Lost Civilization of Atlantis, Hyperdiffusionism and Nazis

 

Amazon: Atlantis, Die Urheimat Der Arier Hardcover – 27 October 2022by Zchaetzsch Karl Georg (Author) 

Karl Georg Zschaetzsch (1870–1946) was a German intellectual of the Völkisch movement, closely aligned with ideas later promoted by National Socialism. An Aryanist, he advanced the notion of an Aryan ancestry for all civilizations. He first made his name in 1920 with the publication of Die Herkunft und Geschichte des arischen Stammes [ The Origin and History of the Aryan Tribes], an instant bestseller, followed in 1922 by Atlantis: die Urheimat der Arier [Atlantis the Original Homeland of the Aryans]

In these works, he developed a fantastical prehistory and early history. According to his claims, Atlantis was inhabited by blue-eyed, blond vegetarians, representatives of a superior “Aryan race”. He located this mythical island in the Azores archipelago, where the inhabitants were supposedly hardened by numerous hardships. Before the Great Flood that ultimately swallowed Atlantis, they had already endured famine caused by drought, a storm, and a conflagration triggered by a comet impact. Apart from the “Negroes”, who he claimed were blackened by the conflagration, only three original Aryans survived: an elderly foster father (Wodan), a newborn boy (Thor), and his sister (Freya), who first became his foster mother and then his wife. From this trio, he argued, all later Aryans descended; in biblical tradition, he equated them with God the Father, Adam, and Eve.

The “Germanic race” was thus presented as the heir of the Atlantean population and the dominant race among the Indo-Europeans. Thus, the Goths, Franks, and Saxons were said to have migrated from Atlantis to Central and Western Europe. Aryans, descending from these groups, supposedly conquered the world from their Atlantic homeland and founded settlement colonies across the globe. Much as Graham Hancock was later to claim, wherever Aryan settlers mixed with non-Aryan natives, advanced civilizations arose: Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient Athens, Peru, and others. From Northern Europe, the last “pure” Aryans allegedly spread through Germania and the Baltic region to Southern Europe, Africa, and Asia, where they continued to intermarry. The original Greeks were also, in his view, descended from the Aryans, and the Incas of Peru, the organizers of a vast, centralized state, were likewise said to originate from Atlantis. Yet, he claimed, these civilizations ultimately declined because of continued racial mixing.

There were inconsistencies. Elsewhere in his work, however, based on a particular reading of Jordanes, Zschaetzsch placed Atlantis in Scandinavia, equating it with the Vagina Gentum described as the original homeland of the Goths. According to Zschaetzsch, the Aryans were eventually driven from their Atlantic homeland by non-Aryan immigrants after bitter battles and forced to migrate to Northern Europe. These newcomers then attacked the Mediterranean region, ancient Athens and Egypt, but were decisively defeated by the Athenians. This is of course the war referred to by Plato in Timeus and Critias. 

Zschaetzsch’s ideas about Atlantis were among the most extreme examples of the grotesquely racist zeitgeist. They were quickly taken up by Völkisch ideologues. Alfred Rosenberg initially adopted this thesis as well, but it never gained significant traction, since the hypothesis of an Atlantean origin for the Germanic populations was widely regarded as unserious (Chapoutot 2008, p. 46).

As another parallel with Hancock, for his theoretical construct, Zschaetzsch appropriated not only Greek mythology but also the Jewish-biblical tradition, ancient American mythologies, and most pre-Christian pagan cults and festivals, all of which he interpreted as distorted versions of an alleged Atlantean prehistory.

He went on to publish further racist writings with the Aryan Publishing House, often featuring similarly absurd claims or based on comparable constructs, such as his onomastic speculations in Uralte Sippen- und Familiennamen (Ancient Family and Clan Names, 1934). After the fourth, revised edition of Atlantis, Urheimat… appeared in 1937, his trail went cold.

In 1946, the Berlin Magistrate classified Zschaetzsch as a Nazi genealogist and ordered his entire output permanently removed, placing his works on the list of banned literature. This did not prevent his writings (together with similar works by authors such as Heinrich Pudor, Herman Wirth, and Siegfried Kadner) from continuing to circulate positively in far-right circles as identity-forming pseudo-history.

Further Reading
Johann Chapoutot 2008, 'Le nazisme et l'Antiquité', Paris, Presses universitaires de France.

Franz Wegener, 'Das atlantidische Weltbild: Nationalsozialismus und Neue Rechte auf der Suche nach dem versunkenen Atlantis' (Gladbeck: Kulturförderverein Ruhrgebiet, 2000), series Politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus, Abt. 1: Das Wasser; 3rd, greatly expanded ed., 2014.