Sigrid Hunke

Sigrid Schulze-Hunke
Dr. phil. Sigrid Hunke
Born	26 April 1913 Kiel, Province of Schleswig-Holstein, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died	15 June 1999 (aged 86) Hamburg, Germany
Education	University of Kiel University of Freiburg University of Berlin
Political party	NSDAP (1937–1945)
Spouse(s)	∞ 1942 Peter Hans Schulze

Sigrid Schulze, widely known as an author under her maiden name Sigrid Hunke (26 April 1913 – 15 June 1999), was a German historian, religious scholar, Germanist, and a prominent figure of the New Right. Rejecting Christianity as “foreign” and “Jewish” she became a pagan Unitarian. She searched for European patterns of interpreting the world and Germanic mysticism. In 1985, she received the Schiller Prize of the German Cultural Organization for the European Spirit. Up to her death, she was also Lady Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the 'Sigrid Hunke Society'.

Life

Born in 1913 in Kiel, Sigrid Hunke studied at the universities of Kiel, Freiburg, and Berlin from 1934 onwards. Hunke studied systematic and comparative religious studies, philosophy, psychology, history, folklore, journalism and German studies (Germanistik), including under Hermann Mandel (1882-1946), a Protestant theologian, Martin Heidegger, Eduard Spranger, Karl Friedrich Alfred Heinrich Ferdinand Maria Graf Eckbrecht von Dürckheim-Montmartin and Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß (her PhD supervisor).

She was a leading member of the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) and worked for its public relations office, first on a local level and then, until 1938, within the Berlin Gaustudentenführung. Here she acquired contact with the press and the public, developing a quiet fluency in her style of expression. These capabilities also promoted her literary success after the war. On 16 November 1937, Hunke applied for membership in the NSDAP and was admitted retroactively to May 1 of the same year.

In October 1936, Sigrid Hunke wrote an article in which she explained her teacher's psychological race-science as the organic counterpart of anthropological Rassenkörperkunde taught by biology, physical anthropology, and genetics. Echoing the thoughts of Clauß, Hunke followed him in his attempt to apply Edmund Husserl's phenomenology to the field of racial studies. Only the Nordic race seemed her capable of comprehending the true essence, the famous „Wesen," of racial phenomena because of a specific ability to exclude the researcher's point of view and by reason of a genuine Nordic unity between science and metaphysics. Even to learn and to live in a foreign language, Hunke reserved to the geniuses of Nordic style.

At the end of the 1930s, Hunke continued this approach in her doctoral dissertation on the Origin and Influence of Foreign Models on the German people, where she dealt with the effectiveness of models in conformity with one's race. Beginning with a eulogy on Adolf Hitler and the moral obligations represented by him, she investigated the relation between alien artfremd and intrinsic arteigen models and how they function. Hunke concluded that racial laws always remain the same, although time and space may lead to some modifications. What may happen is that the inner patterns of perception could be overrun by alien models, ergo races.

In conformity with the race theory, Hunke declared that each people has its own racial shaping. Race unifies a people and outside race no truth is possible: Alle Wahrheitserkenntnis ist rassegebunden, she stated. Especially in the sphere of religion it is impossible to act independently of one's racial determination because the religious identity forms the core of the folk. Race and folk inseparably belong together.

WWII

She received her doctorate in 1941, studying under the racial theorist Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin. Hunke joined the "Germanischer Wissenschaftseinsatz", the German Sciences Service of the SS, the organization established by Heinrich Himmler to promote Germanic solidarity in Northern Europe. Also in 1941 (like her sister Waltraud), she received a scholarship with the Ahnenerbe (Forschungsstätte für Germanenkunde im Ahnenerbe). The exact title of Hunke's racial psychology research project was Rasse und Vorbild in Deutschland (Race and Role Model in Germany). Her Tangier residence and government-sponsored excursions to several Arabic countries helped her gain a good knowledge of the Arabic language.

Post-war

After the war, she was a freelance writer in Bonn. She may be best known for her 1960 work "Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland" ("Allah's sun over the Occident"), which has been translated into numerous languages. For this book she was honoured by the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Cairo, of which she became a member. 21st century Islamic propaganda claims, she defends Islam and Muslims in her book, but she only writes of "Arabian culture" or ancient Arabertum (Arabism), but not of "Islamic culture" (although it highlighted Arab achievements, it strongly rejected Islam and Judaism) nor of a "Islamic realm":

“This book speaks about the Arab and his culture, although their bearers were not only members of that people, which Herodotus already called “Arabioi”, but also Persians, Indians, Syrians, Egyptians, Berbers, Visigoths, who helped shape the culture: because all peoples over whom the Arabs had risen up as their masters, were not only united through the common Arabic language and Arabic religion, they were stamped together through the Arab model and the unheard-of influence of the Arab spirit to a cultural whole of great unity. […] This book aims to pay a debt of gratitude to Arabism that has long been owed.”

A critic of Christianity, which she considered racial betrayal for the Germanic peoples, she joined the Unitarians in the 1950s. She was a member of the Thule-Seminar (as of 1986 permanent contributor) and published in its journal Elemente. She was associated with the Neue Rechte and the Nouvelle Droite. She traveled several times to the Arab world. In 1988, Hunke was honoured by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for her scholarly work on the relationship between Arabic and European cultures and civilisations.

Unitarianism

Sigrid Hunke is a well-known literary figure in Germany and beyond. She has written several books dealing with the subject of European identity. Especially her publications about the relation between Europe and the Arab world have achieved great success. In addition to her activities as an author, as of the 1950s, Hunke played an important role in the religious movement of the German Unitarians („Deutsche Unitarier Religionsgemeinschaft e.V."; DUR). Not to be confused with the British or North American Unitarians, the German Unitarianism of Hunke criticizes Christianity as totally alien to the European, Germanic mind.

The "Judeo-Christian" world view is accused of having brought into the world an unnatural segregation of the Holy and the profane, leading to materialism and the debasement of all spiritual values. The only possibility for Europe to overcome this profanation is to return to its pagan tradition and to strip off the foreign rule which is seen as the result of Christianization.

From 1971 to 1983, she was Vice President of the DUR. Later, she became Honorary Chairwoman.

Hunke as author

In the Beginning there were Man and Woman

The author also shows the changing principle of rulership between partners from the time when the Bible says: “He shall be your Lord” to the equal rights in the twentieth century. The patriarchal attitude of the Orient, which leaves all rights to the man, changed into the Mediterranean, Arab ideal of “cavalier and lady”. The oppression of the wife had turned into courtly worship of the beloved. – But French troubadours and German minstrels also bowed their knees to the lady of their hearts – we just want to quickly but with pleasure remember Ovid’s “art of love”, from which they all drew... A Germanic proverb, on the other hand, demands: . “Like joins like” and thus propagates, in the most modern sense, the comradely coexistence and side by side of the genders. The Nordic ideal, which sees in a woman a companion in fate and collaborator, but also as judge and prophet, was transformed by the missionary power of Christianity into the oriental form of “He shall be your Lord” and only after the devastating wars of the twentieth century, a new unity coming from the Christian and Northern European spirit emerged: man and woman fighting together for their lives. Sigrid Hunke's richly quoted work, which also includes illustrations of paintings, sarcophagi and sculptures as further evidence, is the laudable attempt by a savant woman to found marriage in a new and deeper way and to establish the “new, ancient law of relationship between men and woman” to fairly be seen in the interaction of personalities as well as in the principle of veneration of the partner.

Allah’s Sun over the Occident: Our Arabian Heritage

This book was written by a German author, Dr Sigrid Hunke in 1963, and later translated into Arabic (Cairo & Beirut: 1964), French (Paris: 1963), Turkish (Istanbul: 1972), and Persian (Tehran: 1981). The title of its Persian version can be translated as The Culture of Islam in Europe. This is the primary source for this book review, while the quoted sentences have been extracted from the original German using a virtual translator. The original German title – Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland – Unser Arabisches Erbe – can be translated into English as Allah’s Sun over the Occident: Our Arabian Heritage. [...] The work’s original German language version is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter, entitled “Spice of Everyday,” begins with examples of popular words in Europe that have their roots in the Arabic language [...] The author then describes Venice and the great presence of Eastern culture in the form of spices and other Asian commodities in the prominent European cities of the time. She then portrays Westerners imitating Eastern lifestyles and the collection of technologies that slipped from east to west. [...] She discusses the bridges to the Occident through Sicily and Spain, and mentions Frederick II, who reunited East and West. She also discusses the development of various other disciplines in Europe, such as art, music, and literature. [...] She refers to the religious [...], a trend she links to the hospitality of the pre-Islamic Arabs. Reading this book gives the impression that its author is a devoted Eastern Muslim, while in fact she is a German Unitarian. This can be seen at the end, when the author mentions that any separation between West and East is trivial, and what needs to be emphasised is the intercultural relationship and quest for common interests. As Goethe says in his West-East Divan: “one who knows himself and the others knows as well that East and West are inseparable.”

Europe's Own Religion: Overcoming the Religious Crisis

Europe has been in a deep spiritual crisis for a long time. Christianity, which has existed for almost two millennia, is no longer acceptable to many because of its rigid dogmas and its restrictions on free will and self-determination. Dr. Hunke Europe's own religion, the faith of the free, responsible, open-minded people who, as part of nature, know the divine within themselves, whose morality arises from their free will, who does not seek a reward in the hereafter. The great minds of Europe, from Eriugena and Meister Eckhart to Nikolaus von Kues and Kant, to Goethe and Nietzsche to Albert Schweitzer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Teilhard de Chardin, have always lived this European religion and, depending on their time, are more or less heretics towards a Christianity that is too restrictive. This large cross-section of European intellectual history offers the foundations for a modern conception of the divine and thus the necessary prerequisite for overcoming materialism and shallow plositivism. This book will become a standard work for religious seekers of our time.

Quotes

• "How can humankind resist the beauty of this language, with its logic and unique brilliance? Even the Arab's neighbours, people they've conquered, have fallen under the charm of this language." – Dr. Sigrid Hunke, in: Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland – Unser arabisches Erbe

• The women of the former Germanic Europe are now returning from their thousand-year alienation to their original nature, coexisting as equals with men. The evolution of male and female specialists of extreme human biases into holistic men and women raises humanity to a higher level overall. – Dr. Sigrid Hunke criticizing the hostagement of women by Christianity, in: Die Zukunft unseres unvergänglichen Erbes in Mann und Frau, "Elemente", 1987

Family

Sigrid was the daughter of publisher Heinrich Hunke (1879–1953), wealthy owner of the Walter G. Mühlau Verlag, and his wife Hildegard, née Lau (b. 19 September 1879 in Schöneberg; d. 20 February 1944 in Bad Hersfeld). The mother was a daughter of the engineer Thies Peter Lau (1844–1933) and his wife Walewska Berta Anna, née Artelt (1856–1943). Hunke had two sisters, including Dr. phil. Waltraud Hunke (b 28 April 1915 in Kiel; d. 5 August 2004; Dissertation: Die Trojaburgen und ihre Bedeutung, München 1941), who later took over her father's bookstore. Waltraud (Germanic and Scandinavian medievalist, bookseller, publisher and patron), also with the Ahnenerbe and member of the NSDAP, worked on the Germanic matriarchy, an important theme for the status of German women in the .

Marriage

In 1942, she married the orientalist and diplomat Peter H. Schulze (b. 1919), a member of the Sicherheitsdienst, and lived with him in Tangier, then Spanish Morocco, where he was stationed (as a member of the consulat général), until 1944. Schulze served from 1946 to 25 September 1949 in the radio listening service (Radioabhördienst) of the Organisation Gehlen under Reinhard Gehlen and from 26 September 1949 to 1984 in the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government (BPA), from 1953 to 1963 as head of department and head of the service (Referatsleiter und Chef vom Dienst). Peter Hans Schulze published several books on old-Egyptian mythology after the war and perhaps for this reason, Hunke would bear her maiden name as an author.

Hagen Schulze

Sigrid and Peter had several children. Their son and first-born, Prof. Dr. Hagen Schulze (b. 31 July 1943 in Tangier; d. 4 September 2014 in Berlin), became a well-known historian in Germany. Hagen studied medieval and early modern history, philosophy and political science at the University of Bonn and the University of Kiel. In 1967, he earned his doctorate with the dissertation Freikorps und Republik 1918–1920 and worked during the following years at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin and for the Federal Archives in Koblenz.

In 1977, he earned his habilitation with his biography of Reiner Braun, after which he worked as a private tutor and as a substitute teacher at Kiel and Berlin until 1979, when he was named a full professor of modern history and historiography at the Free University of Berlin. From 2000 to 2006, Schulze was the director of the German Historical Institute in London.

Awards

• 1981: Kant-Plakette (German Academy for Education and Culture in Munich)
• 1985: Schiller-Preis des Deutschen Kulturwerks Europäischen Geistes (German Cultural Work of European Spirit e. V. in Munich; DKEG)
• 1988: Egyptian Order Pour le Mérite for Science and Art

Works (excerpt)

• Schulungsbrief „Rassenseelenkunde“, 1935
• Herkunft und Wirkung fremder Vorbilder auf den deutschen Menschen [Origin and Effect of Foreign Role Models on German People], Dissertation Berlin 1941
• Am Anfang waren Mann und Frau. Vorbilder und Wandlungen der Geschlechterbeziehungen, G. Grote Verlag, Hamm 1955
• Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland – Unser arabisches Erbe, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1960, several Editions (Paperback edition: Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-15088-4)
• Das Reich ist tot – es lebe Europa. Eine europäische Ethik, Hannover 1965
• Europas andere Religion. Die Überwindung der religiösen Krise, Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf / Wien 1969, several Editions
• Das Ende des Zwiespalts. Diagnose und Therapie einer kranken Gesellschaft, Bergisch Gladbach 1971
• Das nach-kommunistische Manifest. Der dialektische Unitarismus als Alternative, Stuttgart 1974
• Kamele auf dem Kaisermantel. Deutsch-arabische Begegnungen seit Karl dem Großen, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1976
• Glauben und Wissen. Die Einheit europäischer Religion und Naturwissenschaft, Düsseldorf 1979
• Europas eigene Religion. Der Glaube der Ketzer, Bergisch Gladbach 1983
• Tod – was ist dein Sinn?, Günther Neske Verlag, Pfullingen 1986
• Was trägt den Untergang des Zeitalters?, in: "Elemente zur Metapolitik", 1986, p. 40 ff.
• Überwindung des Dualismus. Zur Wiedergewinnung ganzheitlichen Denkens in der Gegenwart, in: "Handbuch Deutscher Nation", vol. 3: Moderne Wissenschaft und Zukunftsperspektive, Bernard Wilms, ed., Tübingen 1988, pp. 11-42
• Kampf um Europas religiöse Identität, in: "Mut zur Identität. Alternativen zum Prinzip der Gleichheit", Pierre Krebs, ed., Struckum 1988, pp. 75-104
• Vom Untergang des Abendlandes zum Aufgang Europas. Bewußtseinswandel und Zukunftsperspektiven, Rosenheim 1989
• Allah ist ganz anders. Enthüllung von 1001 Vorurteilen über die Araber, Bad König 1990 (siehe auch: Saladin)

Essays

• Verstehen, in: "Rasse. Monatsschrift der Nordischen Bewegung", 1936, pp. 86–91
• Das dualistische Vorbild Europas, in: "Philosophisches Wörterbuch", published by G. Schischkoff, Stuttgart 1965
• Die Zukunft unseres unvergänglichen Erbes in Mann und Frau, in: "Elemente der Metapolitik zur europäischen Wiedergeburt", No. 2 (June/September), 1987, pp. 27–34 (Archive)

External links

• Feminism and Women on the Right (Part 1)