Order of the New Templars

The Order of the New Templars – Ordo Novi Templi was a proto-fascist secret society in Germany founded by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (the code name of Fascist agitator Adolf Joseph Lanz) in 1900. Lanz used this order to spread his ideas, which he initially referred to as "theozoology" or "Ario-Christianity" and from 1915 as "Ariosophy". The order combined esoteric piety with concepts of racial "science" and eugenics, which were modern at the time. It was modelled after the Catholic military order of the Knights Templar and was similar in its hierarchical structure to the Order of Cistercians which had trained the New Templars founder, Adolf Lanz. Lanz's goal was to bring right-wing extremists in post-World War I Germany together and mobilise them in opposition to liberal society. Members used code names to hinder any chance of betrayals. The order would later provide support to the rise of Nazism. The founder Lanz was the ideologist and political agitator of the group, justifying violence by punishments such as castration in order to establish Fascism in Germany and defend it against communism. Lanz intended the organization to put an end the racial conflict between supposedly higher-bred "master class" and lower-bred "animal people" and to enforce it by force "up to the castration knife" (Lanz). Lanz's ideas should allow the upper class and imperialist groups to justify "any exploitation". Specifically, "the enslavement" of the population was to be reintroduced and this rule by "the emasculation" of be enforced by those who think differently. Women should be called "slaves" and "breeding mothers" serve. The right-wing extremist anti-Semite :de:Nivard Schlögl trained and radicalized Lanz. Lanz had left the Cistercian order shortly before and tied the naming of his own order to the medieval Templar Order. His interest in the Templars was awakened by the contemporary popular motif of the Knights of the Grail in the neo-romantic music and literature of Richard Wagner, Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, and Friedrich Lienhard.