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The Black Sun and Wewelsburg CastleThe second Tom Kirk adventure, The Black Sun, is named after a runic symbol inlaid into the floor of the Hall of the Supreme SS Leaders in the North Tower of Wewelsburg Castle in Northern Westphalia, Germany.Arial photograph of Wewelsburg CastleBased on a seventh century AD fertility symbol, the Black Sun (Schwarze Sonne) in German) combines the Swastika with the stylised sig-runes made infamous by the SS. As described below, the symbol was meant to present in architectural terms the idea of the North Tower of Wewelsburg Castle as the centre of the Nazi world.The origins of Wewelsburg CastleWewelsburg Castle, perched on a limestone outcrop overlooking the Alme Valley, was built between 1603 and 1609. The only triangular castle in Europe, it was originally intended as a secondary residence for the Prince Bishops of the nearby town of Paderborn, but fell into disrepair after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.In 1815, shortly after passing into the hands of the Prussian state, the castle’s huge circular north tower was struck by lightening, the resulting fire leaving only its two metre thick outside walls standing.The SS Reich Leaders’ SchoolHeinrich Himmler – Reichsfuhrer SSIn 1933, Heinrich Himmler, signed a 100 year lease on behalf of the SS with the local district of Büren to rent the castle for a symbolic fee of one Reichsmark per annum. His plan was to develop the castle into a training centre for SS Leaders.The SS was originally established by Himmler as Hitler’s personal bodyguard, although it rapidly emerged as a “state within a state”, a massive enterprise that encompassed racial and agricultural policy, owned vast factories and ran the concentration camps, not to mention controlling a fighting force of close to a million men at its peak.From the outset, Himmler emphasised the SS’s uniqueness, from its striking black uniforms to its distinctive lightening flash runic symbols. Not only were officers drawn from the highest levels of society, but they had to prove the ‘purity’ of their family line back to at least 1750, and enlisted men 1800.The SS Reich Leaders School was, therefore, seen as a key weapon in cementing the SS’s elite status in German society and in ensuring that Himmler’s rapidly growing organisation retained its ideological purity and shared values.The cult of the SSHimmler also envisaged a new state pseudo-pagan state religion based on an idealised view of chivalric German culture and Aryan racial purity. The SS were to be the ideological vanguard of this new faith and the instrument through which the German people were to be indoctrinated into it.To that end, he established festivals on both the Summer and Winter Solstices which incorporated elements of pagan rituals, including sun and nature worship. SS Officers, meanwhile, were wed in secular ceremonies with distinctly pagan overtones, and their children ‘baptised’ in similarly pagan-influenced naming rituals.Wewelsburg was to play a central part in many of these ceremonies, as well as serving as the repository for the SS Death’s Head rings – Totenkopfring – presented to SS officers after three years of service. Formed of a band of oakleaves engraved with a death’s head and runes, the rings were further testament to Himmler’s obsession with Germanic mythology, in which Thor was said to possess a pure silver ring on which oaths were sworn.A Totenkopfring (Death’s Head ring)Wewelsburg – the new CamelotAs Himmler’s plans for the castle developed, so did his architectural ambitions for the site. He envisaged a vast military, residential and quasi-religious complex radiating out for nearly a kilometre from the castle’s north tower that would have necessitated the resettlement of the entire village of Wewelsburg and taken over twenty years to complete.Himmler imagined the castle as a new Camelot. He even installed an Arthurian round table in the castle and then chose twelve SS Officers to serve as his followers.Architectural drawing of planned SS complex at WewelsburgEach of these officers’ quarters commemorated a different hero from Germanic mythology and history, with one room even set aside to house the Holy Grail when it was eventually found.Himmler’s own room was dedicated to the Saxon King Heinrich I who led the German defence against a Magyar invasion during the 10th century, and laid the foundation of what was to become the Holy Roman Empire. Rumour has it that Himmler believed himself to be the earthly reincarnation of Heinrich’s spirit.Wewelsburg rapidly emerged as a sort of Nazi Mecca – a place as sacred to the SS as Marienburg had been to the Teutonic Knights and, effectively, the centre of the Nazi world.KZ NiederhagenTo bring the first stages of this vision to life, in 1939 the SS established a concentration camp at the edge of the village. Not only was it was the smallest such camp in Germany, but its main purpose was to ensure a cheap and continuous source of slave labour for the planned ...

The Black Sun – James Twining