Hitler and Astrology: A Portrait of his Prophet, Erik Jan Hanussen

... in achieving a higher dramatic effect on stage. Was it because of this, or of what he predicted to the Führer, that he in March 1933 was murdered by the Nazi's? Maybe the fact that he lied about his origins had something to do with the murder?Hitler undoubtedly knew his "prophet" was no Danish aristocrat, but an Austrian Jew, born as Hermann Steinschneider. And maybe, in 1933, this became annoying...

It seems that already in the early 1920s Hanussen and Hitler met several times, and that Hanussen taught Hitler how to use gestures and dramatic pauses, and how to control a crowd. He regularly gave lessons to Hitler in speaking and mass psychology.

In 1931 he purchased a printing firm and began publishing a biweekly occult tabloid in Berlin, which included astrological columns. He also purchased a mansion, The Palace of the Occult, that he turned into real Theatre of Fortune Telling. His telepathy and hypnosis act at La Scala had already catapulted him to stardom, the sky was the limit. He became close with a bunch of SA leaders, lending them even a large sum of money.

The controversy around his person grew when he started predicting the future of Germany. In 1933, the fire of the Reichstag (= the German Parliament) allowed Chancellor Adolf Hitler to seize absolute power. Hanussen predicted the event, it was his most famous prophecy - but also, possibly, he used some SA inside information in the wrong way... Shortly after that, on March 25, he was assassinated, probably by a group of SA men, and buried in a field on the outskirts of Berlin.

With "Erik Jan Hanussen, Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant", Mel Gordon wrote a devastating bio-history of the German-Jewish Houdini, also known as "Hitler's Nostradamus", or "the Prophet of the Third Reich", exploring and illuminating a fateful turning point in contemporary European history. Hanussen tried desperately to gain admission into the German universe, but when the Nazi dictatorship emerged from the flames of the burning Reichstag, he became one of the first victims of the Holocaust...

"The Nazi Séance" by Arthur J. Magida tells the strange but true story of the Jewish psychic in Hitler's inner circle. Hanussen's relation to Hitler undoubtedly is one of the greatest enigma of the pre-war era. Arthur Magida has done a great service in illuminating this figure of mystery, who tried - and failed - the ultimate magic trick: to survive Nazi Germany as one of Hitler's own. A history that reads like a novel...