Markner_works
Reinhard Markner has written several works in German on the Illuminati.
Scholarly citations include mention he identified the owl of Minerva as the true symbol of the Illuminati. See this link. A Masonic summary of the Illuminati mentions Markner as a modern scholar on the Illuminati. See this link. Markner's works are cited in Israel's A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment -- at this page link.
He has written the Korrespondenz de Illuminaten Vol. 1 -- see this link for description. (An Amazon link is at this link - $157 Euros.) The Ebook is available for $167 at this link.
The description of the work, in automated translation, is:
Since the publication of Dan Brown's bestseller " Illuminati " is the secret society of the Illuminati , albeit in historically barely recognizable form in everyone's mind. In the history of science, it is , however, become relatively quiet in recent years to the founding of the Ingolstadt professor Adam Weishaupt . After studies of the Illuminati had experienced at the beginning of the 1990s, thanks to new source discoveries in the archives of the defunct GDR and sensational theories on the relationship between Freemasonry and Weimar Classicism a renaissance , the flood of publications began to slowly return to a lower even before the turn of the millennium einzupegeln level.
Also to be displayed here letter edition is in some ways a late fruit of awakening years. With Hermann Shaker and Monika Neugebauer - Wölk include two of the most prominent representatives of the new Illuminatenforschung to the editors. While Neugebauer Wölk moved often referred to as a radical spearhead the Enlightenment secret organization into a new, unfamiliar light with their work on esotericism, Shaker was one of the first on the estate of Johann Joachim Bode in the former Central State Archive of the GDR in Merseburg with its extensive illuminativematic pointed correspondence and placed at the same time in a specially developed Roster enormous human expansion of the Order to the test.
The first volume of correspondence met expectations for the conference that you could make to this project in view of the merits of the publisher. It provides a previously unknown degree in the completeness still detectable letters : the first letter from the searchable September 1776 , a few months emerged after the founding of the order of 1 May through to a handful of letters from the last days of 1781 , the preliminary end point of the output. Each letter is opened by a kind comment that identifies the individuals mentioned in the text next to the Proof of quotations from ancient and contemporary writers in the first place.
The fact that apart from a few exceptions to all, even obscure names information about life data , careers and Masonic commitment be made , speaks to the immense research performance of the publishers. (On Monday mentioned on page 80 and not described in detail , it is to the rest of the Regensburger bookseller Johann Leopold Monday.) The introduction from the pen of Reinhard Markner also testifies to wide-ranging research. It offers a concise overview of the development of the Secret Society until 1781 especially the exciting and in this form has not nachlesbare tradition of religious history archives , traces of which are in the throes of 2 Lose World War.
Overall, the editors have compiled the 190 letters, of which 80 are present already printed. They were , with few exceptions appeared in the two published in 1787 by the Bavarian government volumes with original documents that should discredit public after dismantling of the secret society Weishaupt and his entourage . Within the modern correspondence output , they account for almost the entire surviving corpus of the letter years 1776-1779 . Set Only with the 1780 previously unpublished letters , which it , however, comprise two-thirds of the 440 pages counting Edition and the 1780 and 1781 almost completely dominate . They were discovered primarily in Hamburg estate Freemason and actor Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, in which were found the letters of Baron von Knigge to the Order founder Weishaupt , as well as in the expropriated during the Nazi archives of the German Masonic lodges , the 1993/94 of Merseburg were transferred to the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin.
The two parts of the tradition-historical edition of the significant differences in tone and content . The letters of the early period , usually written by Weishaupt to his two closest associates of those years , Franz Anton von Massenhausen and Franz Xaver Zwack , report of the groping attempts by the secret society to recruit members and build a functional organizational structure. Discussions about the moral, psychological and physiognomic criteria that should meet future Illuminati , through to designing instruction and degrees , reading suggestions and topics for reflection essays fill the pages of correspondence between Ingolstadt and Munich. Even the name of the secret society was turned repeatedly back and forth. Constantly changing directions on how the work of the members and the orden internal correspondence are to organize , also testify to the considerable problems to lift a secret society not only from the baptism, but to keep it alive .
In addition to these initial problems were admittedly early reveal structural deficits . Weishaupt's efforts to retain control of the secret society in his hand, was even in the early phase , when the Illuminati just had four branches in neighboring Bavarian cities , doomed to failure. At the same time lets his obsession with the characterological shaping and monitoring of the members of the Order , which is noticeable in many letters , already suggests the spy system that moved from 1783 in the influential members to resign . No wonder that the Bavarian government was aware of the effect on public opinion sure when she gave Weishaupt's correspondence uncensored in the pressure.
If the reader out in the first third of the edition of the faltering rise of a secret society in mind , the larger expectations were not occasion so penetrates to the previously unknown letters a , a new tone in the correspondence. The letters Knigge and three based in Munich, Mannheim and Wetzlar Freemason Ferdinand Maria Baader, Jacques Drouin and Franz Dietrich von Ditfurth , which form the core of the tradition can be about more clearly the attraction of the Order on his contemporaries . It was primarily the search for a higher, the uninitiated hidden truth that zuführte the secret society of many members . The exchange turned now reinforced by questions of Freemasonry , highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of various Masonic systems , in particular the high degree system of the Strict Observance , to the competition of the Rosicrucians , the regularity and irregularity of Lodges or the historical origins of Freemasonry. Chance find themselves philosophical speculation , moral discussions or problematics of the relationship between the state and the secret organization .
This of course does not mean that pragmatic considerations of the exchange of letters disappeared . Especially with the entry Knigge in the summer of 1780 began the Order in the recruitment of new members continues to mature into abstract non-Catholic Reich. The letters are full of names of promising or already recruited candidates. Repeats also journalistic strategies to fight alleged enemies of the Enlightenment were discussed. In addition, Knigge made in his letters over and over again on the great opportunity , which, the secret society on the eve of Wilhelmsbader Masonic Convention of 1782 presented itself : through an external acquisition of Masonic degrees and rituals he could subdue a large portion of stuck in a deep crisis of meaning German Freemasonry . All the more urgent of course fell from his pleas to Weishaupt , but finally the complete still not worked out religious degrees .
Other recurring complaints indicate that the secret society despite all the progress and success in the years 1780 and 1781 was not without crises. The continuing tensions between Weishaupt and the governing body of the Illuminati in Munich are in the letters of those years , which cover in particular the non- Bavarian region , though only indirectly , but a permanent presence . They also have their counterparts in a number of other disagreements that broke out at every nook and corner of the religious structure and inflamed to such personal animosity to different ideas about how to proceed the secret society . Also Knigge repeatedly voiced advice , the Order had to take in the conduct of its members to self -deception refuge , speaks a clear language . In the end, the reader , therefore, sets the band with the impression aside, that the Illuminati indeed clearly was the end of 1781 to expand, but at the same time suffered from inner turmoil .
All this is of course not new. The story of the rise of the secret society , the essential role of Knigge after 1780 and the internal stresses has already been told of the research several times and will not rewrite even after the publication of the Order of correspondence, at least for the years until 1781 , must be supplemented if necessary in Detail . Nevertheless, it gains in reading the original sources an immediacy that can be reached in modern studies hardly . In addition, the letter Edition provides insights into the daily life of religious life that bring out the image of the secret society but sharper. Anyone who has read the repeated complaints of the leading Illuminati about the tardiness , carelessness and nigh recalcitrance of many members of the Order , laughing at the petty disputes about the management of funds, membership fees or reimbursement of postage costs , in assessing the subversiveness of the secret society in the future be more careful. Not least of these reasons is worth reading the tape, the hopefully soon more will follow.
Michael Schaich