Naensen as "material hand point" and Ebergötzen as "skould point". Wiligut identified Irminism as the true German ancestral religion, claiming that Guido von List's Wotanism and Armanen runes was a schismatic false religion. Wiligut contributed significantly to the development of Wewelsburg as the order-castle and ceremonial center of SS pseudo-religious practice. He designed the Totenkopfring, which Himmler personally awarded to prestigious SS officers. Retirement In November 1938, Karl Wolff, chief adjutant of Himmler's personal staff and the second-highest-ranking officer in the SS, visited Wiligut's wife and learned of Wiligut's earlier involuntary commitment to a mental institution, which proved embarrassing to Himmler. Wiligut's staff was notified that his "application" for retirement on grounds of age and poor health had been granted in February 1939, and the official retirement was dated 28 August 1939, only a few days prior to the outbreak of World War II. Death Wiligut's final years were insecure: he moved to Aufkirchen in 1939, to Goslar in 1940, and to Wörthersee in 1943, and after the war to a refugee camp in St. Johann near Velden, where he had a stroke. After this he was permitted to return to Salzburg, but he soon moved on to Arolsen in Hesse, where he died on 3 January 1946. His gravestone is inscribed with "UNSER LEBEN GEHT DAHIN WIE EIN GESCHWÄTZ" ("Our Life Passes Away Like Idle Chatter"). Occult involvement In 1889, Wiligut joined the Schlaraffia, a quasi-masonic lodge. When he left the lodge in 1909, he held the rank of knight and the office of chancellor. His first book, Seyfrieds Runen, was a collection of poems about the Rabenstein at Znaim on the Austrian-Moravian border; it was published in 1903 under his full real, name and an added moniker, "Lobesam." His next book, Neun Gebote Gots, followed in 1908, in which Wiligut first claimed to be the heir to the ancient tradition of Irminism. Both List and Wiligut were influenced by Friedrich Fischbach's 1900 Die Buchstaben Gutenbergs. Wiligut claimed to be in the tradition of a long line of Germanic mystic teachers, reaching back into prehistoric times. He also claimed to have spiritual powers that allowed him direct access to genetic memories of his ancestors thousands of years in the past. From 1908, Wiligut was in contact with the occultist Ordo Novi Templi in Vienna. Wiligut claimed that the Bible had originally been written in Germanic, and testified to an