Von Wistinghausen, Henning Freimaurer und Aufklärung im Russischen Reich. Die Revaler Logen 1773–1820, mit einem biographischen Lexikon (review)

Abstract

SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 364 critical discussion of and contextualization within the rich field of scholarship on both the Russian and Western European Enlightenments (John Robertson’s study on Naples and Scotland, two other peripheral and economically underdeveloped European states, comes to mind). Hamburg chooses instead to quote his sources at length, framing their interpretation within a wealth of detailed biographical information which, however, is not always directly relevant to an understanding of the source at hand. For any scholar interested in Russia’s intellectual history, the chance to corroborate and verify a reconstruction of the development of intellectual life and currents of thought against a solid body of existing research is essential (a comprehensive bibliography is missing in the book). However, this might be an unreasonable expectation given that Hamburg’s book is the first to trace the history of Russian political thought from medieval times until the end of the eighteenth century. As such it is an important, erudite and informative contribution to the field which will be appreciated by intellectual historians as well as historians of Europe and Russia. Basel Charlotte Henze vonWistinghausen,Henning.FreimaurerundAufklärungimRussischenReich. Die Revaler Logen 1773–1820, mit einem biographischen Lexikon. 3 vols. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2016. 1061 + 356 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. €150.00. This is a major contribution to the history of Freemasonry in the Russian Empire. Henning von Wistinghausen is a German career diplomat who is also an erudite historian of his family’s native Estonia, with numerous publications to his name on its Imperial Russian past and especially the ‘Kotzebue time’ (late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries). Here Wistinghausen chronicles in great detail the history of the Masonic lodges in Reval (Tallinn), placing them firmly in the context of Imperial Russian Freemasonry from its beginnings around the 1740s to its final prohibition in 1822: volume one takes the story to approximately 1800, volume two covers the reign of Alexander I. He has ranged across Europe in search of sources and deploys a huge array of archival and rare published material, much of it previously unused, as well as demonstrating sovereign familiarity with the literature of the subject. The third of his three volumes is a biographical lexicon which provides extensive personal information on the over 400 individuals identified as Masons in Estland and mentioned in the monograph’s text. The Estonian narrative is woven together with the more familiar events in Russia proper — the interaction between the competing Masonic systems REVIEWS 365 and national allegiances of Reichel, Elagin, Gagarin and Melissino, the search for higher degrees and ‘true’ Masonry, and developments leading to the first closure of the lodges in the 1790s. (Wistinghausen cites approvingly Faggionato’s explanation of Catherine II’s crack-down on Novikov and his circle.) In particular the role of foreigners is highlighted, especially the hitherto underappreciated part played in Russian Masonry of the time by the brothers Georg and Wilhelm von Rosenberg. Catherine’s Baltic provinces had a number of lodges, in Dorpat/Tartu, Mitau/Jelgava and Riga as well as in Reval/ Tallinn; many young Baltic German nobles met Masonry while studying in Germany. Reval at this time was an important port but a provincial backwater; one of the features well portrayed here is the change over time of its culture and intellectual life, the gradual penetration of ‘Enlightenment’. The first of the four Reval lodges, Isis (1773–92), which inducted ninety-two members over its initial lifetime, was composed mainly of well-educated incomers, finding little resonance either in Reval’s stuffy merchant society or among the surrounding landed nobility. The Brotherly Love lodge (1777–88), established by an officer of the Kazan´ Cuirassier Regiment, relied heavily upon other regimental officers for its membership. The Three Polehammers (1778-85) followed the Strict Observance and the Swedish system, and did not survive the latter’s demise in Russia. The ephemeral fourth lodge, Hope at Innocence (1788–91?), was plagued by internal conflict. Isis, the only lodge to survive into the 1790s, maintained a skeleton life after 1792 to look after its property and continue its support for the poor. Under Alexander I Freemasonry revived, but once again...