A Gay Jewish SS Officer and the Holy Grail

Otto Wilhelm Rahn (18 February 1904 – 13 March 1939) with some Jewish descent and openly gay.
While attending the University of Giessen, he was inspired by his professor, Baron von Gall, to study the Albigensian (Catharism).
In 1924, he gained a degree in philology, specialising in the literary history of the language and romances of France.
He became convinced from the songs of the Troubadours that the Cathars had had great wealth and that this included the Holy Grail.
In 1934, Rahn published his first book, Kreuzzug gegen den Gral (Crusade Against the Grail), which attempted to link the medieval romance of Parzival with the persecution of the Cathars by Pope Innocent III.
The book came to the attention of Karl Maria Wiligut, head of the Department for Pre- and Early History of the SS Race and Settlement, Main Office.
Wiligut was impressed by the work and passed it to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
Himmler was obsessed with the Holy Grail as the ultimate source of power and eternal life and was thus impressed by Rahn’s work.
Although Himmler was also Neo-Pagan and would have been impressed by the Germanic folklore quality of Eschenbach’s Parzival.
Indeed, Himmler’s Wewelsburg Castle contained various rooms named after Arthurian characters, presumably putting the Grail in the Castle would have been very attractive to him.
Rahn joined Himmler's staff as a junior, non-commissioned officer and became a full member of the Allgemeine SS in March 1936, attaining the rank of SS-Unterscharführer the following month.