Else Christensen (1913-2005)
Else Christensen, affectionately referred to as the ''Folk Mother'',
was a pioneering figure in the emergence of Odinism in Post WWII.
Else Ochsner was born in Denmark in 1913, and met her husband Alex
in 1937. She and her husband became syndicalist activists before the
war and thus where under heavy scrutiny by the Nazi occupation troops.
An informant tipped off the German Police that Else and her husband
possessed numerous firearms and they were arrested and detained under
suspicion of being involved in the partisan underground. They were
released, but toward the end of the war Alex spent six months in a
camp outside of Elsinore for his syndicalist involvement.
After the war, the Christensens emigrated to Canada. In the early
1960's they heard of an Odinist named Alexander Rud Mills who had
an Odinist Church in Australia and had written a book called The Call
of Our Ancient Nordic Religion. Eventually, Else and her husband founded
a group called ''The Odinist Study Group'' which later evolved into
''The Odinist Fellowship''. Alex died in 1971, and Else continued
her work in Odinism, relocating to the United States. Else published
a newsletter called ''The Odinist'' for many years.
She was instrumental in getting Odinism and Asatru recognized by
the prison system in the United States and was known for her networking
and letter writing campaigns. For several years Else's xeroxed and
stapled ''Odinist'' newsletter seemed to be the only thing linking
the scattered Odinist community across North America. Else was very
well regarded for helping many ex-convict Odinists reintegrate as
functional members of society, as well as corresponding with hundreds
of inmates who adhered to Asatru.
Else later in her life spent 64 months in a Federal Prison herself
over a narcotics related conviction, allegedly because she had been
taken advantage of as a drug mule without her knowledge.
Else was a Canadian citizen, and after her prison sentence she was
without transportation and totally destitute. The Asatru community
held a fund raiser to help her get re-established in British Columbia.
She resumed her involvement with ''The Odinist Fellowship'' and continued
publishing ''The Odinist'' newsletter. At the age of 91 she retired
from running her organization and the group merged with the Odinic
Rite. A few days later on May 5th, she passed away.
Sources: Else
Christensen, Wikipedia ; Hail
the Folkmother! – a tribute by Osred
|
Walter Cookes (1878-1976)
Walter David Cookes, was a footwear manufacturer of the Ezywalkin
footwear enterprise. He joined the Rationalist Society of Australia
in 1911 and was local secretary of the Perth District by 1914. Cookes
was treasurer of the Rationalist Association of Victoria from November
1919 until July 1921, when he resigned because of business pressures.
In 1925, together with James Humphrey Skerry, he was a foundation
director of the newly incorporated Rationalist Association of
Australia Limited.
Cookes became involved with the Australia-First Movement through
fellow Rationalist W.J. Miles.
Sources:
The
Foundation of the Victorian Rationalist Society 1909: Edward Martineau
Higginson 1909-1923, Australian Rationalist, No. 51;
James
Humphrey Skerry, The unremarked rationalist 1898-1971, Australian
Rationalist, No. 60/61.
Image of W.D. Cookes [State
Library of Victoria]
|
Erich Ludendorff
(1865-1937)
Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff was a German Army
officer, Quartermaster General during World War I, victor of Liege,
and, with Paul von Hindenburg, one of the victors of the battle of
Tannenberg. After the war, he briefly supported Adolf Hitler and the
Nazi Party. He was acquitted of criminal charges for his role in the
Nazis' unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch. Following this he became disillusioned
with politics and retired from public life that year.
Ludendorff was involved with the Tannenberbund, a
völkische organisation formed in 1925 by Konstantin Hierl. With
Hitler’s succession to power in 1933, the Tannenbergbund was
banned along with its magazine Ludendorffs Volkswarte. The regime
only allowing the purely philosophical newspaper Am heiligen Quell
Deutscher Kraft to continue until 1939.
In his later years, Ludendorff went into relative
seclusion with his second wife, Mathilde von Kemnitz (1874-1966),
authoring several books. He founded the "Bund für Gotteserkenntnis"
(Society for the Knowledge of God), a small esoterical society that
survives to this day.
On 27 May 1933, G. K. Chesterton wrote an article
in the Illustrated London News, denouncing the Heathen revival in
Germany and Ludendorff:
For this peculiar sort of pride is the problem of
Germany, especially North Germany, and primarily, of course, Prussia….
I know that we have also been poisoned by that pride, in a more
subtle and perhaps a more dangerous form, but never in quite so
extreme or extravagant a form. For instance, there is doubtless
many an old Tory Colonel, or rigid reactionary General, cursing
and swearing in Bath or Brighton, whose view of the damned natives
and the dirty niggers and the infernal Irishman or Indians is, in
fact, a mere heathen hate and scorn, quite untinged by Christian
charity, and certainly blankly unacquainted with the very existence
of Christian humility. But if you will show me a retired British
General who travelled round England with a sort of torchlight procession,
proclaiming the restoration of the worship of Odin and Thor, I shall
be much surprised. If you tell me that Earl Haig or Lord Plumer
went from town to town with a brass band, abolishing the worship
of Christ and excitedly restoring the old gods to Asgard, I shall
think it very odd. But that is precisely what was done by one of
the leading Generals who directed the whole German army during the
Great War: General Ludendorff, a man whose military fame and responsibility
were like those of Hindenburg or Foch.
Sources: Erich
Ludendorff, Wikipedia (English) ; Erich
Ludendorff, Wikipedia (Deutsch) |
William Miles (1871-1942)
William John Miles was a rationalist, public accountant and businessman
who founded the Rationalist Press Association of New South Wales
in 1912. He regularly spoke at the Domain in Sydney against conscription
in the First World War, until the issue was finally settled by referendum
in 1917. In October of that year he helped establish the Advance
Australia League, under the slogan “Australia First”.
When his Independent Sydney Secularist ceased in 1940
after forty-nine issues, Miles wrote that censorship had caused
him to suspend publication.
Miles founded The Publicist, subtitled “The Paper
Loyal to Australia First” in 1936. P.R. “Inky”
Stephensen took over as editor in July 1936, and continued until
March 1942.
Source: Miles,
William John, Australian Dictionary of Biography
|
Percy "inky" Stephensen (1901-1965)
Percy Reginald "Inky" Stephensen was a prominent man of letters.
He had been taught Latin at Maryborough Boys’ Grammar School
by Gordon Child, and gone on to study arts at the University of
Queensland, where he became a close friend of Jack Lindsay and the
famous grammarian Eric Partridge - and also became member number
45 of the Australian Communist Party (later denouncing communism
as "only banditry disguised as a political philosophy".) In 1924
he gained a Rhodes Scholarship, and after his studies at Oxford
he became manager of the Franfrolico Press in 1927. Here he published
authors like Aldous Huxley, Jack Lindsay, Hugh McCrae and Kenneth
Slessor. He translated and published Nietzsche’s The Antichrist
in 1929 (illustrated by Norman Lindsay), and after moving
to the Mandrake Press he published DH Lawrence’s paintings,
the first English edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and
works by Aleister Crowley.
On returning to Australia in 1932 he became managing director of
the Australian Book Publishing Company, and brought out works by
Norman Lindsay, Banjo Paterson, Henry Handel Richardson, Eleanor
Dark, Randolph Hughes and Xavier Herbert.
Source: “Behind Barbed Wire”, Renewal, September
1995, No. 2, Vol. 2
Image of P.R. Stephensen [National
Library of Australia]
Painting of Stephensen by Edward Quickie whilst interned [National
Library of Australia]
|
Adela Pankhurst-Walsh (1885-1961)
Daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst. Attended the all-women Studley
Horticultural College in Warwickshire, England. Emigrated to Australia
in 1914. She was recruited during World War I as an organiser for
the Women's Peace Army in Melbourne by Vida Goldstein. Adela wrote
a book called Put up the sword and addressed public meetings
on her opposition to the war and conscription.
She married Tom Walsh of the Federated Seamen’s Union of
Australasia in 1917. Adela was a founding member of the Communist
Party of Australia in 1920 from which she was later expelled.
She became disillusioned with socialism and was a founding member
of the Australia-First Movement. She visited Japan in 1939 and was
arrested and interned in 1941-42 for her advocacy of peace with
Japan and her role with the Australia-First Movement.
Adela's mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, and sisters, Sylvia and Christabel
had been active in the fight for women's suffrage in the United
Kingdom.
Source: Adela
Pankhurst, Wikipedia
Images of Adela Pankhurst-Walsh [Museum
of London] [National
Library of Australia]
|
Sidney Webb (1859-1947)
Sidney Webb was appointed to the Labour Party National Executive
(UK) in 1915. By 1922 he was Chairman of the National Executive
and the following year, in the 1923 General Election, was chosen
to represent the Labour Party in the Seaham constituency. Webb won
the seat and when Ramsay MacDonald became Britain’s first
Labour Prime Minister in 1924, he appointed Webb as his President
of the Board of Trade.
Webb left the House of Commons in 1929 when he was granted the
title Baron Passfield. Now in the House of Lords, Webb served as
Secretary of State for the Colonies in MacDonald's second Labour
Government.
In 1932 the Webbs visited the Soviet Union. Although unhappy with
the lack of political freedom in the country they were impressed
with the rapid improvement in the health and educational services
and the changes that had taken place to ensure economic and political
equality for women. When they returned to Britain they wrote a book
on the economic experiments taking place in the Soviet Union called
Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (1935). In the book
the Webbs predicted that "the social and economic system of planned
production for community consumption" of the Soviet Union would
eventually spread to the rest of the world. They added that they
hoped this would happen through reform rather than revolution.
Beatrice Potter recorded her first meeting with Sidney Webb as
a diary entry on 14th February 1890:
Sidney Webb, the socialist, dined here to meet Charles and
Mary Booth. A remarkable little man with a huge head on a very
tiny body, a breadth of forehead quite sufficient to account for
the encyclopaedic character of his knowledge, a Jewish nose, prominent
eyes and mouth, black hair, somewhat unkept, spectacles and a
most bourgeois black coat shiny with wear.
Source: Sidney
Webb, Spartacus Educational
Image of Sidney Webb (Baron Passfield) [National
Portrait Gallery, UK]
|
John “stubba” Yeowell
John Yeowell, established the Committee for the Restoration
of the Odinic Rite / Odinist Committee in the United Kingdom
in 1973. The organisation changed its name in 1980 to The Odinic
Rite after it was believed that it had gained enough interest
in the restoration of the Odinic faith.
Source: Odinic
Rite, Wikipedia
|
