Dr. Henri Clemens Birven

Born: 1883 in Aachen, Germany.

Died: 1969.

Henri Birven was a philosophy graduate originally from Aachen, Germany, and had lectured on electrical engineering before WWI. Finding himself a prisoner of Russia during the Great War, he escaped through China and ultimately returned to Berlin, where he taught at the Humboldtschule Tegel, one of Berlin's top secondary schools. By 1927, Birven was publishing in his magazine Hain der Isis works by Gustav Meyrink, Franz Spunda, Joanny Bricaud, E.C.H. Peithmann, Will-Erich Peuckert. From 1929 his magazine included extracts from Crowley's works by arrangement with Martha Küntzel, a Theosophist from Leipzig who translated Crowley's writings. Hain der Isis was published from Birven's home address at Schulstrasse 7, near the Humboldt Oberschule in Hatzfeldallee, where he worked as a schoolteacher.

 Due to Birven's strong links within the educated and cultural circles, Karl Germer nourished antipathy towards him when Birven "would not speak to me if it were not for the fact that you [Crowley] know me", he complained. It was in Birven's home in Berlin where Arnold Krumm-Heller, Germer, Gerald Yorke and Crowley met in 1930. Eventually, Birven who already called Theodor Reuss' O.T.O. a "Tutti-Frutti" started to quarrel with Crowley, especially when Birven received a 33° (Cerneau) Charter from Joanny Bricaud. From 1932 on, Birven had a small Memphis Misraim-circle in Berlin and started writing hateful pamphlets against Crowley, Heinrich Traenker and Arnold Krumm-Heller.

At the beginning of the Nazi regime Birven was allegedly seized by the Gestapo and he blamed it all on Karl Germer who then ended up in a concentration camp.