Atlantic antagonism: Revolution and race in German-American Masonic relations, 1848–1861

ABSTRACT

After the 1848 revolutions in Europe, waves of European émigrés, many of them Germans, settled in the United States. These Forty-Eighters faced challenging choices in their relationship to American society, oscillating around assimilation, adaptation, alienation and open antagonism. The arrival of thousands of refugees from revolutions repositioned US politics within a transatlantic world, one increasingly shaped by multiple intersections and exchanges. Through the activities of German-speaking lodges in New York, this article analyses ideological tensions between Masonic universalism as espoused by émigrés and US Masonic practices, particularly with regard to racial biases. Persistent prejudices and significant differences in organizational culture led to escalating transatlantic Masonic tensions, pointing to deeper divergences in worldviews and self-perceptions. These tensions exposed the limits of the cosmopolitan ethos of Freemasonry when faced with the realities of cross-cultural negotiations between immigrant and US-born Freemasons.

KEYWORDS:

• Freemasonry
• ante-bellum
• Grand Lodge of New York
• Grand Lodge of Hamburg
• racial segregation
• Forty-Eighters
• universalism
• particularism
• Brooklyn

Immigration and identity: The complex case of the German Forty-Eighters

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) severely disrupted the political state of Germany. Without the legal and dynastic framework of the Old German Empire (disbanded in 1806), Germans questioned whether Germany represented a unified political space or even culture at all, and how political order should be organized in the future. Germans considered a number of alternatives, ranging from revolutionary republicanism in the Rhineland to conservative restoration in Prussia. During the period called “Vormärz” – stretching from 1815 to the revolution of 1848 – the liberal and social legacy of the French revolution and the reactionary authoritarian and absolutist legacy of the old empire characterized the poles of the political struggles. These antagonisms finally erupted in the failed revolution of 1848–1849, known as the “March revolution.” In its aftermath, radical liberals went into exile, some by choice, others by necessity, and many of them emigrated to the United States.

The German émigré Forty-Eighters – an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 individuals – faced multiple tensions in refashioning a durable political identity in exile.¹ They began these processes of resettlement and refashioning with a transnational perspective on American politics. To conceptualize and negotiate their particular position, they drew on the revolutionary legacy of 1848, asserting “the value of German culture in their adopted home,” while at the same time trying to articulate a “German language of American citizenship.”² Events in Europe had inspired some Americans, particularly abolitionists, to stand in transatlantic solidarity with revolutionaries in Europe. The European struggle for liberty was thus profoundly transformed by the emigration of many of its champions to the United States.³

These tensions manifested themselves in the world of Freemasonry. Shortly after emigrating to the United States, German émigrés began to join, run, and then reorganize Masonic lodges in their new homeland. Masonic lodges were one of many forms of association and sociability in German immigrant communities. As Bruce Levine has pointed out, these associations “offered spiritual refuge, camaraderie [and] material assistance” and strengthened “community cohesion and ethnic identity” within the émigré community.⁴ This examination of émigré Freemasonry in New York contributes to scholarship on German American associational life, as well as analyses how émigrés, through the universal fraternal network of Freemasons, became embroiled in transatlantic disputes over Freemasonry, and American political culture more generally.

Recently, scholars such as Alison Clark Efford, Mischa Honeck and Daniel Nagel have made important contributions towards a more sophisticated understanding of the political identity formation among German immigrants in the decades following 1848. They highlight the first generation of Forty-Eighters as particularly articulate and politically engaged, promoting the image of “‘the freedom-loving German’ who abhorred slavery as much as he prized immigrant rights.”⁵ These Forty-Eighters experienced serious tensions between their utopian expectations of American society and political and social realities they experienced upon arrival in the United States. Many émigrés turned into sharp critics of US politics and society and published their positions in a number of German American press outlets.⁶

This essay contributes to that body of scholarship by showing how German émigré Freemasons did not retreat or separate themselves from larger midcentury US political controversies, but rather reflected the increasingly polarized ethnic and racial sensibilities on both sides of the Atlantic. They forcefully engaged with explosive issues such as slavery, abolitionism, ethnicity, race, and nationalism. German émigré Freemasons responded to these political issues, struggling to reconcile both universalist ideals and particularist interests. They often found themselves at odds with their American counterparts in areas such as Masonic organizational culture, the interpretation of the limits of Masonic universalism, and the acceptance of heterogeneous ideological positions in Freemasonry. Through these ideological debates, German American Freemasons in New York thus made original and radical contributions to the political thinking of the time.⁷ If the antebellum period saw a “transatlantic dialogue about human equality” and a “transnational web of reform,” as Honeck has argued, it is worth investigating the lodges of German American Freemasonry as hubs and nodes “embedded in concurrent democratic endeavors on both sides of the Atlantic.”⁸ It is no accident that the German émigré press of the period published a Masonic journal – Der Triangel: Oder Akazienzweig am Lebensbaum ächten Maurerthums (1855–1879) – with close links to the lodges examined in this article. It positioned itself against the rapidly growing nativist movement in the antebellum era that led to the establishment of the xenophobic and anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party.⁹

A “life-giving spark” across the Atlantic? German-speaking lodges in New York

On 2 May 1851, Pythagoras Lodge No. 86, organized in 1841 by German Americans under the Grand Lodge of New York (GLNY), separated from the GLNY and was consecrated as Pythagoras No. 1 in Brooklyn under the Grand Lodge of Hamburg (GLH).¹⁰ In its first printed circular letter, Pythagoras No. 1 declared that this step aimed

not only to bring about a more intimate union of our German brothers here with those across there in the old fatherland, but particularly to facilitate this more intimate union between our German and American brothers, in order to further the best of Freemasonry in general.

By placing themselves under the GLH, lodge members ostensibly believed that they “may become the binding force of the Arch uniting the basic pillars, the grand lodges on this and that side of the Atlantic, or the chain of union, through which the life-giving spark flows from the one to the other.”¹¹ Lodges in the newly adopted American fatherland of German émigrés, the letter highlighted, could help immigrant Germans respect and love their new home country.

At first sight, this new relationship between the Pythagoras lodge in New York and the Grand Lodge of Hamburg appears to be merely a positive step in the establishment of organized sociability in the age of great transatlantic migration. A closer look, however, reveals deeper dimensions. The members of Pythagoras Lodge No. 1, by forming this formal relationship between their Brooklyn lodge and the Grand Lodge of Hamburg, brought into view and transatlantic debate the distinctly American form of Masonic self-jurisdiction, the complex dynamics of transnational affiliations with non-American Masonic lodges, and the realities of a racially segregated society.¹² When these German Americans affiliated with the GLH, they almost certainly did not realize the controversies their decision would engender. From an historian’s vantage point, the history of Pythagoras Lodge No. 1 offers a lens through which to study more general phenomena, especially relating to the adjustments of immigrants to the United States and American Freemasonry. The intriguing tension between moral universalism as propagated in Freemasonry and the particularism of societal realities on both sides of the Atlantic reflected broader sociopolitical forces of the mid nineteenth-century Atlantic world.¹³

The German Freemasons who separated from the GLNY and affiliated with the GLH had found themselves perplexed by persistent prejudices and significant differences in Masonic organizational culture in the US. Re-establishing transatlantic ties made sense within their understanding of Freemasonry. Yet from an American perspective, they had violated the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of New York, and by extension the jurisdictional structure of American Freemasonry more generally. Immigrants were not to challenge the state of affairs through affiliation with European grand lodges. Contrary to the early vision of Pythagoras No. 1, bridging the Atlantic though Masonic affiliation proved tendentious rather than harmonizing. When faced with particular socio-political realities, the cosmopolitan ethos of Freemasonry arrived at serious and contradictory limitations. On both sides of the Atlantic, arguments were brought forward pointing at deeper divergences in worldviews and self-perceptions, essentially a recourse to the polarizing comfort zones of cultural exclusivity and entrenchment. Far from representing an ideal of homogenization, the North Atlantic, in the case examined here, emerges as a heterogeneous zone of contrast and antagonism where the streams of the Old and New World collided. The decade explored here, during which representatives of European Freemasonry styled themselves as progressive and attacked their counterparts in the New World for their backwardness, provides an important piece of the puzzle of German American political identity formation in the period 1840–1860. It shows that many Forty-Eighters did not see the US as more politically progressive, but rather positioned themselves as émigré reformers, a stance which provoked a backlash from US-born Freemasons, as well as earlier German American Freemasons.

The organizational history of Freemasonry in New York is complex. After American independence, Freemasons sometimes attempted to organize a union-wide Masonic umbrella, but ultimately failed. Rather in each state, Freemasons founded a grand lodge, and American Freemasons enforced a principle of “exclusive territorial jurisdiction”, meaning that only one grand lodge would be allowed to operate in each state, effectively preventing various kinds of territorial trespassing.¹⁴ Despite a fierce anti-Masonic movement during the 1820s and 1830s, Freemasonry in the United States continue to grow, thanks to a growing influx of European immigrants. By 1860, 13.5 percent of the population in New York was of German-born origin, and German American Freemasonry occupied a relatively significant position in New York.¹⁵

Tensions within Freemasonry in New York manifested themselves in conflicts relating to voting rights in the general assembly of the Grand Lodge of New York. Past masters of lodges were allowed to vote in the general assembly of the GLNY. Those residing in the New York City area could more easily attend quarterly assemblies and vote, while past masters from upstate lodges could not, thus creating a marked imbalance in favor of lodges in NYC and Brooklyn, which also were numerically in a majority. Upstate lodges complained that these voting practices disadvantaged them, and a number of metropolitan lodges (including Pythagoras No. 86) supported them. During the 1830s and 1840s, these conflicts resulted in the GLNY splitting into four competing organizations: St. John’s Grand Lodge (1837–1850), Phillips Grand Lodge (1849–1858), and St. John’s Grand Lodge (revived, 1853–1859). The GLNY was officially represented by a fourth body, Willard’s Grand Lodge. In 1841, in the midst of this organizational upheaval German Americans founded Pythagoras Lodge No. 86.

Within German American Freemasonry, there was a parallel narrative of tension. During its first phase from 1819 to 1851, lodges emerged out of existing immigrant associations, such as lodge Trinity No. 13 or L’Union Française No. 17. Then in 1851 a second phase began when Pythagoras No. 86 transferred its affiliation to the Grand Lodge of Hamburg, thus forging transatlantic Masonic ties. This second phase (1851–1854) is characterized by fierce battles over organizational and ideological matters. The third phase (1854–1861) begins when some members of Pythagoras No. 1 withdrew and re-affiliated with the GLNY as Pythagoras No. 86, a split that reflected fierce debates among German Americans over whether to engage in appeasement, assimilation and adaptation relative to American society, or continue a sense of alienation, conflict and controversy. While German-affiliated lodges in New York, and the United States more generally, continued during and after the Civil War and well into the twentieth century, the antebellum period offers the most intriguing insights into different transatlantic lines of development.

When Pythagoras No. 86 shifted affiliation from the GLNY to the GLH in 1851, a transatlantic Masonic relationship began that lasted half a century. While some lodge members broke away from No. 1 in 1854 and revived the original patent from the GLNY – which had never withdrawn the charter – their actions did not check subsequent affiliations of German American Freemasons with the GLH. The position of GLH Freemasonry in New York was strengthened by the constitution of a daughter lodge (i.e. by the initiative) of Pythagoras No. 1, called Franklin No. 2 in the Tremont neighborhood of New York City in 1853. In 1871, German Americans founded a third GLH lodge, Zeton zum Licht No. 3, located in Hoboken, in the Masonic jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of New Jersey. Historians of Freemasonry have not established when these three lodges ceased to work, but in 1884 only Pythagoras No.1 was operating; by the early 1900s, the three GLH lodges had vanished completely. Extensive and untapped archival sources allow us to reconstruct the course of events in the tumultuous years from 1851 to 1860.

Secession from the GLNY and affiliation with the GLH

In the late 1840s, Pythagoras No. 86 commented upon the contemporary political situation in Europe:

Under the impression of the events unfolding in Europe in our time [we can see how] in the old fatherland, new life aims to create itself. – Society aims to become reborn and painful are the works, rocking her! – These shockwaves are of significance to world history and they force some of our brothers out from peaceful coastal sea-travel to the oceans of the world!¹⁶

Although the lodge acknowledged that Freemasonry embraced a principle of political neutrality, it found it necessary to “further a new creation, as it belongs to sage men, as our immemorial, great Brethren in America did at the end of the last century.”¹⁷ Thus, Pythagoras No. 86 interpreted the revolutions of 1848 as a European analogy to the American Revolution.

German Freemasons arriving in New York during the 1840s belonged to a “politically hyper-conscious” faction, in many cases leaving Germany with deep frustrations concerning the slow pace of societal and democratic development.¹⁸ When these men became involved in the decision-making process of the GLNY, they perceived the voting practices of the general assemblies as disturbingly undemocratic. An intensification of the controversies over voting, among other issues, led members of Pythagoras No. 86 to withdraw from the GLNY and apply for a patent from the GLH, at the time arguably one of the most progressive grand lodges in the world.¹⁹ In the correspondence applying for affiliation with the GLH, Pythagoras stressed its aim to “liberate itself completely from the machinations of the American lodges, which it could not subscribe to, and as German lodge [aimed] to work for the strengthening of German-ness [Deutschtum] and relations to the old fatherland.”²⁰ Behind such patriotic language the larger frustrations caused by exile are discernable, particularly unfulfilled socio-political expectations and the complexities of German American political identity formation. In the request to affiliate with the GLH was an intimation of qualms about US Masonic governing practices that went beyond the voting issues of the GLNY.

Simultaneously, Grand Master Willard of the GLNY tried to calm emotions by welcoming one returning German insurgent who had decided to side with the (seceding) Phillips Grand Lodge. Willard declared that he regarded “Pythagoras Lodge No. 86 and Trinity Lodge No. 12, which are composed chiefly of our intelligent and respected German fellow-citizens” as integral parts of the GLNY.²¹ But most members of Pythagoras disregarded this olive branch and in December 1850 the lodge declared itself independent. Somewhat paradoxically, the lodge also adopted a motion to appoint the Grand Master of the GLNY as an honorary member of the lodge, “to prove to our American Brothers that Pythagoras Lodge has the sincere desire under all conditions to remain in friendly and fraternal agreement in the future with the sister lodges as well as with the [GLNY].”²² Even more inclusive were the words spoken at a cornerstone ceremony for their new building, one of the most prestigious lodge buildings in New York City located on Walker Street (now located in Chinatown). The building would eventually host a number of ambitious projects and initiatives, such as a library and a social-philanthropic club. One member of Pythagoras lodge made a festive speech highlighting that “a brother remains a brother in all parts of the world, that no external situation, no position in society, no differences in opinions, no differences of religion do or are able to separate us.”²³ The sentiment suggested that affiliation with the GLH reflected not distancing from the GLNY, but an expansion of the connections of New York area Freemasons, a sentiment not shared much beyond the membership of Pythagoras No. 1.

“Open the door to misrule and anarchy”: The conflict over territorial jurisdiction

On the ground, the German émigré ideal of a borderless Masonic brotherhood collided with an established bureaucratic Masonic practice in the United States – the principle of exclusive territorial jurisdiction. That practice allowed only one grand lodge to exist in any single state or federal territory. Only the grand lodge recognized by grand lodges in other states could charter lodges within its jurisdiction. Such a rigid interpretation of Masonic jurisdiction was unknown in Germany, which only became a unified national state in 1871. From the perspective of the GLH, its affiliation with Pythagoras No. 1 posed no problem. Across the Atlantic in the US, however, the official position of the GLNY was unapologetically opposed to it. According to GLNY Grand Master Milnor, the GLH erroneously thought that “the law, as they understood it, simply prohibited the existence of two [US] Grand Lodges within the boundaries of the State, but did not forbid the exercise of foreign jurisdiction.”²⁴ Although Pythagoras was “a Lodge composed of German Brethren, who hitherto occupied a high place in our estimation, and who were considered second to none in this community for intelligence and moral worth,” the separation could not be tolerated and could only end in discord. Contrary to Hamburg’s intentions, its affiliation with Pythagoras No. 1 had the effect of provoking the GLNY to defend vigorously its jurisdictional authority, thereby strengthening the principle of territorial jurisdiction in American Freemasonry.²⁵ The issue sparked a fierce debate on the general principle of exclusive territorial jurisdiction and whether it had any foundation in the historical principles of Freemasonry. By September 1851, the GLNY had sought and received support from other American grand lodges for resisting “this invasion of her rights and prerogatives by a foreign power” and decided to suspend its relations with the GLH until it revoked the charter for Pythagoras No. 1.²⁶

The controversies caused by the measures taken by Pythagoras No. 1 did not, however, preclude other Freemasons in New York from applying for a charter from the GLH.²⁷ In May 1853, the GLH unanimously voted to accept an application to establish Franklin No. 2, and in June, the lodge was consecrated. Before making its decision, the GLH carefully deliberated, fully aware of the transatlantic irritation it might likely cause. It was convinced, however, on the merits of its decision given “the unbearable condition of Masonic affairs in America, the struggles and splits among the Grand lodges.”²⁸ The GLH opined that the right of exclusive territorial jurisdiction was nothing more than a mutual agreement among American grand lodges, not a general principle of Freemasonry, while the GLH position was derived from older European practices.

The positions forwarded on both sides of the Atlantic were contradictory. German Freemasons in America claimed a right to interpret the true nature of universal Freemasonry. When they found American practices flawed or failed, they resorted to their German origins and even “German-ness” to shield themselves from what they perceived as degraded Masonic practices in the US. American Freemasons, on their part, defended themselves against foreign intrusion and condemned the organization of Masonic lodges based upon nationality as a violation of Masonic universalism. As historian Carl Wittke explains, American German Freemasons might have been “split over the meaning of German ethnicity but united in constituting themselves as a specific ethnic group, a cultural minority within a plural nation,” and a minority which sometimes perceived itself as politically superior to others in their new homeland.²⁹ Wittke goes further and claims that an element of the German Forty-Eighters even saw themselves as part of a “cultural mission” to Germanize America and “to resist assimilation to an inferior culture.”³⁰ His assessment helps to explain how the brothers of Pythagoras No. 1 reconciled themselves to their isolated position; for most, it was a moral high ground. Among that group of German émigrés, however, were a few who found the organizational isolation problematic and decided to adopt a strategy of appeasement, assimilation and adaptation.

The split between Pythagoras No. 1 and No. 86

In 1854, three years after the chartering of Pythagoras No. 1, about twenty members took the initiative to break away from the Grand Lodge of Hamburg, and reactivate their affiliation with the Grand Lodge of New York (Willard) on the basis of the old warrant for Pythagoras No. 86, which the GLNY had not formally withdrawn. At a meeting of the Pythagoras Lodge, this faction stated its opinion that the GLH affiliation had driven Pythagoras Lodge into a social isolation, a state contrary to their understanding of Freemasonry.³¹ In adopting the USA as a “new fatherland,” these German Americans also believed it implied following its laws, including Masonic laws – in order to live in peace with American brothers. These members split away and in 1854, the GLNY returned the original charter to Pythagoras No. 86.

The re-established Pythagoras No. 86 frequently restated its contention that isolation runs contrary to the aim of Freemasonry. In adapting to the US, they forcefully stated that

We, together with our children, don’t ever want to be estranged from this country or from its institutions, because it is – in spite of all its deficiencies – the country of our free choice, the country which gives protection to the persecuted and liberty to the dissenter.³²

Within a year, Pythagoras No. 86 had more than 50 members and started to raise its profile within the GLNY, for instance in organizing charitable work. Starting in 1856, they helped facilitate the re-uniting of Willard GLNY with the competing Phillips Grand Lodge, culminating in 1858, with articles of union closely resembling the ones proposed by the old Pythagoras No. 86 seven years earlier, when the dispute over voting caused the split. German Freemasons established an educational and social club, “Masonia” (paradoxically administered together with Pythagoras No. 1), and even developed an employment bureau for German brothers in need.³³ The lodge continued to sponsor significant activities in New York Freemasonry and existed until 1993.

Pythagoras No. 86 also made substantial demands on No. 1, including return of property and giving up its name. These claims prompted No. 1 to publish documentation on the split entitled Papers relating to the late occurrences in Pythagoras lodge No. 1 (1855). That tract exposed larger issues behind the split. “The said division of our Lodge into two unequal parts, in connection with certain incidents of political and social life in the United States seems after all to be by no means destitute of a deeper significance”. For some members, the arrival of the Forty-Eighters had pulled Pythagoras Lodge too far away from American society. The reconstituted Pythagoras No. 86 had reputedly stated “that the novel notions imported [by] brethren arrived here since the year 1848 are in opposition to the spirit of Freemasonry here.” For the remaining members of No. 1, however, the Forty-Eighters’ emigration was understood as a “new migration of the nations from the East to the West.” These émigrés made it possible for “the nations from themselves [to] join hands across the oceans,” and

to amalgamate in time into one grand union, the union of mankind, of peace and of enlightenment, in spite of the political barriers, in spite of the posts and toll-gates, in spite of the diplomatic embroilments of the courts, and of the various constitutions of the states.

The “intrinsic intellectual power” of the immigrating Germans merited appreciation: “It is a union of the best qualities and peculiarities of the American and German people which promises a remunerative and fruitful future.”³⁴

The tract included documentation from the proceedings of the GLH pointing out that one of the defectors had “meddled in a suspicious manner with the higher degrees of French Masonry,” also called “the ‘Jesuit intrigues’ of the French high degrees.” Pythagoras No. 1’s criticism of former members engaging in higher degree Freemasonry referred to the so-called Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR, a 33-degree system of French-Caribbean origins, established in Charleston, SC in 1801), rituals that they thought created invidious social distinctions. Another defector had double standards; at the time of the secession from the GLNY, he had wildly criticized American Freemasonry, referring to “the chaos of the Masonic discrepancies of this place,” “particular prejudices,” and “the oppressive fetters” of the GLNY. The new GLH affiliation, he believed, demonstrated “humanitarian masonry against those antiquated forms which have already outlived themselves.”³⁵ Three years later he again embraced the GLNY.

This evidence indicates that the split within Pythagoras was engendered by the arrival of a more radical and revolutionary generation of émigrés who not only brought new concepts of Freemasonry with them, but also a political consciousness that could not be reconciled with American realities. The Forty-Eighters blended this spirit of critique and opposition with cosmopolitan visions of a “German” mission in America. Infused in it was a far more contentious issue – racial segregation, both within American Freemasonry and in American society more broadly, an area of profound disagreement in the decade leading up to the Civil War.

Racial segregation as an issue in transatlantic conflicts

Until the 1855 publication of Papers relating to the late occurrences in Pythagoras lodge No. 1, the divisions between Freemasonry as practiced in the German-speaking lodges and their American counterparts manifested largely as organizational. But underlying organizational disputes were differences in political culture between democratically-sensitized German émigrés, who were concerned with participation in decision making and the “heart” of Freemasonry, and more legalistically inclined American Freemasons for whom the major issue was to obey rules, and who were accused by some Germans of formalism. The defensiveness of American grand lodges also triggered a justified fear of opening the door to trespassing from European Masonic bodies, and thereby adding to already existing organizational confusion such as that occurring in New York. Beyond these areas of controversy, it is possible to discern subtle, and occasionally open, comments relating to cultural adaptation and isolationism, two dominant coping strategies of European immigrants to the US.

During the late 1850s, another contentious issue of the smoldering transatlantic tensions flared into open conflict, namely a profound disagreement between the GLH and the GLNY concerning racial segregation in US Freemasonry. The controversy unfolded in an intricate interplay among lodges in Monrovia (Liberia), Hamburg and New York. During the quarterly communications of the GLH in February 1858, a letter was read from a German Freemason who had visited a lodge, Oriental No. 1 in Monrovia, Liberia, consisting almost entirely of Black members. On behalf of this lodge and the Grand Lodge of Liberia (GLLi), the correspondent asked about initiating communications with German lodges. The GLH resolved that “however willing [they] would be to respond to this proposal, as it would be desirable for German brethren visiting Liberia to find a friendly lodge there, still he had hesitated to meet this wish without preliminary inquiry.” The GLH investigating the matter through its representative at the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE), and learned that the GLLi was not a recognized Masonic body. Moreover, it was “highly improbable” that a US grand lodge had constituted the GLLi because “a majority of its members were colored persons.” The GLH responded to the GLLi through its correspondent that it had to rectify organizational shortcomings and then its request would be reconsidered.³⁶

Three months later a German member of Orient No. 1 in Monrovia reported to the GLH that he believed the GLLi was constituted by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, “but probably the Negro Grand Lodge of that state,” referring to the so-called Prince Hall Grand Lodge, named after its founder and established in various phases (1791/1808/1827). This information put the issue in a new light because the question now revolved around whether African American grand lodges in the USA were considered lawful or not. To gain knowledge about their status, in May 1858 the GLH disseminated a lengthy circular to other grand lodges in Europe asking what they knew about these lodges and grand lodges of people of African descent. The circular included a statement concerning racial segregation and prejudice in US Freemasonry, which was strong even in the non-slaveholding states, noting that “it is sad but true that our American brethren have not emancipated themselves from this prejudice.” The GLH referenced a passage in GLNY transactions of 1855 calling the admission of African American persons “a monstrosity to be excluded from discussion.” American grand lodge representatives in Europe had advised European grand lodges that they should abstain from admitting African American members.³⁷

Clearly, Europeans should not expect American grand lodges to recognize lodges and foreign grand lodges with members of African descent. But did this exclusion also apply to European lodges? Were they bound, the GLH queried, “also to refuse to recognize a great number of lodges […] and to refuse admissions of members of the same, merely because their complexion is somewhat darker”? The Prussian grand lodges, for instance, had recognized the Grand Lodge of Haiti, and the same might be the case with the Grand Lodge of Liberia. Now the dispute turned on the principle of exclusive territorial jurisdiction among US grand lodges. The non-recognition of African American lodges was possibly the outcome of the “monopoly claimed by them, according to which there can be but one Gr. Lodge in every state,” and Massachusetts, for example, could not have the Massachusetts Grand Lodge and the Prince Hall Grand Lodge at the same time. The GLH acknowledged that “on account of disregarding this monopoly as regards German lodges in North America, [it] has come into collision with the North American Gr. Lodges” on a more general level. But more appalling, in its estimation, was the fact that individual lodges composed of African Americans wishing to join a regular state grand lodge not would be admitted “from a prejudice which cannot be approved of from a masonic point of view.” The American lodges may be “politically, if not masonically right. But they cannot demand that European lodges should adopt their views or practice concerning colored persons.” This matter was of growing concern, because “the intercourse of Europe with other parts of the globe is annually increasing.”³⁸

We do not know if the GLH realized its circular would elicit vehement reactions from its American counterparts, but the ensuing voluminous transatlantic exchange of letters and statements, as well as articles and opinion pieces in the American and German Masonic press prove how contentious the issue of racial exclusion was. Moreover, this dispute reflects profound national differences concerning Freemasonry, tolerance, and political culture, in general. At its annual meeting in June 1859, the GLNY lamented that the “puny offsprings of Hamburg” were endangering Masonic harmony, maintaining, as they were, a “sullen existence, and a dogged defiance to the solemn edits and resolutions” of the GLNY and almost all other grand lodges in the USA. But worse, the

parent body of these offsprings, across the Atlantic, is seeking to wreak vengeance upon the fraternity of the U.S., for the reprobation with which it acts and its illegitimate subordinances have been visited, by arousing the prejudices of the Grand lodges of Europe against us.³⁹

The GLNY had most likely received the GLH circular through Friedrich August von Mensch, its official representative to the Grand Lodge of Saxony (GLS), one of the many German grand lodges at the time. In his civilian career, he worked for the diplomatic service of his native country.⁴⁰ In four reports to the GLS from October 1858 to April 1859, von Mensch outlined the position of the GLNY.⁴¹ Masonic grand lodges operated in a system of a loosely self-organized international diplomacy, appointing mutual representatives along lines of allegiance and sometimes of pure coincidence. Most grand lodges also had a Committee of Foreign Correspondence (CFC) with the task of coordinating all contacts with other grand lodges.⁴² In June 1859, the CFC of the GLNY issued a lengthy 13-page, sharply-worded reply to the GLH circular (based upon von Mensch’s letters to the GLS) that it attached to the grand lodge minutes. The GLNY endorsed the report, the primary aim of which was to convince the GLS not to support the GLH circular.

The report’s statements reflected how entrenched the racial bias in American Freemasonry had become. It opened by charging that the GLH had made “an unwarranted invasion of our jurisdictional rights” and claimed that the GLH in “retaliation of her supposed grievances” had “adopted a system of reprisals.”⁴³ The GLH circular from May was summarized followed by extensive commentary on it, written in a style to convey a sense of scandal. In his first report to GLS, von Mensch argued against recognition of African American lodges in the USA and against the right of African American Freemasons to visit the GLS. First, he compared the different situations of Freemasonry in German states and the USA to justify the principle of exclusive territorial jurisdiction. It was “not only the question here of the existence of colored, near the present legitimate, Grand Lodges, but also of the constitutionally declared incapacity of the reception in the Masonic order of colored men in the United States.” Von Mensch explained to his brethren in Saxony that while Americans commonly believed that African Americans stood on the “lower rounds of the social ladder, and generally speaking of mental development.” Their acceptance into Freemasonry was therefore impossible. Moreover, “the initiation of colored men […] would not fail to produce between the brethren of the Northern and Southern States of the Union dissentions and discord,” compromising the interests of the entire country. Since “masonic interests always and everywhere” were “subordinate to the welfare of the state,” it would “disturb the order and peace of the country” to act against the foundations of political order. Von Mensch ridiculed the prospect of any African American men visiting the GLS as an absurdity, and denied the legality of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge. The exclusion of black men from Freemasonry, he argued further, was based upon “national customs, historical influences, the power of tradition, social and political relations, and even for physical particularities of the negroes.” To make his case, von Mensch quoted outright racist judgements from a German ethnographer concerning the state of civilization in Haiti.⁴⁴

The GLNY interpreted the GLH’s critique of exclusionary practices among American lodges not to accept black lodges under the Prince Hall Grand Lodge as reverse “vengeance,” because of its criticism of the German grand lodges for not accepting Jewish members.⁴⁵ Furthermore, the GLNY attacked the GLH for its “illiberal and unmasonic policy” and “for seeking to create dissentions between the Grand Lodges of Europe and America.” Last, but not least, von Mensch’s report noted that the GLH attempted

to recognize and to induce the other Grand Lodges of Europe to recognize bodies of colored men in the United States as Masonic Lodges and Grand Lodges, when it is a notorious fact that no legal organization of the kind exists in the American Union.⁴⁶

Thus, the CFC made clear that it did not recognize Prince Hall Grand Lodge, any lodge with African American members, or their admission in other lodges. The GLNY, however, was apparently unaware of that the GLH definitely belonged to the vanguard of the liberal and reform-oriented wing of German Freemasonry advocating Jewish membership in Masonic lodges and the discontinuation of exclusionary practices based on any factors of religion or race.

Johann Barthelmess, Master of Pythagoras No. 1, penned a lengthy and ardent rebuke to the GLNY’s CFC report in August 1859. His letter, preserved in GLH archives, counts no fewer than 40 handwritten pages, in which English quotes and German replies are mixed.⁴⁷ In it, Barthelmess systematically refuted arguments against Pythagoras No. 1 and the GLH going back a decade. He began by refuting the claim of exclusive territorial jurisdiction with reference to historical precedents and contemporary practices on both sides of the Atlantic. In Barthelmess’s view, the GLNY could not force members of Pythagoras “who […] in part are not, as you suppose, American citizens, into conditions abhorrent and perhaps repulsive to their own feelings?” He argued that to “compel uniformity of conflicting opinions” leads Freemasons into the “allurements of the systems of higher degrees” or simply leaves them homeless when trying to escape the grand lodge “straight jacket.” In response to allegations of the GLH making reprisals against the GLNY, he reiterated the background of the GLH circular on African American lodges and their status. Indeed, in Barthelmess’s eyes, the CFC’s attempt “to stigmatize its circular as reprisal” was made even more disturbing when one knew that the GLNY had repeatedly discussed the issue of African American members since 1812. Only more recently had it turned against African American members and lodges. Barthelemess thus fervently attacked the CFC’s position that the GLH had no business “to be meddling with this matter [recognition of ‘negro lodges’] more than 3000 miles away” He listed many instances of racial biases in American Freemasonry and concluded forcefully that the northern lodges had subordinated themselves to the interest of southern slaveholders placing profit over human rights.⁴⁸

Barthelmess argued that the GLH, “which has ever energetically defended the universality and the humane substructure of the masonic fraternity” had a moral duty to take notice of African American Freemasons which they “frequently meet in public,” although “they live at a distance of 3000 miles.” For the GLNY to prohibit intercourse with African American lodges “whose members the extensive commerce of the Hanse Town [Hamburg] leads to that city and to the very door of its lodges” was immoral and absurd. The GLNY’s CFC boldly stated that “no German brother has ever visited these negro lodges in New York!,” an assertion Barthelmess discredited with evidence to the contrary.⁴⁹ He outlined his views on racial segregation in the USA, especially the lack of educational access and structural discrimination, as reasons for the inferior status of African Americans. He pointed out that the ancient charges of Freemasonry included no suggestion that membership could be based on “a difference of colour.” Barthelmess accused the CFC of defending “southern interests,” and reminded readers of when American grand lodges had displayed positive attitudes with regards to the acceptance of African American Freemasons, but increasingly lodges in the northern states were “afraid to provoke the ill-will of the slave states by even the semblance of favour towards colored persons.” The GLNY, having emphatically accused the Prussian grand lodges of excluding Jewish members, now “degrade[d] the masonic fraternity into an instrument of the southern slaveholders. Even at the risk of a split between the Southern and Northern Grand lodges” the “equal rights of all men as regards initiation to masonry” had to be advocated, even if it entailed a “political separation.” In hindsight, Barthelmess’s words were chillingly prophetic, and point to the profound tensions within the USA at the time.⁵⁰

Barthelmess defended the legality of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge with a historical analysis of the maze of Masonic self-jurisdiction, especially the issue of the formation and recognition of grand lodges without formal permission of the United Grand Lodge of England. He emphasized the superiority of German Freemasonry as compared with American Freemasonry, particularly apparent in ritual differences, a primary reason for Pythagoras No. 1 to remain affiliated with the GLH and a reason for not rejoining the GLNY. For want of uniformity, the soul of Freemasonry was destroyed, Barthelemess claimed.⁵¹

Von Mensch replied politely in October, pleading ignorance of the issues at hand, and claiming the CFC misquoted him. But he held on to his contention that the troublemaker and instigator of the transatlantic antagonism was Barthelmess himself, in his aversion to American Freemasonry.⁵² Finally, in February 1860, the GLH responded directly to the CFC report capturing the transatlantic rifts in question. The GLH wholeheartedly supported Barthelmess and likened the accusation that the GLH had invaded GLNY territory to the Oregon boundary dispute. (Between 1818 and 1846 the British and Americans jointly occupied the Oregon Country, and only in 1846 agreed to extend the international boundary along the 49th parallel to the Pacific, because Americans threatened war). The GLH noted that German Freemasons had separated from the GLNY because of “hollow ceremonials,” excessive additional degrees, and an emphasis on social distinctions that made Germans uneasy. Therefore, to create German lodges in the US based on “descent, language, education and that national contemplation of the world” reflected the “beautiful and sublime art of Freemasonry,” not a violation of it. The GLH felt bound to support lodges for German émigrés that espoused a “Weltanschauung” estranged by the shallowness of their American counterparts.⁵³

In addressing racial segregation in American Freemasonry, an even more vitriolic topic, the GLH accused the GLNY of double standards. A German lodge would not bar recognition of “a lodge of red-skins,” nor one with members of “the black colour, for the American lodges would consider it a crime to refuse admission to a Hindostane or Malay, were he even blacker than the blackest Abyssinian, nay even to an African Jew.” The entire issue might appear trivial, the GLH noted, were it not connected to “baneful negro slavery.” European Freemasonry, it averred, would never make difference of color “a bar against […] initiation or admission.” Concerning the regularity of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, the GLH avoided any final conclusion and deferred to the UGLE. It noted, however, that “as the English nation has made immense sacrifices of money and men for the emancipation of negro slaves in her own colonies, and for the prevention of the slave trade on the coast of Africa,” the UGLE certainly would not refuse any future petition for recognition. The GLH’s closed with an appeal “to the colored brethren in the United States” to show patience and cultivate “masonic self command, from regard for the weakness of your brethren.”⁵⁴

Hot-wiring trans-Atlantic Masonic communications

In his analysis of conflicting concepts of universalism in European Freemasonry, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann notes how the “traditional metaphors of light and darkness mingled with the new language of scientific and technological progress.”⁵⁵ In the case analyzed here, the transatlantic cable occupies an important role as metaphor both of hope for better communications and disappointment at the slow improvement. In 1851 Pythagoras No. 1 imagined itself sending “a life-giving spark across the Atlantic.” In 1858, one of its members, Rudolph Garrigue, presented a talk to lodge members on the topic of “The completion of the transatlantic telegraph, the giant progress of our century.”⁵⁶ At the GLNY, however, “disturbances […] had defiled the solemnities […] upon the occasion of the transatlantic cable celebration (scenes which even American papers mention with the utmost indignation).”⁵⁷ Although the GLNY hailed the telegraph “a triumph of science,” and in August 1858 indicated an interest in participating in municipal celebrations of this “new proof of the triumph of mind over matter,” in the end, it withdrew from the September 1 festivities. Instead Grand Master Macoy offered a number of programmatic resolutions, hailing the telegraph as a “material chain of concord […] encouraging the inhabitants of the earth to dwell together in peace and unity,” leading to a “fraternization and union of the families of man,” and “uniting the nations of the earth.”⁵⁸

According to the GLH, the technological progress accelerating global communications would be of little value without simultaneously promoting universal morality. Metaphorically speaking, the transatlantic cable between the GLH and the GLNY went hot in the 1850s over conflicting notions of progress. At the time, many continental European grand lodges were battling “conceptual enem[ies],” first and foremost the Roman Catholic Church.⁵⁹ This battle intensified in Germany during 1870s, the so-called “Kulturkampf” or “culture war” between secular progressives and religious conservatives. Without a clear institutional enemy like the Catholic Church, progressive Freemasons in the US (backed in some instances by foreign lodges like the GLH) directed their agitation against nativism, racial segregation, and formalism in American grand lodges.

The German-US antagonism of the 1850s foreshadowed other fault lines in international Masonic relations, such as the rupture between German and French Freemasons during the war of 1870–1871, and the 1877 split between the United Grand Lodge of England and continental European Freemasonry over freedom of conscience. These conflicts demonstrate that Freemasonry’s ambition to operate above national differences as a “moral international” imploded when faced with the realism of international politics. As Hoffman notes, the “internationalization of European societies exposed the particular character of the universalist pretensions of individual lodge systems.”⁶⁰

Scholars frequently stress the advantage of the less rigid German model of Freemasonry, in which several grand lodges could operate within the borders of one political territory, as showing greater acceptance of ideological heterodoxy. Georg Simmel, in his influential Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (1908), argues that this heterodoxy is a response to more authoritarian models of government in society. Paradoxically, greater uniformity or orthodoxy in ritual forms and organization is a feature of Freemasonry in more liberal societies, such as in the US.⁶¹ Pythagoras No. 86 and No.1 argued against formalism in American lodges, against “association articles least adapted to the free soil of America.”⁶² The lodge imagined itself as a bulwark of “the true and pure principle of humanitarian Freemasonry against the obsolete rule of formalism.”⁶³ The lodge subscribed to an agenda of reform and in 1860 adopted the motto: “No standstill, but advance!”⁶⁴ In 1866, rejoicing at the end of the Civil War and the coming of peace, Pythagoras No. 1 exclaimed: “‘Reform!’ – this is the cry that now moves thousands of spirits on this side and beyond the Ocean.” It appended to its annual communication a long list of areas in need of reform.⁶⁵ German Freemasons transported their political awareness and acceptance of heterodoxy, nurtured in an authoritarian context, to the new more politically liberal context of America, without truly engaging with the constitutional culture that had emerged in the US that strove for egalitarianism through law and union-wide compromise.⁶⁶ The uniformity and orthodoxy of American lodges, in an ostensibly more liberal political context, was hard for Forty-Eighters to accept. In the US, a relatively young federal union of independently governed states, major internal political conflicts related to spatial organization and power relations were not settled yet, and eventually contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. The issue of exclusive territorial jurisdiction was therefore far more sensitive to American Freemasons and is representative for tensions in the large US society. German émigrés arriving in the US in the late 1840s could clearly see the problems within American Freemasonry, of territorial exclusivity, problems that American-born Freemasons and some German immigrants who had been in the US longer could tolerate.⁶⁷

Since the American Revolution (1775–1783), American society was based on a constitutional model of rights, on the idea of a rule of law as the basis of political order. For such a political community, the essence of the law and its interpretation had primacy in political deliberation. Without pushing the argument too far, it would be possible to make the claim that German émigré Freemasons were not familiar or not accustomed enough to truly grasp the implications of this way of organizing political communities, which they regarded as based on external form rather than on imminent spirit or soul (or even a particular German “Weltanschauung”).

On the other hand, German humanitarian passion or pathos painfully touched upon one of the most enduringly sensitive issues of American society: racial segregation. American Masonic universalism ideally, even rationally, meant an embrace of a self-confident society ruled by law, as opposed “misrule and anarchy” or by an absolute monarch. At the same time, that society excluded huge parts of its population, due to skin color alone, from enjoying equal rights. Not even African American Freemasons and their organizations were accepted into this community, despite dogged interference from the GLH and other European grand lodges. German Freemasonry also preserved ideas of cultural particularity, despite the cosmopolitan pathos of Freemasonry in general and of liberal German Freemasonry in particular.⁶⁸ The German émigré community confidently stressed its German-ness, or “Deutschtum,” as a common inclusionary denominator, notwithstanding it being simultaneously exclusionary vis-à-vis the surrounding US society. The split between old members of Pythagoras No. 86 and No. 1 in 1854 and the plans to form an entirely German grand lodge in the US reflect the different stances on cultural assimilation that could be taken. American Freemasonry intentionally omitted a national principle in Freemasonry, which potentially could lead to chaos in the society of immigrants. Yet, paradoxically, American Freemasonry embraced exclusion based on race.

All these issues – territorial hegemony, a national principle in Freemasonry, and race – demonstrate the boundaries of “egalitarian morality” and conflicting models of civilization and society in transatlantic Freemasonry in the nineteenth century.⁶⁹

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my thanks to Distriktsloge Hamburg e.V., who granted me permission to use their private archive at Staatsarchiv Hamburg. I also would like to thank Catherine Walter, Tom Savini, and Bruce Renner from the Livingstone Library of the Grand Lodge of New York for their kind assistance in my research. Thanks also to Thad Peterson at Deutsches Freimaurermuseum in Bayreuth for providing me with additional information as well as especially to Dr. Leroy T. Hopkins who kindly shared his research into German American Freemasonry with me. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of this paper who contributed with valuable input.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Andreas Önnerfors is an Associate Professor in the History of Sciences and Ideas at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has specialized in the cultural history of the eighteenth century, in particular secret societies, cultural encounters and press history. His publications include Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Notes

1. Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 33–37. For a general introduction to the emigration of Forty-Eighters see also Levine, The Spirit of 1848, 15–19. See also Wittke, “The German Forty-Eighters,” 713. Although Wittke published his article seven decades ago, current research does not contradict his principal findings.

2. Efford, German Immigrants, 17–52, quotes on 18; and a closely related argument in Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 26–27.

3. Honeck, We are the Revolutionists, 13–15.

4. Levine, The Spirit of 1848, 83–88. It would be valuable to see the patterns of German American civil society formations compared to other immigrant communities arriving at the same time. Was Freemasonry representative of the Forty-Eighter’s sociability? Did they also engage in other fraternal orders emerging at the time such as the “International Order of Good Templars” (1851) or did they rather form other ethnically based organizations (for mutual aid) such as the “Hermannssöhne” (1840)?

5. Efford argues that the political attitudes expressed by German immigrants also always were shaped by an awareness of European development and thus were trans-Atlantic in their character. Up to German unification in 1871, German immigrants rather embraced ideas of liberal and inclusive patriotism and individual rights, including Black suffrage, but later shifted towards American nationalism and white reconciliation. Efford, German Immigrants, 2–10, 53–85, quotes on 13–14.

6. For their function in shaping a (German) language of American citizenship in the public space, see Efford, German Immigrants, 12. In his extensive analysis of the German American press Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 27–29, speaks about an emerging German “ethnic semi-public space.”

7. Levine, The Spirit of 1848, 160, contends that “[i]n New York City, German America had by far its biggest and most economically and politically heterogeneous center. The various political currents in German America tended to find their clearest and most forceful expressions here.” Levine’s statement lends a study of NY German American Freemasonry some representative gravity.

8. Honeck, We are the Revolutionists, 1–3.

9. Ibid., 16–23; and Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 33 and 325–402, who speaks of the “nativist challenge.”

10. The most comprehensive “positive” historical account of the lodge’s history is Hoffmann, “The First Twenty Years,” 33–54; and “Pythagoras Lodge No. 1,” 320–342. The latter has a printed membership list.

11. The Freemason Teubner printed this first annual return at his publishing house.

12. Leroy T. Hopkins, “‘The Craft vs. Color’: German Freemasonry and Race Relations in the Nineteenth Century,” Typed manuscript ca. 1995. Livingston Library and Museum, Grand Lodge of New York, Series 2, Individual Lodge Papers, Pythagoras No. 86 (No. 1), first observed these tensions in detail.

13. Hoffmann, “Nationalism,” 263. For a general introduction, see Önnerfors, Freemasonry.

14. On “territorial sovereignty,” see Önnerfors, Freemasonry, 86–87.

15. Levine, The Spirit of 1848, 59.

16. “Jahresbericht 1868.” Staatsarchiv Hamburg (hereafter StH), 614-1/72_5.1.10 777, Mitgliederverzeichnisse der Loge Pythagoras Nr. 1 in New York, 1852–1872 (hereafter Mitgliederverzeichnisse), quoting a circular from 1849.

17. Ibid.

18. Wittke, “The German Forty-Eighters,” 715.

19. Hoffmann, “Pythagoras Lodge No. 1,” 320–321.

20. Wiebe, Die grosse Loge, 263–265.

21. Hoffmann, “The First Twenty Years,” 38.

22. Ibid., 40.

23. Die Ger. und vollk., 14.

24. Hoffmann, “The First Twenty Years,” 44.

25. Ibid., 45.

26. Ibid., 46; and Proceedings 1852, 52.

27. Wiebe, Die grosse Loge, 269.

28. Hoffmann, “The First Twenty Years,” 48.

29. Efford, German Immigrants, 13.

30. Wittke, “The German Forty-Eighters,” 714–715; and Honeck, We are the Revolutionists, 22.

31. Hoffmann, “The First Twenty Years,” 49.

32. Hoffmann, “The First Twenty Years,” 50. Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 73–129 develops how the newly arrived Germans or “greens” were confronted with an earlier generation of “grays”. Whereas the “greens” wrongly assumed cultural homogeneity among the German immigrant community in their political struggle, the “grays” referred to their American citizenship and loyalty to their new homeland and its constitutional order.

33. Here we again can observe the function of Freemasonry outside its narrower orbit, as a friendly society and part of German American community organizations with charitable goals.

34.  Papers, 9.

35. Papers, quotes on 13, 18, 19, and 20.

36. Documents, quotes on 1 and 2.

37. Documents, quotes on 2 and 4.

38. Documents, quotes on 4 and 5.

39. Transactions 1859, 81; Hoffmann, “The first twenty years,” 52; and Documents, 34.

40. In 1846, von Mensch published a Manuel pratique du consulat. He worked as counsel for several German states.

41. These letters are printed in English translation in Transactions 1859, 199–214.

42. In 1840 the GLNY installed the first foreign representative, ironically from the GLH. At the occasion the Grand Master claimed that the “duties of Masonic governments correspond with those of the civil governments of the State.” Transactions 1840–1841, 8.

43. Transactions 1859, 199. Subsequent references cited parenthetically in text.

44. Transactions 1859, quotes on 203, 204, 210, and 211.

45. Hoffmann, “Nationalism,” 272.

46. Documents, 35.

47. “Repräsentanten der Gr L des Staates N Y bei der Gr Landesloge von Sachsen (5/1 1859. Report of the Committee of foreign Correspondence 123–136) über die Stellung der farbigen Logen und Brüder in den Verein: Staaten.” StH, 614-1/72_5.1.10 1547, Angelegenheiten der Freimaurerlogen in New York, XVIII A24. Barthelmess was born in 1820 in Bavaria, joined Freemasonry in the lodge Zu den drei Pfeilen in Nuremberg, and was affiliated to Pythagoras No. 1 in 1852. The membership records listed him as a medical doctor. He defended a dissertation on ovarian infections at Würzburg University in 1844. He was very active as a printer and publisher for the lodge. Eventually, he moved back to Germany.

48. Documents, quotes on 11, 13, 14, and 15.

49. Documents, quotes on 15–16.

50. Documents, 17–20. Barthelemess’s rhetoric is concordant with the more radical factions of German American resistance to slavery, and with abolitionists and the Republican Party. See Honeck, We are the Revolutionists, 23–32; and Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 523–524 and 552.

51. Documents, 22.

52. Honeck, We are the Revolutionists, 10, notes that 1848 refugees were frequently perceived as troublemakers by previous generations of immigrants.

53. Documents, quote on 40. Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 49–50 and 530, highlights this recurring theme in German American discourse.

54. Documents, quotes on 46, 47, and 48.

55. Hoffmann, “Nationalism,” 271.

56. “Jahresbericht 1859.” StH, Mitgliederverzeichnisse.

57. Documents, 36. Unfortunately no further information about this thrilling incident could be found.

58. Transactions 1859, quotes on 4 and 5.

59. Hoffmann, “Nationalism,” 273.

60. Ibid.

61. Simmel, Untersuchungen, 293, translated to English in “The sociology of secrecy and secret societies” in The American Journal of Sociology, 11 (1906): 441–498.

62. “Jahresbericht 1859.” StH, Mitgliederverzeichnisse.

63. “Jahresbericht 1867.” StH, Mitgliederverzeichnisse.

64. “Jahresbericht 1860.” StH, Mitgliederverzeichnisse.

65. “Jahresbericht 1866.” StH, Mitgliederverzeichnisse. See also Hoffmann, “Nationalism,” 266 and 271, on the concept of progress in German Freemasonry.

66. Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen, 50–57 develops the German émigré frustration with understanding how their ideal of a democratic republic corresponded to the political realities of the dynamic and racially diverse US society. They did not fully grasp the praxis of self-governance in US-politics.

67. Hoffmann, “The First Twenty Years,” 46.

68. Hoffmann, “Nationalism,” 261.

69. Ibid., 260.