German Freemasons Museum
.jpg) Emblem of the German Freemasons Museum in Bayreuth |
|
| Data | |
|---|---|
| place | Bayreuth , Bavaria |
| Art | |
| opening | 1902 |
| operator |
Association of the German Freemasons' Museum V.
|
| management |
Thad Peterson
|
| Website | |
| ISIL | DE-MUS-012815 |
The German Freemasons Museum in Bayreuth (Upper Franconia) houses one of the largest collections of Masonic cultural assets in the world: Masonica of all kinds such as lodge badges , ritual objects, work carpets and the largest Masonic library in the German-speaking area. It is dedicated to the history of ideas in Freemasonry and its interactions within Germany.
Historical development
The bookseller Georg Niehrenheim (1863–1932) from Bayreuth used since 1902 the Masonic objects collected in the house of the Bayreuth Masonic Lodge Eleusis for secrecy - which is still located in the building erected from 1881 to 1884 - as the basis of his own Masonic Museum. He used the color etching of a scenic painting as an advertising medium, which showed the picture of Margrave Friedrich von Bayreuth by his brother-in-law, the then Prince Friedrich of Prussia .
In 1912 the Bayreuth physician Bernhard Beyer took over the management of the museum and expanded it to become the third largest of its kind in the world by 1930. In 1913, as part of the establishment of the German library in Leipzig, it was intended to establish a German Freemason library as the central library for all deposit copies . The Bayreuth Masonic Lodge Eleusis for Secrecy in Bayreuth followed this idea and incorporated its entire library into the museum's holdings.
With the seizure of power by the Nazis , the museum was closed. At that time the lodge was run by Karl Dürr, a senior teacher and headmaster at the Bayreuth Old Town School. The avowed adversary against National Socialism was a personal enemy of Hans Schemms , at that time head of the NS-Gaus Bayerische Ostmark and Bavarian Minister of Culture . From 1921 the founder of the National Socialist teachers' association Schemm , who lived in Bayreuth, was also a teacher at the old town school. Political police from Munich drove up on October 24, 1933, and the castellan of the house was locked in his apartment. Members of the SA and SS loaded the library and the archive onto trucks, pictures and things unimportant to the party were thrown through the windows in the garden and destroyed. The building became the home of the Bayreuth SS, other Nazi groups and the notorious pastor Franz Lossin also spread out there.
The stolen collections with an abundance of irreplaceable cultural values were kidnapped and have been lost to this day. In the end there were 1000 lodge badges, known as bijoux , over 700 medals, 160 Masonic aprons, 20 ritual carpets and over 1000 oil paintings, copper engravings and stone prints, as well as over 15,000 Masonic seals, crystal glasses and porcelains. In addition, there was a rich collection of clothing from all lodge grades, as well as many documents, original letters and lodge passports from prominent Freemasons.
Bernhard Beyer and his successors were able to rebuild the collections from scratch after the war, so that they are larger today than they were before 1935. The collection of photographs, copperplate engravings and graphics amounts to 2000 copies, the inventory of lodge badges ( bijoux ) and medals to 3100, of other exhibits made of crystals, porcelain, ceramics and Masonic clothing to over 1400. The unique German-language library on Freemasonry now includes 19,000 volumes and is connected to the official interlibrary loan of libraries in the Federal Republic.
20,000 lists of members from many lodges from the beginning of German Freemasonry in 1757 to the present day were kept there. They have been electronically recorded since 2004 and are constantly being updated. The archive with lodge documents currently comprises several thousand numbers. The recording and scientific description of all existing objects in a convertible database according to the international standard of the recommendations of the German Museum Association and the ICOM is in progress .
The museum is supported and administered by the Association of German Freemasons. V., which was entered in the Bayreuth register of associations on May 13, 1954 and to which individual members as well as Masonic lodges belong. The museum is a member of the Association of Masonic Museums, Libraries and Archives in Europe (AMMLA) .
The museum houses one of the three original Illuminati badges in the world.
literature
- Hans-Georg Lesser van Waveren: 100 years of the German Freemasons Museum in Bayreuth (1902–2002)
See also
- Masonic Museum at Freemasons' Hall in London .
- In Schloss Rosenau near Zwettl in Lower Austria there is another Masonic Museum.
- In St. Michaelisdonn ( Schleswig-Holstein ) is the Masonic Museum of the Great State Lodge of the Freemasons of Germany .
Web links
- Homepage of the German Freemasons Museum
- German Freemasons Museum Bayreuth . In: freimaurerei.de
- German Freemasons Museum Bayreuth . In: freimaurer-wiki.de
- Masonic museums worldwide
Individual evidence
- ^ History - Eleusis on secrecy at ezv.bayreuth.freimaurerei.de, accessed on January 3, 2020.
- ↑ Bernd Mayer : Bayreuth as it was. Flash lights from the city's history 1850–1950 . 2nd Edition. Gondrom, Bayreuth 1981, p. 48 .
- ↑ The Protestant Child Care and the Inner Mission in the Time of National Socialism, Volume 1, p. 579. from Google Books, accessed on December 20, 2019
- ^ Nazi looted property back in Bayreuth in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of December 5, 2019, p. 10.
- ↑ www.sites.google.com/site/ammlaorg ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. AMMLA members. Accessed March 3, 2011.
Coordinates: 49 ° 56 ′ 27 ″ N , 11 ° 34 ′ 50 ″ E