The 30th of January 1933. Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany bringing
an end to German democracy. Guided by racist and authoritarian ideas,
the Nazis abolish basic freedoms and seek to create a community which would unite all
social classes and regions of Germany behind one Führer. However, not many people know that
before election, the Führer was taught crowd control techniques, using gestures
and dramatic pauses by a charlatan and clairvoyant performer with Jewish origins
to whom important Nazi officials owe substantial sums of money. His name is Erik Jan Hanussen.
Erik Jan Hanussen was born as Herschel Chaim Steinschneider on the 2nd of June 1889 in
Vienna then part of Austria-Hungary. His father Siegfried was a caretaker of a synagogue and
a performer who travelled though Austria and Italy with his family until his wife,
Austrian singer Julie Kohn, died when their son was only 10 years old.
When Herschel was 13 years old, he left school,
ran away from home and found a living in the variety show and circus environment,
increasingly dealing with the topic of magic, hypnosis, telepathy and the occultism.
The First World War began on the 28th of July 1914.
Steinschneider enrolled in the army and during this time, he used mentalism to
entertain the other troops. In 1917, he adopted the identity of an aristocratic
Scandinavian clairvoyant Erik Jan Hanussen. After the First World War ended on the 11th
of November 1918, Hanussen rose to fame as he traveled through Central Europe and America
performing as a clairvoyant and in 1930 he settled in Berlin. There Hanussen performed a
mind reading and hypnosis act at La Scala theater that catapulted him to stardom.
He then headlined at numerous variety palaces and had a number of side ventures,
like a sanitarium offering occult cures and a libido-enhancing hormonal cream.
Although he had been born poor and had at times been homeless and penniless,
he was now a wealthy man with luxury cars, multiple apartments, and even a yacht on which
he threw lavish, drug-fueled parties. At his height, Hanussen offered private consultations
for exorbitant fees and enjoyed the company of Germany's military and business elite,
also becoming close with members of the Nazi paramilitary force called the SA also known
as the Storm Troopers or the "Brownshirts" for the color of their uniform. It is claimed that
he was a supporter of the Nazis despite his Jewish ancestry, which was an open secret.
Through his connections and performances, Hanussen befriended a number of Nazi officials,
many of whom attended parties on his yacht. In particular, he became close with the Nazi
official Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff to whom Hanussen constantly lent money for his debts.
Such was also the case of Karl Ernst, once a hotel bellboy and a bouncer at a
gay nightclub and Friedrich Wilhelm Ohst both of whom would later assist during Hanussen’s arrest.
In 1931 Hanussen purchased a Breslau printing firm and
began publishing an occult journal named Hanussen Magazin and Bunte Wochenschau,
a popular bi-weekly Berlin tabloid which included astrological columns. He used the proceeds from
his publishing ventures and stage shows to purchase a mansion which became known as "The
Palace of the Occult", which he renovated and turned into a luxurious interactive theatre for
fortune telling games. Guests would sit around a large circular table and place their palms
on glass with symbols lit from beneath; the room lights would be lowered in a séance-like fashion;
and various gimmicks would highlight Hanussen's dramatic verbal presentation of prophecies
to the guests. He became successful, predicted events in the lives of the
individuals present and was always in demand in various venues. He even had a full-time valet.
After Hanussen's first meeting with Hitler in June or July 1932, his predictions and
horoscopes of Nazi officials published in his Bunte Wochenschau tabloid became more positive.
According to Hanussen’s vision, only with Hitler would Germany ever make
a comeback and he encouraged people to vote for Hitler as a savior of Germany.
He taught Hitler his crowd control techniques of using gestures and dramatic pauses thus
instructing the future Führer in performance and the achievement of dramatic effect.
Hitler was a good student. The July 1932 elections
brought the Nazi party 37.3 percent of the popular vote,
making it the largest political party in Germany. In the ensuing elections in November 1932,
the Nazis lost ground, winning 33.1 percent of the vote. The Communists, however gained votes,
winning 16.9 percent. As a result, by the end of 1932, the small circle around President Hindenburg
came to believe that the Nazi party was Germany's only hope to forestall political chaos ending
in a Communist takeover. Nazi negotiators and propagandists did much to enhance this impression.
On the 30th of January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany.
However, Hanussen’s most famous prediction was to come. On the 26th of February 1933,
when he held a séance in his Palace of the Occult, he foresaw the Reichstag fire,
a decisive event that would allow Hilter and the Nazi party to seize absolute power over Germany.
On the following day, the German parliament – the Reichstag building - burned down due to arson.
The Nazi leadership and its German Nationalist coalition partners exploited the fire to persuade
President Paul von Hindenburg that Communists were planning a violent uprising to derail Germany’s
"national renewal" and that emergency legislation was needed to prevent this. Commonly known as
the Reichstag Fire Decree, the resulting act “For the Protection of the People and State” abolished
a number of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship.
Using emergency constitutional powers, Adolf Hitler’s cabinet had issued a Decree for the
Protection of the German People on the 4th of February 1933. The decree placed constraints
on the press and authorized the police to ban political meetings and marches,
effectively hindering electoral campaigning.
A temporary measure, it was followed by a more dramatic and permanent suspension of civil
rights following the 27th of February burning of the parliament building.
Though the origins of the fire are still unclear, in a propaganda maneuver, the coalition
government – the Nazis and the German Nationalist People's Party - blamed the Communists.
They exploited the Reichstag fire to secure President von Hindenburg’s approval for an
emergency decree, the decree "For the Protection of the People and State" of 28th of February
one day after the burning of the Reichstag. Popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree,
the regulations suspended the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press,
and other constitutional protections, including all restraints on police investigations.
Justified on the false premise that the Communists were planning an uprising to overthrow the state,
the Reichstag Fire Decree permitted the regime to arrest and incarcerate political
opponents without specific charge, dissolve political organizations,
and to suppress publications. It also gave the central government the authority
to overrule state and local laws and overthrow state and local governments.
The Nazi press described the Reichstag fire as the work of Communists and a signal for their
planned uprising. Although the Communists had not, in fact, developed any plans for an uprising,
the impact of propaganda and terror on existing fears of a Communist takeover
convinced many Germans that Hitler’s decisive action had saved the nation from “Bolshevism.”
Predicting the Reichstag fire was Hanussen's most famous feat of clairvoyance.
There are unsubstantiated claims that he may have been involved in the Reichstag fire,
hypnotizing and directing a Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe to commit the act.
Other theory claims that it was a miscalculated use of inside information
as he might have got to know about the fire though his connections with Nazis.
Some historians believe, based on archive evidence,
that the arson had been planned and ordered by the Nazis themselves as a false flag operation.
The Reichstag fire not only paved the way for
Nazi dictatorship but it also led to Hanussen’s death shortly thereafter.
A month later on the 23rd of March 1933 Erik Hanussen,
then 43 years old, was arrested, probably by a group of SA men.
On the 8th of April, the body of an unknown man was discovered in the woods south of Berlin.
The corpse had been lying there for a long time and bore signs of abuse and traces of several
bullets. Newspapers soon carried articles about the mysterious discovery of a body.
It was only possible to identify him based on the tailor's monogram on an expensive suit
as the body had been eaten by animals. It was Hanussen’s body and it was discovered that he
had died in a painful death - before he was shot 12 times, he had been brutally beaten.
Who gave the initial command for the murder has never been discovered. However,
even the highest-ranking Nazi officials like Hermann Göring and Ernst Röhm,
the leader of the SA, had turned to Hanussen for financial assistance and papers recording
amounts in excess of 150,000 marks owed to him somehow disappeared from his Palace of
Occultism and were never found. While the palace closed and never reopened,
the story of Erik Jan Hanussen continues to fascinate until this day.
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