KVASIR SYMBOL DATABASE

WILHELM TEUDT’S “IRMINSUL” SYMBOL

Entry by Joseph S. Hopkins with art by Rim Baudey for Kvasir Symbol Database at Mimisbrunnr.info, October 2020. Updated May 2023.

PLEASE NOTE

The symbol described in this entry was developed by a völkisch enthusiast who became an early member of the SS-Ahnenerbe, a pseudoscientific Nazi Party think tank. It subsequently saw use by official extensions of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and today the symbol can be found in use in Neo-Nazi circles.

However, due to the symbol’s reception in popular culture—particularly in modern Germany—Teudt’s “Irminsul” symbol can also be found in use by individuals unaware of its origins. These individuals may reject Nazism. Examples include music-focused subcultures and particular strains of neopaganism.

Readers searching for information on related topics in the ancient Germanic record, such as historic depictions of sacred trees, will find the KSD entry “Sacred Tree & Holy Grove” useful.

DESCRIPTION & DATING

Wilhelm Teudt’s “Irminsul” (sometimes rendered in German as Irminsäule or Erminsul) is a modern symbol consisting of a beam from which protrudes two bowed branches, often coiled into spirals. The object may or may not be ornately decorated with chevron-like patterns and spirals, and generally resembles a squat and stretched Ionic column. The symbol was first proposed by German former pastor, amateur archaeologist, and SS-Ahnenerbe member Wilhelm Teudt in 1929.

Teudt claimed the symbol represented the historic Irminsul, an object of veneration among the ancient Saxons, generally considered to be one of many examples of sacred trees among the ancient Germanic peoples. The Irminsul was targeted and destroyed by Frankish king Charlemagne in the 8th century. Teudt’s claim stems from his interpretation of a relief found on the Extern Stones (German Externsteine), a sandstone formation near Horn-Bad Meinberg, Germany.

Scholars generally date the relief to the 12th century, and it clearly depicts the descent from the cross, a popular motif from Christian mythology. According to Teudt, a section of the relief features a a bent Irminsul, which he suspected to have stood in the area. Teudt’s symbol saw limited but notable use in Nazi Germany (see Sources below).

Teudt’s interpretation has usually been ignored by scholars discussing the relief, but those who do mention it—often in the context of discussing the pseudoscientific quality of the SS-Ahnenerbe’s output—overwhelmingly reject it. Rather than an inexplicably placed “Irminsul”, scholars generally assess the segment of the relief to depict an ornate chair or some variety of vegetation, perhaps a tropical tree, used as a stool without the necessity of assuming any connection to the Irminsul. Nonetheless, the symbol continues to see some use in modern popular culture, particularly in Germany, where Teudt’s claims can now and then be encountered to this day.

SOURCES

While the Irminsul had a notable and varied history of depictions before him (see for example this 1882 illustration by Heinrich Leutemann or this curious object housed at Hildesheim Cathedral), Teudt appears to have first proposed the identification of the symbol in the following publication:

• Teudt, Wilhelm. 1929. Germanische Heiligtümer. Beiträge zur Aufdeckung der Vorgeschichte, ausgehend von den Externsteinen, den Lippequellen und der Teutoburg, p. 47-55. Eugen Diederichs Verlag.

Readers can find a revised 1931 edition of this book at Archive.org here (see page 50 for an illustration). Teudt’s “Irminsul” occurs here and there in Nazi Party publications and related items, and in non-Party völkisch art. Examples of notable uses include the March 1935 cover image by artist Wolfgang Willrich for Odal: Monatsschrift für Blut und Boden (at the time edited by Richard Walther Darré, Reichsleiter of Food and Agriculture, cf. Mees 2008: Fig. 24 for an image) and the June 1935 cover of official Nazi Party monthly magazine Der Schulungsbrief (viewable on Archive.org). Teudt’s “Irminsul” also appears on a variety of items associated with the SS-Ahnenerbe, where the think tank employed it as something of an emblem. (Readers can find an example of the SS-Ahnenerbe’s use of the symbol at a virtual exhibition maintained by the German Federal Archives here.)

Teudt’s “Irminsul” remained relatively obscure among Nazi Party symbols, particularly in comparison to the Party’s far more common use of Christian iconography and imperial German symbolism. Whatever the precise path(s) of diffusion, the symbol holds a particular place in specific esoteric circles today, well after Teudt’s death in 1942 and Nazi Germany’s total defeat by the Allies in 1945 (for more on this topic, see Analysis below).

ANALYSIS

The Old Saxon noun Irminsul is a compound consisting of two elements: ‘mighty, great’ and ‘pillar’. As mentioned above, the Irminsul was venerated among speakers of Old Saxon, a West Germanic language. The object is attested by a number of sources, but the earliest source—the near-contemporary Royal Frankish Annals—describes the Irminsul as having been targeted and destroyed by Charlemagne’s forces in the 8th century. This during the brutal Saxon Wars, where the king waged religious warfare on his eastern neighbors.

While these sources have little to say about the object beyond its existence and destruction, early sources notably imply or indicate that the Irminsul was a tree stock standing in the open, making it yet another extension of the ancient Germanic peoples’s focus on sacred trees, groves, and concepts of ‘tree-ness’. It is for this reason that scholar Alessandro Barbero refers to it as a sacred tree in his biography of Charlemagne, where he summarizes the situation as follows:

“You love the lilies of peace and the roses of war; thus you are resplendent in white and scarlet.” These were the flowery words that court poets used to flatter Charles, but the truth was that the color of roses and blood prevailed by far over the whiteness of lilies, because warfare accompanied him throughout almost every year of his life. The harshest war, and the one most fraught with complications, was the war against the Saxons, which lasted for more than twenty years, took the borders of Christendom to the banks of the Elbe, and incorporated the entire breadth of the German regions within the Frankish kingdom. Back in 772 Charles had already gathered his warriors and led them against the pagans of the north to achieve a spectacular victory: they took the principal Saxon sanctuary, the Irminsul, where the sacred tree stood. The tree that according to the Saxons held up the heavens had been burned, and Saxon idols destroyed. But these punitive expeditions had to be repeated every year, because the Saxons resisted with all their force a subjugation that implied both the loss of their tribal independence and the abandonment of their ancestral beliefs. (Barbero 2018 [2000]: 44)

There is much to say about the Irminsul (or Irminsuls, as the case may be) but an extensive analysis of the object is beyond the scope of the present entry. Exterior to scholarly biographies of Charlemagne that mention its destruction by the ruler’s forces, the Irminsul is rarely discussed outside of German scholarship, but for approachable English overviews on the topic see Cusack 2011: 101-120 and Simek 2007 [1993]: 175. English Wikipedia also has a brief but solid overview that outlines the subject’s most important sources (but do note that at the time of writing the entry unfortunately contains little discussion from secondary sources).

Like other aspects of Germanic prehistory and related topics, the Irminsul played a role in the völkisch movement, where a general fascination with the (real or imagined) past combine with late 19th-century to mid-20th century politics in and around Germany. Topics of particular interest to völkisch enthusiasts included a sense of shared history, a strong sense of nationalism and imperialism, and in some cases a potent dose of romanticist mysticism.

The völkisch movement played a significant role in the development of the Nazi Party, leading to, for example, its use of the swastika, a symbol employed by the ancient Germanic peoples (among many, many others). This influence could lead to conflicts with the entrenched beliefs of the German public. As an example, Charlemagne was not a universally popular figure in völkisch subcultures. Some within the movement decried him as a butcher, citing historic incidents like the Massacre of Verden. Parallels between post-World War I France (represented by Charlemagne) and Germany (the Saxons, in this case) were not difficult to invoke. This appears to have led to an initially ambiguous stance regarding the Frankish king by the Nazi Party.

Yet despite howls from this comparatively small chorus, Charlemagne came to be celebrated as a cultural hero in Nazi Germany. This appears to have stemmed directly from Nazi Party Führer Adolf Hitler, who evidently saw something of himself in the Frankish conquerer and Christianizer. In turn, despite his association with France, Charlemagne was thereafter officially embraced as a sort of proto-Führer figure: Charlemagne subsequently appeared in, for example, Nazi Germany-era textbooks as a figure of veneration, Nazi Germany celebrated Charlemagne’s birthday with an immense celebration in 1942, and the SS named its short-lived 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division (consisting of French troops) after him (Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS “Charlemagne”), to name a handful of examples. (On Nazi Germany idolization of Charlemagne, see for example Johannes 2016: 540-547. Readers can also find an excellent summary of some of these events on English Wikipedia here).

The Nazi Party rose to power with the assistance and complicity of powerful Protestant and Catholic networks and clergy, a nearly entirely Christian population, and a long history of European Christian antisemitism (on this thorny topic see, for example, Ericksen 2009, Ericksen 2012, & the United States Holocaust Museum’s online Holocaust Encyclopedia entry on this topic). It is therefore no surprise that alongside inherited German imperial imagery, Nazi Germany overwhelmingly employed Christian iconography, symbolism, and messaging throughout its extensive propaganda networks. Among the parades of crosses, explicit and implicit comparisons between Hitler and Christ, and Gott mit uns (German ‘God with us’) pageantry, one can also find a cluster of images and symbols more obscure to modern eyes: The SS in particular employed a variety of symbols stemming from völkisch interpretations of the ancient Germanic record alongside imagery from Ancient Greece and newly invented symbolism, including Teudt’s “Irminsul”.

In 1935, Himmler established the SS-Ahnenerbe, a pseudoscientific, quasi-anthropological think tank. In his seminal Science of the Swastika (2008), scholar Bernard Mees provides the following summary of the SS-Ahnenerbe’s development alongside the then-fashionable but today esoteric notion of Sinnbildforschung, a variety of epigraphy:

With the Nazi accession to power in 1933, Sinnbildforschung was soon supported directly by the state through university appointments and the manipulation of streams of research funds. Moreover, in 1935 an organization was founded with Hitler’s bodyguard, the SS, to further its study. This organization, the SS-Ahnenerbe or Ancestral Inheritance Foundation, was officially styled the Learned Foundation for Intellectual Prehistory (Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte). Most infamous as the organ through which medical experiments were arranged to be performed on the inmates of concentration camps, the Ahnenerbe was founded as a historical or rather prehistoric research institution before it expanded its horizons to medical torture. At first glance it seems strange indeed that the police apparatus of the Nazi state would become involved in archeological digs, historical research and museum exhibitions. Yet the National Socialists recognized a need actively to support investigations of the ancient Germanic past, bring resources to bear never before (or since) available for the study of early Germanic history and prehistory. Amid this new project for the uncovering of Germanic antiquity, Sinnbildforschung remained a development held in high esteem by the new regime, concerned principally as it was with investigating the origin and meaning of symbols such as the swastika and other expressions of early Germany which had become part of the symbolic repertoire of the Nazi Party.

The institutional focus brought to bear on the study of Germanic antiquity led to the enrollment of German prehistorians, linguists, philologists, legal historians, folklorists and anthropologists within bodies such as the Ahnenerbe. These scholars can generally be classed as Germanists—they focused on the study of German culture, especially from a historical perspective … Of course Germanists who focused on expressions of antiquity which had been adopted by the National Socialists to symbolize aspects of their political platform might be expected to have come under special attention in Nazi Germany and certainly this in part explains why so many antiquarian Germanists became so politicized at the time. Yet the intellectual origins of Sinnbildforschung predate the formation of the Nazi Party or its adoption of the swastika. Indeed many of its proponents had been associated with the Party long before the Nazi accession to power. But it was not merely openly National Socialist academics who were attracted to the new science of Sinnbildforschung. (Mees 2008: 6-7)

Among the SS-Ahnenerbe’s frequent fixations was a bizarre, Nazified version of the academic field of ancient Germanic studies. Völkisch ‘occultist’ figures who held notable positions in the SS also promoted a variety of fragmented and inconsistent theories, such as a blurry notion of a “true Christianity” stemming from an ancient Atlantis inhabited by a monotheistic “Aryan race”. This nonsensical cocktail of pseudoscience (and, well, straightforward crackpottery) often stemmed from a variety of pet theories by SS figures such as Himmler, Ahnenerbe co-founder Herman Wirth, and SS-Brigadeführer Karl Maria Wiligut. Many of the group’s foundational concepts had some root in preceding völkisch works and concepts, such as those of Austrian völkisch mystic Guido von List (born Guido Karl Anton List, d. 1919). List’s ‘revealed’ (that is, idiosyncratic) Armanen runes would eventually see official SS use in a variety of contexts. (cf. Mees 2008: 60-62, 140-144, 204)

As a further example of the quality of work conducted by the Ahnenerbe during this period, figures within the Ahnenerbe such as Wirth also spent a significant amount of time analyzing the Oera Linda Book, a manuscript from around the mid-19th century. At the time of its discovery, contemporary academia rejected the manuscript as an obvious forgery. Yet in Nazi Germany it was taken more or less at face value by Wirth, and some of the book’s symbolism appears in official SS imagery and projects, including the Wralda symbol on ritual Julleuchter objects. The Wralda symbol or ‘rune’ also appears to occur in some contexts with the Irminsul, such as on the aforementioned Wolfgang Willrich piece occurring as a 1935 Odal cover image. (On this, see for example Mees 2008: 151-154, 197-198, fig. 24)

Much of our discussion in this entry rotates around modern perceptions of carvings on a notable sandstone formation known as the Extern Stones (Externsteine). The stones are an unusual feature in the Teutoburg Forest landscape, and consequently a substantial amount of folklore has developed around them (on this, see Schmidt & Halle 1999). The site and the area surrounding it maintain a peculiar relationship with ancient Germanic studies. On this, Mees observes the following:

Much of the contemporary fascination with the stones no doubt derives not just from their remarkable form, but from their location, in the Teutoburg forest, the surviving area of woodland where it was thought until recently that Arminius had routed three roman legions in A.D. 9, ending the attempt of the Romans to bring all of Germany under their control. The Extern Stones are barely a spear’s throw from the Arminius monument (Hermannsdenkmal), erected in the nineteenth century to commemorate the savior of ancient Germany, not to mention the actual site of Arminius’ ambush. The first descriptions of the Extern Stones also identified them as the home of Irminsûl, the great sacred column of the pagan Saxons chopped down by the order of Charlemagne in A.D. 772. (Mees 2008: 191-192)

Today the site is popular with the general public. Among its many visitors are a variety of neopagans, Neo-Nazis, and neopagan Neo-Nazis. While some neopagan groups perceived it as having played a particular role in pre-Christian Germanic religion in the region, the location maintains a particular connection to the German far-right primarily due to its association with Nazi Germany. (Notable here is an observation made by scholars Martin Schmidt & Uta Halle during their survey of folklore associated with the site in the late 1990s. While composing their study, the scholars noted selective law enforcement activity in the area. As they put it: “Officials generally do next to nothing against the meeting of right-wing or neo-Nazi groups. It is obvious that the police regularly observe left-wing or communist groups, but pay less attention to rightwing groups.” Schmidt & Halle 1999: 161)

For the purpose of the present entry, another SS-Ahnenerbe member, the aforementioned Wilhelm Teudt, is particularly notable. Before its absorption into the Ahnenerbe, Teudt led an organization based out of Detmold, the closest city to the Extern Stones. As Mees highlights, the area has historically been a point of interest for enthusiasts of continental Germanic topics, but as non-Nazified academia during Teudt’s time generally pointed out (that is, if they bothered addressing Teudt’s proposal at all) there seems to be no reason to assume that this depiction of chair or variety of vegetation also happens to represent a curiously stylized representation of the historic Irminsul. (Readers can find a YouTube video from Stadt Detmold uploaded in October 2020 featuring contemporary Detmold and nearby points of interest, such as the Extern Stones, here.)

By 1936, Teudt led an organization of enthusiasts, the aforementioned Association of Friends of Germanic Prehistory (German Vereinigung der freunde germanischer Vorgeschichte—hereafter referred to as the Detmold Friends). The Detmold Friends was an organization founded in Detmold in 1927 dedicated to völkisch research and maintained several chapters across Germany. The group expressed a strong and frequent interest in the Extern Stones through its periodical, Germanien. (Mees 2008: 191-195)

The story of Teudt’s rise to prominence in the SS-Ahnenerbe appears to have ultimately been a result of SS politics. With the goal of increasing the influence of the SS, Himmler set out to sideline Alfred Rosenberg, a powerful competitor with similar interests in the party, by cornering the market on Germany’s völkisch subcultures. Had the early Ahnenerbe leadership not taken an interest in Teudt’s Detmold Friends, Teudt’s Germanische Heiligtümer may have left little lasting influence, much in line with the works of most other völkisch enthusiasts. Once the SS absorbed the Detmold Friends, the Ahnenerbe soon found little use for Teudt and sent him on his way. Nonetheless, Teudt’s influence continued in various ways, including official use of his “Irminsul” symbol. (Mees 2008: 191-195)

Indeed, some of Teudt’s theories and his symbol not only survived his ejection from the SS, but they also survived the process of de-Nazification, making their way into strains of modern popular culture. As Schmidt and Halle observe in the late 1990s:

Up to 1997 more than a thousand books, brochures, articles, videos and CD-ROMs, have been published by crackpots, old and new Nazis, pagans, esoterics, etc. They are mostly build on Teudt’s interpretation of seventy years ago, without consideration of its ideological context. (Schmidt & Halle 1999: 165)

Not much has changed since then. In late 2020, one may encounter Teudt’s “Irminsul” in a variety of contexts. For example, at the time of writing, a search for “Irminsul” on the popular online marketplace Etsy brings up a variety of items, nearly all of them featuring derivatives of Teudt’s symbol. Sometimes these depictions appear with another Nazi Germany-derived symbol, the Black Sun (German Schwarze Sonne, the subject of a future Kvasir Symbol Database entry, but English Wikipedia also hosts a solid article on this topic). Some of these sellers may be dog whistling to a potential Neo-Nazi audience (for example, an object bearing Teudt’s “Irminsul” symbol placed next to a Feldgrau M43 cap leaves little room for ambiguity), whereas others sellers employ the symbol on items alongside a variety of historic pagan and neopagan symbols with no indication of fascist sympathies.

Etsy listings present a small sample of a larger phenomenon, and now and then depictions of Teudt’s “Irminsul” pop up at the Extern Stones themselves. A notable incident occurred New Year’s Day 2017, when authorities removed a large wooden carving of Teudt’s “Irminsul”. The object was found to be painted red, white, and black, interpreted by authorities as implying far-right symbolism. This depiction was removed ‘at great expense’ by the Horn-Bad Meinberg fire department (according to a fire department spokesperson, ‘That thing was massive’). (Engelhardt & Sewing 2017; Schwarzer 2017)

ABOUT THE IMAGES

This entry contains two original pieces by Rim Baudey for Mimisbrunnr.info, all produced by the artist in 2020. They are as follows:

• Image I: Wilhelm Teudt sketching his proposed “Irminsul” symbol. This depiction of Teudt is in part based on a photograph of the subject from Staatsarchiv Detmold dated to 1940, which may be viewed here.

• Image II: Teudt’s “Irminsul” symbol after SS-Ahnenerbe usage. Compare the image to an item featured by the German State Archives as part of a digital exhibition here.

Please contact Mimisbrunnr.info for image use requests.

REFERENCES

• Barbero, Alessandro. 2018 [2000]. Charlemagne: Father of a Continent. University of California Press.

• Cusack, Carole. 2011. The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

• Engelhardt, Thorsten & Astrid Sewing. 2017. “Unbekannte installieren "Irminsul"-Symbol auf den Externsteinen”. Lippische Landes-Zeitung online (lz.de), January 2, 2017. Viewable online. Last accessed October 19, 2020.

• Ericksen, Robert P. 2009. Christian Complicity? Changing Views on German Churches and the Holocaust. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Online PDF.

• Ericksen, Robert P. 2012. Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press.

• Fried, Johannes. 2016. Charlemagne. Harvard University Press.

• Mees, Bernard. 2008. The Science of the Swastika. Central European University Press.

• Schmidt, Martin & Uta Halle. 1999. “On the Folklore of the Externsteine” in Amy Gazin-Schwartz & Cornelius J. Holtor, editors. Archaeology and Folklore, p. 153-169. Taylor & Francis.

• Schwarzer, Marianne. 2017. “Staatsschutz ermittelt wegen "Irminsul"-Symbol auf den Externsteinen”. Lippische Landes-Zeitung online (lz.de), January 3, 2017. Viewable online. Last accessed October 19, 2020.

• Simek, Rudolf. 2007 [1993]. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Boydell & Brewer.