Fascist and Fortean.
Heinz Kloss was born 30 October 1904 in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. I know nothing about his early or personal life. He graduated from the department of economics at the University of Halle in 1926, with an interest in the role of language in the cohering of German folk communities. He joined the German Academy—which was a proto-Fascist group focused on the role of (German) ethnic groups in the taking of land. In 1927 he went to work at the German Foreign Institute (DAI), which sent him to the United States for none-months of research in 1930; returned, he became librarian at the DAI. He wrote a book on historical linguistics in 1935, which served as his dissertation in 1939.
Kloss’s research helped to solve a problem that had become central to German civilization in the wake of World War I: how to make a coherent civilization. He was especially concerned with bringing back into the national fold Germans who had emigrated to other countries; indeed, that was the DAI’s mission. Kloss’s part was to focus on America, tying its German community to Germany, and then spreading Nazi ideology through it. There were some in German’s fascist community that saw America as a natural ally—it was the Zionists, they said, who tried to forged a special connection between America and Britian, when, in fact, German’s contribution to American society was equally robust. Kloss was concerned that a new race might be emerging out of America’s great melting pot, with miscegenation weakening the stock. He was intent to strengthen the German community and, in tune with Nazi ideology, keeping it pure.
Heinz Kloss was born 30 October 1904 in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. I know nothing about his early or personal life. He graduated from the department of economics at the University of Halle in 1926, with an interest in the role of language in the cohering of German folk communities. He joined the German Academy—which was a proto-Fascist group focused on the role of (German) ethnic groups in the taking of land. In 1927 he went to work at the German Foreign Institute (DAI), which sent him to the United States for none-months of research in 1930; returned, he became librarian at the DAI. He wrote a book on historical linguistics in 1935, which served as his dissertation in 1939.
Kloss’s research helped to solve a problem that had become central to German civilization in the wake of World War I: how to make a coherent civilization. He was especially concerned with bringing back into the national fold Germans who had emigrated to other countries; indeed, that was the DAI’s mission. Kloss’s part was to focus on America, tying its German community to Germany, and then spreading Nazi ideology through it. There were some in German’s fascist community that saw America as a natural ally—it was the Zionists, they said, who tried to forged a special connection between America and Britian, when, in fact, German’s contribution to American society was equally robust. Kloss was concerned that a new race might be emerging out of America’s great melting pot, with miscegenation weakening the stock. He was intent to strengthen the German community and, in tune with Nazi ideology, keeping it pure.
There were German-American groups similarly focused on reconciliation between America and fascist Germany, though the relationship between these groups and the German scholars (and politicians) was not always smooth, with competition and argument not uncommon. (One of these groups was the German American Bund; another Fortean, Clara Studer, would be connected to it during World War II, her peace activism seen as a front for pro-Naziism; yet another Fortean, the Duke of Bedford, would similarly see his pacifism attacked as pro-German sentiment, by George Orwell.)
In 1936 and 1937, Kloss went to America again, this time to (try to) coordinate the activities between German scholars and American activists. The idea was to rejuvenate the identity of “German language islands”—as Cornelia Wilhelm wrote in an article that serves as the basis for much of what I know about Kloss. Part of the plan was to map these islands, so that they could serve as the point places for Nazi representatives. Apparently, while based in Philadelphia, Kloss traveled thousands of miles around the country, connecting with these disparate groups, trying to knit them into something coherent. Returned once again to his homeland, Kloss recommended that Germany continue its educational activities in America, not seeking to make pure Nazis, but to make German-Americans proud of their heritage and sympathetic to fascism.
Another trip to America interrupted by the War, the prolific Kloss became the head of a new agency—connected to a number of German war-time institutions—that allowed him to continue his linguistic research. Wilhelm says, though, that most of his research at this time was information gathering, and his publications were “propaganda.” These continued to flog his earlier concerns, especially the lack of German-ethnic identity in America and the need for Nazi ideology to make the islands into a coherent group. He also wrote in this topic for political officials so that they could use it in reaching out to American Germans. Wilhelm writes, Kloss “created a concept of research that was to match and legitimize a cultural memory and identity according to Nazi ideology, and laid the groundwork for the political activation of the group and its memory.” He eventually became a member of the NSDAP in 1941.
After the war, Kloss’s activities were investigated, and he was eventually allowed to continue his research. As Wilhelm notes, he seems to have downplayed his own activities and explained his work as pure research, when it was not. Subsequently, he went on to do important and well-cited research in linguistics. Early in the 1950s he did fundamental work on how to distinguish between new languages and dialects. He continued to elaborate his taxonomy into the 1960s. In the 1970s, a number of his works made their way into English, including what is probably his best-known work in this country, “The American Bilingual Tradition.” As Wilhelm notes, along with the scholar C. M. Hutton,” this work was largely built on research he did during the 1930s and 1940s, when he was associated with German fascism.
Heinz Kloss died 13 June 1987. He was 82.
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Heinz Kloss nestles easily within Thayer’s fascist Fortean circle, but his presence within the Society nonetheless raises questions I cannot answer. He was a member of the Fortean Society since very near its renascence in the mid-1930s, if not at exactly the moment that it was reborn. Already in issue 2, dated October 1937, he was listed as a “foreign correspondent” of Germany, living in Stuttgart. This would have been just after he returned from his trip to America. Likely, it was on this trip that he became associated with the Society, though exactly how is unclear. There is some room for informed speculation, though.
Almost certainly, Kloss knew the poet and German propagandist George Sylvester Viereck. Viereck had been in Germany during the early part of the 1930s, trying to get the Nazi’s to advertise in America; and in the mid-1930s, he was associated with the German American Bund. Kloss could have met him, possibly, when Viereck came to Germany, and all-but-doubtlessly when Kloss visited America: he was tasked, after all, with connecting to the pro-German elements in America. Viereck was also an acquaintance of Thayer.
How Thayer and Viereck came to no one another is difficult to discern. Thayer was a fan of Ezra Pound, and Pound and Viereck came to know each other—but at a later date. I am unaware of any connections between Thayer and American fascism—and though he had sympathies for it, and (at best) indifference toward anti-Semitism, he doesn’t seem the type to have joined. The best I can guess is that Thayer became aware of Vierick through Viereck’s poetry; that poetry received a lot of attention in the early 1930s. Viereck had also run his own magazine. One can imagine Thayer, a man who cultivated a number of different intellectual heroes, seeking out Viereck in the mid-1930s, as he was about to relaunch the Society and start its magazine, to talk of his plans, and of poetry: Thayer considered himself an aficionado of the form. This would place the meeting between Thayer and Viereck in late 1936 or early 1937, after Thayer had left Hollywood. Thayer may very well have met Kloss personally, then.
Kloss does not appear in the pages of the Fortean Society magazine—later titled Doubt—properly until after World War II, at which point he had purged his Nazi past. And at that he only showed up two times, both in 1948, which might suggest a limited connection but also raises some uncomfortable questions. The first mention was in passing. In Doubt 21 (June 1948), Thayer welcomed a new Fortean, Ernst Fuhrmann, noting that Fuhrmann had been called to the Society’s attention by Kloss, who had been a member since year 1. Perhaps this description was a mistake, and Thayer meant since the beginning of the reborn Fortean Society. But if he did mean year 1, then he was referring to the Society’s founding in 1931, suggesting that Kloss had made a connection with Thayer even earlier, possibly still through Viereck.
The other reference came two issues later, in Doubt 23, ca. December 1948, under the title German Forteana. Thayer was asking for German translators to go through a whole collection of Forteana he had received, written by Fuhrmann as well as Karl Neupert and Ernst Barthel. He noted that all of this material had been sent to him from Kloss. It could certainly be that Kloss was simply providing Thayer with material he thought might be interesting—Neupert’s cosmogony was supposed to be similar to the Koreshans, for example. But given Kloss’s pre-war propaganda activities, there is also the lingering suspicion that he night still have been trying to create a pan-Germanic folk community.
Was he a Fortean—or did he see Thayer’s Society as an outlet for propaganda? It’s an open question.
Equally interesting is Thayer’s . . . I don’t know whether to call it bravery or naiveté, or what. Only a few years before, Thayer had been accused of sedition. He had attacked World War II as a hoax put on by the world’s governments and bankers to feed the war profiteers. He knew that other pacifists were accused of pro-Fascist sympathies. He was a friend of Ezra Pound. And yet, here he was, trumpeting the work of a German, a former Nazi, who had been involved with propaganda and trying to make an alliance between fascist Germany and America. Thayer’s promoting of Kloss did not blow up in his face, though it easily could have.
At the end of this last column mentioning Kloss, Thayer wrote that Kloss promised to send on more German Forteana. I am not sure if Kloss broke the connection, or if Thayer did, but no more material appeared. It wasn’t the last time that Thayer flirted with fascists, though.
In 1936 and 1937, Kloss went to America again, this time to (try to) coordinate the activities between German scholars and American activists. The idea was to rejuvenate the identity of “German language islands”—as Cornelia Wilhelm wrote in an article that serves as the basis for much of what I know about Kloss. Part of the plan was to map these islands, so that they could serve as the point places for Nazi representatives. Apparently, while based in Philadelphia, Kloss traveled thousands of miles around the country, connecting with these disparate groups, trying to knit them into something coherent. Returned once again to his homeland, Kloss recommended that Germany continue its educational activities in America, not seeking to make pure Nazis, but to make German-Americans proud of their heritage and sympathetic to fascism.
Another trip to America interrupted by the War, the prolific Kloss became the head of a new agency—connected to a number of German war-time institutions—that allowed him to continue his linguistic research. Wilhelm says, though, that most of his research at this time was information gathering, and his publications were “propaganda.” These continued to flog his earlier concerns, especially the lack of German-ethnic identity in America and the need for Nazi ideology to make the islands into a coherent group. He also wrote in this topic for political officials so that they could use it in reaching out to American Germans. Wilhelm writes, Kloss “created a concept of research that was to match and legitimize a cultural memory and identity according to Nazi ideology, and laid the groundwork for the political activation of the group and its memory.” He eventually became a member of the NSDAP in 1941.
After the war, Kloss’s activities were investigated, and he was eventually allowed to continue his research. As Wilhelm notes, he seems to have downplayed his own activities and explained his work as pure research, when it was not. Subsequently, he went on to do important and well-cited research in linguistics. Early in the 1950s he did fundamental work on how to distinguish between new languages and dialects. He continued to elaborate his taxonomy into the 1960s. In the 1970s, a number of his works made their way into English, including what is probably his best-known work in this country, “The American Bilingual Tradition.” As Wilhelm notes, along with the scholar C. M. Hutton,” this work was largely built on research he did during the 1930s and 1940s, when he was associated with German fascism.
Heinz Kloss died 13 June 1987. He was 82.
**************
Heinz Kloss nestles easily within Thayer’s fascist Fortean circle, but his presence within the Society nonetheless raises questions I cannot answer. He was a member of the Fortean Society since very near its renascence in the mid-1930s, if not at exactly the moment that it was reborn. Already in issue 2, dated October 1937, he was listed as a “foreign correspondent” of Germany, living in Stuttgart. This would have been just after he returned from his trip to America. Likely, it was on this trip that he became associated with the Society, though exactly how is unclear. There is some room for informed speculation, though.
Almost certainly, Kloss knew the poet and German propagandist George Sylvester Viereck. Viereck had been in Germany during the early part of the 1930s, trying to get the Nazi’s to advertise in America; and in the mid-1930s, he was associated with the German American Bund. Kloss could have met him, possibly, when Viereck came to Germany, and all-but-doubtlessly when Kloss visited America: he was tasked, after all, with connecting to the pro-German elements in America. Viereck was also an acquaintance of Thayer.
How Thayer and Viereck came to no one another is difficult to discern. Thayer was a fan of Ezra Pound, and Pound and Viereck came to know each other—but at a later date. I am unaware of any connections between Thayer and American fascism—and though he had sympathies for it, and (at best) indifference toward anti-Semitism, he doesn’t seem the type to have joined. The best I can guess is that Thayer became aware of Vierick through Viereck’s poetry; that poetry received a lot of attention in the early 1930s. Viereck had also run his own magazine. One can imagine Thayer, a man who cultivated a number of different intellectual heroes, seeking out Viereck in the mid-1930s, as he was about to relaunch the Society and start its magazine, to talk of his plans, and of poetry: Thayer considered himself an aficionado of the form. This would place the meeting between Thayer and Viereck in late 1936 or early 1937, after Thayer had left Hollywood. Thayer may very well have met Kloss personally, then.
Kloss does not appear in the pages of the Fortean Society magazine—later titled Doubt—properly until after World War II, at which point he had purged his Nazi past. And at that he only showed up two times, both in 1948, which might suggest a limited connection but also raises some uncomfortable questions. The first mention was in passing. In Doubt 21 (June 1948), Thayer welcomed a new Fortean, Ernst Fuhrmann, noting that Fuhrmann had been called to the Society’s attention by Kloss, who had been a member since year 1. Perhaps this description was a mistake, and Thayer meant since the beginning of the reborn Fortean Society. But if he did mean year 1, then he was referring to the Society’s founding in 1931, suggesting that Kloss had made a connection with Thayer even earlier, possibly still through Viereck.
The other reference came two issues later, in Doubt 23, ca. December 1948, under the title German Forteana. Thayer was asking for German translators to go through a whole collection of Forteana he had received, written by Fuhrmann as well as Karl Neupert and Ernst Barthel. He noted that all of this material had been sent to him from Kloss. It could certainly be that Kloss was simply providing Thayer with material he thought might be interesting—Neupert’s cosmogony was supposed to be similar to the Koreshans, for example. But given Kloss’s pre-war propaganda activities, there is also the lingering suspicion that he night still have been trying to create a pan-Germanic folk community.
Was he a Fortean—or did he see Thayer’s Society as an outlet for propaganda? It’s an open question.
Equally interesting is Thayer’s . . . I don’t know whether to call it bravery or naiveté, or what. Only a few years before, Thayer had been accused of sedition. He had attacked World War II as a hoax put on by the world’s governments and bankers to feed the war profiteers. He knew that other pacifists were accused of pro-Fascist sympathies. He was a friend of Ezra Pound. And yet, here he was, trumpeting the work of a German, a former Nazi, who had been involved with propaganda and trying to make an alliance between fascist Germany and America. Thayer’s promoting of Kloss did not blow up in his face, though it easily could have.
At the end of this last column mentioning Kloss, Thayer wrote that Kloss promised to send on more German Forteana. I am not sure if Kloss broke the connection, or if Thayer did, but no more material appeared. It wasn’t the last time that Thayer flirted with fascists, though.
