Editing Thule Society (section)

==Origins==
The Thule Society was originally a "German study group" headed by Walter Nauhaus,<ref name=Ph>{{harvnb|Phelps|1963}}</ref> a wounded [[World War I]] veteran turned art student from [[Berlin]] who had become a keeper of pedigrees for the [[Germanenorden]] (or "Order of [[Germanic peoples|Teutons]]"), a [[secret society]] founded in 1911 and formally named in the following year.<ref>{{harvnb|Goodrick-Clarke|1985|pp=127–28, 143}}</ref> In 1917, Nauhas moved to Munich; his ''Thule Society'' was to be a cover-name for the Munich branch of the Germanenorden,<ref>Phelps 1963, n.31.</ref> but events developed differently as a result of a schism in the order. In 1918, Nauhas was contacted in Munich by [[Rudolf von Sebottendorf]] (or von Sebottendorff), an occultist and newly elected head of the [[Bavaria]]n province of the schismatic offshoot known as the [[Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail]].<ref>{{harvnb|Goodrick-Clarke|1985|pp=131, 142–43}}</ref> The two men became associates in a recruitment campaign, and Sebottendorff adopted Nauhas's Thule Society as a cover-name for his Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater at its formal dedication on 18 August 1918.<ref name=GC144>{{harvnb|Goodrick-Clarke|1985|p=144}}</ref>