Gangleri – bookreviews

Since this is not really a book review, I have put this in the “blog” section.
I had wanted to read this work for a long time. It is a standard work on the subject of Germanic secret men societies and heavily used by later writers. It is not impossible to get, but very expensive (even the 1993 reprint that I just found out that exists), so I eventually had my library get me a copy from another library. I got only the first part and I do not even know if there is one or two other parts and I had three weeks with too little time to work through this book (250 pages). The book starts with a massive and detailed amount of information about the “Wilde Heer” and the “Wilde Jacht”, refering to folklore, sagas, etc. All very interesting, but nothing I had not read before. Since only here and there there is a reference to the “Geheimbünde” (nowadays better known as “Männerbünde” even in the English-speaking world) and a lot about folklore, etc. I started to read faster and faster, since most information I already encountered elsewhere. Mind me, the book is a classic and perhaps the second part is the more interesting piece, but after having read the works of Farwerck, Kershaw (not yet finished), De Vries, etc. this book did not present me much novelties and perhaps it is a bit too much in collecting supportive information. Of course Höffler was (one of) the first to separate “rites de passage” from initiation rites, recognise youth-bonds and cultic bonds in names such as Einherjar or Harii, so this book is much of the basis of all that we know about the subject nowadays and a must-read if you are interested, but you need to have more time than I did.