Prominent people within the organisation have included Bernd Hicker, who was its first leader, and Fritz Steinbock, who has managed and influenced its religious practice.

The VfGH practices Germanic paganism conceived as a polytheistic religion connected to the region of Central and Northern Europe.

Central to the practice are reinvented blóts—ceremonies that may involve invocations of gods, drinking and sacrificial gifts—which are held by local groups.

[4] It created a new organisational structure based on small local groups and established a process for electing officials.

[6] At the same Bundesthing, a central meeting held in the spring, its chairman Volker G. Kunze chose to step down; Haimo Grebenstein was elected as his successor.

[8] In 2018, the journal Materialdienst [de] reported about the VfGH as one of several Germanic neopagan organisations in Germany with "two to three dozen members".

[11] Rituals have a central role in the organisation's conception of pagan practice, which it defines as having "a living relationship to the gods, to nature and to everything holy that realizes itself actively".

[16] Religious views that the VfGH explicitly rejects include theologies where gods are seen as aspects of an abstract divinity, as archetypes, or as symbols.

[20] Gründer describes this as a position between two supposed polar opposites, where the Germanic aspect either is determined by descent or is seen as a free individual choice.

[21] According to the scholar Stefanie von Schnurbein, the approach to paganism promoted by Steinbock and the VfGH contains a possible contradiction, because it dismisses genetic ideas about Germanic ancestry but assumes that language and culture are derived from a unity of gods, nature, and men.

[6] The book contains instructions for a ritual in nine parts:[26] Beyond the basic principles, members are allowed to develop their own beliefs and practices.

[39] In his 2008 sociological study of Germanic neopaganism in Germany, Gründer says the VfGH has a "strong conservative orientation" and tolerance for members influenced by völkisch ideas.

[42] The religious studies scholar Jörn Meyers says the VfGH emerged in the post-war context of new social movements, which tends to correlate with left-wing views but has some overlap with right-wing milieus.