The Influence of Guido von List

A look at the signatories [1] of the first announcement concerning support for a Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft (Guido von List Society), circa 1905 , reveals that List had a following of some very prestigious people and shows that List, his ideology and his influence had widespread and significant support, including that amongst public figures in Austria and Germany . Among some 50 signatories which endorsed the foundation of the List Society (which had an official founding ceremony on March 2nd 1908 ) were the industrialist Friedrich Wannieck (president of the "Verein Deutsches Haus at Brno and chairman of the "Prague Iron Company" and the "First Brno Engineering Company" - major producers of capital goods in the Habsburg empire) and his son Friedrich Oskar Wannieck , Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels , Karl Lueger (mayor of Vienna), Ludwig von Bernuth (health organisation chairman), Ferdinand Khull (Committee member of the German Language Club), Adolf Harpf (editor of Marburger Zeitung ), Hermann Pfister-Schwaighusen (lecturer in linguistics at Darmstadt University ), Wilhelm von Pickl-Scharfenstein ( Baron von Witkenberg ), Amand Freiherr von Schweiger-Lerchenfeld (editor of the popular magazine " Stein der Weisen " and a distinguished army officer), Aurelius Polzer (newspaper editor at Horn and Graz ), Ernst Wachler (author and founder of an open-air Germanic theatre in the Harz Mountains ), Wilhelm Rohmeder (educator at Munich), Arthur Schulz (editor of a Berlin periodical for educational reform), Friedrich Wiegerhaus (chairman of the Elberfeld branch of the powerful " Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband " DVH (German Nationalist Commercial Employees' Association) and Franz Winterstein (committee member of the " German Social Party " DSP at Kassel ).

Among these men included occultists such as Hugo Göring (editor of theosophical literature at Weimar), Harald Arjuna Grävell van Jostenoode (theosophical author at Heidelberg), Max Seiling (an esoteric pamphleteer and popular philosopher in Munich), and Paul Zillmann (editor of the Metaphysische Rundschau and master of an occult lodge in Berlin)

List's influence continued to grow and attract distinctive members after the official founding of the society in 1908 . From 1908 through to 1912, new members included the deputy Beranek (co-founder of the "Bund der Germanen" in 1894), Rudolf Berger (a committee member of the "German Nationalist Workers' League" in Vienna), Hermann Brass (chairman of the defensive League of Germans in North Moravia [est. 1886]), Dankwart Gerlach (an ardent supporter of the romantic Youth Movement), Conrad Glasenapp (biographer of Richard Wagner ), Colonel Karl August Hellwig (an organiser in Kassel), Bernard Koerner (an heraldic expert and polulariser of middle-class geneology ), Josef Ludwig Reimer (Viennese author), Philipp Stauff (a Berlin journalist), Karl Herzog (DHV Manheim branch chairman), Franz Hartmann (a leading German theosophist), Arthur Weber (a theosophical editor), Karl Hilm (occult novelist), General Blasius von Schemua , the collective membership of the "Vienna Theosophical Society" and Karl Heise (a leading figure in the vegetarian and mystical Mazdaznan cult at [[Zürich]).

As the list demonstrates, the growth of nationalism within Germany during the late 19th toearly 20th century, culminating in the Third Reich of Nazi Germany, provided an ideal audience of people who were already predisposed to accept List's ideas and unidentifiable personal gnosis of the Armanen way.

The register shows that List's ideas were acceptable to many intelligent persons drawn from the upper and middle classes of Austria and Germany. So impressed were they that these men were prepared to contribute ten crowns as an annual society subscription. The main part of the Society's assets derived from the Wannieck family, which put up more than three thousand crowns at the Society's inauguration. [2]

NOTES

1 - A list of the signatories is printed in GLB ( Guido-List-Bücherei ) 3 (1908), [p.197f]. GvLB is a series (eight in total beginning in 1908) of "Ario-Germanic research reports" which were based upon his occult interpretations of ancient national Germanic culture. Six of these volumes were published by the Guido von list Society itself. The two exceptions were first published by Adolf Burdeke in Switzerland and Leipzig.

2 - Membership lists are printed in GLB 2 (1908), pp. 71-4 and GLB 5 (1910), pp. 384-9. The articles of the List society are printed in GLB 1, second edition (1923), pp. 68-78. Karl Herzog joined the society circa 1912. Karl Herzog to Philipp Stauff, letter dated February 3rd 1912 , Bundesarchiv , Koblenz , NS26/512a