Knowra Völkisch movement Völkisch movement The Völkisch movement was a German nationalist current that idealized an ethnically defined people, cultural unity, and ancestral roots, often in racial and antisemitic terms.
German Romanticism : An intellectual and artistic movement emphasizing emotion, nature, history, and the particular cultures of peoples. Its interest in folk culture and historical particularity supplied themes the movement recast as national belonging.
Volksgeist : The idea that each people possesses a distinctive collective spirit expressed through its culture and history. It supplied a cultural rationale for treating the German people as a historically unified community.
Guido von List : An Austrian occultist and author who developed Ariosophy, a racialized esoteric account of ancient Germanic religion. His writings joined Germanic ancestry to occult racial speculation within the broader Völkisch milieu.
Thule Society : A Munich-based occultist and nationalist society active in the years surrounding the First World War. It embodied the overlap between Völkisch mysticism and postwar political networking.
National Socialism : The German far-right ideology and regime led by Adolf Hitler, in power from 1933 to 1945. It appropriated Völkisch ethnic nationalism and antisemitism while building a distinct mass dictatorship.
German nationalism : Political movements and ideas seeking a unified German nation and defining its national identity. The Völkisch current gave German nationalism an ethnic and ancestral account of national identity.
Volk : A German word for a people, nation, or folk, whose meaning varies with historical and political context. Völkisch thinkers used Volk to imply an organic community grounded in shared ancestry.
Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels : An Austrian racial theorist and former monk who promoted an antisemitic, pseudo-religious doctrine called Theozoology. His publications exemplify the movement's blend of racial hierarchy, myth, and esotericism.
Germanenorden : A secret German nationalist society founded in 1912, organized around racial and antisemitic ideas. Its exclusivist membership and ideology show Völkisch beliefs taking organized form.
Nazi racial policy : The laws and state measures through which the Nazi regime imposed racial hierarchy and persecution. It turned exclusionary ideas shared with Völkisch circles into government policy and systematic persecution.
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