Hörbiger, Hans (1860-1931)

German engineer who developed an eccentric cosmology of "cosmic ice." According to Hörbiger, space is filled with cosmic ice, a basic material from which stellar systems are generated when a large block of cosmic ice collides with a hot star. Stellar systems are governed by a law of spiral motion and propelled toward a central sun and smaller planets, eventually being captured by larger ones and becoming moons, Hörbiger said. Earth is supposed to have had several previous moons that were drawn to it, according to his theory. These earlier moons caused geological upheavals when they spiraled to Earth, and myths and legends are said to preserve race memories of such cataclysms. When a former moon circled the earth with ever-increasing rapidity during such a capture, its appearance generated legends of the Judeo-Christian devil, as well as of dragons and other monsters.

Hörbiger's complex theories included occult concepts of a "platonic world soul." With Phillipp Fauth, he published Glazialcosmogonie in 1912. In the 1920s, a Hörbiger cult called WEL (Welt Eis Lehre) sprang up, attracting millions of supporters. Hörbiger was intolerant of all opposition to his theories and once wrote to rocket expert Willy Ley: "… either you believe in me and learn, or you must be treated as an enemy." After the death of Hörbiger, Hans Schindler Bellamy, a British mythologist, continued the propaganda for WEL in his book Moons, Myths and Man (1936) and in further books on the subject.

Hörbiger's ideas provoked enraged opposition from German astronomers, but during the 1930s Nazi sympathizers associated it with ideas of the lost Atlantis and a master Aryan race. Adopted by Nazi occultists, Hörbiger's ideas eventually attained the sponsorship of none other than Heinrich Himmler. During the height of the Nazi rule in Europe, the teachings of Hörbiger and Bellamy were combined with paranoid propaganda and anti-Semitism.

Sources:

Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover Publications, 1957.