Origins of The Sastika‐Movement in Germany

Extract

The history of the Swastika-Movement goes back to the early nineteenth century. At that time, when the first archaeological excavations were made in Germany the Swastika was found on many objects from Germanic tombs of the first Christian centuries, and so it came to be regarded as a Germanic symbol. The first to popularise the sign was a man named Jahn, who in 1806 founded the German gymnastic clubs, which politically had a strongly nationalistic tendency. Jahn subsequently came to be known as ‘The father of the gymnastic movement.’ His motto was : ‘Frisch, Fromm, Froehlich, Frei’—‘Brisk, Pious, Joyous, Free’; and he arranged the four ‘F’s’ of this device to form a badge in the shape of a Swastika.

Then, the seventies of the last century saw the rise of Anti-Semitism in Germany and the foundation of various Anti-Semitic parties, which in the years before the World War 1914-18 took an increasingly radical direction under the influence of the race theorists. The Swastika, which the Viennese author Guido List (1848-1919), in his bombastically written books, called ‘The holy symbol of the Aryans,’ became, some years before the World War 1914-18, thanks to his writings, the generally adopted badge of the Anti-Semites.

In order to understand later developments, it is necessary to study List’s writings, which prior to 1914 were widely current in ‘nationalist’ circles in Germany and Austria—although indeed they are completely forgotten to-day. Fundamentally, Guido List’s ideas are based on the vague and disputed writings of the Germanised Englishman, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and his predecessors, such as the French count Joseph de Gobineau and the latter’s compatriot, De Lapouge. To these must be added the publications of the East Prussian archaeologist, Gustav Kossinna, and certain misinterpreted teachings of the famous German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.