Rudolf von Sebottendorf

His birth name was Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer and he was born in Hoyerswerda in the Prussian Province of Silesia (present-day Saxony), the son of a locomotive engineer.[5] He appears to have worked as a technician in Egypt between 1897 and 1900, although according to his own account he spent less than a month there in 1900 after a short career as a merchant sailor. In July of that year he travelled to Turkey, where he settled in 1901 and worked as an engineer on a large estate there. By 1905 he had returned to Dresden where he married Klara Voss, but the couple divorced in 1907. The Münchener Post (14 March 1923) reported that he was sentenced as a swindler and forger in 1909, which Goodrick-Clarke (1985: 251) insists is a misprint for 1908. He became an Ottoman citizen in 1911 and was apparently adopted (under Turkish law) by the expatriate Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorff shortly thereafter. The adoption was later repeated in Germany and its legal validity has been questioned, but it was endorsed by the Sebottendorff family (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 140–41) and on this basis he asserted his claim to the Sebottendorff name and to the title of Freiherr. After fighting on the Ottoman-Turkish side in the First Balkan War, Glauer returned to Germany with a Turkish passport in 1913. He was exempted from military service during the First World War because of his Ottoman citizenship and because of a wound received during the First Balkan War.

After leaving Germany, Glauer published The Practice of Ancient Turkish Freemasonry[9] (Die Praxis der alten türkischen Freimauerei), and then, in 1925, The Rosicrucian Talisman (Der Talisman des Rosenkreuzers), a semi-autobiographical novel which is the main source for his earlier life (see: "Rosicrucians"). He returned to Germany in January 1933, and published "Before Hitler Came: Documents from the Early Days of the National Socialist Movement"[10] (Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundlich aus der Frühzeit der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung), dealing with the Thule Society and the DAP. Hitler himself understandably disliked this book, which was banned. Glauer was arrested, but somehow escaped (presumably due to some friendship from his Munich days) and in 1934 returned to Turkey.[11] His most polemic and obscure work, Bevor Hitler kam, was translated and published in English. The preface dates to November 1933.[12] Glauer was an agent of the German military intelligence in neutral Istanbul during the period 1942–1945, while apparently also working as a double agent for the British military. His German handler, Herbert Rittlinger, later described him as a "useless" agent (eine Null), but kept him on largely, it seems, because of an affection for "this strange, by then penniless man, whose history he did not know, who pretended enthusiasm for the Nazi cause and admiration for the SS but who in reality seemed little interested in either, much preferring to talk about Tibetans". Much remains unknown about his death, some accounts claim it was suicide by jumping into the Bosporus on 8 May 1945.[13]

Rudolf von Sebottendorf was recorded at birth as Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer. He also worked under the name Erwin Torre. The authorities additionally record the heading Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer. His recorded language was German. His recorded confession was Islam.

Rudolf von Sebottendorf is recorded as engineer, astrologer, writer, politician and occultist.