Order of the New Templars

Lanz's goal was to bring right-wing extremists in post-World War I Germany together and mobilise them in opposition to liberal society.

Lanz was the ideologist and political agitator of the group, justifying violence by punishments such as castration in order to establish Fascism in Germany and defend it against communism.

His interest in the Templars was awakened by the contemporary popular motif of the Knights of the Grail in the neo-romantic music and literature of Richard Wagner, Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, and Friedrich Lienhard.

He interpreted the persecution of the Templars from 1312 as a triumph of racially inferior people whose aim was to undermine the rule and purity of the Aryan race.

In addition, he was convinced that the Catholic Church had been suppressing true Christian teaching since that time, as the core of which he regarded his ideas of a racial struggle.

The rules of the order stipulated that only blonde and blue-eyed men were allowed to join, who also had to meet other Aryan criteria, which Lanz described in his series of publications Ostara.

The golden background symbolized eternity, the lilies racial purity, and the red swastika the rising Aryan hero.