Historical templates Before
World War II, there was at least one private circle in
Berlin whose members were explicitly involved with the "Vril" force. The few sources that prove the existence of this circle of people later became one of the starting points for the creation of the Vril society legend.
The "truth society" One of the sources of evidence for the existence of such a group is an article by the German rocket pioneer
Willy Ley, which he published in 1947 in the American science fiction magazine
Astounding Science Fiction. In it, he attempts to explain to his readers why National Socialism was able to fall on fertile ground in Germany and attributes this to the great popularity of irrational beliefs in pre-war Germany. He describes various examples of
pseudoscience and
esoteric currents and in this context also mentions what he sees as a particularly peculiar group: : "The next group was literally based on a novel. This group, which I believe was called the Truth Society and was more or less based in Berlin, devoted their spare time to the search for Vril. Yes, their beliefs were based on Bulwer-Lytton's
The Coming Race. They knew the book was a fabrication, Bulwer-Lytton had used this artifice to tell the truth about this 'force'. Subterranean humanity was nonsense, Vril was not. Possibly it had enabled the British, who guarded it as a state secret, to build their colonial empire. Certainly the
Romans possessed it, encased in small metal spheres that protected their homes and were referred to as
lares. For reasons I could not see through, the secret of the Vril could be discovered by immersing oneself in contemplating the structure of an apple cut in half. No, I am not joking, this was what I was told with great solemnity and secrecy. Such a group actually existed; it even published the first issue of a magazine in which it proclaimed its credo. (I wished I'd kept some of these things, but as it was, I had enough books to smuggle out)."
"Reich working group 'The coming Germany'" In 1930, two smaller pamphlets entitled
Weltdynamismus were published and
Vril. Die kosmische Urkraft, which were published by an occult circle that called itself the "Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft 'Das kommende Deutschland'" (RAG). In it, the RAG claimed to have an elaborate technology that was suitable for utilizing the "Vril" force. The structure and functional principle of the machine described and the political program outlined are almost identical in structure and content to a brochure published by two Austrian authors as early as 1928, which propagated a
perpetuum mobile that the Austrian Karl Schappeller is said to have invented. The RAG plans only differ from this in a few details. Overall, the impression is created that this is an improved version of Schappeller's machine, the function of which is not explained in (pseudo-)physical terms, but in occult terms. In a longer section of one of the texts, the image of an apple cut in half is used as a model for the structure of the earth and its connection with the "space force". This and the contributions by proven Schappeller supporters suggest that it was primarily followers of the Austrian inventor who contributed to the RAG publications. From another RAG publication, it becomes clear that RAG was founded in Berlin in 1930 by a certain Johannes Täufer. Täufer was also responsible for the brochure
"Vril". Die kosmische Urkraft, but nothing more is known about his person. The name is probably a
pseudonym, and it has been suggested that it may have been the publisher Otto Wilhelm Barth, who had published two of the RAG publications.
Summary of the research situation A comparison between Ley's memoirs and the contents of the RAG writings leads to the conclusion that the "Truth Society" and the RAG could actually have been the same group. However, it seems to have only had a short-term and marginal significance in the occult scene of the time. No further issues of either the
Zeitschrift für Weltdynamismus or the
Archiv für Alchemistische Forschung, which was published jointly with it, appeared. Nonetheless, this group later formed a central building block for justifying the legends of the secret activities of a "Vril Society" in Germany from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Origin of the legends In the period after the Second World War, numerous
conspiracy theory and
pseudohistorical interpretations of the Third Reich developed. pseudo-historical interpretations of the Third Reich, in which occult elements played a central role. In this context, the "Vril" concept and the aforementioned references to occultist groups were also cited as historical evidence. The earliest reference to an alleged secret society with the name "Vril Society" can be found in a publication from 1960. Since then, the topic has been taken up again and again in several variations in conspiracy theory and esoteric literature. While the first versions of this legend still rejected National Socialism, more recent versions of the legend directly or indirectly serve a positive reinterpretation of the Third Reich.
Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier The existence of a "vril society" was first claimed by the French authors
Louis Pauwels and
Jacques Bergier. In their book
Le matin des magiciens (
Departure into the third millennium), published in 1960, they represented the thesis that the Nazi leadership attempted to enter into alliances with supernatural powers. An occult secret society had played a central role in these efforts. Referring to the statements of
Willy Ley and on the basis of research they had allegedly carried out themselves but not specified further, they claimed that this society had called itself the "Vril Society" or "The Lodge of the Brothers of the Light" (Luminous Lodge). The "Vril Society" maintained close contacts with the
Theosophical Society, the
Rosicrucians and in particular the
Thule Society and was an important Nazi organization.
Criticism The sect that Ley recalls bears only a superficial resemblance to the "Vril Society" of the book
Dawn of the Third Millennium. The authors never provided further evidence for their far-reaching speculations, not even for the alleged names of this group. Their claims must therefore be classified as fictions. In addition, historical research came to the conclusion that the occult groups existing at the time (for example the Thule Society) did not exert any significant influence on
Hitler and the
NSDAP. Although connections between occult ideas and the world view of individual National Socialists (especially
Himmler) can be proven, they do not support the thesis that these occult circles had a comprehensive, systematic influence on Hitler and the entire National Socialist leadership. Pauwels and Bergier's book inspired other authors to speculate about the alleged role of the "Vril Society", such as J. H. Brennan or
Trevor Ravenscroft.
Norbert Jürgen-Ratthofer / Ralf Ettl and Jan Udo Holey In the 1990s, the legend of the "Vril Society" was further developed. Norbert Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl linked them in 1992 in their publication
The Vril Project mit dem älteren
Mythos der „
NS-Flugscheiben". According to them, the "Vril Society" had developed from the Thule Society and pursued esoteric studies. In the early 1920s, the Aldebarans made telepathic contact with it and with an inner circle of the
SS, through which they received plans to build a flying machine. In 1922, the "Vril Society" is said to have used this information to build a saucer-shaped flying ship, the so-called "Beyond Flying Machine". Through various intermediate steps, in which the Austrian inventor
Viktor Schauberger is said to have been involved, this then allegedly led to the construction of a version ("V7"), in which members of the "Vril Society" are said to have traveled to
Aldebaran in 1945. In addition, further saucer-shaped aircraft (with names such as "Vril" and "Haunebu") were allegedly developed, with the help of which members of the Vril Society and the SS finally set off for Antarctic
New Swabia in 1945. Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl were members of the so-called Tempelhof Society, which had been active since the 1980s under the aegis of its "grand commander" Hans-Günter Fröhlich. The Tempelhof Society brought out several small publications and organized regular meetings that demonstrated its connections to the German-speaking right-wing extremist network of the time. The first comprehensive publication of the Tempelhof Society appeared in 1987 under the title
Einblick in die magische Weltsicht und die magischen Prozesse (
Insight into the magical world view and the magical processes). Excerpts from this publication and from articles in the right-wing extremist magazine
CODE prove that an exchange took place between the members of the Tempelhof Society and the circle around
Wilhelm Landig, which mainly revolved around the Sumerian/Babylonian origins of the Germans and the concept of the
Black Sun. The publications of the Tempelhof Society were instrumental in linking this esoteric concept of the
Black Sun, which had been discussed in the circle around Landig since the 1950s. The text
Das Vril-Projekt (
The Vril Project), published by the Tempelhof Society, was originally little known. The legend attracted greater attention when it was taken up by
Jan Udo Holey and reached a wider readership through his books. Holey, who is associated with brown esotericism, published the book
Geheimgesellschaften und ihre Macht im 20. Jahrhundert (
Secret Societies and their Power in the 20th Century) in 1993 under the pseudonym "Jan van Helsing", which is said to have sold 100,000 copies by 1996 alone. In it, he reproduces the scenario by Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl, but without clearly identifying their authorship. in the
Study Buddhism, in
Arcanorum Causam Nostrum, with
Armin Risi and not least
Henry Stevens. Other variations of the legend focus more strongly on the alleged role of a woman, who was already mentioned in 1992 in the
Vril Project by Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl and also later at Holey According to the
Vril Project, Maria Oršić from Zagreb (
Croatia) was involved in the founding of the "Vril Society" and also established the spiritualist contact with the Aldebarans. In a later text, which only circulates anonymously on the internet, the figure of Maria Oršić is transformed from a minor character into a central protagonist. This text claims that Maria Oršić, a native of Vienna, founded the "All German Society for Metaphysics" in Munich in 1919 or 1921, which was linked to the "Vril Society". According to this text, the originally only female members of this society were involved with magical energies that were connected to the "Vril force". The protest against the short hair fashion of the 1920s and the wearing of long hairstyles played an important role in connection with the use of these "vibrational magical" energies. These energies were also used to power so-called "otherworldly flying machines", in the construction of which they were involved. According to the text, the "Alldeutsche Gesellschaft für Metaphysik" later formed the "Antriebstechnische Werkstätten". There, other scientists and technicians, including a Munich professor named "W. O. Schumann", were involved in the development of Reichsflugscheibes and other armaments projects. After the dissolution of the Tempelhof Society, Ralf Ettl founded the Causa Nostra circle of friends, which continues to disseminate such ideas to this day, sometimes in a modified form. Causa Nostra also maintains links with the Swiss publisher Unitall, whose publications incorporate the ideas of the Tempelhof Society / Causa Nostra in the form of novels and non-fiction books.
Criticism The myth of the Nazi UFOs arose independently of the aforementioned authors and was essentially inspired by the writings of
Miguel Serrano,
Ernst Zündel and Wilhelm Landig characterized. The graphic representations of German flying disks circulating today are mostly based on drawings that were distributed in the 1980s by Ralf Ettl's Abraxas Videofilm Produktionsgesellschaft mbH and first published by D. H. Haarmann and O. Bergmann. The drawings were apparently inspired by the photos in
George Adamski's UFO classics. There is a complete lack of verifiable evidence for the scenarios described; the books contain only a few illustrations of questionable origin. There is no substantiated evidence for the references to the groups discussed above or to real people from contemporary history. The authors refer to messages transmitted by the media and anonymous informants (cf. e.g.), that defy all scrutiny. No reputable sources were provided on the life and work of Maria Oršić and the members of the society she allegedly led. Nevertheless, in the wake of the publications of the "right-wing extremist esotericist"
Jan Udo Holey wrote a series of
neo-pagan and, in part,
neo-Nazi publications, secret societies, as well as a novel based on facts about the life and work of Maria Oršić and the "Vril Society". Not least through a publication by the authors Peter Bahn and Heiner Gehring, in which an attempt was made to support the concept of a "primal energy" underlying all other forms of energy by referring to the historical tradition of this concept, However, the "Vril" concept was also used by representatives of "brown esotericism" for a positive reinterpretation of the "Third Reich". For example, references to Bahn and Gehring's interpretation of the RAG can be found in the publications of the Sonnenwacht association, which, according to critics, "uses neo-pagan esotericism as a cover for right-wing extremism". == Literature ==