Akhenaten полностью

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Figure 4.2 'FIDUS'. Hugo Hoppener (1868-1948), illustrator, alternative religionist and later Nazi sympathiser, often mingled Egyptian elements with nudism in his graphics, such as this one for a German Theosophical journal, 1910.

successful pre-war work was Sieben vor Verdun, a tale of soldiers' comradeship in the First World War. Sieben vor Verdun mixes racism and sentimentality with a vague, somewhat Theosophical religiosity in a way that also appears in his Akhenaten novel, Eehnaton and Nofretete: Eine Erzahlung aus den alten Agypten, pub­lished in Leipzig in 1944. Eehnaton and Nofretete seems to be indebted to Mcrezhko- vsky's Der Messias, perhaps another instance of its anti-Scmitic attraction which Freud noticed. Wehner added an autobiographical epilogue to the novel, explain­ing why the story was a topical one to recount in 1944. But the most prolific and extreme of Akhenaten's Nazi interpreters was the woman who called herself Savitri Devi.

Devi (1905-82) was born Maximiani Portas in Francc, of Anglo-Greek par­entage. She studied at the University of Lyons and the Sorbonne. A visit to Palestine in 1929 confirmed her loathing of Jews (there is no other way of putting it). She bccame convinced that it was time for all the Aryan nations of Europe, not just the Germans, to rid themselves of the constrictions of Judaco- Christianity. These, after all, were a relatively recent imposition, since central Europe and Scandinavia had only been Christianised in the tenth century. Devi became a passionate believer in National Socialism and a devotee of Hitler, whom she saw as a god come to earth in human shape. She spent most of the Second World War in India, but came to Germany in 1948 to pursue Nazi agitprop activities. She was arrested and imprisoned.³' Devi had long been fas­cinated by Akhenaten and how (in her view) he seemed to relate to the anti- Christian Utopian movements, with their glorification of Aryan sun-worship. The bibliographies and footnotes to the five books she had written on Akhen­aten by 1947 show how much she had read about him, though Weigall remained a favourite source. In slightly different ways, Devi's works all explore Akhenaten's relationship with Nazi ideology, through his advocacy of sun- worship and his Aryan blood: indeed, he prefigures Hitler himself. For such unpalatable books they have deceptively innocent-sounding titles, such as A Perfect Man: Akhnaton, King of Egypt (1939); Akhnaton's Eternal Message. A Scientific Religion 3300 Years Old (1940); Joy of the Sun. The Beautiful Life of Akhnaton, King of Egypt, told to Young People (1942). In fact, it would be quite easy to miss their Fascist subtext if one were unaware of the events of Devi's own life. Her two immediately post-war books were both issued by Theosophical publishing houses, another illustration of the ease with which Theosophy could accom­modate dubious racial theories. ⁵⁸ In A Son of God. The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt (1946), she elaborates at length how Akhenaten's religion was a fitting one for a new, Aryan world order. Was Akhenaten himself not three-quarters Aryan? She takes pains to explain how Akhenaten's religion had nothing to do either with Christianity or with Judaism: 'both arc but puerile and barbaric tribal gods, compared with that truly universal Father-and-Mother of all life, Whom the young Pharaoh adored'.⁵⁹ Devi also pays a great detail of attention to Akhenaten's love of nature and his harmonious unity with the natural world. At Amarna there were

arbours in which one could sit in the shade and admire the play of light upon the sunny surface of the waters, or watch a flight of birds in the deep blue sky. The gardens, where Akhnaton often used to come either to pray, either to sit and explain his Teaching to his favourite courtiers, or simply to be alone . . . lead the soul to praise God in the loveliest mani­festations of His power and to fill the heart with love for him.⁴"

Following Weigall, Devi's Amarna is a prelapsarian place where nothing bad happens and everyone is treated well, including animals. She was very senti­mental about animals. A vegetarian (like Hitler), she even suggested that Akhen­aten banned hunting and bloodsports at Amarna bccausc he loved animals so much.