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Definizione

Freemasonry was founded as a secret fraternal order based on humanitarian and chivalric ideals in England in 1717. The order's members tended to be anti-clerical and freethinkers, and Jewish members were admitted starting in 1732 in England and continental Europe. However, as political antisemitism began to rise in the 1880s, Jews were denied admission into the order. Right-wing movements in Germany accused Jews and Freemasons of conspiring together against Christianity and nationalism. After World War I, anti-Jewish publications such as the Protocol of the Elders of Zion continued the Jewish-Mason conspiracy theory. During the Nazi era in Germany, Freemasonry was regarded as an ideological foe of Nazism. Members of Mason lodges were not allowed to join the Nazi Party and some were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Masonic lodges were closed by 1935 and former members were monitored by the SD and the RSHA. After the war, the Freemasons became the largest secret society in the world, with numerous appendant groups such as the Shriners, with members mostly in England and countries originally within the British Empire. (en-US)

Fonte

Encyclopaedia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, and general literature. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1995. vol. 4, p. 966

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• vita culturale e sociale