The Book Thieves

by Anders Rydell

  The Ludendorffs were convinced that the Freemasons had supernatural powers and thereby posed a threat to the whole German nation and its people. They also believed they had found evidence of Freemasons, through their international networks, leaking German military secrets to the nation’s enemies during the war.7 In his memoirs, Erich Ludendorff postulated that the Masonic orders were controlled by Great Britain.

  Eradication of Freemasonry Through Uncovering of Its Secrets also had another, not entirely unexpected figure emerging from the wings: the Jew. The entire Masonic movement was, in fact, created and controlled by Jews. According to the Ludendorffs, the secrecy of the lodges was a way of hiding this Jewish influence. The Masonic orders were what the Ludendorffs referred to as a künstlicher Jude, an “artificial Jew.” Their suggestion was that while the Masons were not officially Jewish, nonetheless the lodges acted as agents of Jewish interests. The couple also believed that the Jews had entered into a secret pact with the Jesuits to jointly take control of the world economy.8

  The book did not garner the sort of critical acclaim that Ludendorff had been hoping for. Most newspapers dismissed his ideas as verging on the eccentric and even slightly pitiful. The Bremer Tageblatt made comments insinuating that the old general had become “psychologically unstable.”9

  Yet, there was a good deal more receptiveness to his ideas in right-wing circles, where the conspiracy theory in question was already well established. The concept of a Jewish Masonic conspiracy was almost as venerable as the lodges themselves. According to popular myth, Freemasonry was first established among the guilds formed by freelancing cathedral builders in the medieval era. Whether this was really how Freemasons’ orders were first established has not been firmly proved, but this was the mythology on which the Masonic movement was based. The lodges first took form in the early 1700s, when the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment led to a new interest in existential questions, mysticism, and spirituality—as well as various kinds of societies. It was still perilous to question the authority of the church openly. During the 1600s and the 1700s, therefore, a myriad of religious, spiritual, and philosophical societies were set up, in which people could discuss and share such potentially dangerous ideas behind closed doors.

  The Freemasons at the Bibliotheca Klossiana in The Hague show me a book from their renowned collection—the illustrated work Bibliotheca chemica curiosa.

  The Grand Lodge of England was established in 1717, and is usually considered the first great lodge of Freemasons. From England, Freemasonry spread to France, and afterward fanned out across the Continent. Masonic orders sought to convey theoretical and spiritual knowledge through philosophical and religious inquiry. A resurgent interest at the time in the occult, magic, and séances also influenced the various orders. But the orders were not mere spiritual conversation clubs, they were in large part segregated associations for the social elite, from which women and people of lower social backgrounds were excluded.

  The secrecy, the rites, the esoteric elements, and the many prominent members created from the very beginning a plethora of widespread rumors and conspiracy theories. The first official condemnation came from Pope Clement XII at the end of the 1730s, when he spoke disapprovingly of Freemasonry as a practice in opposition to the Catholic faith. Initially, criticism was largely on religious grounds; however, after the French Revolution a political dimension emerged. In the general hunt for scapegoats to blame for the political turmoil, Freemasons and the Bavarian Illuminati were framed as the conspirators and initiators. As the 1800s progressed there was an added element of criticism from (liberal) nationalists. As many of the orders were part of international networks, the phenomenon was regarded by nationalists as a threat to national cohesion.

  The alleged link between Freemasonry and the Jews was particularly odd since many of the orders, especially those with a Christian focus, did not admit Jews as members.10 In the more humanist orders Jews were only allowed membership from the 1850s. Of the eighty thousand Freemasons believed to have existed in Germany in 1933, only some three thousand are estimated to have had a Jewish background.11

  In far-right and conservative circles an idea was cultivated in the 1800s, to the effect that the Jews were infiltrating and manipulating the ideology of the Freemasons for their own purposes. That many orders were supportive of Enlightenment ideals such as equality and positive belief in the future was considered to serve “Jewish interests” by clearing a way for Jewish emancipation. Freemasons and Jews were believed to have conspired to overthrow both church and monarchy in order to achieve equal rights for Jews.

  Around the turn of the century, Freemasons had a role in every conspiracy worth its salt. In France the Freemasons were purportedly involved in the Dreyfus affair, in which the French-Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty of espionage—on the basis of falsified evidence. In Russia, the Freemasons had a role in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an instrument for the Jews to take over the world. In England, Freemasons were accused of having links with Jack the Ripper.

  A book written by the Austrian politician Friedrich Wichtl in 1919 achieved particular standing: The Freemasons of the World—World Revolution—the World Republic. An Investigation into the Origins of the First World War and Its End.12 It was Wichtl who coined the expression “artificial Jew” and presented evidence that the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was murdered in 1914 by the machinations of a group of Freemasons and Jews.

  The Ludendorffs and Wichtl would find a receptive supporter in Alfred Rosenberg, who had himself published a book on the subject in 1922: The Crimes of the Freemasons, Jews, Jesuits, and German Christianity. In The Myth of the Twentieth Century he accused the Freemasons of spreading “tolerant and humane principles, such as how a Jew or a Turk has the same rights as a Christian,” which was, in Rosenberg’s universe of racial myth, a horrific thought. It was the Freemasons, he alleged, who “led the democratic revolutions in the 1800s.” It was this very humanism, as espoused by Freemasons, that had caused the democratic, racial, and moral decline in which “every Jew, negro, or mulatto can become a citizen with the same rights in a European nation.”13

  Heinrich Himmler was convinced that blood rituals were being used in Masonic lodges. The manner of it was described more closely in a report filed by the Bavarian political police, the BPP: “The candidate cuts himself in the thumb and drips the blood into a chalice. Wine is then mixed in, and then blood from the other brothers (from when they first carried out the ritual). Then the candidate drinks the liquid, and absorbs the blood from all Freemasons, including Jews. With this the triumph of the Jew is complete.”14

  At the same time there was within the SS a curious fascination with Freemasonry. Himmler regarded the orders not only as enemies of the state but also as sources of knowledge and inspiration. It was therefore no secret that a large part of the literature seized from German Masonic orders in the 1930s ended up in the library of the RSHA. The rituals, secrets, and symbolism of the Freemasons were of great interest to Himmler, who wished to re-create his own not entirely dissimilar rituals and orders within the SS.

  The Nazis were not the first to ban Freemasonry in the 1900s. Most emerging totalitarian regimes in the interwar years also attacked it. In Italy, Mussolini accused the Masons of being enemies of fascism and subsequently banned them, as did the Soviet Union and Spain under Franco. In Nazi Germany, Reinhard Heydrich set up a special division within the RSHA for Freemasons. One of the individuals recruited to register German Freemasons was Adolf Eichmann. How many German Freemasons fell victim to Nazi persecution is difficult to estimate, as many members were also detained and sent to concentration camps on account of other political activities.

  Freemasonry was an important component of the propaganda leveled against exterior enemies no less than interior ones. That both Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were Freemasons was often mentioned in German propaganda.
When the German field marshal Friedrich Paulus capitulated at Stalingrad, contrary to Hitler’s orders, he was smeared in German propaganda as “a Freemason of the very highest rank.”15 Yet the Nazis did not mention quite as stridently that Goethe, Mozart, and Frederick the Great had all been Freemasons.16

  • • •

  In the summer of 1940, the ERR in Amsterdam mapped out the network of Freemasons’ lodges in the Netherlands. In their completed list there were thirty-one Freemasons’ lodges and ten lodges belonging to Droit Humain, a mixed-gender order of Freemasons. There were also thirty-five local Odd Fellows and fifteen Rotary clubs. In early September, the ERR launched a series of coordinated raids, with Grootoosten in The Hague as the most important target. Quite apart from its famous library, this Masonic lodge was an umbrella organization for a long list of regional lodges with a membership in excess of four thousand. “On the fourth of September 1940 all the members were summoned to the lodge, and they were also told to bring all their regalia from home. Those who refused had their homes searched,” Piepenbrock tells me. The members were registered, and thereafter the lodges were disbanded. Most of the members were released, but the grand master of Grootoosten, Hermannus van Tongeren, was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he died.

  The property of the orders was wholly confiscated, including buildings, regalia, and libraries. As in Germany, Freemasons’ lodges often ended up being used as offices, warehouses, or coordination centers for various Nazi organizations.17

  Another theme exported from Germany was the concept of the “shaming exhibition,” used here as an attempt by the occupiers to win over the citizens in the territories to their struggle against Jews, Freemasons, and Bolsheviks. In Paris, an anti-Freemasonry exhibition opened in June 1940, and Brussels put on a similar show one year later.

  In France, the ERR started preparing the plunder of the Masonic lodges earlier than in the Netherlands. Even while the military operation was still going on, Alfred Rosenberg had sent personnel to France to carry out reconnaissance for the imminent confiscations. On June 18, 1940, one of the emissaries, Professor Georg Ebert, reported that he had occupied France’s largest lodge of Freemasons, Grand Orient of France, on rue Cadet in Paris.18

  In France and Belgium, the orders were plundered as thoroughly as in the Netherlands. In Denmark, Norway, Poland, Austria, Greece, and the Balkans, orders were also raided and cleared.

  There were bitter skirmishes between the ERR and the RSHA for the right to acquire the libraries and archives of the Freemasons. The RSHA was often given precedence, which forced the ERR to hand over much of the already confiscated Masonic literature. It was considered important from a security perspective to be able to map out the Freemasons’ international networks by having access to their membership registries, correspondence, and other materials. But it was also clear that the “occult literature” that had been the property of the orders was of great interest to the SS. The RSHA had already built up a considerable collection, plundered from the German Masonic orders—prior to the Nazi accession to power they had held the world’s second-largest membership.19 The seizure of books and archive materials from the German lodges had been enormous, and most ended up in the library on the enemies of the Reich, housed in Section VII of the RSHA in Berlin.

  Already in the German collections the RSHA had found plenty of material that could underpin the conspiratorial fantasies and occult interest of the SS. One such archive was the Schwedenkiste (Swedish chest) from the Masonic lodge Ernst zum Kompass in Gotha. This was a collection of documents and letters that the Illuminati order had held at the end of the 1700s. The secret order, surrounded by myths, had been founded by the German philosopher Adam Weishaupt. Its purpose had been to reach consensus on the fundamental values of the Enlightenment among intellectuals and decision makers, and in this way encourage rational social reforms in a progressive spirit. Weishaupt’s organization recruited assiduously within this target group, and regarded the Illuminati order as an institution for the development of an elite in which a loyal cadre group would coordinate its high ideals for the betterment of humanity.

  The order was banned by the Bavarian state in 1785 and several of its members imprisoned. And yet, despite the brief life of the order, the Illuminati were soon surrounded by a proliferation of conspiracy theories, with one popular assertion that the order lived on in secret.

  John Robison, the Scottish philosopher and conspiracy theorist, accused the Illuminati in his book Proofs of a Conspiracy (1797) of having infiltrated Masonic groups on the Continent and starting the French Revolution. In 1780, the Illuminati had instigated a collaboration with Freemasons, which was regarded as evidence of the order having continued its subversive activities under the guise of the Masonic orders. Schwedenkiste consisted of documents hailing back to the time when the Illuminati were still active, including information identifying the members. Duke Ernst II of Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg, a member of the order, regarded the contents to be of such sensitivity that he had them sent to his contacts in Sweden. In Stockholm the Illuminati archive would be protected from publication, which was guaranteed by the Swedish royal family. One of those listed as a member of the Illuminati was none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Schwedenkiste would remain in Sweden until 1883, when the collection was sent back to Germany and ended up with the Masonic lodge Ernst zum Kompass, where the Gestapo found it in the 1930s.

  There were few Freemasons’ libraries on the Continent that could measure up to Bibliotheca Klossiana in terms of breadth and depth; it was one of the most important in the world for those who wanted to look into the origins of Freemasonry. The library also contained materials that were studied by the Freemasons, such as books on natural history, biology, philosophy, and the history of various cultures and their beginnings—books from the 1600s and 1700s on indigenous people and their rites and religions. Alongside these were classical Greek tragedies. The library was absolutely crucial to the activities of the Freemasons. It was through such materials that they could attain new knowledge about themselves. “It was a way to catharsis,” says Theo Walter, the Klossiana librarian.

  Apart from books on magic, theosophy, astrology, alchemy, rites, music, song, and symbolism, Klossiana also has one of the world’s most substantial collections of anti-Freemasonry literature. But the library’s value lies not only in written literature but also in a rich stock of illustrations, etchings, and drawings that demonstrate how to conduct the secret rituals.

  Among Klossiana’s rarities are five of the oldest editions of the Scotsman James Anderson’s The Constitutions of the Free-Masons from the early 1700s, the work that forms the basis of the British Masonic system. Another even more mythologized document found in the collection is the Charter van Keulen (Cologne Charter), which is said to date back to 1535. The document, written in Latin, demonstrates that there was already widespread Masonic activity during the 1500s. According to the myth in circulation, the document was found in a dormant lodge in Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, hidden in a chest locked with three locks, behind three separate seals. It was widely discussed in Masonic circles during the 1800s. Kloss, who first chanced upon the document, was one of those who could reveal that this was very likely a case of forgery.

  Also of interest to the Nazis was the large archive of materials from defunct orders, held by Grootoosten der Nederlanden, many of these having had connections with the East India Company. In the archive of the lodge was something of at least comparable value, namely a card index of every individual who had been a member of a Masonic order in the Netherlands since the 1700s.20

  After the raids in 1940, the ERR’s Netherlands section was able to report on the significant success of the action. Hundreds of thousands of books and other materials had been confiscated.21 Also included with these were art and ritual artifacts, including the golden hammer of the grand master, which had been found at Grootoosten’s lodge. The ERR estimated
the golden hammer’s value at 3,000 reichsmarks.

  There was no doubt about what was regarded as the foremost trophy: “In order to calculate the value of the Bibliotheca Klossiana, which contains many rare works, one must bear in mind that in 1939 Grootoosten was offered five million dollars for the library by Freemasons in the USA,” the ERR writes in a report.22 But not only the financial value was emphasized; in fact, the impounded books were said to be of “extraordinary scientific value”: “One can state without any hesitation that the library of Hohe Schules, without enormous labor, will now offer a quite remarkable amount of treasures that will give the library a leading position in questions touching upon Jews and Freemasons.”23 But the ERR did not merely make do with the library itself: “Also, steel shelving units sufficient for about 30,000 books were removed from the building.”

  [ 8 ]

  LENIN WORKED HERE

  Paris

  Jean-Claude Kuperminc runs his fingers over the book titles, reading them quietly to himself as he moves slowly between the rows of bookshelves until he finds what he is looking for. He pulls out a beige-white cloth-bound book. The ceiling light, with its buttery yellow glow, makes it difficult to read the title. Kuperminc opens the thick blackout curtains that cover the wall toward the inner courtyard and then holds up the book spine to the sunlight. The title is Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes (World History of the Jewish People) by the Russian-Jewish historian and activist Simon Dubnov, murdered in Riga by the SS in 1941. At the bottom of the spine, a small label is glued on, bearing the text “B. z. Erf. d. Jud. Frankfurt a. Main.” On one of the flyleaves is a blue rubber stamp with the same text, except unabbreviated: “Bibliothek zur Erforschung der Judenfrage Frankfurt a. Main.” It is the first time I have seen a stamp from Rosenberg’s Frankfurt institute. Even the catalog number from the institute’s library is preserved: “42/1941,” in a quick but entirely legible scrawl, written with a sharpened pencil.