Wolfram von Eschenbach
Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170 – c. 1220), German knight and poet, one of the greatest epic poets of his time, the author of Parsifal
Roscoe's solution (Part thereof)
In Geography Strabo (64 B.C-23 A.D.) tells of a massive 300 tons of gold and silver bullion that was recovered by the Romans from the Celtic temples at Narbonne. This is near the mouth of the Aude river on the French Mediterranean coast. A further eighty kilometres up the Aude is Rennes-le-Chateau. Strabo attributes the bullion as either an accumulation of Celtic sacred offerings, or else the Celts' loot from the Greek treasuries at Delphi, sacked in 278 B.C. The Romans somehow lost the bullion near Narbonne during Caesar's Gallic Wars and it was never recovered.
The gold was taken from a votive lake by a Roman proconsul by the name of Cæpion. He took 80 tons of gold and money and immediately re-melted this into ingots. This apparently disappeared during its transport towards the port of Narbonne following an attack from Volkes tectosages upset by this profanation of their sacred offerings. They would have then withdrawn to the high valley of the Aude and would have hidden the treasure in this area which is easy to police.
Otto Rahn in Wikipedia
Otto Wilhelm Rahn (February 18, 1904—March 13, 1939) was a German medievalist and a Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) of the SS, born in Michelstadt, Germany.
Speculation still swirls around Otto Rahn and his research. From an early age, he became interested in the legends of Parsifal, Holy Grail, Lohengrin, and the Nibelungenlied. While attending the University of Giessen he was inspired by his professor, the Baron von Gall, to study the Albigensian (Catharism) movement, and the massacre that occurred at Montségur. Rahn is quoted as saying that "It was a subject that completely captivated me''".
Work
A review of Otto Rahn’s Lucifer’s Court by John J. Reilly
This book and its companion volume, Crusade against the Grail, are about as close as we can get to an “authoritative” statement of the esoteric dimension of the Nazi regime in Germany. The publication of the Crusade book in 1933 persuaded SS leader Heinrich Himmler to invite its author, Otto Rahn (1904-1939), to work for the SS as a folklorist. As the book under review here also does in part, that work developed the thesis that the doctrines of the medieval Cathars of Provence were encoded into Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s 13th-century version of the Grail legend. Rahn later became a member of the Ahnenerbe (“ancestral heritage”) bureau of the SS, in whose employ he finished Lucifer’s Court.
A review of Otto Rahn’s study of Grail lore by John J. Reilly
Anyone who undertakes the study of the intellectual underpinnings of Nazi Germany (1933-1945) will soon notice that at least some members of the regime were doing things that are not covered by the typical survey course in political theory. Researchers who attempt to investigate these anomalies will dig through a swamp of popular and crank literature about the Third Reich’s connection to the occult underground, some of it coincident with conspiracy theory and some of it (often the most coherent works) purely fictional. Nonetheless, a sober study of primary sources will reveal that not all the fantastic rumors were made up out of whole cloth.
Otto Rahn Bio
Berlin between the wars was a city known throughout Europe for its bohemian subculture of young intellectuals. Amongst the personalities who hotly debated the many modernist “isms” that were fracturing the old ideological certainties that had glued together the 19th century, few individuals were more colorful or conspicuous than a febrile dark-haired, green-eyed young man called Otto Wilhelm Rahn.
Rahn was welcomed in the cafes and nightclubs of 1930’s Berlin because he was a hyper-intense intellectual – a brilliant talker with a great deal to say but he was also a conspicuous outsider in that he was unfashionably dismissive of the emergent modernism that so excited his peers. Moreover, he had even less empathy with the cynicism and decadence that colored there lifestyle. Rather, like that of most Germans outside of Berlin, Rahn’s sensibility had been molded by influences wholly incompatible with the café society avante-garde.
English translator's foreword to Crusade Against the Grail
WHEN URBAN VERLAG IN FREIBURG published the first edition of Crusade Against the Grail [Kreuzzug gegen den Gral] in 1933, the book was not an immediate bestseller. But its eloquence deeply moved those who read it. One so moved was Albert H. Rausch, the 1933 Georg Biichner prizewinner who published under the pseudonym Henry Benrath. Rausch wrote an introduction for the book called Kreuz und Gral [Cross and Grail], which eventually appeared in the Baseler Nachrichten later in the year.
Editorial Reviews to First English Translation of Crusade Against the Grail: The Struggle between the Cathars, the Templars, and the Church of Rome
Book Description
The first English translation of the book that reveals the Cathar stronghold at Montségur to be the repository of the Holy Grail<
• Presents the history of the Papal persecution of the Cathars that lies hidden in the medieval epic Parzival and in the poetry of the troubadours
• Provides new insights into the life and death of this gifted and controversial author
Otto Rahn (Dutch)
Otto Rahn werd geboren in Michelstadt (Odenwald) op 18 februari 1904. Na zijn middelbare studies (en de eerste wereldoorlog) trekt hij naar de universiteit waar hij aanvankelijk rechten studeert. Maar al spoedig gaat zijn belangstelling uit naar de literatuur en laat hij zich inschrijven aan de faculteit der letteren in Heidelberg. Zijn droom is literair recensent te worden voor een krant of tijdschrift.
Als muziekliefhebber dweept hij met Wagner. Diens "Parsifal" brengt hem in contact met de graallegenden en hun Duitse auteur Wolfram von Eschenbach. Die studie zal hem nooit meer loslaten.
Otto Rahn Biography
CHRONOLOGY 1904-1939
18 Feb 1904 Otto Rahn born, Michelstadt. Parents Karl & Clara (nee Hamburger)
1910-1916 Junior school at Bigen
1916-21 Secondary school at GrieBen
1922 obtains Baccalaureat
1924 obtains Bachelor in Philology and History
1930 Rahn begins his European travels (Paris, Provence, Switzerland,
Catalonia, Italy)
1931 Rahn visits French Pyrenees. Visits "Spion" in Pyrenees with Himmler and Abetz
1932 Rahn leads a Polaires expedition in Pyrenees
13.12.33 Rahn joins the German Writers Association
1934 publishes "Kreuzzug gegen Gral" (Crusade against the Grail)
1935 appointed to personal staff of Heinrich Himmler
29.2.36 Rahn joins Allgemeine-SS, member 276 208
1936 Rahn visits Iceland with 20 men
1937 publishes "Luzifers Hofgesind. Eine Reise zu denguten Gelstern Europa" (Lucifer's Court in Europe; Rahn sent back to Languedoc (Montsegur), says he will return in 1939. Time of alleged Corbieres visit?
20.4.37 promoted to sub-lieutenant (Untersturmfuhrer)
Sep-Dec1937 military service for "disciplinary reasons" at Oberbayern Regiment, Dachau<
Rennes-le-Chateau
Here, on the northern edge of the Pyrenees some 110 years ago, a Catholic priest named Bérengier Saunière became unbelievably wealthy overnight, seemingly after discovering something of immense value or significance in his church. He is said to have spent lavishly redesigning the tiny hill-top structure, building a strange belvedere tower called Tour Magdala and constructing a guest house known as Villa Bethania. He is also reported to have started acting oddly, erasing inscriptions on tomb stones, carrying out nocturnal excavations in both the church and churchyard, and receiving visitors totally beyond his standing as a parish curé in a rural part of southern France.
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