By Kristy Matthews
ARTICLE 2:
It was late afternoon on December 20, 1970, on the serene island of Tenerife, where police were called to investigate a building on Jesus of Nazareth Street, in the town of Santa Cruz. Neighbors reportedly heard strange noises coming from one of the apartments nearby, and when asked, reported hearing screaming and shouting, which was partially silenced by loud organ music and the singing of hymns, also coming from the apartment. However, when police arrived to investigate, no one could have prepared themselves for the scene they were about to witness.
Blood. There was blood absolutely everywhere. All over the walls, the furniture, the floor, and there was even blood dripping down from the ceiling above. The scene in the living room produced the freshly murdered bodies of three females, one middle-aged woman, the other two were young girls. They had been bludgeoned to death so badly, that their skulls were smashed in and their faces were unrecognizable. The murder weapon, a heavy wooden coat hanger, laid on the floor only a few feet from the bodies. However, most disturbing piece of this murder scene is the fact that all three women were sexually mutilated with their breasts and sex organs being cut out with a knife and nailed to the walls of the apartment like mere hunting trophies. The oldest of the three victims had suffered the worst fate, for her heart had been ripped out of her chest and impaled on a wooden stake in the center of the living room. The entire scene was comparable to a horrifying primitive ceremony concerning some ghastly ritualistic sacrifice. Police stated, “Every inch of that apartment was dripping with blood.” Meanwhile, only a few streets away, a young German girl by the name of Sabine Alexander was attending her duties as a housekeeper in home of the local doctor. When the doorbell rang, she answered it to discover her father, Harald, and her brother, Frank solemn-faced and covered in blood. “We wanted you to know, that Frank and I have just killed your mother and sisters.”
In order to understand this bizarre series of events, it is necessary to travel back in time a bit, to 19th century Slovenia, the birthplace of the prophet and mystic Jakob Lorber. He was born July 22, 1800 in Kanischka, a small village along the River Drau. Born to a family of farmers, Jakob was sent to teacher training college, and originally began his career as a simple village teacher. After pursuing further education, and failing to secure a position in a secondary school, he decided to change the direction of his career and focus on his musical talents instead. Those who considered themselves prophets or messengers of God often times are very ordinary people, with very little standing out about them. German mystic Jakob Boehme believed, “To exclude from the very beginning any claim for personal merit, the Lord sometimes makes use of very insignificant people when revealing His mysteries, so it shall be all the more clearly evident that they are from His hand only.”
Being a mystic along the same lines as Boehme, Lorber enjoyed playing the violin as a soloist in concerts, while also reporting on operas and concert performances for provincial newspapers. He took lessons from the famous violin virtuoso Paganini, in order to enhance his techniques and reputation, and at the height of his career, he performed a concert at La Scala Opera House in Milan. He ran with the same crowd as Franz Schubert, and in 1840 he was offered a position as the assistant musical director of the Trieste Theatre, an opportunity he chose to decline, due to receiving his calling from God. It is reported that on March 15, 1840, Lorber heard a voice calling from within, that spoke the words, “Jakob, get up, take your pencil and write”. In obedience to the command, Jakob picked up a pencil and spent the next 24 years writing down everything that was being dictated to him, by this voice, calling itself Jesus Christ. Altogether he wrote 24 long volumes and a slew of smaller writings. Included in these writings is a daily report of the 3 year ministry of Jesus, which consists of the crucifixion, information concerning the history of mankind, a description of the universe and all its contents, a report concerning the afterlife, and an abundance of information concerning planetary systems, elementary particles, galactic structures, and more, with the manuscript being the equivalent of 10,000 pages of printed text.
Jakob Lorber made the mistake of revealing his destiny as the one chosen to record a revelation from the supernatural world to his friends, who in turn began to fear he was developing a mental illness, due to the Inner Voice Jakob Lorber claimed to be hearing. They began visiting him more frequently, sometimes watching him write for numerous hours at a time. As Lorber was not considered a very intelligent man, his friends became suspicious of who the real author of these texts could possibly be, considering that Jakob couldn’t even understand most of what he was being told by the Inner Voice. However, he was confident that whatever he wrote would find meaning to someone somewhere, and generations to come would be shocked by the accuracy of his predictions fulfilled. Unfortunately, during his lifetime, only a few pages of the manuscript were published, and for that matter, weren’t even credited to his name. However, the Inner Voice spoke to him, and reassured him that one day all his written words would be published and all of mankind would know his name. After beginning his journey with the Inner Voice, Jakob became a man of little luxuries. He became an independent retiree with limited material possessions. From that point on, his only means of work outside of his mission was the music lessons he gave to children in Graz, and his only distraction from everything was the rare occasions he would meet up with his friends in the evenings to have a chat. He became somewhat of a recluse, staying out of the public’s attention, living alone in a single room, never to be married. Over the years, Jakob’s health began deteriorating, and he found himself in a hole financially. He was so far down in the hole with his finances that his friends had to pitch in to satisfy his most basic needs. Lorber also had to begin dictating the prophecies he received to others for them to be written down, before death finally found Jakob Lorber in 1864.
Eventually, the manuscript Jakob wrote became known as The New Revelation. This work encompasses a mystical revelation of elucidation and supplementation of the gospels as well as a number of prophecies relating to disasters that were supposed to be the downfall of mankind before the end of the 20th century. He points out that mankind is facing a turning point in time, and those terrible disasters are going to affect all life on earth. The disclosures of the manuscript also include a critical warning for modern man to destroy the path of theoretical and practical materialism before a worldwide catastrophe takes place. It is interesting to note that the seed of Lorber’s predictions would bear its best fruit at the turn of the new millennium. The New Revelation contains true facts concerning astronomy, atomic physics, and anthropology that Jakob couldn’t possibly have known, according to his followers. The Lorber Society also stated that The New Revelation contained impossibly accurate predictions involving atoms, elementary particles, and paleontological details in relation to early and prehistoric man. During the last few years of his life, Jakob’s prophecies became very apocalyptic, involving worldwide terror. According to Lorber, technology in the 20th century would become an evil spirit utilized in the service of demonic powers to destroy the environment. The last days began with the two World Wars, the terror of Hitler and Stalin forming part of the events predicted by Lorber bringing great tribulation to the world. “One nation shall rise against another and fight it with weapons of fire. Tremendous scarcities will develop, starvation, many dreadful diseases, epidemics and plagues among men, animals, and plants. Great storms will also arise, earthquakes, and at the end of time, the world will become utterly leaky”.
Several volumes of The New Revelation contains detailed descriptions of the destiny of dead souls and of conditions in the next world. “Things are quite different in the spirit world than on this earth”. Lorber goes on to say, “Hell was created not by God, but by evil men, wholly worldly men, who believe in no God and yet enjoy life in health to a great age and in the end die a quick and painless death”. Lorber theorized that those types of sinners have already received their rewards in life, and should not expect any pleasure in the hereafter. “In the society of such souls, outer darkness will prevail, and predictably, perhaps there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth among them”. The followers of Jakob Lorber enjoyed pulling attention to the parts of his writing that discussed the adversary from the air, and lights in the heavens. These statements are said as a reference to UFOs, in connection to a passage of the writing in which it is suggested that extraterrestrials are coming to intervene in the lives of those living on planet earth. “Now the time is coming when I shall open a view of the earth to the inhabitants of the greater planets, and make clear to them the standpoint of those who set to look for me and came to this earth. Then they shall grow greatly excited, and this excitement will extend from Venus to Urka. Then it shall come about that the forces of heaven are shaken, and a tremendous call shall go out from all sides to the inhabitants of this earth”, according to Lorber. Of course, this is interpreted by others to mean that the residents of other heavenly bodies will lend men spiritual guidance. The Lorber Society claims that there have been at least a million copies of The New Revelation sold since it was first published. The manuscript itself shows no mistakes or revisions, and are currently held at the Lorber Publishing House in Wuerttemberg, Germany, which is also known for publishing later editions of the text.
In a similar fashion to most other prophets, Jakob Lorber found himself a number of devoted followers over the years, until his death occurring in 1864. On his deathbed, Lorber passed down his knowledge to his most devoted disciple, a wheelwright named Greg Riehle. He in turn also passed down the knowledge on his deathbed, to his constant companion, Harald Alexander. Unfortunately, however, this was not a good decision to make. When the torch was passed down to him, Alexander began developing delusions of grandeur, which eventually led to him suffering from a messianic complex.
In 1945, Alexander moved to Hamburg, and he took Lorber’s sacred organ and manuscript with him. He installed them in the apartment he shared with his wife Dagmar. There were no other followers of Jakob Lorber in Hamburg, and therefore no one to recognize Harald Alexander as the officially sanctioned spiritual leader, so he decided to form his own version of the Lorber Society from the comfort of his own home. However, like all other death cults before him, Alexander’s version of the Lorber Society was a bizarre perverted distortion of the religious tradition the Lorber Society started out as. Dagmar Alexander who fully supported her husband’s self-bestowed religious authority, became the mother of four children. First came a daughter, Marina, followed by twin girls named Petra and Sabine, and finally the long awaited son they so desperately sought out, Frank. In the eyes of Harald Alexander, his son stood next in line to inherit the knowledge of the Lorber Society, and a genuine seer of the traditions of Swedenborg, Boehme, and Jakob Lorber himself. Harald then decreed that every single demand Frank had must be met and that he was to be referred to as the Prophet of God.
Those who followed in the traditional teachings of Jakob Lorber believed in total societal withdrawal, complete self-sacrifice, and that all nonmembers of the group belonged to Satan. According to Jakob Lorber, devils walk among us on the earth, which is a belief that was taken to heart very seriously by Harald Alexander. “There are personal devils right here, still walking in the flesh, who are now and forever endeavoring to have an evil influences on this world, through certain secret whisperings and enticements. They are only too well aware of the different weaknesses and potential weaknesses in men, take hold of these and fan them into burning passions”. However, things became complicated for the Alexander family when Frank reached puberty and began having sexual thoughts. According to the belief of the Lorber Society, all women outside of the family were considered to be sinful and dirty “whores” owned by Satan, and therefore also considered highly inappropriate sexual partners for Frank. The only women deemed suitable to fulfill Frank’s sexual desires were those of his mother and three sisters. Frank began his sexual journey with his mother, until he grew tired of only one sexual partner. He was then offered the body of his oldest sister Marina, with Harald joining his wife, son, and daughter in the bedroom with repeated sexual orgies with older members of the family. Complications arose when the younger sisters began complaining about not being involved in the sexual activities happening at home, to their friends at school. One of these friends passed the information off to their parents, who wasted no time in turning them into the police. Rather than awaiting charges to be filed against them, Harald Alexander packed his family up and left the country.
During the early months of 1970, the Alexander family was busy adjusting to life and settling into their apartment on Jesus of Nazareth Street in Santa Cruz of the Spanish Canary Islands. This particular area now being known for high volumes of tourism, it was the perfect place for the family’s unusual religion to be continued. Ironically, for being such a small island, Tenerife has an unusually large number of connections to cult activities. Ron L. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, lived there for a while and 19 people were arrested in January for their plan to take part in a mass suicide with the anticipation of the world coming to an end in 1998. The followers of Heidi Fittkau-Garthe believed that a spaceship would come and claim their bodies from the ridge of a volcano. This sect, that never had their name released, was shown to be connected to the Order of the Solar Temple, whose followers completed mass suicides in Canada, France, and Switzerland. In Tenerife, the Alexander family continued their bizarre lives, with the children taking domestic and clerking jobs in order to support the family financially. Once the whole family was home together at night, they would read from Jakob Lorber’s sacred text, sang hymns, and Harald Alexander played the sacred organ. However, only 11 months after making their grand move to Tenerife, Frank Alexander decided that the killing hour was upon them.
December 20, 1970 started out like any other day for the Alexander family. The streets were decorated for the holidays, and Sabine, the youngest daughter, went off to work as usual for the last week before Christmas. She was a housekeeper at the home of the local doctor. Everyone else was home, reading and quietly praying. At some random time in the afternoon, Frank made the announcement to his father, “The hour of the killing is upon us”. While his father played the sacred organ, Frank instructed his mother and two sisters, Marina and Petra, to kneel down in front of him, to which they did with no questions asked. They kneeled down and bowed their heads, submissively awaiting further instructions from The Prophet. But no further instructions came. According to Frank, “This was the time of the cleansing”. Since there were no weapons in the house, Frank picked up the only deadly object he could find, a large heavy wooden coat hanger. He then began beating his mother and sisters over the head, until they finally fell unconscious, a process which must have taken an agonizingly long time to achieve. Despite screaming in pain and suffering, the women made no attempt to defend themselves against their attacker.
Once the women were finally dead, or unconscious at least, Frank took over on the organ while his father, Harald, took care of hacking the bodies of his family up. He was still singing hymns as his ripped the women’s bodies apart. He cut off their breasts and vaginal areas, nailing them to the walls of the apartment. He also carved out the heart of his wife, impaling it to a wooden stake in the middle of the floor. After finishing their crime scene, Frank and his father then proceeded to walk over to the house where Sabine worked to tell her what they had done. Unfortunately, the neighbors overheard what was happening in the apartment and frantically called the police. When the police arrived, they saw one of the bloodiest and most deranged crimes scenes they had ever come across. After openly admitting their guilt to the police, Frank and Harald Alexander were deemed unfit to stand trial by reason of insanity and both were taken into the custody of a psychiatric institution. Sabine Alexander on the other hand, begged the judge to be allowed to go with her father and brother despite her innocence. However, her appeal was denied and instead, she was sent to a convent, to which she has never set foot outside since.
Editor's note: this is the second of two “Culture of Death” articles by this author; the first is published here as `THE-KILLER-THUGS-OF-KALI`. This one traces a doctrine rather than a criminal case, and no roster entry exists for anyone in it. Jakob Lorber was an Austrian musician who from 1840 until his death in 1864 wrote what he said was dictated to him by an inner voice, producing the twenty-five volumes published as The New Revelation. He was never accused of a crime. The article follows the movement built on those writings, which is a legitimate subject, but the reader should be clear that the connection it draws between a nineteenth-century mystic and a twentieth-century killing is the author's argument and not a finding of any kind.