The Influence of the Occult on the 1939 German Expedition to Tibet

Ernst Schäfer and his expeditionary team in Lhasa in 1938

In the late spring of 1938 a German expedition team arrived in Calcutta with the aim of entering into Tibet. The expedition team consisted of: Zoologist, ornithologist, and expedition leader Ernst Schäfer; Entomologist, photographer, and camera operator, Ernst Krause; Ethnologist, Bruno Beger; Geophysicist, Karl Wienert; and technical caravan manager Edmund Greer. As well as being scientists, all of the five members were also officers in the SS. Weeks before the German invasion of Poland on September 1^st, 1939, the team had returned from their expedition and had successfully entered Tibet and had collected a large amount of scientific material.¹ Occultism, the belief in the existence of secret, mysterious, or supernatural agencies, has been claimed to have links to Nazism and its beliefs on the roots of the Aryan Race. For many, the 1939 German expedition to Tibet was proof of this link. Some theories claim that Hitler held occultist beliefs of a hidden population of Aryan supermen in the Himalayas and that the expedition was thus driven by Hitler’s desire to find these people. Other’s point to Himmler and claim that it was his occult beliefs in Tibet that led him to sponsor the expedition and then use it to serve his occultic interests. However, contrary to the claims of many sensational genres of literature, the 1939 German Expedition to Tibet was not driven by occult beliefs on the roots of the Aryan race, but rather by the scientific interests of Ernst Schäfer.