TO MANY OBSERVERS TODAY, the world of occult and esoteric groups seems to represent a thoroughgoing rejection of the Enlightenment legacy, irreducibly alien and incomprehensible. Yet for a broad cross section of educated Germans in the Wilhelmine era, the occult and esoteric offered a powerfully appealing alternative form of enlightenment. Esoteric worldviews promised illuminating knowledge about the farthest reaches of the cosmos and the innermost depths of the soul, providing access to hidden sources of spiritual wisdom and profound insight into the secrets of the universe. Reworking key themes of modernity, occult adherents in Imperial Germany embraced esotericism as an antidote to materialism: an alternative approach to knowledge and enlightenment that could reenchant a disenchanted world and extend the ideals of Bildung, of education and character formation, as a lifelong process of constantly developing new human faculties. This optimistic image shaped the work of well-known literary and artistic figures as well as obscure occult authors.

A sample of individual biographies and intellectual milieus can clarify the factors that led German thinkers to favor esoteric alternatives to established and academically sanctioned modes of knowledge. The prototypical Wilhelmine occultist was both a spiritual seeker exploring unconventional realms and a practically oriented person responding to scientific discoveries and scholarly innovations, in conjunction with a commitment to traditional values and beliefs. From the artist Fidus to influential publishers like Eugen Diederichs to occult teachers such as Rudolf Steiner or Franz Hartmann, esoteric ideas circulated widely in the Kaiser's empire. Though it has yet to be explored adequately, the historical record reveals a striking fluidity of esoteric traditions in Imperial Germany, with the same figures adopting a wide array of contradictory occult viewpoints, sequentially or simultaneously, while displaying multivalent connections to the “life reform” movement, völkisch circles, neopagan currents, and minority strands of Christianity. These esoteric pioneers combined universal principles and a cosmopolitan outlook with a central emphasis on the unique German spiritual mission.

Much of this neglected history confirms the recent trend of reinterpretation in scholarly studies of esotericism. Much of this neglected history confirms the recent trend of reinterpretation in scholarly studies of esotericism. While an older body of literature from the 1960s to the 1980s emphasized the marginal status of occult thought, newer studies argue that fin de siècle occultism was “closer to the social mainstream than is presently appreciated.”