While asserting that Munch and his existentialist imagery embodied Nordic essence, the newspaper also worked to appropriate the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). The impulse behind this cultural-historical mission came from the notorious racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther, whose books – including The Ethnology of the German Volk (1922), The Racial Elements of European History (1927), and The Ethnology of the Jewish People (1930) – were important sources of eugenic thought in National Socialism. In an article on “Kierkegaard as a Prophet of Nordic Blood,” Günther insisted that the Dane was a “Nordic herald of faith.” As in the case of the poet Heinrich von Kleist, Günther felt that “racial as well as pathological factors interacted in Kierkegaard’s soul.” Despite what Günther described as Kierkegaard’s “mental illness,” a significant element of his constitution was the “drive to establish a Nordic form of Christianity.” Above all, Kierkegaard’s character bore “distinctive traits of Nordic piety.” As Günther saw it, he followed a path to God that was contrary to the path followed by “those of the Near Eastern race” (including followers of the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as of Islamic mysticism). Whereas “Near Easterners climbed up to the spiritual, Nordic peoples – understood racially, not culturally” – or as the editors of the paper added, “not just North Germans or Scandinavians, but the tall, small-faced, high-foreheaded, blond, and blue-eyed people who were strongly present over all Germany” – “internalized spirituality until they became fit to match themselves with God.” As thus interpreted, Kierkegaard’s argument was that devotion was always a matter of the individual and his God, “not of this or that historical reality, Church order, or Church law.” He demonstrated that every individual faces the “unique anguish” of his own decisions about “soulful relations with the holy.”

Kierkegaard’s form of piety had been termed “Christian individualism,” but, as Günther explained, it was really more a “Nordic form of Christianity.” It rejected all rules about church and faith and posited as many paths to God as there were individuals. Moreover, in Kierkegaard’s view, suffering helped to clarify the relationship between the individual and God. In Günther’s opinion, this was the only stance possible for a “Nordic herald of faith,” because Nordic people were “insusceptible to suggestion, advertising, and instigation.”