Though the Krohn and Haushofer connections are the most widely accepted theories, other authors [1] believe that Hitler’s first contact with the swastika began a long time before, while he was a young student with the Benedictins at the Abbey of Lambach-am-Traum, in upper Austria. [2] At Lambach Hitler saw the swastika engraved on the four corners of the monastery, where it had been sculpted several years before following orders of the abbot, Theodorich Hagen.
A most erudite ecclesiastic, Father Hagen had a fair knowledge of astrology and of the occult sciences. He was also an specialist on the Apocalypse of Saint John.
In 1856 Father Hagen made a long trip to the Near East visiting, among other places, Persia, Arabia, Turkey, and the Caucasus. Upon his return to 
Lambach in 1868 he immediately hired workers and cabinet makers, whom he ordered to sculpt the swastika (on stone and wood) on the four corners of the building, and even on some religious objects.[3] One of the swastikas at Lambach is depicted on the illustration on the left.
When young Adolf Hitler became a student at Lambach Father Hagen had already died, but the swastikas he ordered to carve were still there.
While Hitler was a student at the abbey, an enigmatic Cistercian monk named Adolf Joseph Lanz [4] made a stay at Lambach. He stayed for several weeks, shut up in the monastery, thoroughly researching and studying Father Hagen’s personal papers. The monks affirm that during his mysterious research he evidenced the signs of great agitation, like of a person who had made a great discovery.
After his visit to Abbey, Lanz returned to Vienna, where the following year (1900) he founded the Order of the New Templars.[5]