi Party. He was
the original publisher of the party newspaper, the Völkischer
Beobachter, and also wrote the lyrics of Deutschland erwache
("Germany awake"), which became an anthem of the Nazi Party.
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The first NSDAP Party Day, January 28, 1923
in Munich. Hitler (with armband, front left) is standing to the right of
Eckart.
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.dietricheckartgillespie.htm]
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Eckart
met Adolf Hitler when Hitler gave a speech
before the DAP members in 1919. Eckart was involved with the Thule Society, although not a member. The
Society was a secretive group of occultists who believed in the coming of a
“German Messiah” who would redeem Germany after its defeat in World War I.
Eckart expressed his anticipation in a poem he wrote months before he first met
Hitler. In the poem, Eckart refers to ‘the Great One’, ‘the Nameless One’,
‘Whom all can sense but no one saw’. When Eckart met Hitler, Eckart was
convinced that he had encountered the prophesied redeemer. Eckart exerted
considerable influence on Hitler in the following years and is strongly
believed to have helped establish the theories and beliefs of the Nazi Party.
Few other people had as much influence on Hitler in his lifetime.
It
was Eckart who introduced Alfred Rosenberg
to Adolf Hitler. Between 1920 and 1923, Eckart and Rosenberg labored tirelessly
in the service of Hitler and the party. Through Rosenberg, Hitler was
introduced to the writings of Houston
Stewart Chamberlain, Rosenberg's inspiration. Rosenberg edited the Münchener
Beobachter, a party newspaper, originally owned by the Thule
Society. Rosenberg published the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion in the Beobachter.
To
raise funds for the Party, Eckart introduced Hitler into influential circles.
While staying in the house of a wealthy manufacturer in Berlin, Hitler was
given instruction in public speaking by a teacher of drama, Erik Jan Hanussen.
On
9 November 1923, Eckart participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch. He was arrested and placed in Landsberg Prison along with
Hitler and other party officials, but was released shortly thereafter due to
illness. He died of a heart attack in Berchtesgaden on 26 December 1923. He was
buried in Berchtesgaden's old cemetery, not far from the eventual graves of
Nazi Party official Hans Lammers and
his wife and daughter.
Hitler
dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf
to Eckart, and also named the arena near the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, now
known as the Waldbühne, the "Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne" when it
was opened for the 1936 Summer Olympics. The 5th Standarte (regiment) of
the SS-Totenkopfverbände was given the
honour-title Dietrich Eckart.
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HITLER'S MENTOR: DIETRICH ECKART, His Life,
Times, & Milieu [Kindle Edition]
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In
1925, Eckart's unfinished essay Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin:
Zwiegespräch zwischen Hitler und mir ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin:
Dialogues Between Hitler and Me") was published posthumously, although it
has been shown (Plewnia 1970) that the dialogues were an invention; the essay
was written by Eckart alone. "However, this book still remains a reliable
indicator of [Eckart's] own views." The historian Richard Steigmann-Gall quotes from Eckart's
book:
"In Christ, the embodiment of all manliness, we find all that we need. And if we occasionally speak of Baldur (a god in Norse mythology), our words always contain some joy, some satisfaction, that our pagan ancestors were already so Christian as to have an indication of Christ in this ideal figure."
– Dietrich Eckart
Steigmann-Gall
concluded that, "far from advocating a paganism or anti-Christian
religion, Eckart held that, in Germany's postwar tailspin, Christ was a leader
to be emulated."
In
1935 Alfred Rosenberg published the book Dietrich
Eckart. A Legacy (i.e. Dietrich Eckart. Ein Vermächtnis) with
collected writings by Eckart, including the quotation:
To be a genius means to use the soul, to strive for the divine, to escape from the mean; and even if this cannot be totally achieved, there will be no space for the opposite of good. It does not prevent the genius to portray also the wretchedness of being in all shapes and colors, being the great artist, that he is; but he does this as an observer, not taking part, sine ira et studio, his heart remains pure. ... The ideal in this, just like in every respect whatsoever is Christ; his words "You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one" show the completely divine freedom from the influence of the senses, the overcoming of the earthly world even without art as an intermediary. At the other end you find Heine and his race ... all they do culminates in ... the motive, in subjugating the world, and the less this works, the more hate-filled their work becomes that is to satisfy their motive, the more deceitful and fallacious every try to reach the goal. No trace of true genius, the very opposite of the manliness of genius ....
Eckart
was described by Edgar Ansel Mowrer as "a strange drunken
genius," he died of drug addiction and alcoholism. His antisemitism
supposedly arose from various esoteric schools of mysticism and he spent hours
with Hitler discussing art and the place of the Jews in world history, he has
been called the spiritual father of National Socialism.
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Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne, 1939
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Portrayals
in popular culture
A
fictionalized, female version of Eckart (Dietlinde Eckhart) appeared as the
main villain and head of the Thule Society in the 2005 anime
movie Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa.
In
part 4, Phase 1 of the 2000AD story Zenith by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell Eckardt is referred to and
depicted as the poet and mystic who initiated a German army corporal (Adolf Hitler) into the occult group called
the Cult of the Black Sun after recognizing his potential as a medium. Eckardt
and Haushofer put Hitler in contact with the Great Old Ones with their goal of helping
the Nazis engineer superhuman bodies that could act as physical vehicles for
these Dark Gods.
In
episode 15 of NCIS:
Los Angeles (season 4), Hetty Lange discusses Hitler's mentor,
Dietrich Eckart, and how without Eckart's influence, there might never have
been a holocaust.
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