Rathenau Frage

[Jan Klimkowski]

Wading thru endless deathlists, I find the following:

>Anyway, question is this: does Pynchon have a legit source for the
>Rathenau Seance scene in GR?  Is this historical, WWII myth or just
>TRP's wild imagination?

Spooks have been trying to colonise the aether for at least a century   
now: check out the early cast-list of the OTO and the Golden Dawn.  The   
latest publicised manifestation are the US Army's intrepid psi-spies who   
pinpointed the future location of Gaddafi for the Raygun's bombers back   
in the 1980s.  Of course, as we know, when the bombers and the TV crews   
flew in, Gaddafi was off in a tent in the desert somewhere and They just   
hit his kids....

Anyway, the following account is from Michael Howard's "The Occult   
Conspiracy".  The book was published in 1989, so it can't be a direct   
source for Pynchon, but the events described did take place:

"In 1918 the Thule Society had over 250 members in Munich and nearly 1500   
members scattered across the Bavarian countryside....  Among its leading   
members were Franz Gurtner, the Bavarian Minister of Justice, who later   
held the same position in the Nazi regime; Pohner, the police   
commissioner of Munich; and Wilhelm Frick, the assistant police chief who   
became the Minister of the Interior in the Third Reich.  Another leading   
member of the Thulists was an occultist called Deitrich Eckart who held   
seances with two White Russian emigres.  Eckart was associated with a   
White Russian printing house which produced an anti-Communist newspaper   
specializing in stories alleging that the Jews had financed the Bolshevik   
revolution.

"At the occult seances organized by Eckart, the medium was a peasant   
woman who allegedly manifested ectoplasm from her vagina.  This   
ectoplasmic substance formed into human shapes representing long-dead   
spirits.  While she was in trance the medium spoke in foreign languages   
and predicted the rise of a messiah who would lead Germany to victory and   
world domination.  Dead members of the Thule Society materialized at   
these seances, including Prince von Thum und Taxis who had been murdered   
in early 1919 by the Communists.  The Prince had been a member of the   
Order of Bavarian Mystics which claimed descent from the Illuminati."

And later:

"The Communists were well aware of the Thule Society's political   
activities by this time.  In the April 1919 coup, Communist militia   
raided the Society's headquarters in Munich.  Several leading Thulists   
were taken hostage and later shot dead, including Prince von Thum und   
Taxis and several titled aristocrats.  When the hostages were shot, the   
Thulists organised a citizens' army against the Communists and on 1 May   
troops loyal to the counter-revolution entered Munich and regained   
control of the city."

Thum - huh?   Interesting spelling.  Actually, foax, we ARE talking about   
the same Thurn & Taxis critters who appear in Lot49.  International   
business, aristocratic eugenicists and occult lodges were at the heart of   
the Nazi experiment: in the heart of Europe, in the 1930s, Hitler, to all   
intents and purposes, abolished the Crucifix and replaced it with the   
Swastika.

I've long been convinced that Pynchon's most interesting sources are not   
always Textual, heh-heh....

jan