List's book is seminal to later currents of
Germanic mysticism and
Nazi occultism. The Armanen runes were employed for
magical purposes in works by authors such as
Friedrich Bernhard Marby and
Siegfried Adolf Kummer, and after World War II in a reformed "pansophical" system by
Karl Spiesberger. More recently,
Stephen Flowers,
Adolf Schleipfer, Larry E. Camp and others also build on List's system. The book also remains popular in German
Neo-Nazism, with a reprint published by
Adolf Schleipfer of the "
Armanen-Orden". During the 19th century, interest in the runic alphabets (such as the academic discipline of
runology) was revived in Germany by the
völkisch movement, which promoted interest in Germanic folklore and language in a reaction against the rapid modernisation of the
German Empire under Kaiser
Wilhelm I. The collapse of Wilhelmine Germany at the end of the
First World War led to an upsurge of interest in
völkisch ideology, which rejected liberalism, democracy, socialism and industrial capitalism—all traits reflected in the political system of
Weimar Germany—as "un-German", subversive Jewish influences. By the end of the war (1918) there were about seventy-five
völkisch groups in Germany, promoting a variety of pseudo-historical, mystical, racial and anti-semitic views. This had a major influence on the embryonic Nazi Party; Hitler wrote in his 1925 book
Mein Kampf that "the basic ideas of the National Socialist movement are
völkisch and the
völkisch ideas are National Socialist." List's work led to the adoption of his "Armanen runes" by the
Völkisch movement, which had already adopted the
swastika as
a symbol of Germanic antiquity, and from there List's runes became an integral part of German and Austrian nationalistic socialist symbology.
Heinrich Himmler, who led the SS from 1929 to 1945, was one of many leading Nazi figures associated with the
Thule Society völkisch group, and his interest in Germanic mysticism led him to adopt a variety of List's runes for the SS. Some had already been adopted by members of the SS and its predecessor organisations but Himmler systematised their use throughout the SS. Until 1939, members of the
Allgemeine SS were given training in runic symbolism on joining the organisation. Runic signs were used from the 1920s to 1945 on SS flags, uniforms and other items as symbols of various aspects of
Nazi ideology and
Germanic mysticism. They also represented virtues seen as desirable in SS members, and were based on The Runes order designed by
Karl Maria Wiligut which he loosely based on the historical
runic alphabets. ==Use in contemporary esotericism==