Karl Gotthelf von Hund and Altengrotkau

Karl Gotthelf von Hund and Altengrotkau

Karl Gotthelf, Imperial Baron von Hund and Altengrotkau (born September 11, 1722 in disgrace , † November 8, 1776 in Meiningen ) was the founder and promoter of the Strict Observance in Germany . Carlsbrunn is named after him.

Childhood and youth

Dog came from the Silesian family, which goes back to Heinrich von Hund auf Altengrottkau around 1480. His son of the same name was Commander of the Order of Malta in Glatz , where he held the office of burgrave in 1518 and the office of governor in 1523 . Although Johann and Christoph von Hund appear in documents as early as 1300, there is no evidence that they belong to the later Altgrotkau line. Karl Gotthelf's father, Joachim Hildebrand von Hund, was an electoral chamberlain and large landowner . The von Hund and Altengrotkau family owned the Unwürde manor since 1607 and the Oberkittlitz manor in Upper Lusatia since 1704. The father died very early, so that the inheritance fell to the still underage son, with the guardianship of the mother and the state elder Caspar Heinrich von Rodewitz. Karl Gotthelf was the youngest after three children, all of whom had died before he was born, so he was given special care and a good spiritual education. He studied in Leipzig from 1737 to 1739. Then he went on trips under the leadership of Colonel Friedrich von Schoenberg. Because of the death of his guardian Rodewitz's daughter, whom he loved, Hund broke down mentally and decided never to marry.

First contacts to Freemasonry

In 1741 Hund was in Frankfurt am Main on the occasion of Charles VII's coronation as emperor and was accepted into the Freemasonry there. In 1742 he stayed in Paris and is said to have converted to Catholicism there under the influence of a noble lady . Here, on February 20, 1743, he led a lodge as master of the chair . On August 25, 1743 he acted as the first overseer at the establishment of a lodge. He later declared that he had been accepted into the order of the Templars by Scottish knights in Paris in 1742 and introduced to the English pretender to the throne, Charles Edward Stuart, as the grand master of the supposedly resurrected Knights Templar . The latter is probably a legend. There is still no documentary evidence of a Masonic-Templar institution before 1750. Dog is said to have been used by these " unknown superiors " of the temples as "army master" (provincial grand master) of the 7th order province (Germany). Whether it was deceived or whether it was misused for other purposes is not understandable. As proof, he later, accused of being untruthful, presented an encrypted, so-called "Heermeisterpatent", which has not yet been deciphered. When asked more carefully, Hund always kept silent and repeatedly referred to his duty of confidentiality towards the "unknown superiors" who had supposedly given him the task of resurrecting the Templar Order in Germany. Hund's relationship with the alleged French Templar order is confused and no longer clear. In any case, the surviving diary entries of Hund provide no information on this.

Hund's work as a Freemason

When he returned to Germany, the Niederkittlitz estate was transferred to Hund in 1750. The Kittlitz Castle he built there has an octagonal floor plan that is interpreted as a Masonic symbol . It can be assumed that after several unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with the court of the pretender to the throne Karl Eduard Stuart, he finally decided to take responsibility for the organization of the seventh province of the Temple Order himself. From 1751 he founded the rite of strict observance within Freemasonry . He always propagated the idea of ​​a line of development from the Knights Templar to the Freemasons. First of all , in 1751, he founded the chapter of the Strict Observance on the Three Pillars on his estate Unwürde , which initially only comprised himself and his best childhood friend von Schoenberg. In 1755 he created an operation plan for the Knights Templar community to attract as many people as possible of high class. Their members gave each other well-known religious names. Dog himself carried the name Carolus eques from Ense (Latin: Karl, knight of the sword) or Chevalier de l´epée (French: knight of the sword).

Characterization of Hund

From today's perspective, dog was not a charlatan, as there were several of them in the 18th century. What is certain is that the dog was enthusiastic and relatively easy to influence. Even as a youth he is said to have loved the poets of antiquity and to have devoted himself entirely to the ideals of the knightly spirit. Especially in his time, knightly ideals were revered, which was also strongly expressed in the other high degree systems of Freemasonry of the 18th century. In the rest of his life, Hund enthusiastically represented the erroneous view that Freemasonry came from the supposedly still existing order of the Templars, which should be resurrected. Masonic historians value dog as a person of kindness and fraternity, who sacrificed everything for his ideals. He could have lived a prosperous life, could have held higher court and state positions. He renounced all of this in favor of the religious idea. So he endured toil, hostility and persecution until the end of his life, always in the erroneous view that he was the messenger of the Knights Templar. When he was asked at the Braunschweig Convention on June 11, 1775 about the "unknown superior" who allegedly introduced him to the system of strict observance in Paris, Hund is said to have tearfully assured that this was his oath and his conscience contradicted.

He sacrificed a great deal of time, money and almost all of his property for Freemasonry and the system of strict observance he founded. The willingness to sacrifice himself for this type of teaching is ultimately also proven by the fact that, already very ill, he traveled to Meiningen in 1776 to personally admit the reigning Duke Friedrich August to the Strict Observance. A short time afterwards he died of a "heated fever" and was buried in full military robes in the town church of Mellrichstadt (Lower Franconia). He wore his army master's ring with the initials NVIO, di “nulla vi invertur ordo” (“The order cannot be overthrown by any force”), the motto of the Strict Observance.

literature

• Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon. 5. Revised and expanded new edition of the 1932 edition. Herbig, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 .
• Ferdinand Runkel: History of Freemasonry. 3 volumes. Reprint from 1932, Edition Lempertz, Königswinter 2006, ISBN 3-933070-96-1 . Vol. 1, p. 193 ff.
• Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the baronial houses, p.337f family Hundt and Alten-Grottkau
• Friedrich Bülau , Secret stories and enigmatic people , Volume 1, pp.356f

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Land captains of the County of Glatz. (According to Kögler's handwritten chronicles.) In: Quarterly journal for history and local history of the County of Glatz. 2nd year 1882–1883, p. 167
2. ↑ Naumann, Germania sacra: a topographical guide through the church and school history of Germany , p.1026