Jakob Wilhelm Hauer

Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (4 April 1881 in Ditzingen, Württemberg – 18 February 1962 in Tübingen) was a German Indologist and religious studies writer. He was the founder of the German Faith Movement.

In the two burning centers [Brennpunktsgebieten] of this great expanse, in Indo-Arya and in Germania, we find, even in the religious and spiritual attitudes and formations, an unmistakable kinship, one that extends all the way to their roots.

Even today one finds overall in the realm of the Indo-Aryans and their anthropological and geographical surroundings blond and blue-eyed types, so that we may assume that the dark-haired and dark-eyed ‘north Indians’ became darker partly under the influence of the climate [and] partly through admixture with the dark-skinned pre-Aryan inhabitants of ancient India.

Quotes

• India is universally held to be the land of quiet contemplation, escapist mysticism, dreaming passivity. But whoever knows India knows that this image is onesided. It is true that the Indo-Aryans, very early in their history, turned inward with an exceptional fervor. . . . [But] the urge toward contemplation and a turn away from the world is only one side of the Indo-Aryan essence. Complementing it in a polar tension is an extraordinary activism that worked itself out ever anew through the millennia in gladiatorial battles, and in the building of temples and riches. The powerful northern blood inheritance [nordische Bluterbe] of the Aryans who migrated into India roughly three millennia before Christ did not remain concealed in India.
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

• Research in comparative religion has shown that the oldest, religious documents of ancient India point back to an Ur-Germanic age.
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

• Today, it is considered settled that the racial traits of the Indo-Aryans link them historically to that race which has had the definitive influence in the Indo-Germanic world, the northern [race].
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

• Even today one finds overall in the realm of the Indo-Aryans and their anthropological and geographical surroundings blond and blue-eyed types, so that we may assume that the dark-haired and dark-eyed ‘north Indians’ became darker partly under the influence of the climate [and] partly through admixture with the dark-skinned pre-Aryan inhabitants of ancient India.
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

• The exemplary researches of [Egon] von Eickstedt, now evaluated in Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menschheit.... [demonstrates] that even today primarily in northwest India, indeed all the way to Bengal and further into the mountains of south India, a type of human close to the northern type is to be found, which von Eickstedt calls the north Indios [Indiden].
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

• So much at least is clear, that Indo-Arya remained extensively under the influence of northern blood and stands even today, albeit in pronounced admixture with non-Aryan elements.
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

• In the two burning centers [Brennpunktsgebieten] of this great expanse, in Indo-Arya and in Germania, we find, even in the religious and spiritual attitudes and formations, an unmistakable kinship, one that extends all the way to their roots.
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

• If there is something characteristic of the northern spirit, it is the extraordinary vigor that courses through it. . . . Ever again, the Indo-Germanic community has been forced to the most intensive activity in a struggle for the unity of forces that threaten to pull apart.
  • quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

Quotes about Hauer

• The only positive connection between India and National-Socialism would be in the person of Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. (...) Hauer was one of those German Upanishad-lovers in the tradition of Arthur Schopenhauer. There was nothing wrong with his search for a universal religion in which Hinduism would be a major tributary. The point is that the regime was hostile to this project. When he propagated Paganism, he had to clothe it in a verbiage of Germanness, downplaying his Hindu sources. (...) The Nazis mocked him as a failed missionary now making a second soul-winning attempt on the Germans...
  • Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 924ff