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A most erudite ecclesiastic, Father Hagen had a fair knowledge of astrology and of the occult sciences. He was also an specialist on the Apocalypse of Saint John. In 1856 Father Hagen made a long trip to
the Near East visiting, among other places, Persia, Arabia, Turkey,
and the Caucasus. Upon his return to When young Adolf Hitler became a student at Lambach Father Hagen had already died, but the swastikas he ordered to carve were still there. While Hitler was a student at the abbey, an enigmatic Cistercian monk named Adolf Joseph Lanz [4] made a stay at Lambach. He stayed for several weeks, shut up in the monastery, thoroughly researching and studying Father Hagen's personal papers. The monks affirm that during his mysterious research he evidenced the signs of great agitation, like of a person who had made a great discovery. After his visit to Abbey, Lanz returned to Vienna, where the following year (1900) he founded the Order of the New Templars.[5]
1. See, for example, Jean Claude Frére, Nazisme et sociétés secrétes . Paris: Grasset, 1974, 142-143. -- Back to main text --
2. August Kubizek, Hitler's friend in Vienna, claims that there were only two books that Hitler studied carefully and used to talk about repeatedly: one of them was a volume on archaeology of German tribes exhibiting a sketch of a swastika which impressed him. A few years later, as a youth in Vienna, he promised himself that one day he would write a great political work, and even designed the cover for it. It showed his name adorned with a swastika. (See Robert G. L. Waite, The Psychopathic God. Adolf Hitler . New York: Signer Books, 1977, 15, 70.) -- Back to main text -- 3. Some authors have suggested that Father Hagen's interest in the swastika was only motivated by the likeness between his name and the name of the swastika in German: Hakenkreuz. Given his expertise in the occult and the Orient, however, one must assume that he knew in depth about the swastika and its symbolism. -- Back to main text -- 4. Adolf Joseph Lanz von Liebenfels was an early user of the swastika as a symbol of racial, Völkish superiority. It is recorded that in 1907 he hoisted a flag with a swastika above the New Templars Order's temple at Burg Werfenstein in Lower Austria. At that time Adolph Hitler was only 18 years old. -- Back to main text -- 5. Occult sect founded in 1907 by Dr. Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, for which he wrote a series of "ritualistic readings." The New Templars Order's first temple was built in 1907 at Burg Werfernstein, a romantic ruin high above the River Danube. Other temples were subsequently founded at Marienkamp, near Ulm, and at Rügen on the Baltic coast. The Order of the New Templars was a manifestation of the lunatic fringe sector of the pre-Nazi Pan German movement. It was the culmination of Lanz's activities as a racial publicist and occultist. -- Back to main text --
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Lambach
in 1868 he immediately hired workers and cabinet makers, whom
he ordered to sculpt the swastika (on stone and wood) on the four
corners of the building, and even on some religious objects.[