Johann Dietrich Eckart

General Information

Johann
Dietrich Eckart is a fictional character inspired by a historical person in the
novel *Blood Ties*.

He
was born as Johann Dietrich Eckart in 1868 in Neumarkt, Upper Palatinate in the
Kingdom of Bavaria, the son of royal notary and lawyer Christian Eckart and his
wife Anna, a devout Catholic. His mother died when he was ten years old. Young
Dietrich was expelled from several schools; in 1895, his father died also,
leaving him a considerable amount of money that Eckart soon spent.

Dietrich Eckart initially studied law at
Erlangen, later medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and was
an eager member of the fencing and drinking Korps. But he finally decided in
1891 to work as a poet, playwright, and journalist. Diagnosed with morphine
addiction and nearly stranded, he moved to Berlin in 1899. There he wrote a
number of plays, often autobiographical, and became the protégé of Count Georg
von Hülsen-Haeseler (1858–1922), the artistic director of the Prussian Royal
Theatre. Eckart was a successful playwright, especially with his 1912
adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, one of the best attended productions of
the age with more than 600 performances in Berlin alone. This success not only
made Eckart wealthy, it gave him the social contacts needed to introduce Hitler
to dozens of important German citizens. These introductions proved to be
pivotal in Hitler's ultimate rise to power.”

Later,
Eckart developed an ideology of a "genius superman", based on
writings by the Völkisch author Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels; he saw himself
following the tradition of Heinrich Heine, Arthur Schopenhauer who both happen
to be vampires and Angelus Silesius. He also became fascinated by the Buddhist
doctrine of Maya (illusion).

After World War I, Eckart edited the
antisemitic periodical Auf gut Deutsch ("In good German"), working
with Alfred Rosenberg and Gottfried Feder. A fierce critic of the German
Revolution and the Weimar Republic, he aggressively opposed the Treaty of
Versailles, which he viewed as treason, and was a proponent of the so-called
stab-in-the-back legend, according to which the Social Democrats and Jews were
to blame for Germany's defeat in the war.

In January 1919, Eckart, Feder, Anton
Drexler and Karl Harrer founded the German Workers' Party, which to increase
its appeal to larger segments of the population; in February 1920 he changed
its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (DAP); more commonly
known as the Nazi Party. He was the original publisher of the party newspaper,
the Völkischer Beobachter, and also wrote the lyrics of Deutschland erwache
("Germany awake"), which became an anthem of the Nazi Party.

Dietrich met Adolf Hitler when Hitler gave
a speech before the DAP members in 1919. Dietrich was involved with the Thule
Society, although not a member. The Society was a secretive group of occultists
who believed in the coming of a “German Messiah” who would redeem Germany after
its defeat in World War I.

Dietrich expressed his anticipation in a
poem he wrote months before he first met Hitler. In the poem, Eckart refers to
‘the Great One’, ‘the Nameless One’, ‘Whom all can sense but no one saw’. When
Eckart met Hitler, Eckart was convinced that he had encountered the prophesied
redeemer. Dietrich started lending Hitler books and helping him to improve his
German – written and spoken.

Thule
Society members such as Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, and Hans Frank became
Nazi leaders and had key roles in the Third Reich. It was Dietrich who
introduced Alfred Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler. Between 1920 and 1923, Eckart and
Rosenberg labored tirelessly in the service of Hitler and the party. Through
Rosenberg, Hitler was introduced to the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
it is not known who turned Hitler and Eckart into vampires. Hitler was killed
by an unknown assailant while Eckart continued to live on.

In 2014
Eckart went under the alias Terry Waldenville and resided in Pennsylvania and
used the Order of the Nine Angles as a way to recruit neo- Nazis. His purpose
was to create a vampire army to purge America.

Eckart was
killed by Tony Perillo, Rudolph Hess and Cagliostro before Perillo knew that
Eckart had already murdered his girlfriend.