Nazi Party
"Deutsche Gemeinschaft" was a branch of the Nazi Party founded in 1919, created for Germans with "Volksdeutsche" status. It is not to be confused with the post-war right-wing "", which was founded in 1949.
Völkisch movement
The "völkisch" ideologies were influential in the development of Nazism. Indeed, Joseph Goebbels publicly asserted in the 1927 Nuremberg rally that if the populist ("völkisch") movement had understood power and how to bring thousands out in the streets, it would have gained political power on 9 November 1918 (the outbreak of the SPD-led German Revolution of 1918–1919, end of the German monarchy). Adolf Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"): "the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are populist ("völkisch") and the populist ("völkisch") ideas are National-Socialist." Nazi racial understanding was couched in "völkisch" terms, when Eugen Fischer delivered his inaugural address as Nazi rector, "The Conception of the Völkisch state in the view of biology" (29 July 1933).
The Thule Society was founded on 17 August 1918 by Rudolf von Sebottendorff with the original name of "Studiengruppe für Germanisches Altertum" (Study Group for Germanic Antiquity), and disseminated anti-republican and anti-Semitic propaganda. Karl Harrer, the Thule member most directly involved in the creation of the DAP in 1919, was sidelined at the end of the year when Hitler drafted regulations against conspiratorial circles, and the Thule Society was dissolved a few years later. The "völkisch" circles handed down one significant legacy to the Nazis: In 1919, Thule member Friedrich Krohn designed the original version of the Nazi swastika.
In January 1919, the Thule Society was instrumental in the foundation of the "Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei" (German Workers' Party, or DAP), which later became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), commonly called the Nazi Party. "Thule" members or visiting guests that would later join the Nazi Party included Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart and Karl Harrer. Notably Adolf Hitler never was a member of the "Thule Society" and Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg were only visiting guests of the Thule Society in the early years before they came to prominence in the Nazi movement. The "Münchener Beobachter" ("Munich Observer"), owned by Sebottendorff, was the press organ of another small nationalist party and later became the "Völkischer Beobachter" ("People's Observer"). The Thule Society had no members from the top echelons of the party and Nazi officials were forbidden any involvement in secret societies so the connection of "völkisch" ideologies with the NSDAP can be overstated. According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, an imaginative mythology has grown up around the supposed influence of the "Thule-Gesellschaft" within the Nazi Party.