MATT KOEHL PASSES INTO HISTORY
Matt Koehl, Commander of the NEW ORDER and the foremost National Socialist thinker of the modern era, has passed into history.
Commander Koehl died peacefully in his sleep early on the morning of October 10, at the NEW ORDER property “Nordland” in Wisconsin. The Waukesha County coroner has determined the cause of death as “complications due to cancer.” Koehl was 79, and had been battling the illness for several years.
Matthias Koehl, Jr., was born in Milwaukee on Jan, 22, 1935, one of three children of Matthias Koehl, Sr., and his wife Ruth. He graduated Washington High School here in 1952, and later attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he studied journalism. He subsequently served in the US Marine Corps for two years.
As a teenager, he joined the New York-based National Renaissance Party. He was a key NRP activist, and was mentioned by name in a report by the House Committee on Un-American Activities when they investigate the NRP in 1954.
Koehl went on to join a number of organizations, commonly characterized by the media as “neo-Nazi” or “racist,” such as the United White Party and the National States Rights Party. He also served as the national secretary of the Free Ezra Pound Committee, and met with the poet in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC, on numerous occasions, as he worked to get him released.
In 1961, Koehl joined George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party and became its Chicago organizer. He opened an ANP headquarters there, and conducted over 100 public demonstrations.
In 1963, he was transferred to the party’s national headquarters in Arlington, Va., and became the group’s national secretary.
In January, 1967, Rockwell renamed his party the National Socialist White People’s Party. When he was killed in August of that year, Koehl became the new NSWPP leader.
Although he lacked Rockwell’s flamboyant showmanship, Koehl was a serious and methodical political organizer. Under his tenure, the NSWPP flourished into a national organization, with headquarters in many US cities. In the mid-1970s, it ran candidates for local office in Milwaukee and elsewhere. Koehl’s “Nazis” stunned political observers by capturing between five and 20 percent of the popular vote in various electoral contests.
By the early 1980s, however, Koehl became disenchanted with the political advocacy of Hitlerian ideas. Instead, he helped formalize and develop a serious religious approach that he was convinced was a more assured means to success for those faithful to the worldview of National Socialism.
In 1984, the Commander dissolved the NSWPP and reorganized it as the NEW ORDER, which is a religious movement with a codified worldview based on National Socialist principles. He moved the NEW ORDER headquarters from Arlington to Milwaukee in the mid-1980s.
Matt Koehl was respected throughout the so-called “far-right,” both in the US and abroad, as an essayist, lecturer and theorist. Among his most influential writings are: “Faith of the Future”, “Adolf Hitler: German Nationalist or Aryan Racialist?” and “The Revolutionary Nature of National Socialism”. He was also the author of many doctrinal tracts on National Socialism.
In his personal life, Koehl was a vegetarian, an aficionado of classical music, and a strong supporter of animal rights and natural medicine. Commander Koehl was fluent in German and conversant in multiple other languages. He will be missed and will continue to serve as inspiration for action, dedication and loyalty for National Socialist both in the United States and across the world.
NEW ORDER associate Martin Kerr, a longtime follower and co-worker of Commander Koehl’s, offered this brief assessment of his life and contributions to the Movement:
Matt Koehl was an exemplar of the highest Aryan humanity, and of the finest type of National Socialist. His loyalty to Adolf Hitler and his Cause was unquestionable. Almost singlehandedly, he was responsible for the survival of the National Socialism in the United States following the brutal assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell. Beyond that, however, he was a profound thinker of the first order. The true magnitude of his contributions will only be fully recognized in the years and decades ahead.
We, his loyal followers, bow our heads in sorrow at his passing.
Various essays by Matt Koehl, including The Revolutionary Nature of National Socialism, the Good Society and Faith of the Future are available in print form from http://www.nspublications.com.