266 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
exhibit about Atlantis in the nation’s capital. Although the 1938 event attracted
favorable notice across the country and outside Germany, it was not sponsored by
any Nazi organization. He may have contributed to the production of Wo liegt
Atlantis? (“Where is Atlantis?”), a popular film examining possible Atlantean impact
on Central America, released in 1933, just after the Nazis assumed power.
Herrmann’s illustration for Atlantis in Unser Ahnen und die Atlanten, banned in
Germany since 1945, is still well-known and continues to be republished in several
Atlantology books, almost invariably without credit.
Other well-known Third Reich Atlantologists included Ernst Moritz Arndt
(Nordische Volkskunde, “Nordic Folk Message,” 1935); Alexander Bessmertny (Das
Atlantis Raetsel, “The Atlantis Riddle,” Leipzig, 1932); Rudolf Brunngraber (Der Engel
in Atlantis, “The Angel in Atlantis,” Frankfurt, 1938); Heinrich Pudor (Voelker aus
altes Athen, Atlantis, Helgoland, “Peoples from old Athens, Atlantis, Helgoland,” Leipzig,
1936); Herrmann Wieland (Atlantis, Edda und Bibel, “Atlantis, Edda and the Bible,”
Nuremberg, 1922); and Herbert Reichstein (Geloeste Raetsel: Geschichte von Edda,
Atlantis und der Bibel, “Solved Riddle: The History of the Edda, Atlantis and the
Bible,” Berlin, 1934). They were part of worldwide interest in Atlantis, as attested
by contemporary Atlantologists in other countries, such as Britain’s Lewis Spence
and Colonel Braghine of the United States. Unfortunately, the works of early 20th-
century German Atlantologists, regardless of their political content, were lost when
they were uniformly proscribed by Allied occupation authorities after World War II.
Atlantis has always attracted especially broad interest in Germany, as Ignatius
Donnelly, the American father of Atlantology, pointed out during the last decade
of the 19th century, long prior to Herrmann’s exhibition, and many years before
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. In an attempt to silence their critics, skeptics lump
Atlantologists together with “Nazi mass-murderers,” even though consideration
of Atlantis, save on a single public occasion (Herrmann’s 1938 exhibit), was never
part of the Third Reich.Thonapa
Either another name for Viracocha, the Andean flood hero, or a distinctly
different, though similar, survivor associated with an earlier arrival of technologically
gifted foreigners. The Incas told of four major waves of alien immigration to South
America during the ancient past, all prompted by terrific natural catastrophes.
Thonapa is commonly associated with the Unu-Pachacuti, or “World Over-Turned
by Water,” the third Atlantean cataclysm around 1628 B.C.
(See Ayar-aucca, Ayar-chaki, Ayar-manco-topa, Unu-Pachacuti, Viracocha)Thoth
Also known as Thaut (Egyptian), Taaut (Phoenician), Hermes (Greek), and
Mercury (Roman), he was mortal, later deified, and a prominent leader of Atlantean
refugees into the Nile Valley. He is the Atlantean deity of literature, magic, and
healing most associated with civilization. In Greek myth, Hermes is the grandson of