A well assembled and rather seductive sell, though it does emphasise the symbolism of that dream sequence by underscoring it with dialogue that spells out its meaning. A surprise inclusion, three early 8mm films made by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, short experiments with the medium that helped him get into film school. Reportedly, there were numerous meetings between Hanussen and Hitler. It's said that it was Hanussen who taught Hitler his crowd-control techniques, such as using dramatic pauses and gestures. He even predicted the Reichstag fire in February 1933, a key event that led to Hitler seizing ultimate power in the same year. Hanussen’s story is fascinating, improbable and perplexing and has been dissected in various biographies, perhaps most notably Mel Gordon’s Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant (2001) and Arthur J. Magida’s The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler’s Circle (2011). 2 Essentially, the same as the German trailer but of better quality and with an American voiceover and English language dialogue. Whether this edit was created by the German distributor or its US counterpart I can’t say for sure, but according to the IMDb, the film was first screened in Germany almost a year before it’s limited USA release, so draw your own conclusions.

Gordon's complicated, fascinating tale is one familiar to many Germans, but completely unknown to Americans, save for some devotees of magic who regard Hanussen's name, acquired while his career was in its infancy, with a reverence second only to that of Harry Houdini's. Despite the 1988 film "Hanussen" by Hungarian director Istvan Szabo (starring Klaus Maria Brandauer in the strangely Aryanized title role), and a number of articles written in English by German imigris in the 1930s and '40s, Americans have had almost no exposure to this bizarre tale of a Jew who played the part of psychic advisor to Hitler. No wonder the uninitiated roll their eyes when Gordon starts to talk about it. My personal feeling is that all the evidence points to the fact that at the very least Hanussen was involved or he couldn't have known about it. Unless you believe in clairvoyance, which I don't. The other story is why he was killed. That is, he had to be eliminated because he knew too much," says Gordon. While this obviously won't play out in a future Kingsman movie, a direct sequel to The King's Man could see the newly-formed organisation attempt to stop World War II from breaking out. Seer Who Foretold Hitler’s Rise Found Slain,” New York Times (9 April 1933), 12, and “Hellseher-Leiche im Wald – Vor 80 Jahren wurde Erik Jan Hanussen von einem SA-Kommando nahe Zossen erschossen,” Maerkische Allgemeine (Online), 21 March 2013 (accessed 10 April 2014). Where flamboyant tech billionaires want to control people and/or destroy the world in the Matthew Vaughn films, The King’s Man acts as a thesis for the agency, beyond the gadgets and snazzy suits. The saying “Oxfords, not brogues” in the first two Kingsman movies is derived from the Duke of Oxford explaining the importance of being a gentleman - being “Oxfords, not rogues.”

During their session, Hanussen told Hitler that there would be a favorable rise in his future, but a hindrance stood in their way. Hanussen promised Hitler he would use a magical spell to ensure Hitler’s success. He would get a mandrake root from a butcher’s yard and bury it in the town of Hitler’s birth under the light of the full Moon.

In real life, Hanussen was an Austrian Jewish clairvoyant performer who was famous in Berlin after World War I. It's believed that despite his Jewish ancestry, he was a supporter of the Nazis and, supposedly, he mixed with Germany's military elite, including members of the SA. Guénon to Marcelo Motta, 1949, as quoted in Giorgio Galli, Hitler e il nazismo magico. Milan: Rizzoli, 1989, 129. Hanussen, Erik Jan. 1915. Was so über's Brettl ging Poetika aus Musentempeln, die ohne Vorhang spielen. Olmütz: Groak. Hanussen, Erik Jan. 1989. La notte dei maghi: autobiografia di un veggente. Roma: Edizioni Mediterranee.

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Nearly as soon as World War I ended, Adolf Hitler made friends with a doctor named Wilhelm Gutberlet. By day, Gutberlet was an ordinary, mild-mannered physician. But by night, he used his secret, mystical powers to detect Jews. Hanussen seemed at the peak of his power. He wasn’t just associating with Nazis, he was one. Even his trusted secretary, Ismet Dzino, was a Party and SA man. In addition to being the favoured soothsayer of the new regime, he was about to open his opulent Palace of the Occult. The Capital’s elite clamoured for invitations. But there was trouble brewing. His tilt to the Nazis earned Hanussen the enmity of the Communist press which had published proof of his Jewish ancestry. Hanussen did his best to brush off the matter and his Nazi pals like Helldorf remained steadfast, for the time being anyway. Filmed by Beat Presser, this single-shot, handheld wander round what looks like the location used for the Zishe family home shows how it was before the production design crew got to work on it. Richard B. Spence, “Behold the Green Dragon: The Myth and Reality of an Asian Secret Society.” New Dawn 112 (Jan-Feb 2009), 69.

Truitt, Brian (24 December 2021). "Spoilers! How 'The King's Man' sets up a future prequel, rise of an evil historical villain". USA TODAY . Retrieved 14 January 2022. Après avoir tue sa femme et sa fils, l’ancien secretarie du mage Hanussen se suicide a Vienne,” L’Impartiale (29 Sept. 1937), 3.

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A light-hearted homage to Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, in which a well-dressed young man is startled by what he reads in a newspaper that then assaults him in an almost Svankmajer-esque piece of stop motion pixilation. In rather good shape for an 8mm short, despite some serious jitters. Poté, co byl 23.března 1933 zatčen komandem SA, byly Hanussenovy tělesné pozůstatky nalezeny až 8.dubna 1933 a policejní pátrání bylo předčasně ukončeno. Jedním zmotivů usmrcení Hanussena je skutečnost, že ve svých věštbách předvídal požár Říšského sněmu. Z pozůstalosti zmizely směnky vystavené některými členy SA, zůstaly jen jeho dluhy ve výši 150 000 marek.

The Crowley-Hanussen connection may be at the root of René Guénon’s later assertion that the Beast infiltrated Hitler’s circle and made himself a “secret counsellor” of the Nazi leader. 35 There is no indication that Crowley got anywhere near the future Fuhrer, but Hanussen certainly did. The Nazis had other reasons to favor Hanussen: They liked gambling, and they were often in debt. One officer, Count Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, was named on several IOUs held by Hanussen, who had loaned the head of the storm troopers a considerable sum to cover his gambling losses. In doing so, Hanussen felt he could grease the wheels with Helldorf in the event Berlin was consumed by either the Jewish-loathing Nazi party or the communist opposition that incited violence.As a drama, the film gets off to a hesitant start, the result of requiring non-professional first-timers to deliver dialogue in what is a second language both for them and their writer-director. There’s certainly a slight imbalance in the screenplay, with some of the dialogue and monologues so well written that it can leave some of the personal interplay feeling a little flat by comparison, and it will probably come as no surprise that real-life Finnish strongman Jouko Ahola was making his film acting debut as Zishe. The thing is, while his inexperience gives these first scenes a slightly awkward feel, as the film progresses, it actually works for his character, giving him an air of almost childlike innocence that makes him disarmingly easy to sympathise and even empathise with, as well as adding weight to his eventual embrace of his Jewish heritage. In the early scenes we see the world through Zishe’s eyes, as his journey to Berlin is aided by the kindness and friendliness of those he meets, and as he observes the theatrical world with awed delight. He also has one of the most charming smiles I’ve seen on screen all year. Seriously, how could you not like this guy? His fascination with the theatre’s pianist Marta is nicely balanced by the fact that she is played by Russian concert pianist Anna Gourari, who is also new to acting and tonally very much on Ahola’s wavelength. That she has become the plaything of her employer, who violently mistreats her and regards her more as a possession than a partner, sees that innocence and her underlying sadness cast her as a victim of circumstance, trapped in a relationship without which she would have no job and be forced to leave the country. Werner Gerson (Pierre Mariel), “Mage ou Espion?,” in Le Nazisme: societe secrete. Paris: J’ai Lu, 1972, humanisme.canalblog.com/archives/2010/08/22/18871564.html (10 April 2014) and Gordon, Hanussen, 195. Like most of Hanussen’s Nazi associates, Ewers later was an outcast from the Party.