He was the founder of an esoteric or Neopagan movement, the Unabhängige Freikirche (UFK, "Independent Free Church"), which he headed from 1933 until his death.

He studied for his doctorate under the jurist Otto Koellreutter, culminating in his 1928 dissertation, "Die Selbstherrlichkeit: Versuch einer Darsterstellung des deutschen Rechtsgrundbegriffs" (Self-Aggrandisement: An Attempt to Present the German Legal Concept).

This thesis was an effort to define the legal foundations of the German Right around the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Oswald Spengler.

[citation needed] Hielscher was influenced by the Conservative Revolution movement, especially Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.

"[1] He was inspired by Friedrich Schiller, who consoled himself during the French occupation by recalling that the values of "Germandom" lay outside the political sphere and thus indestructible.

[2] Hielscher proposed that the "Myth" of das Reich could be found in the merger of "Power" and "Inwardness", which he regarded as "divine totality".

[3] Hielscher's concept of Reich was also inspired by Stefan George's belief in a "Secret Germany" (Geheimes Deutschland), a mystical and ethnic essentialist argument for a spiritual and cultural potential held by the German people and a German nation which existed in potentia but which had been prevented from realization in the history of the Holy Roman Empire.

As with other members of the Conservative Revolution, Hielscher advocated for anti-colonialist movements as the natural allies of Germany in its own struggle against the supposed powers behind Versailles.

[5] In his own magazine Das Reich, Hielscher gave an audience to anti-imperialist liberation movements under the heading "Vormarsch der Volker" (Rise of the Peoples).

In 1933, he founded the Unabhängige Freikirche ("Independent Free Church", UFK), a non-Christian religious institution designed to put into practice his theological ideas.

The religious doctrine of Hielscher's UFK consists of a syncretism of monotheistic Christianity, panentheism as advocated by Goethe, and polytheistic reconstruction related to other currents of Germanic mysticism at the time (such as the groups led by Jakob Wilhelm Hauer and Ludwig Fahrenkrog).

Disillusioned, and disappointed with his failure to save Sievers from execution, Hielscher publicly announced his retirement from all political activities, resolving to restrict his efforts to the purely religious.