Philipp Stauff was a prominent German/Austrian journalist and publisher in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. He was an enthusiastic Armanist, a close friend of Guido von List

Guido von List

Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List was an Austrian/German poet, journalist, writer, businessman and dealer of leather goods, mountaineer, hiker, dramatist, playwright, and rower, but was most notable as an occultist and völkisch author who is seen as one of the most important...

, and a founding member of the Guido-von-List-Society. He was also the obituarist for List in the Münchener Beobachter

Münchener Beobachter

The Münchener Beobachter was a völkisch newspaper edited by Rudolf von Sebottendorf. In the course of 1920 it became the official Nazi organ, becoming the Voelkischer Beobachter. , and remained the leading Nazi party newspaper until 1945....

.

Stauff joined the List Society in 1910 and swiftly graduated to the High Armanen Order, the intimate inner circle around List. In 1912 he became a committee member of the List Society and a generous patron. He was the chief German representative of the High Armanen Order at Berlin.

His esoteric treatise Runenhäuser (Rune Houses), published in 1912, "extended the Listian thesis of 'armanist' relics with the claim that the ancient runic wisdom had been enshrined in the geometric configuration of beams in half-timbered houses throughout Germany". (See also Runic significance of timber framing.)

He was active in both the Reichshammerbund

Reichshammerbund

Reichshammerbund was a German anti-Semitic movement founded in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch.Based on The Hammer, a journal founded by Fritsch in 1902, the Bund argued that Jewish influences had contaminated Germany and attempted to argue that their racism had a basis in biology...

 and the Germanenorden

Germanenorden

The Germanenorden was a völkisch secret society in early 20th century Germany...

 (pre-World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 völkisch leagues). He was one of the principal officers in the loyalist Berlin province of the original Germanenorden after a splinter group led by Hermann Pohl broke away in 1916.