Heinrich Kramer

[Yuillegan]

Heinrich Kramer (not Kemmler) was a german inquisitor (also known by his Latinised name, Heinricus Insitor). He widely distributed the Malleus Maleficarum - literally "the Hammer of the Witches" (1487), which described witchcraft and endorses detailed processes for the extermination of witches.

He was also asked by a Nuremburg council to provide expert consultation on a witch trial.

He was the rough basis of the Warhammer Fantasy character, Heinrich Kemmler, from who Jim has named his own character as a homage.

Heinrich Kemmler in the Dresden Files is a body-swapping, bad ass necromancer who was so feared and despised that he took on the entire White Council and quite nearly beat them. He engineered WW1 and possibly WW2, and seemed to have many unsavoury associations with demons, vampires (particularly Black Court) and the "nastier" faeries. Mab describes him as mad but brilliant, Leansidhe regards him highly and even his own heirs (acolytes) respected and feared him, even if some of them even thought he was mad.

He is one of the few mortals to work out how to eat spirits to become stronger, and eventually figured out how to become a god through that (although he is far from the first mortal to figure out how to become a god altogether). He evaded the White Council for decades and it took the several times to kill him (who knows why they are so sure he is really dead this time, but apparently they are). He seemed to have some business in Illinois just before WW1 and quite possibly was responsible for the Spanish Flu (according to a recent but cryptic WOJ) and Wyatt Earp seemed to cause him some trouble too. He seems to be linked to all the worst sorts, and I am sure he is linked to Outsiders (which, like his name sake, would be a source of his power).

Could Kramer and Kemmler be the same person? I think this is quite possible. I guarantee Jim would know of the connection, but will he use it?

And how does an inquisition priest become a mad, power hungry necromancer?

[Con]

Damn. Well researched. I'd forgotten even the Warhammer link.

Have you discovered anything about Society of Thule?

I've only come across general statements and a link to the Nazis, but nothing in depth.

[Arjan]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Society

[Bad Alias]

It be interesting if he had been a low talent "witch" hunter who was killing other talents to eat their ghosts to gain power. It could also be that Kemmler stole his body at some point and that's where he got his name from, with his true name hidden.

[Yuillegan]

Thank you Con.

Ah yes, I knew I had forgotten something.

He is the first person we see using that magical symbol from Small Favour (the pentagram crossed with the Anarchist symbol), the one that used some of the most powerful magic in the series. I have heard an argument that it is some sort of generic black magic symbol...but I wouldn't be so sure myself. Jim has often said he is a lazy writer, I think he put it as a clue in Fistful of Warlocks.

This is where we learn that Kemmler is a member of the Thule Society, a occult society eventually linked with none other than Adolf Hitler. So almost certainly Kemmler or his followers organised WW2.

I will look further into the Thule Society...but my research so far in that area has been slim.

Bad Alias - I do like your first theory. Although the second one brings an obvious question - who or what was Kemmler before he stole that body (if that was his first body)?

[Arjan]

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265691417747183p

I did not read it but someone did a big study about the the nazi’s and their superstitions.  It was everywhere. But it was not suddenly sprung out of nothing, magical thinking was widespread in Germany before that and some of these ideas were racist, a lot of blue und bodem mysticism.

Bob told us in dead beat that Kemmler was responsible for WWI. Nazi occultism and it’s predecessors are an ideal atmospheric background for the whole Kemmler story. Or in dresdenverse context they can form a secret society which can hide your real secret society, a sort of black paranet and a place we’re you can easily recruit new disciples and so on. And it helps creating the WWII which must have been the ideal environment for a lot of black magic.

[Yuillegan]

Indeed, in fact it is really only very recently that superstition has waned. Magical thinking was widespread globally for a long time, and whilst there have always been skeptics, they have only outweighed the superstitious in comparatively modern times. I too have read that Germany was full of mysticism well before WW2, and I think that is only one part of the broader picture.

I quite agree that WW2 merely advanced an end that WW1 failed to do for Kemmler. I like the idea that the Thule Society is like the Ventori Umbrorum; that is - a cover for the real thing. But hard to say certainly.

[Con]

Well from what we learned of Luccio's short story. Thule Society attracts and trains sorcerers turning them into Warlocks. That is they are the anti-wardens, but as Bob said mostly destructive, violent, black magic. It also explains how Kemmler's apprentices were once in all probability relatively minor talents until they started eating ghosts and souls to give themselves power boosts.

[Bad Alias]

This is where we learn that Kemmler is a member of the Thule Society, a occult society eventually linked with none other than Adolf Hitler. So almost certainly Kemmler or his followers organised WW2.

I will look further into the Thule Society...but my research so far in that area has been slim.

...who or what was Kemmler before he stole that body (if that was his first body)?

Wyatt Earp was in Dodge City in the 1870's. The Thule Society was founded after WWI according to Wikipedia. If I was writing a story about an occult society that I placed in the world 50ish years before it existed in reality, I'd probably have looked into Thule, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule. Maybe there is something there.

As many have stated, Kemmler did engineer WWI, which many people believe is basically the cause of WWII. Bob mentions that Kemmler disappeared after WWI and didn't show up again until WWII.

I just figured Kemmler wouldn't be running around using his actual last name, first or last.

[Yuillegan]

Indeen Con, anti-wardens and possibly the precursor to the Black Council/Circle. Although I am not so sure that Kemmler's apprentices have his ability to consume shades, and even if they did I doubt he would pick minor talents. I think he picked enforcers, myself.

Yeah I did notice that discrepancy...I assumed Jim knew something about it that I had missed about the timing. But who knows, maybe he has an excellent idea cooked up to explain what the Thule Society was before they gained notoriety. I always think back to Hellboy too, when this comes up.

[Kindler]

The Thule Society is not nearly as interesting as sci-fi/fantasy writers make it out to be. Their real-world claim to fame is they started the whole Aryan Superiority thing in an organized way around 1918ish, and they were one of the organized sponsors of the party that became the Nazi party.

Thule's link to the occult is pretty lame. It's mostly that they believed in the Aryan ideal, pretty much worshiping the concept of Hyperborea. They therefore worshiped Odin (and it's why they played a lot of Wagner, who died like forty years before the Thule Society was created but who probably would've been happy to join). They were about as occult as people believe Freemasons are today. It also didn't last very long. It came and was dissolved in less than a decade, I think (someone can check the dates, I'm tired and ornery).

But yeah. They were the ones who put the antisemitism into politics in an organized way (it was already there, but obviously not to the extent that you see from Nazi Germany), and helped prop up the German Workers Party. When Hitler started taking control of the GWP and began turning into the National Socialist Party, he cut ties with the Thule Society. I think one of the founding members was even expelled from Germany under the same Aryan ideals the Thule Society promoted, which is funny until you realize how many other people had the same thing happen to them.

By the time Hitler was elected, the Thule Society had been gone for something like ten years (at least officially). I think I recall that Thule was an offshoot of a more occult-ish organization by one of the founders. But yeah, Thule was more Pagan than Occult. You frequently hear terms like "occult organization" and "mysticism" in connection with Thule, but I've never found any evidence of them doing anything even remotely connected with the Occult as I see the Occult. They weren't practicing magic. They were basically just racist Pagans who believed they could become Ubermensch through selective breeding and national pride.