Cahiers du CIERL 5

2018

Centre interdisciplinaire d'Étude des Religions, de la laïcité de l'Université libre de Bruxelles

• Éditeur: EME Editions
• Année: 2018
• ISBN de l'eBook: 9782806661500
• Sujet: Theology & Religion
• Sujet: Religion

L'analyse du fait religieux n'est pas une nouveauté à l'Université libre de Bruxelles. Celle-ci peut s'enorgueillir d'avoir dès le XIXe siècle inscrit l'étude du phénomène religieux à son programme et d'avoir créé, en 1884, l'une des premières chaires d'histoire des religions au monde, avec Eugène Goblet d'Alviella.

Rabbi Samuel Hirsch, a freemason by choice
and conviction

33 years of belonging to Freemasonry in Luxembourg
and Philadelphia

Christian MEYERS

The aim of this article is to review in a short and precise way Hirsch’s belonging to Freemasonry, in Luxembourg as well as in Philadelphia and thus filling the lack on Hirsch’s Freemasonry life journey in Greenberg’s (1975) and Wiese’s (2009) biographical-philosophical articles. As Hirsch’s belonging to the Luxembourgian lodge Les Enfants de la Concorde fortifiée is well known since Katz’s Hirsch focused article (Katz, 1966) and book on Freemasonry and Judaism (Katz, 1970), we only briefly touch this subject by proposing a solution to the enigma of Hirsch’s disappearing from the Masonic member lists from 1854 on. We will then pass on to the important part of this article which is to document and prove that Hirsch was reintroduced to Freemasonry in Philadelphia shortly after his arriving in the United States.

The emphasis we do put on this research work concerns both traditional and online archives work in Luxembourg and the virtual libraries (digitalized books) in the United States and Canada. A first limit of this article is that we have no space here to deepen the history of freemasonry (Jacob, 1976; Stevenson, 1988, 1990; Combes, 1998; Lomas, 2002; Bauer, 2003; Dachez, 2008; Hasselmann, 2009; Harrison, 2009, 2010) nor that of liberal Judaism and aspecially Reformjudentum (Katz, 1973, 1986; Meyer, 1988; Olitzky, Sussman & Stern, 1993; Mendes-Flohr & Reinharz, 1995; Brenner, Jersch-Wenzel & Meyer, 1996; Gotzmann, 2002; Wiese, 2007) as well as the historic links between both (Katz, 1966, 1970; Nefontaine & Schreiber, 2000; Hoffmann, 2000; Hoffmann, 2001; Wyrwa, 2003). A second limit is that for the present argumentation, we did not use the writings of Hirsch himself but based our presentation on secondary literature. A systematic and detailed analysis of Hirsch’s Die Humanität als Religion, in Vorträgen, gehalten in der Loge zu Luxemburg as well as his Das Wesen des Maurerthums has still to be done and to be linked to the here presented freemasonry thematic.

Further on, we have to add two remarks, which are based on the diagnosis that most of the scientific articles published on Samuel Hirsch deal with his pre-American period and focus on the philosophical content of his major publications. These publications do not take sufficiently into account the historical and political context in which Hirsch produced his intellectual work, neither do they worry about Hirsch’s acquaintance and network that played an important role in the evolution of his religious as well as socio-political thoughts. In advance, we want to apologize for the lists of freemasons included in this publication, which makes it’s punctually reading rather arduous. Finally, we have to underline and warn the reader of not interpreting the effective proximity between Reform Judaism members and Freemasonry members, as exposed in our article, as a consolidation of an eventual Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory.

Hirsch’s Masonic life journey in Europe and the United States

Hirsch, the ideals of Freemasonry and the struggle for participation

If Hirsch was a Jew by birth, he chose to become a freemason to identify himself at least partly to the common ideas and ideals of this institution. Beneath the basic fact that freemasonry was clearly in that time founded on the belief of the Great Architect of the Universe who is God, it was the universally utopian thoughts of tolerance and solidarity, as well as of internationalism and cosmopolitism (Beaurepaire, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004, 2008; Jacob, 1981, 1991, 2006) of the fraternity that influenced Hirsch’s Weltanschauung in a sustainable way. That’s why he struggled against the exclusion of Jews to the Prussian lodges and chose, beneath other reasons, to leave the Luxembourgian freemasonry when the anticlerical and increasing atheistic tendencies – due to the radicalisation of the Catholic Church’s positions and first of all to their ultramontan bishops – swept over from the Belgian freemasonry neighbours (Dierkens, 1995; Gérard, 1988; Lemaire, 2000; Schiffino, 2003) largely tolerated by the Grand Orient de France (Headings, 1998; Combes, 2007; Dachez, 2011; and conducted in 1855 the Luxembourgian Suprême Conseil to abandon the reference to the Great Architect of the Universe (GAOTU).

In this radicalising process, Hirsch was an indirect witness of the struggle between the members of the liberal government composed by numerous of his Masonic brethren and a conservative Catholic Church that tried to dominate the minds and the souls of the Luxembourgian population and through them take influence to the national politics. In Luxembourg, Belgium and France, for the next decades, the confrontation between the two blocks seemed inevitable and was most visible in the educational domain where the term of guerre scolaire (Lanfrey, 2003) describes well the doggedness with which both camp tried to fray itself a path.

Without any desire to fall into a conspiracy position seeing freemasonry as “forces occultes”, we have to say that the influence of freemasons who did occupy important posts in succeeding governments and in the national administration institutions was of significance in the revolutionary reformative time period between 1830 and 1912 in Luxembourg, France and Belgium. Effectively, such succession of important positions helped greatly to forge the modern liberal constitutions of these countries. Maybe for the same reasons we have indicated above, we finally notice that there is for the moment no systematic scientific or historic work that analyses the important impact of freemasons in the democratic state fundaments and more generally to the nation building in Luxembourg.

Hirsch, a member of the Luxembourgian Lodge Les enfants de la Concorde fortifiée

Hirsch Masonic life journey in Luxembourg

On the 9th of May 1843, Hirsch was initiated to the French speaking Luxembourgian Lodge Les Enfants de la Concorde fortifiée, even if a German speaking lodge existed in Luxembourg but was working under the auspices of the Altschottische Direktorium der Großen-National-Mutterloge zu den 3 Weltkugeln, namely the Blücher von Wahlstadt lodge. This traditional and conservative Prussian Großloge did not initiate Jews, with the argument that only Christians could understand Freemasonry and its aims – which is why Hirsch was somehow forced to be initiated in the other lodge. In 1821, there already had been an incident with brother Levy who wasn’t permitted to participate to Saint John festivities and in 1837, the brother Gerhard, by expressing his opposition to the Prussian freemasonry position and his sympathy for Jews to become members of the fraternity, asked to pass from the Blücher von Wahlstadt lodge to the Les Enfants de la Concorde fortifiée lodge.

Through the consultation of the microfilm documents at the Archives Nationales du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, we are able to reconstruct, at least partly, Hirsch’s Masonic life journey. So, after his initiation in 1843, Hirsch was elevated one year later to the mastership and was still a master mason in 1847. He was rather regularly present248, which means that he attended at least half of all the Lodge meetings. The 23e jour du 11e mois de l’année de la Vraie Lumière 5852 (in 1852), Hirsch had the position of an Orateur adjoint and one year later exalted to the 1st Order of the Rite français, as to know the french Grades de Sagesse (side grades) practiced at that time in Luxembourg. On a document dated to the 11th of February 1854, Hirsch is presented as having achieved the grade of Souverain Prince Rose-Croix, 4th Order of the Rite français. But, shortly after this event, no further mark of his presence in the Luxembourgian Lodge can be found. In other words, Hirsch’s name is not on the membership lists in 1855, 1859 or 1863.

Hirsch’s Masonic network

Consulting these membership lists is very interesting in the perspective of trying to reconstruct Hirsch’s acquaintance and network. First, we can say that Hirsch worked only under two Grand Masters, namely Jean-Baptiste Gellé, member of the government and Mathieu-Lambert Schrobilgen, high ranked functionary and adviser to the government. Other politically important members of the Luxembourgian Lodge were the three brothers of the industrials Metz family: Nobert Metz, president of the Chamber (Parliament), member of the government; Charles Metz, president of the Chamber and Auguste Metz, member of the Chamber. Hirsch was also familiar with different members of the merchants and jurists Pescatore family, namely Joseph, Ferdinand, Théodore and Guillaume. Gaspar Théodore Ignace de la Fontaine, governor of Luxembourg from 1841 to 1848, was also a Luxembourgian freemasonry member, but was almost never present at the Lodge meetings. François Charles Munchen, member in 1848 of the Assemblée constituante as well as from 1848 to 1849 member of Frankfurter Nationalversammlung and adviser to the government was a Masonic brother too to Hirsch, a very active freemason and later on, after Hirsch’s retract, several times Vénérable Maître of the Les Enfants de la Concorde fortifiée Lodge (1867–1869; 1871–1873, 1877-1879, 1881). Hirsch also frequented Isaïe Lippman (father of the first Luxembourgian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Lippman) and Gelschlik Godchaux of the important industrials Godchaux family, as well as other Jews in the Lodge meetings. There were also numerous Prussian Protestants (mainly military officers) present, when the Les Enfants de la Concorde fortifiée Lodge and the Blücher von Wahlstadt Lodge hold common Lodge meetings.

Hirsch could also have known personally the brethren Jean-Baptiste Nothomb, Edouard baron D’Huart and Victor Tedesco, three Belgian politics who, in 1830, switched to a Lodge in Arlon. It is interesting here to write about a hypothetic link between Hirsch and Tedesco, a cousin of Victor Hugo and a confida...

Table des matières

• Couverture
• 4e de couverture
• Copyright
• Titre
• Éditorial Jean-Philippe Schreiber
• Luther, Müntzer, Calvin, et la Bible Fabien Nobilio
• Calvin controversé. Quelques polémiques récentes relatives au calvinisme Bernard Hort
• Déconstruction et reconstruction de la mémoire huguenote Anne Morelli
• Le protestantisme naissant et l’islam Jean-Charles Ducène
• Littérature islamique et modèles antisémites : « Le quartier juif » de Najīb al-Kīlānī Xavier Luffin
• Les 'Temps mauvais' (1846-1942) dans la théologie politique française Jacques Marx
• Rabbi Samuel Hirsch, a freemason by choice and conviction Christian Meyers
• António de Oliveira Salazar et les catholiques, histoire d’un rapport très particulier Daniele Serapiglia