Jesse Ryhänen, in his in-depth review of Himmler’s Secret Society, invokes one of my pet peeves in connection with Yrjö von Grönhagen – the question of his credibility. When the book originally came out in 1948, many could not stomach his strange stories about Weisthor, “Jesus Christ”, et al, or even that he actually met Himmler, Karl Wolff and Mussolini. Later generations, however, have mostly questioned his actual motivations for working in the Ahnenerbe. My introduction for the book tries to address some of these accusations, e.g. that he was a Nazi agent, or that he tried to whitewash himself of his involvement with the National Socialist regime by “forgetting” to tell everything. Unlike Felix Kersten, however, who seems to have been quite liberal with his “truths”, having recently studied most of the available archival material on him[1], I still have no reason to suspect any part of von Grönhagen’s narrative.

In his review (available in both English and Finnish) Ryhänen invokes Dr Inkeri Koskinen’s view of von Grönhagen in her Villi Suomen historia that neatly summarises the party line: “[Koskinen] calls into question Grönhagen’s description of the Ahnenerbe: she finds significant omissions in both persons and events.” Let us see what she actually writes.

Villi Suomen historia is popular history; actually an entertaining romp through some of the more outlandish theories about Finland’s ancient past, including the sagas of Kings of Kvenland and, naturally, Wettenhovi-Aspa’s Fenno-Egyptic etymological adventures. Von Grönhagen, it seems, has been chosen by Dr Koskinen to portray the fallacy of Nazi pseudoscience, exemplified by the Atlantean romanticism of Ahnenerbe’s first director, the Dutch-German Herman Wirth (1885-1981). She writes:  “[von Grönhagen was] a naïve young man who accidentally got mixed with activities that he did not fully understand. At least if one assumes that Grönhagen’s book is a reliable account of what happened in reality. On the other hand, if one reads for instance Heather Pringle’s Master Race, puzzling holes start to appear in his narrative: missing persons and omitted events.”[2]   

What does Pringle — who did an excellent job in researching primary sources — deduce, then, to justify Dr Koskinen’s claim? Von Grönhagen can obviously not write about what happened in the Ahnenerbe after his departure in the autumn of 1939, such as the amassing of the infamous skeleton collection and the inhumane medical experiments revealed by the Doctor’s Trial in Nuremberg (1947), projects that resulted in Wolfram Sievers, the managing director of Ahnenerbe (and von Grönhagen’s arch enemy in the Ahnenerbe according to his own words) being hanged for war crimes in 1948 after Himmler’s Secret Society had come out.

However, Pringle is actually very sympathetic of von Grönhagen – the only piece of “revisionism” she found in his story comes from her interview of Gabriele Winckler-Dechend, a protégé of Colonel Weisthor. Winckler-Dechend told that when von Grönhagen was living with Weisthor and was daily subjected to his ancient Gothic proverbs and Halgaritha  sayings, von Grönhagen had once said that “Oh, I know that one, I heard it from my father too”. Later, Pringle writes, “he seems to have revised his opinion, describing Weisthor as an unscientific agitator in his book Himmlerin salaseura.”[3] I bet Weisthor’s pithy sayings might have occasionally contained wisdom also found in Finnish proverbs – or, what is perhaps more likely, that weary of the eccentric old colonel and eager to move out as soon as possible, von Grönhagen might have just humoured his host.

Von Grönhagen’s ethnographic work, however, while perhaps not groundbreaking – the 25-year old Finn honestly confessed that his studies were not finished – can certainly not be considered as “pseudo-science,” least of all expressive of Wirth’s Atlantean theories (or Frenzolf Schmid’s Aryan-Attalantic Weltkreis for that matter). His doctoral thesis for Friedrich-Wilhem University that he meant to defend in 1940 (left unfinished in 1939 as the war break out) dealt with Finnish ancestor worship and would probably have not been considered “pseudo-scientific” by any university in the world at the time. As for his alleged “racism,” von Grönhagen’s sole mission seems to have been to prove to the Germans that Finns were not Mongols (a misconception that some still seem to cling to despite modern gene research) in order to secure German sympathy and tangible military help against Soviet Russia, but one can hardly accuse him of spouting racialist propaganda.

Walther Wüst’s 1939 testimony of von Grönhagens time in the Ahnenerbe.

Another point that von Grönhagen’s account of Ahnenerbe underlines, seemingly incomprehensible to many current scholars, is the often forgotten fact that the institute was not merely dabbling in pseudo-science; while humouring Himmler, who guaranteed the institute’s funding, professors like Walther Wüst and Alexander Langsdorff also vehemently opposed the “intuitive” methods of Weisthor and Schmid and actually set high hopes for the academic future of Ahnenerbe before the outbreak of the war.

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[1] Bundesarchiv Deutschland: NS 21/47, NS 21/304, NS 21/712, NS 21/755, R 58/6191

Finnish National Archives: A3860 (Valpo)

US National Archives: T580-0251-00190: Georg Halbe to Walther Darré , December 20, 1937: „Unbekanntes Finnland von Georg von Grönhagen.“

Private collection of Juhani Grönhagen

[2] Inkeri Koskinen: Villi Suomen historia, 164. Tammi, 2015 (ebook).

[3] Heather Pringle: The Master Plan, 84; 347. Harper Perennial 2006.