Functions of Secrecy – Herder and the Masonic Elements of Enlig

Functions of Secrecy – Herder and the Masonic Elements of Enlig

Functions of Secrecy – Herder and the Masonic Elements of Enlightenment Thought
Helge Jordheim, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University
of Oslo
(paper for the workshop ‘Herder and Anthropology’, University of Oslo 29-30 May 2006; not
for citation)
The point of departure for this talk is a larger project, with the working title the “Functions of
Secrecy”, in which I try to map how, in what contexts and to what ends, functions of secrecy
and concealment are in operation in the Age of Enlightenment – in obvious opposition to the
ambition of exposing every aspect of human life and of society to the bright light of reason.
In one sense the beginnings of anthropology in the late 18th century – a frequent topic at this
workshop – can in itself be regarded as a function of secrecy, or, more precisely, as a reaction
to the experience that there are aspects of human life that remain hidden, that are not
immediately accessible to the human eye or to human reason – such as dreams, fantasies,
desires, or rather, reincarnation, ghosts and voices from beyond the grave. Parallel to these
phenomena, secrecy – in its different and more or less spiritual forms – is among the topics
that bring about the so-called “anthropological turn” in German literature and science in the
second half of the 18th century, for instance – from my field of research – in novels such as
Wielands Geschichte des Agathon and Jean Pauls Die Unsichtbare Loge, in which the
functions of secrecy are at once a force of Bildung and a way of deceiving the hero.
If we, for a moment, return to the presentation of this workshop on the website, this paper will
obviously mostly have to do with – as it says – situating Herder within the context of 18th
century German history and culture, and may be even point at some of the limitations of the
traditional reception of Herder’s thinking. But can a study of Herder and the Masonic
tradition – in the context of the functions of secrecy – say anything about Herder’s relevance
today? I have already mentioned that there might be a element of secrecy at work in the birth
of anthropology, and there obviously is one at work in the rise of hermeneutics and the
philosophy of history. If this element – this function of secrecy – is still relevant today, is a
question I leave for the discussion afterwards. However, if we look at how a popular
phenomenon such as the Da Vinci Code – the book and now the film – has been able to
1
reintroduce notions of secrets and secrecy at the heart of global popular culture, more or less
overnight, I have the feeling that the perspective I present here might not be completely
irrelevant after all.
That concludes my introductory remarks.
I.
In the 18th century practices of secrecy manifested themselves first and foremost in the great
number of secret societies which were founded all over Germany and which – as Reinhart
Koselleck, Richard Van Dülmen and many others, even quite briefly Jürgen Habermas have
pointed out – were one of the most important institutions of bourgeois self-organization and
education in this period. The dominant intellectual and ideological force in these secret
societies was freemasonry, characterized by a strictly hierarchical organization, Egyptian
symbols, esoteric rituals, pseudonyms, code words and secret handshakes. For obvious
reasons I cannot go into the history of Freemasonry and Masonic lodges in Germany here.
However, two aspects have to be made clear if we want to understand the role of Masonic
secrets in German thought and writing from the beginning of the 18th and well into the 19th
century: Obviously, one important function of secrecy consisted in concealing what was really
taking place on, the actual plans and activities of the secret societies, making them appear
much more important than they really were, according to a well-known logic of conspiracy
theory. For instance, even as late as in the 1820s the German public still believed that the
order of the Illuminati had planned and staged the French Revolution, together with the
German and French Jacobins. Secondly, several important intellectual figures in 18th century
Germany had affiliations with freemasonry and thus put this motive to frequent use in their
works, the most famous examples being the Turmgesellschaft in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre, the character of Marquis Posa in Schiller’s play Don Carlos as well as the empire
of Sarastro in Mozart’s Zauberflöte.
From the names featured on this list you will have guessed that Freemasonry, Masonic
practices and ideology are by no means new to 18th century German historiography.
Moreover, in the last fifteen years there has been a renewed interest in these topics, at least
partly fuelled by the renewed interest in 18th century anthropology. At one point this scholarly
topic even reached the headlines in German newspaper, after the American scholar W. Daniel
2
Wilson, in book on the order of the Illuminati in Weimar, had claimed that both Goethe and
the prince Carl August had entered the order with the sole purpose to spy on and control its
members. The title of this paper – “The Functions of Secrecy” – marks an attempt to move
away from this mainly biographical and highly positivistic way of studying the secret
societies of 18th century Germany as well as their prominent members. Thus, the term
“function” is meant to indicate that I do not want to focus the actual secrets or practices of
secrecy, their contents, what the Freemasons actually believed, knew or did, but on the idea or
mechanism of secrecy itself – how it was perceived, what it meant, how it functioned. More
precisely, I want to show how the functions of secrecy play a decisive role in the genesis of
some important intellectual contributions of the late 18th century, on the fields of politics,
philosophy and poetics – among them the concepts of liberty, humanity, cosmopolitanism and
freedom of speech, the literary genre of the Bildungsroman and the bourgeois institution of
the public sphere – just to mention some elements of the Enlightenment heritage that I am
working with.
To view the secret primarily as a function not as a kind of content is an approach I take from
Reinhart Koselleck’s seminal work Kritik und Krise from 1959, with the subtitle “the
pathogenesis of the modern world”, in which the German historian discusses at length how
freemasonry in general and the order of the Illuminati in particular can be seen as a social and
political correlate to Enlightenment criticism, as practiced by thinkers such as Voltaire,
Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller and Kant. According to Koselleck their thoughts on man, society
and art pretend to be concerned only with morality and not with politics, but in fact their
arguments have radically political and even revolutionary implications – implications that
need to be hidden from political authorities. Koselleck then, in his brilliant, but singularly
one-dimensional work acknowledges only one possible function of secrecy, what he calls a
“protective function”, “eine schützende Funktion”. Hence, the sole function of the Masonic
secret is to protect the lodges, their members and their rituals from control and censorship by
the absolutist state, or more precisely to hide the fact that their allegedly moral practices, their
education and ideology, their focus on man not as a subject, but as an autonomous human
being, in reality presents a highly political and even revolutionary attack on the absolutist
regime – a strategy that Koselleck terms “hypocritical”. In the following I will try to show
that there might be other functions of secrecy as well, that become effective in different parts
of the textual culture of the Enlightenment as well as in different parts of Herder’s work.
3
II.
I shall start by giving you a brief overview of Herder’s dealings with Freemasonry. In 1766,
during his time in Riga, Herder joined the lodge “Zum Nordstern”, where he, according to his
wife Caroline, came to hold the office as secretary. After having moved to Weimar he became
a member of the order of the Illuminati that had formed around Johann Cristoph von Bode
and that counted prominent people like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, prince Carl August of
Sachsen-Weimar and Freiherr von Knigge, only to mention a few. As W. Daniel Wilson has
shown Herder – whose name in the order was “Damasus Pontifex” – seems to have been a
rather passive member. Furthermore, in a letter from 1786, Herder gives the following –
rather crushing – summary of his experiences as a freemason and a member of different secret
societies:
Ich hasse alle geheime Gesellschaften auf den Tod und wünsche Sie nach den Erfahrungen, die
ich aus und in ihrem Innersten gemacht habe, zum T – ; denn der schleichende Herrsch-,
Betrug-, und Kabalengeist ist’s, der hinter ihrer Decke kriechet.1
This, however, is by no means marks the end of Herder’s engagement with Freemasonry and
Masonic lodges. Much later, between 1800 and 1803 Herder joins the theater director, actor
and well-known Freemason Friedrich Ludwig Schröder in his work to bring about a reform of
Masonic rites and practices in Germany, particularly in Hamburg. The goal of this reform was
to create a new Masonic ritual, suppressing almost entirely the idea of secrecy and replacing it
with a moral obligation to work for the best of mankind. A vivid correspondence between the
two documents Herder’s continuing interest in Freemasonry as fundamentally moral and
humanitarian institution.
Not surprisingly, the same ambivalent and shifting attitude to Freemasonry can be found in his
texts on and around this matter – the most important being his three dialogues, his
Freimaurergespräche in the tradition from Lessing: “Glaucon und Nicias”, that was never
published in his own time; “Gespräche über eine unsichtbar-sichtbare Gesellschaft”, printed
in the second part of Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität; and two conversations in the
fourth book of the Adrastea. In this paper I am going to concentrate on his earlier texts, from
the 1780s, as they are the ones, in which his thoughts on Freemasonry are first being
formulated.
1 Dobbek 265f, zit. nach Voges 190.
4
III.
I begin my discussion of some of Herder’s texts by giving a brief account of five fairly
strange letters that were published in the journal Teutsche Merkur in spring and summer 1782,
as part of a heated debate. The protagonists of this debate, or rather, should we say, the
antagonists were two seminal figures of the German Enlightenment. Furthermore, in the study
of the period they have come to represent opposing or even contradictory versions of the
Enlightenment project, between – on the one hand – a rigid, but heroic rationalism, strictly
rejecting every hint of mysticism or sentimentality, for instance in Goethe’s Werther or in
Fichte’s idealism, and – on the other – an open-minded and emphatic historicism, with a
singular sense for historical, cultural and linguistic difference. Prior to this debate the two
men in question were friends, or at least they tried to be, in a circle that also included
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn, afterwards, they were at least for a time
sworn enemies. Their names were Friedrich Nicolai and Johann Gottfried Herder. And it
wasn’t the first time that they had clashed, either. Some years before, Nicolai, the famous
editor of the journal Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, where Herder had been publishing short
articles mainly on literary and aesthetical questions, had written a rather fierce critique of one
of Herder’s first experiments in the philsophical genre, Aelteste Urkunde des
Menschengeschlechts, from 1773 and 1776. In spring and summer 1782, shortly after the
death of their common mentor and intellectual father-figure Lessing, the two former friends
went at it again. Once more, the context was the problem of Enlightenment, its goals and
means; the topic, however, was the history and the practices of secrecy.
In the beginning of 1782 Nicolai had published a book in Berlin, with the title: Versuch über
die Beschuldigungen, welche dem Tempelherrenorden gemacht worden, und über dessen
Geheimnis; nebst einem Anhang über das Enstehen der Freimäurergesellschaft. Only a few
months later, first in March and then in April and June, Herder published five letters in the
Teutsche Merkur, in which he criticizes Nicolai’s book. Upon a closer look these letters
consist in a full-fledged attack on Nicolai. In part they can be read as Herder’s attempt to
vindicate himself after Nicolai’s criticism of his Aelteste Urkunde – but obviously there is
something else at stake as well.
During most part of his life Nicolai was a practicing Freemason. He was a prominent member
of the Berlin lodge “Zu den drei Weltkugeln” as well as the founder of the
5
“Mittwochsgesellschaft”. Furthermore, he had a scholarly interest in the history and rituals of
Freemasonry, as can be seen in the book on the Knights Templar. As the title shows, Nicolai is
out to answer two questions, one regarding the accusations made against the order of the
Templars by the Inquisition in the 14th century, and the other regarding the origin of
Freemasonry. On the one hand, Nicolai wants to show that the accusations against the
Templars were in fact not fabricated, as had been claimed in a recently published book by
Karl Anton, but true, to the extent that the Templars were indeed a kind of Gnostic sect
worshipping an arcane and esoteric knowledge, “ein Weisheitsgeheimnis”.2 Secondly, he
reconstructs a complex genealogy for 18th century Freemasonry, going back to the order of
the Rosecrucians founded by the famous Silesian author Johannes Valentin Andrea in the 17th
century. Other scholars commenting on Herder’s critique have all concluded that Herder
generally makes a fool out of himself, unable to match Nicolai’s rhetorical powers and
knowledge of the subject. However, the question I want to ask is what Herder is trying to do
in writing these letters against Nicolai and in what sense they can be said to anticipate his
reflexions on Freemasonry.
In his letters, Herder – it would seem – is out to disprove all of Nicolai’s attempts to find the
historical and esoteric content of the secret of the Templars: Neither the Gnostic secret of
wisdom – “eine geheime Tinktur der Weisheit” – or the alchemic secret of gold-making – “die
Goldtinktur” – have – according to Herder – any reality or relevance for the history of the
order. To illustrate how Nicolai have been fooled, Herder considers the etymology of the
name “Baphomet” that appears several times in the documents from the case against the
Templars. Nicolai takes this name and the bearded head, to which it refers, to be a symbol of a
secret, a piece of secret knowledge, common to Templars and Gnosticists. Against this idea,
Herder argues – over several pages – that “Baphomet” was just another version of the name of
the Muslim prophet “Mohamed” that the Templars knew from their travels in the Holy Land.
Hence, it had nothing to do with secret Gnostic knowledge. To claim that this name, this word
is the sign of a secret is to Herder nothing more than “die gemeinste Romanlüge und
Pöbelsage”.3
Even though Herder’s often imprecise or even incorrect arguments deals with clearly
historical questions, about of the Templars, their rituals and secrets, it soon becomes clear that
2 Herder, 15, s. 82
3 15, s. 84
6
he is not really interested in the real – historical and esoteric – content of the secret of the
Templars – what they were really hiding – at least not in the way Nicolai is. If every secret,
every practice of secrecy can be studied both in search of a content and in search of a
function, Herder – this is at least my claim – is more interested in the functional aspects. To
Herder – it seems – secrecy is a function at work in history itself – a function that can be
controlled and put to use for the purpose of Enlightenment. In the 18th century this functional
approach to the problem of secrecy is by no means singular to Herder, but can also be found
in other texts and debates – such as in C. M. Wielands brilliant essay “Geheimnis des
Kosmopolitenordens” from 1776 as well as in the debate between the publisher Johann Erich
Biester and the philosopher Christian Garve in the Berliner Monatsschrift in 1785.
A good example of how Herder, in his letters against Nicolai, in fact analyzes the functions of
secrecy, is his discussion of the works by the Silesian theologian and author Johannes Valentin
Andrea, who, in addition to his most famous work of utopian fiction, Christianapolis, wrote
several books about the secret society of the Rosecruscians, Fama fraternitatis Roseae Crucis
oder Die Bruderschaft des Ordens der Rosenkreuzer (1614), Confessio oder Bekenntnis der
Sozietät und Bruderschaft Rosenkreuz (1615) and Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz
Anno 1459 (1616). In Andrea Nicolai sees not only the founder of the order of the
Rosecruscians, but indirectly, through his influence on Francis Bacon and the English
societies, an important predecessor of Freemasonry. Herder, however, who had the greatest
respect for Andrea, but more as a priest and a theologian, reads these books in quite a different
way, namely as pure fictions:
Also war seine Chymische Hochzeit bloß ein ludibrium, damit er die zahlreichen monstra
seiner Zeit durchzog: er siehts selbst als eine Comödie oder Roman an, mit dem er sich seiner
übermäßig gesammelten Lektur habe entledigen wollen.4
This analysis of how Andrea’s books should be considered as a compilation, in the form of a
novel, of all the superstitions and delusions of his own time, written with the sole ambition to
earn money and sell books, seems also to apply or even be directed at Herder’s own time. One
of the most important novelistic genres in the second half of the 18th century, vastly
contributing to Leseseuche, the epidemic of reading, that was spreading all over Germany,
was the so-called “novel of secret societies”, the “Geheimbundroman” – gaining a lot of its
4 15, s. 60
7
popularity from the fact that the readers were unable to tell the difference between real and
fictitious secrets. Obviously, this is one function of secrecy that Herder wants to warn against
in his letters:
Chymie, Alchimie, Mystik, Traumdeuterei, Astrologie waren im höchsten Ansehen und es
konnte nicht anders seyn, als – wie es ja auch wieder zu werden anfängt – dass mancherlei
Betrug und Wahn dahinter seine Zuflucht suchte.5
If we move on to the first of Herder’s dialogues on Freemasonry, “Glaucon und Nicias”, that
remained unpublished till after his death, this contemporary perspective – wie es ja wieder zu
werden anfängt – is the central one. This text is a harsh, even contemptuous criticism of
Masonic practices. Furthermore, it ties in nicely with the letters against Nicolai in the way it
focuses more or less exclusively on the functional aspects of secrecy and the effects on the
culture of Enlightenment. Almost in a systematic manner Herder explores the consequences
of secrecy for the concepts of science, of morality and of religion – geheime Wissenschaften,
geheime Moral and geheime Religion. First the two men engaged in a conversation, Glaucon
and Nicias, ridicule the notion of geheime Wissenschaft, as if nature had decided to remove
her veil and uncover all her secrets, or as if a new artificial sense, eine neue künstliche Sinne,
had been invented that only those who are initiated to a secret society had access to. Geheime
Moral, on the other hand, cannot be anything but deceit, Betrug, practiced by beautiful
women, priests and state ministers: “Minister”, Herder writes, “glauben die ganze Welt für
ihren Fürsten hintergehen zu müssen; betrügen aber am Ende meistens ihn oder sich selbst”.6
Third, geheime Religion, according to Glaucon and Nicias, can be nothing but Schwärmerei.
This, they conclude, is the danger that the secret societies represent: “Sie sind Winkel, die sich
dem Licht der Sonne verschließen, damit hier den Betrug, dort die Schwärmerei ausbrüten
können […].”7 Not by coincidence the chapter on Freemasons in the Adrastea is placed
immediately before the chapter on Methodisten and Enthusiasten.
It would be easy, then, to conclude that Herder was in fact an enemy of the secret societies
and that his attack on Nicolai is in fact an attack on the secret societies in general and
Freemasonry in particular, If this is the case, however, why would he take the trouble of
defending the Templars against Nicolai’s accusations? Even though the letters themselves
5 15, s. 61
6 15, s. 168
7 15, s. 171
8
give no definite answer, there are passages in them that seem to indicate that Herder have a
more historico-philosophical and dialectical view of secrecy. To him secrecy is not just
another cultural or political expression, but is deeply rooted in the history and the prehistory
of mankind, as, in his own words, “einen Gegenstand des grauen Alterthums”. Moreover, in
the letters against Nicolai he often expresses rather favorable inclination to the idea of
selecting a group of men, “die Vornehmsten, Brauchbarsten, Ersten”, and organizing them in a
society: 8
Ich will es glauben, dass in einem so großen Orden, wo viele wackre Glieder waren, vielleicht
auch aufgeklärte Glieder gewesen: es kann beinahe nicht anders seyn, als dass ihre
Bekanntschaft mit den Saracenen, vielleicht auch in einigen Ländern Europens mit den
Albigensern, Stedingern, und wie die Ketzer weiter genannt wurden, die Begriffe mancher
Ritter geläutert und über den Pöbel der herrschenden Kirche erhoben habe. Verschiedene
Lebensweise, Reisen, Kenntnis anderer Länder und Partheien, geben inbesonderheit tapfern
Leuten eine Art Unpartheilichkeit und allgemeiner Uebersicht, die eingeschlossene Mönche
und disputierende Gelehrte wohl nicht haben konnten. 9
This is indeed a very interesting passage, especially the final reference to the ideals of
Unpartheilichkeit und allgemeiner Uebersicht. At the end of his fierce attack on Nicolai’s
book Herder ends up formulating an almost utopian ideal – of a kind of men who through
their experience with other peoples and other cultures has developed a generality of
knowledge and an openness of mind that not only sets them apart from the mob – “den Pöbel
der Kirche” – but even from the scholars and monks studying, collecting their knowledge
behind closed doors. And this – we should add – is also a function of secrecy.
According to the argument I am making here this is what really interests Herder in
Freemasonry and in the secret societies: the opportunity to create, to build – in the full
German sense of bilden – groups, societies of men who are not “eingeschlossen” – locked up
– like monks, in their religious, cultural and national contexts, but who are fundamentally
open-minded, liberal and cosmopolitan. The function of secrecy then, is to free these people
from the political and religious forces controlling them, from their duties and allegiances to
the state and the church. Hence, this protective function, this “schützende Funktion”, to use
Koselleck’s term, is to Herder not an end in itself, but a means of creating the space necessary
8 15, s. 100
9 s. 110
9
to bring about a reorientation, from the small world of the monastry or the principality, to the
bigger world of the nation, the continent, the globe. However, in his own time, not least in
Nicolai’s book on the Templars, Herder can observe how the function of secrecy has become
an end in itself, how function becomes content, how members of Masonic lodges become
more interested in the rituals and the levels of initiations than in educating themselves and
others in open-mindedness and cosmopolitanism. This could – in my opinion – partly explain
Herder’s ambivalent attitude towards Freemasonry. Furthermore, in more or less all his
relevant texts Herder faces the question if the strategies of secrecy are not outdated,
“unzeitgemäß”, if we have not reached a level of Enlightenment when their “protective
function” is in fact not needed anymore. Obviously, the strategies of secrecy are not in
accordance with the fundamental ideals of Enlightenment. Hence, Herder is constantly
searching for ways of reformulating or even reinventing the cosmopolitan ideals of
Freemasonry without having to refrain to the strategies and functions of secrecy effective in
these orders and lodges. I’m going to finish my paper by giving two examples of how he
considers this to be possible. In these examples two central ideals of the German
Enlightenment in general and of Herder’s work in particular – Humanität and Bildung – are
being reformulated as functions of secrecy.
IV.
In 1791 Herder broke off his work with the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit, because he wanted to write something more explicitly practical and political.
Immediately he started to work on a collection of letters that he first planned to publish under
the title Briefe, die Fortschritte der Humanität betreffend. Later they were revised, made less
politically explicit and published with the title Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität. In the
late 18th century Humanität was a highly ambivalent concept: on the one hand, it brought with
it meanings of politeness, friendliness and good manners from the representative culture of
the Ancien Regime; on the other hand, however, Humanität had become what Koselleck in his
Begriffsgeschichte calls a concept of movement, ein Bewegungsbegriff or a concept
formulating a utopian goal, ein Zielbegriff. This conceptual change can be observed in the title
of Herder’s letters. However, the most explicit discussion of the concept Humanität is to be
found in the third collection, in the first three letters, entitled “Über das Wort und den Begriff
Humanität”. Herder begins by asking if this word couldn’t be replaced by another:
“Menschheit, Menschlichkeit, Menschenrechte, Menschenpflichten, Menschenwürde,
10
Menschenliebe?”10 Why does he consider changing it? Because – and this is the opening line
of the first letter - “Sie fürchten, dass man dem Wort Humanität einen Fleck anhängen
werde.”11 This is indeed a strange statement. Indeed it seems impossible to understand what it
is referring to, until we spot the editor’s – Herder’s – footnote, referring us to the preceding
letter, the last letter of the second collection, in which we find the almost exactly the same
sentence , this time in the form of a question, posed by one of the two discussants, indicated
as “Er”: “Glaubst du aber nicht, daß man auch dem Wort Humanität einen Fleck anhängen
werde?” “Ich” answers – tounge in cheek: “Das wäre sehr inhuman. Wir sind nichts als
Menschen; sei der Erste unserer Gesellschaft.12”
Of, course there are several possible reasons why the concept of Humanität doesn’t appear to
be completely without spots, Flecken. As a normative ideal it could indeed be considered as
conservative, as French, as elitist and so on. In the letter in question, however, the 26th letter
of the Humanitätsbriefe, the concept of Humanität is developed, deduced even, from a
concept of secrecy. The heading of this letter is “Gespräch über eine unsichtbar-sichtbare
Gesellschaft” and the content is for the most part copied – word by word – from the first
dialogue in Lessing’s work Ernst und Falk. Gespräche für Freimaurer, published in 1778 –
the work that first awoke Herder’s theoretical and historical interest in Freemasonry. Parallel
to the debate with Nicolai the scholarly tradition has concluded that Herder’s own
contribution to this dialogue is rather inconsequential, editing, mostly abridging Lessing’s
original text and then adding a new, apparently not as illuminating ending. In this assessment,
however, what is overlooked, is the immediate discursive context of the dialogue, the way it is
included in a book, and in a part of a book, describing the birth, development and origins of
the political and social concept of Humanität. Already at the very beginning of the Herder’s
work, in the first letter, that also serve as an introduction, the connection is made between
Humanität and the secret societies: “Je reiner die Gedanken der Menschen sind, desto mehr
stimmen sie zusammen; die wahre unsichtbare Kirche durch alle Zeiten, durch alle Länder ist
nur Eine”.13 Furthermore, Herder “ein Bund der Humanität”, a bond, an alliance an
association, has been formed between he who writes and he who reads the letters, “wahrer,
wenigstens unanmaßender und stiller, als einer je geschlossen ward.” Thus, Humanität – as
utopian concept of movement, of progress – takes the historical form of an invisible, silent
10
11
12
13
11
Werke 7, s. 147.
Ibid.
Werke 7, s. 141,
7, s. 13.
society, much like a Masonic lodge, but in which every man can be or even is a member.
In the dialogue itself follows a further description of this society. Before introducing his own
thoughts in the second dialogue Herder sums up Lessing’s arguments: The society he is
referring to, “Er” says, “is not something arbitrary, something dispensable, but something
necessary, that one could discover for oneself as well as being introduced to it by others”. But,
he continues, it is not “the words, signs and rituals that are important”. This society, “Ich”
answers, is “not closed, but open to the entire world, it doesn’t express itself through rituals
and symbols, but in clear words and actions; it doesn’t exist in one or two nations only, but
among enlightened people all over the world”.14 In short, it is die Gesellschaft aller
denkenden Menschen in allen Weltteilen. Obviously, Herder is still working with the idea of
the secret society, of the Masonic lodge, but at the same time he is dialectically changing it,
step by step, into an ideal of openness and communication. Thus, in the place of the practices
of secrecy he introduces the printing press, die Buchdruckerei. After the invention of the
printing press, Herder argues, there shall be no secret words or signs anymore, keine geheime
Worte und Zeichen. Instead there is “das heilige Dreieck” – a well-known Masonic symbol –
of poetry, philosophy and history that makes us rise above the prejudices of state, religion,
rank and status. The member of this world-wide society are, on the one hand, the great men of
the past, Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Tacitus, Marc Antony, Bacon and Fenelon, on the other
hand, the ones among our contemporaries that share our cosmopolitan conviction and that we
recognize at once: “Setze zwei Menschen von gleichen Grundsätzen zusammen; ohne Griff
und Zeichen verstehen sie sich, und bauen in stillen Taten den großen, edlen Bau der
Humanität fort.” Hence, the ideal of Humanität, as developed by Herder in the sense of a
reformulation of the Masonic practice of secrecy, consists in a way of overcoming, of tearing
down the borders of state, rank and religion. Or as “Ich” says about this almost utopian
society:
Ich treffe in ihr alles an, was mich über jede Trennung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft erhebt,
und mich zum Umgange nicht mit solchen und solchen Menschen, sondern mit Menschen
überhaupt, nicht nur einführt, sondern auch bildet.
Precisely this idea of Bildung, of a society not only introducing, but even educating its
members to Humanität, is crucial here. To achieve this, Herder states in his dialogue on
14 7, s. 138.
12
Freemasonry, it was once necessary to have laws, rules, pledges and symbols, but not
anymore: For our own time, he concludes, “we have to use the opposite method, pure, light,
revealed truth”, reine, helle, offenbare Wahrheit.
V.
However – and now I come to the issue of Bildung and to my last point – Herder is well
aware of the fact that truth doesn’t work for itself. On the contrary, reine Wahrheit needs
someone to cultivate it and to communicate it, to put it into practice as Bildung. Historically,
this has been the self-appointed role of the secret societies, such as Freemasonry or the
Knights Templar, who has seen themselves as keepers of a kind of arcane knowledge, “ein
Weisheitsgeheimnis”, that certain carefully selected people can be initiated into. In the last
part of this paper I am going to show how Herder tries to adapt this Masonic model of
cultivation and communication of knowledge for his own time.
An important text for understanding how Herder takes up the model of the secret society and
tries to adapt it to contemporary, Enlightenment purposes, first and foremost, by insisting on
its fundamentally open and public character, is a rather small treatise written in 1787, with the
title: “Idee zum ersten patriotischen Institut für den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands”. In fact, the
idea to this essay came from one of the enlightened German princes of the time, count Karl
Friedrich von Baden. The count was a strong supporter of the idea of a German league of
princes, ein Fürstenbund, and as a parallel to this political vision, he considered founding a
league of scholars, writers and thinkers, ein Gelehrtenbund, that – he thought – would
contribute greatly to creating a common German spirit, ein Allgemeingeist Deutschlands. For
a long time the count had been an admirer of Herder and his works and now he wanted him to
develop his great vision into a practicable plan. After several requests Herder complied and
wrote the already mentioned text that was sent to Carl August, the prince and ruler of
Sachsen-Weimar, in December 1787.
The main thought in the treatise – that Herder had from Karl Friedrich von Baden – was to
found an academy, eine Teutsche Akademie – a German version of L’academie francaise –
with members from all the provinces and principalities of the German Reich. The task of this
academy was to be an institution and an instrument of Bildung within the German cultural
sphere, or as Herder puts it, “ein[] Vereinigungspunkt mehrerer Provinzen zur allgemeinen,
13
praktischen Geistes- und Sittencultur”15 As in the case of Humanität this idea of an institute of
Bildung takes up and reworks important ideas from the Masonic tradition, in a way that
strives to liberate them from the functions and mechanisms of secrecy specific to this
tradition. Herder himself evokes the tradition of the secret societies in the introduction to the
treatise, considering them as symptoms of a certain contemporary intellectual movement,
“eine Gährung” – as he puts it, with a concept that, according to a study by Hans-Jürgen
Schings, was central to Masonic thought and a favorite metaphor of the Illuminati. Moreover,
this concept or metaphor seems to support Koselleck’s claim that the Masonic ideology was
characterized by a utopian faith in progress, anticipating the collapse of the Ancien Regime. I
quote:
Die große Anzahl geheimer Gesellschaften, die meistens nur deswegen geheim sind, weil sie
sich ans Licht hervorzutreten nicht wagen, zeigen auch in ihren Mißbräuchen und
Verderbnissen, dass eine Gährung dabei, deren Wirkungen man nur dadurch vorkommt, daß
man die Gemüther der Menschen öffentlich auf allgemeine, bessere Endzwecke leitet.16
In this passage Herder seems to come to the same conclusion as Koselleck – that the secret
societies were in fact revolutionary forces, plotting to overthrow the absolutist regimes in
Germany. Thus, an important, even urgent task for an enlightened ruler would be to canalize
this revolutionary energy – this Gährung – into other areas less threatening to the state, such
as the creation of a common German spirit and culture. Hence, in this case the reworking of
the Masonic model of organization obviously also had a political purpose, of pacifying the
secret societies and changing them into instruments of cultural reform, not political
revolution. As answer to the request of the prince, to make a plan for the construction of a
German Gelehrtenbund Herder subsequently changes the Masonic model for a secret society
into a model for a definitely public one.
In the dialogue on Freemasonry in the Humanitätsbriefe the ambition was global, concerning
alle denkenden Menschen in allen Weltteilen; in the treatise zum patriotischen Institut the goal
is a national one, concerning den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands. Comparing the two texts,
however, we find that most of the thoughts and even the words are the same. In the “Teutsche
Academy”, as in the sichtbar-unsichtbare Gesellschaft, there shall neither be room for petty
partiality, nor for any sort of contempt for other provinces and religions or for the political
15 16, s. 606.
16 16, s. 602
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interests of different estates. “Because”, Herder adds, “Germany has only one interest, the life
and happiness of the whole”. Thus, the global ideal of Humanität has been replaced by the
national ideal a German culture. As instruments of this project of Bildung, of forming a
national character, Herder mentions – in this order – language, history and practical
philosophy. The following description of how one should go about to form such an academy
can very well be read as a reworking of the practices and hierarchies of the Masonic societies
– however, with the important exception that the mechanisms of secrecy has been replaced by
mechanisms representation and communication: Every province sends a deputation, eine
Provinzialdeputation, to the academy. The members are selected by the prince after
suggestion by the academy without regard to their position or rank. The activity of the
members consists in writing yearly rapports about everything of interest in their province.
Furthermore, these rapports and everything else produced by the members of the academy
shall be made available to the public in journals and books. Thus, in an almost astounding or
at least highly original way, the function of secrecy has become, has been transformed into a
function of publicity.
One obvious element of continuity between the secret societies and the idea of a German
Academy can be found in the description of the relationship between the society and the state.
There being no secret, no practices of secrecy to protect the Academy from control and
intervention by the state, the meetings should be held at places, as Herder puts it, “dass […]
unter den Einflussen keines Hofes stehe”.17 In this attempt to protect the society from the
claws of power, we may recognize the last and almost invisible trace of the political, utopian
and almost revolutionary function of secrecy, effective in Masonic lodges prior to the French
revolution.
Indeed – and this is my conclusion – there is hardly any better way of learning about the
functions of secrecy in the Age of Enlightenment than to consider the fate of Herder’s plan for
a German academy. To begin with, Herder, a former Freemason and member of the
Illuminate, reworks the model of the secret society in order to develop a plan for a patriotic
institution for the cultivation and communication of German culture. However, upon reading
Herder’s plan, the princes and ministers remain skeptical, even the likes of Carl August of
Weimar and Karl Friedrich of Baden. Why? Because, as Carl August writes in his letter to
Herder, they are disturbed by the radically public character of the society, functioning
17 16, s. 613
15
according to principles of representation and communication, not, as they are used to from the
government of small German principalities, according to principles of secrecy. They are, in
short, not used to treating public matters publicly. In the end, the result of this initiative
couldn’t have been more paradoxical. After long and heated discussions of Herder’s plan, it is
the task of certain minister von Edelsheim to come up with a solution that is in accordance
with the original idea of his ruler, Karl Friedrich von Baden. What does he do? As proposed
by Karl Friedrich, Edelsheim suggests the founding of a learned society for the cultivation of
a common German spirit and culture, not, however, according to Herder’s plan, but – and this
is where the real historical irony occur – in the form of a secret society and under the
protection of a prince. Furthermore, this society shall not only be a secret to the public, but
also – interestingly – to the members themselves. To avoid choosing the wrong people for the
society, it would be best, argues Edelsheim in a letter sent to Herder, if the members didn’t
know what they were taking part in, thus, that the purpose of the meetings was in itself a
secret. The plan was that eight to ten men – Edelsheim had already made a list – should
receive a secret invitation – that Edelsheim wanted Herder to write – to a meeting. Their
traveling costs should be paid by the prince, but they were not allowed to know about it. To
avoid giving the secret away it should be suggested to these members that they found a
monthly journal as their main project. And so on. On receiving note of these plans, Herder
was, of course, despondent: “It is not going to amount to anything,” he writes in a letter from
February 1788, and he adds: “I would rather wish that it didn’t amount to anything than that
they destroy everything”.18
In the end, they didn’t get the possibility to either create or destroy anything at all. Only a
year later the French Revolution broke out, and all of a sudden the ambitions of bringing
about a reform of the German principalities through Humanität und Bildung, cultivated and
communicated by a society of the best men in each state, seemed almost naive and childish
And who were to blame for it? Lo and behold, the Freemasons!
18 Haym, s. 491
16