Freemasonry in Germany
This culminated with the suppression of Freemasonry by the Nazis in 1935, with many Masons in Germany and occupied countries being executed or sent to concentration camps.
[1] It was only on December 6, 1737 that the Grand Master's Deputies of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Electorate of Brandenburg Hamburg founded a lodge.
[3] The Rite of Strict Observance arose in Germany in the middle of the 18th century, introducing the concept of Higher degrees in Freemasonry.
The founder, Karl Gotthelf von Hund, claimed to have been initiated into the higher degrees by Scottish Jacobites, who guarded the secrets of the Knights Templar.
In 1764, seeking to re-establish this link, he unintentionally unmasked a fraud calling himself George Frederick Johnson, who claimed to be an exiled Jacobite with knowledge of the higher degrees of Freemasonry.
The lodges that Johnson had deceived placed themselves under von Hund, and Strict Observance was born, rapidly becoming the predominant form of masonry in Germany.
In the convent of Wolfenbüttel in 1778, the Grand National Mother Lodge, "The Three Globes" withdrew from the Strict Observance for political reasons.
[3] After the era of the Strict Observance, set against much stranger forms of Freemasonry, the craft in Germany came to be governed by several strong and durable Grand Lodges.
The Hamburg club focused more on the content of scientific questions, the Berliners were more concerned with administrative aspects of their Grand Lodge.
As Germany unified, these meetings formed the "Federation of German Grand Lodges" (Deutscher Großlogenbund), formulated in 1871 and officially founded on May 19, 1872.
They produced an aim to establish a National Grand Lodge of all German Freemasons in 1880, and in 1897 recognised Anderson's charges.
Emigrants such as the Baltic German Alfred Rosenberg brought the fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Western and Central Europe.
Therefore, capitalism and communism were only apparent opposites, in truth they were one and the same pincer movement, caused by international Jewry and their aspirations of world domination.
This stated that Germany could have been victorious, had not greater powers insidiously undermined the "heroic struggle of the German people".
[7][8] When the Enabling Act of 1933 placed power in the hands of Hitler, the Humanitarian lodges, which all admitted Jews and had cosmopolitan ideals, voluntarily dissolved themselves.
The three old Prussian Grand Lodges, exclusively Christian in membership, continued to protest their patriotism in an effort to stay open.
In November 1943 seven Freemasons, who were Nacht und nebel prisoners from the Belgian resistance, formed a lodge which initiated another intern and accepted two more members.
[11] After the fall of the Nazi regime, the first meetings of Freemasons were probably the Square and Compass clubs of British, American and Canadian servicemen.
[12] Freemasonry in the Soviet occupied areas of Germany, which later became known as the DDR - Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic) was forbidden.
To avoid confusion, it changed its name twice, first to Große Landesloge der Alten Freien und Angenommenen Maurer von Deutschland, and finally in 1970 to Großloge der Alten Freien und Angenommenen Maurer von Deutschland (Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Germany).
[15] Reconstituted in 1946, but initially confined to the American sector in Berlin, the Grand National Mother Lodge, "The Three Globes" adheres to "Rectified Masonry", descended from the system developed in the Rite of Strict Observance.
Like the British masons, the first North American lodges were composed of military personnel who obtained warrants from home.
The oldest Droit Humain lodge, Goethe of the Blazing Star in Frankfurt am Main, left in February 1959.
After Goethe's daughter lodge defected in the same year, Humanitas was formed at a convention in Frankfurt attended by 28 male and female masons.
