Freemasonry: history, organization, beliefs and public role

The term freemason is an 18th century loan translation for English freemason. In the 15th century, the word, probably derived from freestone, a soft stone found in the county of Kent, referred to the stone sculptors or builders organized into building lodges, the freestone-masons (French: franc maçon, Italian: frammassone). In contrast, the roughstone-masons were more responsible for the rougher work. The historically handed down symbols like trowel, protractor and compass still belong to the inventory of the Freemasons. Writings and artifacts dealing with or relating to Freemasonry are called Masonica, Latin, sg. Masonicum. The terms "Freemason" and "Lodge" are not protected, so anyone can call themselves a Freemason or any grouping a Lodge, although they have nothing to do with historically established Freemasonry.

Lessing disputes the medieval origin of Freemasonry and identifies it as a parallel development to the emergence of bourgeois society. Freemasonry, he argues, was not derived from masonry, but from massoney or masoney, a word for table society or club, for "smaller, familiar societies" alongside the "great bourgeois" one. This derivation, however, is disputed.

Often - and by Freemasons themselves - Freemasonry is referred to as the "Royal Art". This is based on a biblical quotation and philosophical considerations: James 2:8: "If you perfect the royal law according to the Scripture, 'Love your neighbor as yourself,' you do well." Plato used the term Royal Art to refer to philosophy ("love of wisdom"). So the term has no reference to the title of ruler.

According to its self-image, Freemasonry's goals and values derive from the tradition of medieval stonemasonry fraternities. Freemasons took an important part of their symbols from the building lodge culture with its carefully guarded secrets of work. Depending on the Grand Lodge, many Freemasons profess a principle of creation, which they call the Almighty Builder of all worlds. Symbols convey shared values and ideas. The World Brotherhood Chain symbolizes international connectedness and the brotherhood of all men.

The mutual promise of secrecy, originally made to protect the secrets of the work, is not for the purpose of secrecy, but to safeguard privacy. In discussions, disputes about political and religious matters are frowned upon. Likewise, Freemasons are bound to respect the laws of their own country. The headquarters of the lodges, their presidents and their statutes are known, their writings and descriptions of rituals of Freemasonry are publicly available to everyone in city libraries and archives and are therefore, in contrast to conspiracy theory accounts, not a "conspiratorial secret society" in the sense of a conspiratorial-political underground activity.

For the spread of the Masonic lodges in Europe, the ideas of the Enlightenment were more important than the continuation of the old lodge tradition. In the 18th century, i.e. in the age of absolutism, freemasonry was the only institution that could escape the absolute claim to power of the state and the separation of the estates. The power of the state had relegated the realization of the moral claims of the citizen to the private sphere. As a result of this enforced separation of political power and private morality, Freemasons, who were committed above all to their moral values, had to separate themselves from the institutions of the state and the church, override the prejudices of innate class, religion, and nationality, and confine themselves to an inner space, to be shaped by them, in which they could transcend social divisions and which they protected by their taciturnity. This transformed them from an initially apolitical moral grouping into a moral countervailing force against the absolutist state. That freedom and equality had to be cultivated in secret was an almost universal feature of late absolutism.

The bulk of Masonic values thus clearly derive from the Age of Enlightenment, although the aura of mystery led to thoughts from alchemy and other secret sciences and rituals finding their way into the lodges. The following are the five basic pillars of Freemasonry: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Tolerance and Humanity.

1. Freedom is to be realized through freedom from oppression and exploitation as the basic condition of freedom of the mind and individual realization.
2. Equality means equality of people without class distinctions and equality before the law.
3. Fraternity is realized through security, trust, care, co-responsibility and understanding with and among one another.
4. Tolerance is lived through active listening and understanding of other opinions.
5. Humanity comprises the sum of all the previous four basic pillars and is symbolized by the "Temple of Humanity" on which Freemasons work.

The aim of Freemasonry is to live these principles in everyday life in order to promote human good in the world. In the Masonic sense, humanity means the doctrine of the dignity of man. In the lodges, therefore, Freemasons look away from all socially conditioned differences in human work; the focus is on the human being as such. Emanuel Schikaneder, himself a Freemason like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, expresses this attitude in the libretto of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute with the words "He is a prince, still more, he is a human being!" Lessing defends the idea of equality, even though he sees it inadequately implemented in the lodges of his time and criticizes the exclusion of Jews by the lodges.