booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

CHAPTER VII
GERMAN TEMPLARISM AND FRENCH ILLUMINISM
THE year after Ramsay's oration-that is to say in 1738-Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia, the future
Frederick the Great, who for two years had been carrying on a correspondence with Voltaire, suddenly
evinced a curiosity to know the secrets of Freemasonry which he had hitherto derided as " Kinderspiel," and
accordingly went through a hasty initiation during the night of August 14-15, whilst passing through Brunswick.[1]
The ceremony took place not at a masonic lodge, but at a hotel, in the presence of a deputation
summoned by the Graf von Lippe-Bückeburg from Grand Lodge of Hamburg for the occasion. It is evident
that something of an unusual kind must have occurred to necessitate these speedy and makeshift arrangements.
Carlyle, in his account of the episode, endeavours to pass it off as a " very trifling circumstance "-a
reason the more for regarding it as of the highest importance since we know now from facts that have recently
come to light how carefully Carlyle was spoon-fed by Potsdam whilst writing his book on Frederick
the Great.[2]
But let us follow Frederick's masonic career. In June 1740, after his accession to the throne, his interest
in Masonry had clearly not waned, for we find him presiding over a lodge at Charlottenburg, where he received
into the Order two of his brothers, his brother-in-law, and Duke Frederick William of Holstein-Beck.
At his desire the Baron de Bielfeld and his privy councillor Jordan founded a lodge at Berlin, the " Three
Globes," which by 1746 had no less than fourteen lodges under its jurisdiction.
In this same year of 1740 Voltaire, in response to urgent invitations, paid his first visit to Frederick the
Great in Germany. Voltaire is usually said not to have yet become a Mason, and the date of his initiation is
supposed to have been 1778, when he was received into the Loge des Neuf Sours in Paris. But this by no
means precludes the possibility that he had belonged to another masonic Order at an earlier date. At any
rate, Voltaire's visit to Germany was followed by two remarkable events in the masonic world of France.
The first of these was the institution of the additional degrees; the second-perhaps not wholly unconnected
with the first-was the arrival in Paris of a masonic delegate from Germany named von Marschall, who
brought with him instructions for a new or rather a revived Order of Templarism, in which he attempted to
interest Prince Charles Edward and his followers.
Von Marschall was followed about two years later by Baron von Hundt, who had been initiated in 1741
into the three degrees of Craft Masonry in Germany and now came to consecrate a lodge in Paris. According
to von Hundt's own account, he was then received into the Order of the Temple by an unknown Knight
of the Red Plume, in the presence of Lord Kilmarnock,[3] and was presented as a distinguished Brother to
Prince Charles Edward, whom he imagined to be Grand Master of the Order.[4] But all this was afterwards
shown to be a pure fabrication, for Prince Charles Edward denied all knowledge of the affair, and von Hundt
himself admitted later that he did not know the name of the lodge or chapter in which he was received, but
that he was directed from " a hidden centre " and by Unknown Superiors, whose identity he was bound not
to reveal.[5] In reality it appears that von Hundt's account was exactly the opposite of the truth,[6] and that
it was von Hundt who, seconding von Marschall's effort, tried to enrol Prince Charles Edward in the new
German Order by assuring him that he could raise powerful support for the Stuart cause under the cover of
reorganizing the Templar Order, of which he claimed to possess the true secrets handed down from the
Knights of the fourteenth century. By way of further rehabilitating the Order, von Hundt declared that all
the accusations brought against it by Philippe le Bel and the Pope were based on false charges manufactured
by two recreant Knights named Noffodei and Florian as a revenge for having been deprived of their commands
by the Order in consequence of certain crimes they had committed.[7] According to Lecouteulx de
Canteleu, von Hundt eventually succeeded-after the defeat of Culloden-in persuading Prince Charles Edward
to enter his Order. But this is extremely doubtful. At any rate, when in 1751 von Hundt officially
founded his new Templar Order under the name of the Stricte Observance, the unfortunate Charles Edward
played no part at all in the scheme. As Mr. Gould has truly observed, " no trace of Jacobite intrigues ever
blended with the teaching of the Stricte Observance."[8]
The Order of the Stricte Observance was in reality a purely German association composed of men drawn
entirely from the intellectual and aristocratic classes, and, in imitation of the chivalric Orders of the past,
known to each other under knightly titles. Thus Prince Charles of Hesse became Eques a Leone Resurgente,
Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick Eques a Victoria, the Prussian minister von Bischoffswerder Eques a Grypho,
Baron de Wächter Eques a Ceraso, Christian Bode (Councillor of Legation in Saxe-Gotha) Eques a Lilio
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
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