Introduction: Staging the Pagan Past 9 I and even feminism are seized upon and ideologically transformed by the contemporary far right. This has created a situation where conventional classifications of “left” and “right” are becoming increasingly unreliable and traditionally right-wing thinking such as ethnonationalism, antisemitism, the “blood and soil” ideology and anti-queer agendas can only be identified through a closer look behind the scenes. With this in mind, especially here, in the land of mythologised images of history, no claim can be made to precision in distinguishing the meanings of the various dimensions and terminological concepts of “right-wing”. Nevertheless, the authors of the articles offer sufficient context for their case studies to enable the reader to determine which flavour of far-right ideology is involved in their individual examples. The volume aims to contribute to both research and education on the exploitation of early history for farright ideological projects ranging from ultra-conservatism and populist ethnonationalism to extremist racism and antisemitism. In so doing, it hopes to join the various studies, events and publications that have recently addressed topics such as political mediaevalism and the (ab-)use of the Middle Ages3 or those that have dealt in general terms with polarised pasts and contested heritage.4 It wants to expand these approaches by including a perspective on the Pagan past in (broadly understood) popular culture. Reflecting the main topics covered at the preceding workshop, this volume focuses on three countries by way of example – Germany, Poland and Hungary. The decision to concentrate on these countries was made based on the response to the workshop. While the texts on Germany and Poland included here cover broad swathes of the topic, we were only able to reflect some aspects of the situation in Hungary. Nonetheless, they provide an important dimension to the varying extents to which state authorities tolerate, embrace and even impose ethnicist historical narratives. Ralf Hoppadietz’s article opens proceedings for Germany by taking a look at the reenactment scene exploring the long tradition of völkisch Neopagan ideals in the imaginations of pre-Christian societies. It is followed by the ‘folk pagans’ in German black metal described by Niels Penke and their preoccupation with Germanic culture and mythology, which reflect anti-modernist and antisemitic world views. The next contribution by Hermann Ritter shines a spotlight on the links between extreme right-wing fiction, fantasy role-playing and conspiracy narratives. The two final articles in this section dedicated to Germany take a look at books and other writings dealing with pre- and early history and Nordic mythology that reveal obsolete nationalist concepts of history and ideological ties with the German Neue Rechte: Whilst Anna- Lena Heckel and Heike Sahm explain how the legend of the Germanic peoples is being kept alive in children’s and young adult books, Hannes Buchmann and Julius Roch highlight the connection between views of prehistory and völkisch ideology based on the example of the Institut für Staatspolitik. The second section, which is devoted to Poland, starts with Philipp Schaab’s article, that uses the example of selected Neopagan groups to highlight the significance of historical references in ethnonationalist identity construction. In the following contribution, Mariusz Filip explores the period of post-1989 transformation as a major formative phase for Polish far-right Neopaganism. While Filip focuses on the broad spectre of political activism and networking, Karin Reichenbach’s paper discusses whether identifying with the Pagan Slavs influences popular performances of history and exerts a cultural effect in the metapolitical sense. Michał Pawleta then examines various aspects of the politicisation of historical reenactment in present-day Poland. The section on Poland concludes with an article by Ryan Buesnel, which explores antisemitism and radicalism in the growth of Polish right-wing black metal. For Hungary, Katrin Kremmler’s article offers insights not only into the role played by reenactment in the state-sponsored reframing of the country’s early history but also into the re-ordering of archaeology and history within an illiberal system. As the final contribution to this volume, Áron Szele’s article illustrates the importance of mythological ancestry in Hungarian rock music. For the success of this publication, which involved a great deal of effort for us as editors due to occasionally unstable and uncertain academic contract situations, we would chiefly like to thank the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) for funding the preparation of this volume and including it in its Visuelle Geschichtskultur (“Visual Cultural History”) series. The editors of this series, Maren Röger and
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