WAR ON CHRISTIANITY

Hokitika Guardian, 15 April 1929, Page 3

WAR ON CHRISTIANITY

ludendokkf and wife

1‘ ield-Marshall Ludeiulorff, one of the leaders of Germany’s armies during war. recently completed arrangements for a gigantic missionary campaign through Germany, in which he and Dr. Mathilda Ludeudorlf, his wife would, it was announced tour the length and breadth of the Fatherland calling on the German people to renounce to the worship of its ancient pagan gods. General Ludeudorlf anu his wile, as stated in a cablegram, have begun their campaign.

General Ludeudorlf, since his retirement from military life to his castle at Ludwigshoehe, near Munich, after the war, has, as was hitherto known only to a few of the initiated, recently become the apostle of a new religion, to which his wife is the high priestess.

The “high priestess” a few weeks ago published a hook, entitled “Deutseher Gott Glauhe” (German God Creed), in which she condemns Christianity as “a foreign cult unsuited to the German character.” “Through many thousands of years” Krau Ludeudorlf declares, “our forefathers were a strong and forceful people with high moral standards, sound in body and soul. About lIP, years ago system of wholesale murder to extirpate our forefathers of Germanic faith was instituted. Thousands and thousands were killed because they preferred -death •to abjuring the faith of their fathers. About TOGO years ago their resistance was finally broken, and our true national religion was henceforth represented as the work of the devi.l. “Now, 1030 years after this terrible catastrophe, we find our pro-pie living in the deepest moral abandonment. in Godlessness, in 'dull religious indifference, or rigid ritualism. The number of those who succeed in living according to the precepts of the foreign creed of Christianity is negligible.

“At last, however, in this hour of our national need, the recognition of the sanctity of mu' race, and tin*-sanc-tity of-our racial godsshave once more awakened. Nothing can prevent' us Germans from returning during the coming century to the worship of the gods of our fathers.” Frau Lndenorff’s book is full of references to the mythology of pagan Germany, to the goddess Tied, to Wotan. to Asa, and other heroic did ties known to the present generation of Germans chiefly through performances to Wagnerian opera.

Frau Ludendorff’s bible is the Edda, the great -Scandinavian collection of Norse folklore written .down in Runic characters during the hlth and I.3th centuries. In the Edda she has discovered the prophecy of Germany’s present plight, but also the gospel of Germany’s future salvation. The greatest enemies of the German people, according to tho LudendorlFs, ait* the Jews, Jesuits, and the Freemasons. General Ludeudorlf has vowed to devote his great military brain to waging a ruthless war on these “insidious foes.”

It was stated that for tho purposes of their campaign, the two missionaries had decided to divide the subject field of their programme so that Frau Ludeudorlf should deal mainly with the theological side of their creed while the general, as befits an old soldier, would lead tlie attack on the Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons, and other “infidels.”

The general and his wife say they have no intention for the present of inciting their Hock to practise the ancient rituals of their savage forbears. They hope, however, that when the ground for the great tiermanic reformation has been sufficiently prepared it will fall to their apostolic successor ,to lead the German people out of the “heretical un-Ger-manic church 's'’ back into the pagan eiisioms of their forefathers.