Secret society The Thule Society, originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum, was a German occultist and völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend. The Society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party. According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer. However, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess had been Thule members, but other leading Nazis had only been invited to speak at Thule meetings or were entirely unconnected with it. The ideology of the Thule Society and that of Hitler's regime agreed in philosophy but,