###

# Freemasonry

Freemasonry served as a vital link in diffusion of the Enlightenment in Transylvania. The first Transylvanians to come into contact with this purposeful secret order, around 1742, were two Hungarian aristocrats, László and János Kemény, and the essentially conservative, future Saxon statesman, Samuel Bruckenthal. They soon paid a price for their zeal: in 1742, Maria Theresa had them placed under house arrest in Vienna, though the sanction was of short duration. Nevertheless, freemasonry soon took root in Transylvania, initially among the Saxons. The first masonic lodge, Brassó's Zu den 3 Säulen, was founded by the son of a local patrician, Martin Gottlieb Seuler. Seuler joined the freemasons in 1749, while pursuing studies at Jena, and he obtained permission to found a grand lodge and a lodge Transylvania. The masonic lodge in Brassó probably had a very small membership, and it soon dissolved itself.

The Szent András [Saint Andrew] lodge at Szeben (H. Andreas zu den drei Seeblättern) proved more enduring. It had been founded sometime between 1764 and 1767 by a young Saxon patrician, {2-669.} Simon Friedrich Baussnern. The other original members, all Saxons who had become masons while studying in Germany, included two Lutheran ministers, two municipal secretaries, two public physicians, and a printer; they were soon joined by a Saxon secretary from the Gubernium. Until 1778, the lodge's membership consisted largely of Saxons and people from the hereditary provinces. A peculiar figure among the early members was Alexandru Moruzi Mavrocordat, the brother the Moldavian ruler Moruzi and brother-in-law of the Wallachian ruler Alexandru Ipsilanti; he had served in the Russian navy before coming to Transylvania. At first, Mavrocordat proved of great value to the lodge, but he later brought it into disrepute with his weakness for gossip and shady financial affairs.

The first Hungarian to join the Szent András lodge was György Bánffy, who later became governor of Transylvania. The only other Hungarians who adhered prior to 1778 were Farkas Bánffy, Antal Jósika (the father of János Jósika, who became the successor to Governor Bánffy), and a third person of lesser significance. The change came in 1779–80, when there were twelve Hungarians among the twenty-eight new adherents, including László Türi, a prominent lawyer and leading opposition figure in the period 1790–95, László Tholdalagi, György Aranka, Farkas Kemény, and Lajos Teleki.

The influx of Hungarians continued for years. In 1785, the lodge had 132 members, of whom 62 were active, 43 resided out of town, and 27 lived outside Transylvania. The membership encompassed Transylvania's political and intellectual elite. Among the former, one found, in addition to earlier adherents, Ádám and Mihály Teleki and Dániel Fábián. Hungarian culture was represented by György Aranka, founder of the Hungarian Philological Society of Transylvania. János Esterházy and the future treasurer, József Bethlen, belonged to another lodge but also attended meetings of the Szent András lodge. Saxon members included Joachim {2-670.} Bedeus, who helped inspire an important post-1791 reform plan, drawn up by the estates, and known as the 'Commerciale'; the future Gubernium councillor Daniel Straussenburg; Müller, the headmaster of the Szeben high school and future Lutheran bishop; Johann Filtsch, a leading intellectual and founder of the Sieben-bürger Quartalschrift; and Martin Hochmeister, a bold and versatile entrepreneur who published a newspaper publisher and leased a theatre as well as a paper mill. Two members of Transylvania's Romanian intellectual and political élite joined the lodge in 1781: István Koszta, a protocol official at the Gubernium, and Ioan Piuariu-Molnár, who, as previously noted, was a towering figure of the Romanian Enlightenment. Other noteworthy figures on the lodge's roster were three recent arrivals to Transylvania, the silkworm expert Gallarati and two mining experts, Franz Müller von Reichenstein and Johann Fichtel.

In the mid-1780s, Szeben's Szent András lodge served as the leading intellectual and political centre in Transylvania. By then, a few other lodges had been founded, notably the one reconstituted in Brassó. The latter's members included the future Saxon count Johann Tartler, two prominent Saxon physicians, Josef Barbenius and Martin Lang, and the leading Romanian Orthodox intellectual Dimitrie Eustatievici. Kolozsvár's lodge was founded on the initiative of Ferenc Fekete, who came from Frics, in Upper-Hungary. Its membership included József Pákei, an early Hungarian Kantian who taught at the town's Unitarian college; he later served as chief recorder of the consistory and was probably responsible for drafting, in 1790–91, the report of the standing committee of education. These lodges came under the authority of the provincial grand lodge. The latter's leading figures included the grand master, György Bánffy, his deputy Farkas Bánffy, and Simon Baussnern. It is worth noting that Samuel Bruckenthal had no connection with the Transylvanian lodges.

{2-671.} In 1785, Joseph II drew the lodges into one organization, thereby altering the structure of freemasonry in the empire. The Freemason Reform Patent allowed only one lodge in Transylvania, at Szeben. György Bánffy requested that the lodge at Kolozsvár be preserved, but in vain. Even the lodge at Szeben was dissolved, on orders from Francis I, in January 1796. Stunned by the French Revolution, the central government had come to regard freemasonry as a highly suspect organization. In its heyday in the 1780s, freemasonry had drawn together Transylvania's leading politicians. However, after 1790, factional tendencies weakened the movement. György Bánffy, László Türi, János Esterházy, and László Tholdalagi were no longer politically united, even if the popular image of two deeply divided camps, one powder-wigged, the other hirsute and garbed in animal skins, was a gross caricature. Between 1770 and 1790, freemasonry served as a unifying force in Transylvania. It induced a certain moral purpose, and, among politicians, a concern for public welfare, but it did not represent a single political creed or party. That would not have been compatible either with the essence of freemasonry or with political reality in Transylvania.