The Nazis and Their Fairy Friends: Sidhe Heil! July 11, 2013
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
***Thanks to Theo and (Anomalist) Chris for this information and to Beach’s family for a fabulous birthday – an African hedgehog and an interlibrary loan credit and an Edwardian painting of the farm where Beach grew up, wow!**
***Credit where credit is due: I owe Sidhe Heil to Greg at the Daily Grail***
Beach is putting this post up because of curiosity over the murderous Third Reich and fairy belief. Let’s start with some safe a priori statements. The Nazis were fascinated by the occult: drinking blood in Wewelsburg, playing around with agricultural magic, employing magic symbols, not least the swastika itself. This is simple fact and has been documented, not least by the late and much lamented Nicolas Goodrick-Clarke (obit 2012). And fairies? Well, if you are going to commune with Norse gods, fetischise the Celts and Tibetans, grow Steinerian gardens at Auschwitz and listen to Wagner why not get all excited about earth elementals?
Beach knows two fairy books from the Reich, one well and one (now) by reputation. First we have Gisela Piaschewksi Der Wechselbalg (Breslau 1935), which is a very earnest and valuable book about changeling traditions. Miss Piaskchewski had spent a little too much time reading the Brothers Grimm, but she knew her stuff and put down the bases for modern studies of changelings, which, of course, nobody has troubled to build upon. The book is written in harsh Gothic script that always intimidates this blogger, who has problems enough with German in Times New Roman, 14. Beach would love to know what happened to GP, as he grew rather fond of her while struggling through her prose (again a reflection on his German not her style). With a surname like that and living in ‘Breslau’ she is unlikely to have had a good war. Let’s hope that she and her family made it out the other side alive.
The second book has recently come up on The Black Sun, Hans Hartmann’s Über Krankheit, Tod und Jenseitsvorstellungen in Irland. Erster Teil: Krankheit und Fairyentrückung. It was published by Max Niemeyer Verlag, as issue 9 of the Schriftenreihe der deutschen Gesellschaft fur keltische Studien. Theo Paijmans has written out on The Black Sun the contents of the book and some sources. Beach hopes soon to get his hands on the original and create a pdf for the greater good. Germany of course, had an outstanding tradition in Celtic studies, including giants like Kuno Meyer something brought down to the present by the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie. Not the least interesting thing about this work is that it was published in 1942. You would have thought that Hans Hartmann and the publishers at Max Niemeyer Verlag might have had better things to be doing around then!? So much for total war. Or perhaps fairies took the edge off Pearl Harbor and the very distant rumble of America bombers relocating to Suffolk.
Beach is actually REALLY curious: anything else on Nazis and fairies? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com And here courtesy of Wade in an old Nazi nature story, covered on this blog long ago and courtesy of Southern Man, Nazi Fairy Tales.
