Friedrich Hielscher & Wolfram Sievers’ execution

[Eddy Marz]

Good Day everyone;

Friedrich Hielscher, ex Freikorps member (1919-1920), student in political philosophy, engaged throughout the 20’s in the project of attempting, through publications and newspapers, to bridge the gap between Germany’s socialist workers’ intellectual background and traditional nationalism. He was in close contact with Ernst Jünger and, from 1926, became very much involved with newspapers related to ‘Revolutionary New Socialism’; his first essay, Innerlichkeit und Staatskunst, was published in 1926 in the Neue Standarte-Arminius; Kampfschrift für deutsche Nationalisten magazine.

At about the same period, he was in contact with the cultural philosopher Oswald Spengler, and with Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister who was also a philosopher. Hielscher founded the Unabhängige Freikirche, a pantheistic ‘pagan’ cult wherein God was not 'exterior' to the universe; the universe was 'within God'... an multiple unity within itself… Hielsher defined the Unabhängige Freikirche as the ‘Invisible Church’. It is also important to note that the ‘Church’ was strongly opposed to the fast emerging bio-racial theories. A few members of the church held various posts within the Wehrmacht, the SS, and the SD, gathering information and occasionally helping persecuted individuals (including a few Jews).

According to various sources, Wolfram Sievers, managing director of the Ahnenerbe, was among Hielscher’s close friends and, apparently, also a member of the Unabhängige Freikirche. Although an anti-nazi, Friedrich Hielscher received temporary research commissions from the Ahnenerbe in matters of folklore, cultural and historical research. He was arrested in 1944, and tortured in connection with the failed Stauffenberg plot, but released after Wolfram Sievers interceded in his favour.

During the Nuremberg trials, Hielscher testified that Sievers was in fact also an anti-nazi and a resistant, but that his involvement in the barbaric SS medical experiments conducted under the authority of Ahnenerbe was due to his inability to resist openly, despite his religious feelings… Of course, Hielscher’s testimony failed, and Sievers was condemned to death…

The detail that interests me is this: It is said that on the day of Wolfram Sievers’ execution (2nd June, 1948 – Landsberg), Hielsher was authorized by the Allied administration to visit his friend in jail just before the execution and share a 'farewell pagan religious prayer' particular to the Unabhängige Freikirche, about which Hielscher had never spoken, neither during interrogations, nor during Sievers’ trial…

Does anyone have any info/data/links about this strange occurance ? Thanks in advance…

Eddy

[DerHenkerAusHalle]

I just now ran across this post by you from some 4 years ago! Well, from what I have heard, and I cannot even recall now where I read this information, the prayers were pagan prayers devised to help his soul navigate through the Afterlife successfuly. I remember one source believed these pagan prayers were new creations based on the SS's re-creation of the pagan pre-Christian religion of Germany. But yet another source seemd to believe the prayers were from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, which is all about helping the deceased person in the Afterlife. This too would make sense as Sievers and the Ahnenerbe were very familiar with Tibetan Buddhism and had studied it and gone to the country to do research.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I got that information from; so that is the extent of what I can tell you. Let me know if you have learned anything since you posted this note back in 2009!

[Eddy Marz]

Hey DerHenkerAusHalle !
What a little patience will do ! Thanks for your answer, which makes a lot of sense. No, unfortunately I never did manage to get any more info on this apart from the occasional crackpot theory on SS mysticism. From your answer, I would definitely opt for Tibetan Book Of The Dead prayers as opposed to SS neo-paganism which wouldn't have been at all in tune with Hielscher's or the Unabhängige Freikirche's viewpoints.

Thanks a lot
Best regards
Eddy

[DerHenkerAusHalle]

Glad I could be of help! I'd really like to know for sure too but at least for now the best we can do is an educated guess. With many SS people, they probably would have preferred something strictly in line with German paganism, but as you said, when you're talking about the specific people involved, their interest in Tibetan Buddhism would probably give us a strong clue in that direction. That story always caught my imagination too, and in fact I even wrote a poem about Sievers being prayed over after his execution.

[Landsberger]

In his biography, Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor (Continuum Books, 2009),
Ulf Schmidt describes the executions on June 2, 1948.

"On 2 June, at 10:10 am., Brandt was hanged as the first of the seven men condemned to death at the doctor's trial. It was a rainy and chilly day. No visitors or relatives were allowed to be present during the executions. A number of journalists, guards and prison officials filled the wet courtyard of the prison, where two black gallows had been erected. They exhibited grim symbols: thirteen steps to the scaffold; thirteen coils in the knot of the noose.

Brandt was the only one of the condemned men who refused religious aid at the scaffold."

The religious aid offered was usually the Christian Minister at Spottingen Chapel, and if Sievers accepted it as Schmidt attests, it appears that Sievers was still hedging his spiritual bets.

For general interest, I'll continue with the description:

"Next came Mrugowsky, chief hygienist of the SS, who shouted defiantly from the scaffold: "I die as a German officer sentenced by a brutal enemy and conscious that I never committed the crimes charged against me."

Karl Gebhardt, the head of the SS hospital at Hohenlychen and the last President of the German Red Cross, exclaimed:
"I die without bitterness, but regret there is still injustice in the world."

He was followed by Sievers, Brack, Hoven, and finally, Rudolf Brandt, personal adjutant to Himmler.

After criticism about the time it had taken the prisoners of the IMT to die, some as long as sixteen minutes, the authorities were happy to report that the condemned men had died "without a hitch."

Others, however, have suggested that the hangman's job at Landsberg was worse that at Nuremberg. Apparently, some of the executed had to be suffocated with cotton wool which was pushed into their noses and mouth by American soldiers standing beneath the gallows. Newspapers reported that the executions had lasted sixty-two minutes"

[Eddy Marz]

Hi, Landsberger;
Thanks alot for this...

Regards
Eddy