1/ Another ex. of the multivalence of Pynchon’s use of the Thurn und Taxis family in “The Crying of Lot 49”: Prince Gustav Franz Maria was a Thule Society member—he was executed by the Bavarian Red Army following the assassination of Kurt Eisner & the failed Palm Sunday putsch
2/ Kurt Eisner, Minister President of the People's State of Bavaria (a bourgeois attempt to preempt the formation of a Soviet state in Munich) was killed by a nobleman w/ a bit of Jewish heritage who'd been refused entrance into the Thule Society, setting off a chain reaction:...
3/...Red Army reprisals; the formation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic; Sebottendorf, aristocrats, anti-communists, freikorps, & Thule-Gesselschaft's counter-revolutionary abortive coup d'etat; followed by the raid on the Thule Society HQ in Munich around 2 weeks later.
4/ There were at least 2 aristocrats among the 6 Thule members arrested: Prince Gustav & a young noblewoman named von Westarp, who were accused of being nationalist spies. They were executed in Luitpold Gymnasium on Walpurgisnacht (intentional Thule blood sacrifice? 😉)
5/ Addendum: the Count who killed Eisner was found guilty of murder & imprisoned in Landsberg, just about the fanciest-ass detention center you ever did see. He was evicted from his sumptuous, flower-accentuated unit known as "General's Hill" upon the arrival of one Adolf Hitler.
6/ Another addendum: the Nazis arrested Count Arco auf Valley under suspicions he might also try to assassinate Hitler (which is strange, as he was an aristocratic nationalist), but released him shortly after. This incident is mentioned in EP 17—we’ll return to it in a new series
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