Ahnenerbe

The text around the logo reads German Ancestry

The Nazi Ahnenerbe Forschungs und Lehrgemeinschaft organization was founded by Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Wirth, and Walter Darré on July 1st 1935 as a research foundation. It was incorporated into the larger SS in January 1939.

The name of the society literally means "ancestral heritage", and it was originally devoted to scientific and pseudo-scientific researches concerning the anthropological and cultural history of the German race. Their headquarters was at Wewelsburg castle.

Their initial aim was to prove Nazi theories of racial superiority through historical, anthropological, and archaeological research. Himmler summarized its goal as to restore the German people to the everlasting godly cycle of ancestors, the living and the descendants.

Occultism and pseudo-science

File:Ahnenerbe class.gif

A class on Germanic runes

Many of their interests extended beyond pseudoscience into occultism. This led to Nazi scientists traveling around the world in search of Atlantis and the Holy Grail.

In 1936, Himmler convinced Otto Rahn to join the group by promising near-unlimited funding for his Grail search, which would become one of the best-known aspects of the Ahnenerbe in post-war times. Unfortunately Rahn committed suicide the following year, after being disciplined for his behaviour, and amidst rumours of homosexuality.

Scan from Wirth's 1931 book *Was Heisst Deutsch?*

The Ahnenerbe accepted Rahn's belief that the Grail had been possessed by the Cathars, and continued to excavate and study Montsegur after his death. A notable officer in the institute's Grail work was Otto Ohlendorf, an occultist lawyer practising in Kiel. Never formally a member of the Ahnenerbe, Ohlendorf was diverted to the Crimea by Hitler in 1941. His final words upon being executed in 1951 following the Nuremberg trials were recorded as The Grail will rise again. The Jews in America will suffer for what you have done to me.

Travels and expeditions

Archealogical expeditions were organized and sent to Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland and Greece, as well as the region of Kafiristan.

Tibet

File:Ahnenerbe-Tibet.jpg

The expedition team in the Himalayas

From April 1938 until August 1939, biologist Ernst Schäfer led an Ahnenerbe expedition to Tibet. The team included Bruno Beger who collected and studied 300 skulls in the region attempting to prove that Tibet was the birthplace of a "Northern Race". Eventually he concluded that the Tibetans were somewhere between the Mongol and European races. Other team members included Edmont Geer, Karl Vinert and someone referred to as Ernst.

Schäfer personally sought to prove that the Yeti was a species of bear, and though he did not find a specimen, did send more than 50 animals back to Germany for further study.

File:DalaiLamaAhnenerbe.jpg

The Dalai Lama poses with Heinrich Harrer and Bruno Beger standing directly behind him, in an undated photograph

The team acquired the 108-page sacred text Kangschur. Upon returning from the expedition, Schäfer was presented a Totenkopfring, though he would not publish his findings until 1950, under the title Festival of the White Gauze Scarves: A research expedition through Tibet to Lhasa, the holy city of the god realm.

Iceland

Himmler had a personal fascination with Iceland, believing it to have been a birthplace of the Aryans. He actively sought the Edda, which he believed was a sacred text about Germanic origins. A 1938 expedition to Iceland was meant to discover shrines to the Norse gods Odin or Thor, but resulted in failure. The failure was largely blamed on uncooperative Icelandic government officials who restricted the Ahnenerbe's access to certain locations.

Brazil

Not an official expedition, Ahnenerbe officials were sent to Brazil in 1943 with the task of 'procuring' several crystal skulls that were reportedly found in a Maya ruin of Lubaantun by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges.

The agents were arrested after trying to infiltrate and rob a Brazilian museum storing the artifacts. Some has conjectured that it was believed the skulls were an artifact of Atlantis.

Caucasus

When Germany overran the Caucasus in early 1942, they stationed 10,000 troops on Mount Elbrus. Three mountaineers believed to be from the Ahnenerbe held a ceremony in which they planted the Nazi flag at the peak, referring to it as a 'sacred Aryan mountain'.

Atrocities

Later on an Institute for Functional Research in Military Science (Institut für Wehrwissenschaftliche Zweckforschung) was set up within the Ahnenerbe Society. It is believed to have received funding from both the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht.

Wolfram Sievers, the manager of the Ahnenerbe Society, became the director of the Institute. Under his leadership, it was responsible for many of the Nazi medical experiments, chiefly in the Dachau concentration camp with Ahnenerbe member Dr. Sigmund Rascher.

Sievers and August Hirt together collected human skeletons, many of which were those of people murdered directly for the purpose of collecting their skulls. Hirt used the opportunity to test the effects of mescaline as a poison.

Sievers was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity in the Doctors' Trial and hanged in 1948. Hirt was never found after the war, though reported sightings occured in Chile and Paraguay.

Involvement of German soldiers

File:AhnenerbePravda.jpg

A worker holds a discovered German skull

In 2002, Ukraine announced the discovery of a mass-grave containing dozens of Nazi soldiers in the southern region of the country. Some had been trepanned, others had their spinal cords sawn lengthwise, or were missing their skulls. It was reported to be the aftermath of an Ahnenerbe experiment, although no further information was given.[1]

Fantasy vs. reality

Some of the activities of the Ahnenerbe border on the edge of fantasy, and are sometimes confused with related rumors and unconfirmed accounts. Nevertheless, their existence, and their activities, are well-documented, although some of these accounts are at first sight perhaps too implausible to believe.

The Ahnenerbe organization appears to have been the basis for the Nazi archaeologist villains in Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones" films - Spielberg's fictional character Jones being their arch-nemesis. In the Delta Green (a sourcebook for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game), Ahnenerbe is said to have spawned another organization, known as "Karotechia," which actually practiced ritual magic. The video game Return to Castle Wolfenstein also portrays the Ahnenerbe as practicing occult rituals and magic.

Similar ideas have now become common in fantasy fiction, including comic books such as Hellboy, and the Ahnenerbe have now become part of the background of conspiracy theories.

A recent in-depth analysis of the Ahnenerbe was Michael Wood's Channel 4 (UK) documentary Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail, part of its "Secret History" series, broadcast in 1999.

External links