Wewelsburg: Himmler's Occult Castle

Wewelsburg is a Renaissance castle located in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in the village of Wewelsburg which is a quarter of the city Büren, Westphalia, in district of Paderborn in the Alme Valley. The castle has the outline of a triangle. After 1934 it was used by the SS under Heinrich Himmler and was to be expanded to the central SS-cult-site. After 1941 plans were developed to enlarge it to the so-called "Center of the World".

The castle crew consisted of members of both SS branches, the "General SS" ("Allgemeine SS") and the "Armed SS" ("Waffen SS"). Also working at the castle were proponents of a kind of SS esotericism consisting of Germanic mysticism, an ancestor cult, worship of runes, and racial doctrines: Himmler, for example, adapted the idea of the Grail to create a heathen mystery for the SS.

Meetings of SS-Group Leaders at "spring conferences" were planned since 1939. Probably some talks took place at Wewelsburg Castle; the only documented meeting was in June 1941. Another source mentions three or four ceremonies a year of SS-leaders which took place at the castle.

In 1938 Himmler ordered the return of all Death's head rings of dead SS-men and officers. They were to be stored in a chest in the castle. This was to symbolize the ongoing membership of the decedent in the SS-Order. The whereabouts of the approximately 11,500 rings after the Second World War is unclear.


Where primary a cistern was a vault after the model of Mycenaean domed tombs was hewn into the rock which possibly was to serve for some kind of commemoration of the dead. The room is unfinished. The floor was lowered 4.80 meters. The fundament of the tower was firmed with concrete. In the middle of the vault probably a bowl with an eternal flame was planned. In the middle of the floor a gas pipe is embedded. Around the presumed place for the eternal flame at the wall twelve pedestals are placed. Their meaning is unknown. Above the pedestals wall niches existed. In the zenith of the vault a swastika (which ends run out in an ornamental way) is walled in. The swastika (Hakenkreuz) was understood as "the symbol of the creating, acting life" (das Symbol des schaffenden, wirkenden Lebens) and as "race emblem of Germanism" (Rasseabzeichen des Germanentums). The vault has special acoustics and illumination.

The axis of the sun wheel consisted of a circular plate of pure gold, which was to symbolize the center of the castle and thus the entire "Germanic world empire".

n 1938, Siegfried Taubert was in charge of developing the castle, when Himmler inquired about the cost of installing a planetarium[citation needed]. To round off the subjects taught at the Wewelsburg SS school a teacher was sought who should draw cross connections between astronomy and history and the folklife of the ancestors so that the historical and ideological schooling was to be enhanced and deepened by the "cosmic view" (kosmische Schau).

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