Karl Germer -- never OHO of the O.T.O.
P.R. Koenig
Karl Johannes Germer was born on 22 January 1885 in Elberfeld, Germany.
His brothers and sisters were named Elisabeth, Margarete, Otto,
Wilhelm, Gustav and Alfred. From 1900-1904 he was living in London. For
his military involvment in 1908-09 in Dixmuiden, Lemberg, Stochod and
Armentières-Lens he received the Second and the First Class Steel
Cross. Between 1912 and 1914 he became representative of the Alfred
Herbert Lt (Coventry) in Berlin. During World War I he served in Belgium,
Russia and France.
In 1919 Germer met Heinrich Traenker in Leipzig.
In 1923 he sold his house in Vienna and
moved to Munich in order to publish the magazine "Pansophia", together with
Otto Wilhelm Barth and Traenker. In 1925, while visiting Germany,
Crowley first stayed at Traenker's home but soon moved to the Germer's.
In the same year, Germer was a patient of Alfred Adler in Vienna [there
exist no surviving papers on this in any of the Adler-Institutes]. In
1926 Germer got a divorce from his first wife Marie Wys in Mexico in order
to marry the rich Cora Eaton in New York on 15 January 1929. Back in
Germany he was arrested on 13 February 1935 by the Gestapo. His wife
Cora (who was staying in the US) and Martha Kuentzel (in Leipzig)
unsuccessfully tried to have the American Ambassador to complain about
the arrest.
Between February and August 1935 Germer was a prisoner
in a Concentration Camp in Esterwegen. In October he fled to England
and arrived in Dublin on 1 December 1936 where he worked as an
Engineer. Between 1939 and 1940 he wrote 223 pages of his
autobiographical book "Protective Prisoner No 303" about his
experiences in the Concentration Camp. At the outbreak of WWII Germer
stayed in Belgium and was deported on 10 May 1940 to France. He was
released on 1 February 1941. On 13 July 1942 the rich Cora died. Two months
later he married the rich Vienna piano teacher Sascha Ernestine André
(born 1891) who, alias Elly Aszkanasy also had given singing lessons.
With her money, Germer supported Aleister Crowley.
 | Das Milieu des Templer Reichs - Die Sklaven Sollen Dienen. Hanns Heinz Ewers - Lanz von Liebenfels - Karl Germer, Arnoldo Krumm-Heller - Martha Kuentzel - Friedrich Lekve - Hermann Joseph Metzger - Christian Bouchet - Paolo Fogagnolo - James Wasserman. Unbequeme Aspekte in der Geschichte von O.T.O. und Thelema |
After Crowley's death on 1 December 1947 a lot of surviving members
wanted Germer as OHO of the Crowley-O.H.O. but Germer always neglected
the job.
In 1956 he was living in the house of Ero Shivonen, in
Barstow, California. Here he initiated Marcelo Ramos Motta into the
IX°. Motta remembered that Germer "told us sadly that Crowley had
loved him, and had wanted to have sex with him, but he had refused his
Instructor's advances all his life."
Only during Germer's stay in the Concentration Camp while receiving the Conversation with his Holy Guardian Angel, Germer
allegedly learned the joys of "passivity" and eventually, 20 or more
years later, made sexual advances towards Motta, who refused. Motta:
"Mr Germer recounted that, when in a Nazi concentration camp, he was
ascribed a number which was the German symbolic number of the passive
paederast, and his fellow prisonsers mocked him for it. He told us that
previously he would have felt affronted; but at this time he took it as
a message of his Angel to become passive (cf. LXV i 44-46). Soon
afterwards he was put in solitary, and whole in solitary applied
himself to remembering the Holy Books of Thelema and reconstructing
them, verse by verse, in his mind."
Allegedly, Germer had suffered from Syphilis from Crowley. Also the FBI
suspected "I do feel something is wrong with these two men
[Crowley and Germer] being in contact with each other. Mr. Crowley
secured the brains behind Germer. The latter seemed to be a tool in his
hands".
Germer wasn't very much interested in O.T.O. matters: You must have realised that my heart and soul are not very deeply in this. A.C. knew this. He suggested to me that after his death I may either drop this form or system of working, or devise my own entirely independent method." "O.T.O. does not interest me too much; mine is only the A.A. and ... A.C. wanted me to set up an entirely different system." And he didn't "read books". A fact which very much disappointed the more educated O.T.O. members (e.g. Frederic Mellinger) and caused them to leave the Crowley-O.T.O. under Germer.
Karl Germer died from prostatic cancer on 25 October 1962 and left a chaos as to the successor of himself or Crowley. When H.J. Metzger proclaimed himself OHO of the O.T.O. in January 1963, he published a "Memento Mori" and declared Germer to having been a X°. Henry Birven, "the closest friend of the deceased" strongly protested because Germer never should have seen himself as either a X° or OHO.
This is an outline from the German "Das OTO-Phaenomen"
(1994) and Abramelin & Co.
(1995)
Of Booksellers And Other Grand Masters of the
O.T.O.: Detailed biographies on
Heinrich Tränker, Karl Germer, Henri Birven, Spencer Lewis, C.H.
Petersen, Eduard Munninger -- and their relation with the O.T.O. under
Reuss, Crowley and Metzger -- containing Henri Birven's "Obituary on
Karl Germer" with interesting details about Crowley in Berlin in 1930
|
To another biography on Karl Germer
Karl Germer's own autobiographical
outline
To the main page of Photographs and Documents
Das Milieu des Templer Reichs - Die Sklaven Sollen Dienen. Hanns Heinz Ewers - Lanz von Liebenfels - Karl Germer, Arnoldo Krumm-Heller - Martha Kuentzel - Friedrich Lekve - Hermann Joseph Metzger - Christian Bouchet - Paolo Fogagnolo - James Wasserman. Unbequeme Aspekte in der Geschichte von O.T.O. und Thelema
More about all this in: Andreas Huettl and Peter-R. Koenig: Satan - Jünger, Jäger und Justiz
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