History of the secret societies
The history of the secret societies ranges from ancient times to modern times . The following presentation follows the respective contemporary definition of a secret connection.
Antiquity
The story of secret combinations can be up traced back to ancient times, as in ancient Egypt, the numerous priestly orders esoteric teachings and practices before the people by secret signs, hieroglyphics , more concealed as widespread as in ancient Greece the mysteries arose and in the Roman Empire , the Pythagoreans . The Jewish sect of the Essenes was or is still considered a secret society and was opposed by the Roman authorities.
middle Ages
The Middle Ages then showed numerous religious fraternities in conflict with the Church , the Templars , the Cathars , Waldensians and others. The construction huts also belonged to the secret societies of the Middle Ages.
Modern times (17th and 18th centuries)
The Illuminati Order founded by Adam Weishaupt in Ingolstadt sought political changes in the spirit of the Enlightenment . He quickly won many followers. After being banned in 1784/85, he stopped working.
Modern times until 1830
It was only when Napoleon I threatened to stifle freedom with the anarchy that more and more secret political connections emerged, such as that of the Philadelphs , which held up regardless of all countermeasures until the fall of the emperor. Likewise the Charbonniers in eastern France , whose propaganda in Italy was initiated by the Carbonari . In Germany, under Napoleonic rule, the idea of national resistance first fled to the Tugendbund in 1808 , the statutes of which were known to the state government, and which was dissolved on December 31, 1809. He then gave the name to all anti-French agitation in Germany for several years .
Real secret societies of German patriots were the German Confederation , founded in 1810 by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Karl Friedrich Friesen , the Iron Bund , the Bund der Charlottenburger and others. As in Germany and Italy, secret societies with a thoroughly national tendency were formed elsewhere, especially when the legitimacy principle came into force with the victory over the hated Napoleon. The hetary of the Greeks , founded in 1795 and renewed in 1814 for liberation from Turkish rule, and the secret societies founded in Poland since 1817 under the names of the Patriotic Association , the Confederation of Scythe Bearers , the Radiant , the Philaretes and the Templars , had a decidedly national character . The partial discovery of the Templars led to their merging with the Patriotic Association. The unsuccessful outbreak of the Decembrists' conspiracy in St. Petersburg after the death of Alexander I then also resulted in the dissolution of the Polish Patriotic Association, in the place of which a secret association was established in 1828, initially with the Warsaw Military School, which expanded into a youth league The impetus for the Polish uprising in 1830. Even after the suppression of this uprising, attempts to establish revolutionary societies, some of which were led by emigration in France, continued and led to the uprisings in Cracow , Poznan and the January uprising .
In the west and south of Europe, the aim of the secret societies since the Restoration of 1815 and the reaction that went with it was directed not only towards the national unification intentions mentioned, but also towards the introduction of truly constitutional conditions. In Italy, for example, the Carbonari - not so much the Camorra and the Mafia - in Spain the Freemasons and Comuneros had a liberal, sometimes democratic color. In France, such connections were initially formed in the interests of the Napoleonic dynasty under various names, such as the Association of the Black Needle , the Patriots of 1816, the Bonaparte vultures , the Sun Knights , the European reformist patriots and the General Regeneration . This merged with the Carbonari, so that Paris became the headquarters of the Charbonnerie. Soon after the peace , a secret alliance arose in Germany, especially along the Rhine , which borrowed much from the earlier Tugendbund, but which was soon re-established. Later, the general German fraternity formed a youth association ( unconditional ), partly as an opposition to the so-called chain of nobility and to Jesuit activities.
Modern times 1830
A new phase in the history of the secret societies begins with the French July Revolution of 1830. In France, societies emerged from the Carlist party such as the Chevaliers de la Legimité . The republican party created a new charbonnerie démocratique , and a special section d'action was formed as part of the numerous human rights societies . After further revolutionary attempts in Italy subsequently failed, several emigrants, u. a. Mazzini , in opposition to the French Charbonnerie, the Young Italy . A Young Germany , Young Poland , Young France and Young Switzerland , all of which sought to enter into mutual exchange as Young Europe , were based on his model.
After the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, a number of secret societies were formed in Spain from the remains of earlier associations, from the Carbonaria and the Young Europe, such as that of the Isabellinos , the High Templars , Human Rights, the irregular Freemasons and the boy founded in Barcelona Spain . These associations either only aimed to ward off Carlist despotism and the rule of priests, or they aimed at restoring the constitution of 1812 or the republic. Opposite them appeared several Carlist associations, such as the Sun Knights, while moderate liberalism tended towards the society of the Jovellanists . In a similar way, connections of the Septembrists , Charlists and Miquelists appeared in Portugal , which temporarily disappeared and reappeared under new names and forms.
In Germany, part of the fraternity took on the shape of a secret association as Germania even before the attack in Frankfurt . Not long after that attack, a men's society with a democratic tendency was formed in Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area.
In England the long-established Torystan orangelogues came out more and more resolutely. Likewise, secret political organizations under bizarre names have been active in Ireland since the 18th century:
- since 1760 the whiteboys
- the rightboys
- the Shanvests
- Hearts of Steel since 1722
- the Corders
- the Caravak
- the Oak Boys and Treffers
- since 1781 the United Irishmen
- 1817 the band men .
These groups had an agrarian reorganization and political independence of Ireland for the purpose. In addition to the public associations ( trade unions ) of the workers in Great Britain and Ireland and Chartism , secret societies were also formed, but they aimed more at obtaining higher wage rates than for political goals. In general, political secret societies were not able to take root so deeply in British society because the right of association and assembly was already legally recognized.
France remained the main focus of the secret societies. After the Republican Party suffered a heavy defeat in the uprising of 1834, the numerous associations that had the aim of realizing socialism or communism were formed. In some German states, too, a few secret associations, mostly founded by craftsmen , were discovered from 1840 onwards , which seemed to show similar tendencies. Some of these efforts were brought in via Switzerland , where, after an extensive investigation in Zurich, communist associations were discovered in 1843 .
Modern times (since 1848)
The political movements of 1848 and 1849, which developed in full public in all the countries affected by them, ended the secret association system in so far as each party was allowed to express its plans out loud. It was only with the restoration of the old rule and the earlier political pressure that secret societies became active again, for example the conspirators against papal and Austrian rule in Italy and Marianne in France . In Italy, Germany and Austria, as a result of the more liberal political national transformations in 1859, 1866 and 1871, and above all through the development of freedom of association, the secret associations were essentially deprived of their ground.
United States
Across the Atlantic Ocean , the southern aristocracy in the United States founded the Knights of the Golden Circle to maintain and spread the preponderance of slave owners . After the end of the American Civil War , the slave-owning party in the Ku Klux Klan tried again to gain influence. The well-known Tammany Society was also initially a secret association. One link in the chain is the Irish-American Fenians , whose most extreme wing, the so-called Invincible , represented a terrorist organization. The highbinder were a Chinese secret society in the United States.
International
In Germany , when the Socialist Law had made it difficult for it to take an open political position , the Social Democrats withdrew into the darkness of an association operating in secret, which had special connections with the International Workers' Association, which comprised all these secret societies .
Russia in the 19th century
The greatest sensation - comparable to the RAF and Al-Qaida today - caused the emergence and activities of the nihilists in Russia in the 19th century . Their aim was the overthrow of absolutism , the creation of parliamentary institutions and the dissolution of the previous social conditions. The alliance of terrorists arose from nihilism , from which the murders of numerous high-ranking officials and finally of Tsar Alexander II began in 1878 (March 13, 1881).
It was also the Russian Bakunin whose agitation in 1872 led to the separation of the collectivist Jura Federation from the International, from which anarchism developed in 1880 , mainly through the efforts of the nihilistically minded Prince Kropotkin .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Horst E. Miers : Lexicon of secret knowledge. Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-442-12179-5 . Pp. 234-235.