Artaman League

Publications by right wing Lebensreformists, which sold in the tens of thousands, argued that their practices were "the means by which the German race would regenerate itself and ultimately prevail over its neighbours and the diabolical Jews who were intent on injecting putrefying agents into the nation's blood and soil".

[4] This völkisch movement believed that the decline of the Aryan race could only be halted by encouraging people to abandon city life in favour of settling in the rural areas in the east.

[5] Whilst members wished to perform agricultural labour as an alternative to military service, they also saw it as part of their duty to violently oppose Slavs and to drive them out of Germany.

[6] As the situation deteriorated in the late 1920s, some of the Artamans were drawn deeper into politics, and engaged in a holy war against their enemies: liberals, democrats, Free-Masons and Jews.

[4] The Artaman vision would continue to have a profound effect on Himmler who, throughout his time as Reichsführer-SS, retained his early dreams of a racially pure peasantry.

Since the 1990s, far-right environmentalists have taken advantage of cheap farmland made available by the post-Cold War reunification of East and West Germany, establishing themselves in Mecklenburg, "in an effort to reinvigorate the traditions of the Artaman League".

The politically extreme rightwing environmental magazine Umwelt und Aktiv (Environment and Active), is believed to receive support from Germany's far-right National Democratic Party (NPD).