Thule Society

Thule Society Thule-Gesellschaft
German name	Thule-Gesellschaft
Abbreviation	Thuleorden
Leader	Walter Nauhaus[1]
Founder	Rudolf von Sebottendorf
Founded	1918; 106 years ago (1918)
Dissolved	1925; 99 years ago (1925)
Split from	Germanenorden
Headquarters	Berlin, Germany
Newspaper	Münchener Beobachter
Ideology	National mysticism Racial antisemitism
Religion	Ariosophy
Politics of Germany Political parties Elections

The Thule Society (/ˈtuːlə/; German: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum ('Study Group for Germanic Antiquity'), was a German occultist and Völkisch group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend. The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers' Party), which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer.^[2]

Author Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess had been Thule members, but other leading Nazis had only been invited to speak at Thule meetings or they were entirely unconnected with it.^[3][4] According to Johannes Hering, "There is no evidence that Hitler ever attended the Thule Society."^[5]