The
Lambach Connection
Though the Krohn and Haushofer connections are the most widely accepted
theories, other authors [1] believe
that Hitler's first contact with the swastika began a long time before,
while he was a young student with the Benedictins at the Abbey of Lambach-am-Traum,
in upper Austria. [2] At Lambach Hitler
saw the swastika engraved on the four corners of the monastery, where it
had been sculpted several years before following orders of the abbot, Theodorich
Hagen.
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 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.
[3] One of the swastikas at Lambach
is depicted on the illustration on the left.
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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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