En: National Grand Lodge of all German Freemasons
National Grand Lodge of all German Freemasons
Source: THE HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY of Robert Freke Gould
IV. The National Grand Lodge of all German Freemasons at Berlin. 1
The above title of this Grand Lodge is not now and never was justified. It is a barefaced
usurpation. The Lodge never has been national in the way claimed, as embracing all Germany,
and even at its birth was not so in the more restricted sense as applying to Prussia, where
the National Grand Mother Lodge of the Three Globes already existed. That it assumed until
quite recently to be the only legal Grand Lodge in Germany, that it to this day poses as
infallible, the only true exponent of Freemasonry with the sole exception of Sweden, is, how-
ever, only in perfect keeping with the imperious temper of its founder. From its inception the
Lodge has been dictatorial and oppressive towards its own daughters; scornful and even
impertinent towards its equals ; boastful of its own superior light, yet persistently shrouding
itself in darkness ; founded by a violation of all masonic legality, yet a stickler for legal
forms when they suit its own convenience ; revolutionary at its birth, and ever since most
rigidly conservative. Nevertheless this Grand Lodge is the second largest in Germany, and
has produced Masons of the highest culture, whose very names must always remain an honour
to the Fraternity. Zinnendorff and his immediate friends and successors knew their own
minds at a time when their German brethren were vacillating between Clermont degrees,
Strict Observance Pates, Eosicrucianism, ct hoc genus omne, and so knowing, carried out their
views astutely, ruthlessly, and persistently— with the success that usually attends all well-
directed efforts. No official history of this Grand Lodge has ever been published; its
partisans speak with awe of its ancient documents, and hide them from the gaze of the
student. Like holy relics they are only accessible to devout believers ; nay, even a complete
book of Constitutions has never been placed within reach of the public ; and Worshipful
Masters, in order to govern their Lodges, have been constrained to gather together the
decisions pronounced at various times by the Grand Lodge, each thus forming for himself a
species of digest of the common law as settled by decided cases. Such a collection has been
made in Vol. xxvi. of the " Latomia," and will be used by me ; my other facts I have had to
collect from divers sources, but many gaps still remain to be filled up.
The early annals of this Grand Lodge are indissolubly connected with Zinnendorff, one of the most remarkable and perhaps unscrupulous Masons of whom we have any record. Ellenberger was his patronymic, and he was born August 11, 1731, at Halle; but, being adopted by his mother's brother, took his uncle's name of Zinnendorff. He followed the medical profession, and rose to be the chief of that department in the Prussian army, retiring in 1779. His initiation took place at Halle, March 13, 1757. When he joined a Berlin Lodge, or even which Lodge it was, are alike unknown ; but he was one of the early members of the Berlin Chapter of Jerusalem. We have already seen how Schubart, the Deputy GM. of the "Three Globes," was in November 1763 won over by Von Hund. Schubart's first step was to despatch a letter in Von Hund's interest to the " Three Globes," which was to be opened in the presence of 24 brethren, who were specified. On its arrival, Zinnendorff and three others being with Von Printzen, the G.M., Zinnendorff persuaded
1 The literal trauslation of the German title is "Grand Lodge of the Country." I therefore reject as a barbarism the accepted designation " Grand Countries Lodge "—a phrase which proclaims either a contempt for, or an ignorance of, the structure of both the German and English tongues ; it is not English, and it is not German, because Laudcs is not the plural of Land, which would be Lander, but its genitive singular. VOL. III. 2 K
