Reference Type: Journal Article
Author: Karády, Viktor
Year: 1996
Title: Jews in Freemason Lodges in Transylvania and in Voivodina before 1940
Journal: Studia Judaica
Pages: 184-199
Language: English
Keywords: Jewish minority, history, bibliography, elites, antisemitism, social groups, Transylvania, historical sources
Abstract: (En) This is by no means a full fledged study of Freemasons and Freemasonry in the South-Eastern territories of the Carpathian Basin, but only a richly documented comment of survey results giving some socio-historical insights into patterns of regional, denominational, ethnic and social recruitment of Jewish and non Jewish members of Lodges established in the region before its temporary reannexation in 1941 by Hungary. The source of the data is strictly linked to this historical juncture. All information used here is indeed from an antisemitic document denouncing the destructive nature of Freemasonry as to Hungarian national ideals and, incidentally, the Jewish share in it. The author was a Hungarian journalist of irredentist inclinations who painstakingly endeavored to pinpoint the responsibility of Freemasons and among them the Jews in general in the dismemberment of the erstwhile "millenary" Hungarian state. In order to do this he collected and published an enormous set of prosopographic data relative to the membership of Freemason lodges in territories of the former Hungarian kingdom. The documentation thus made available is paradoxically much richer for Transylvania and Voivodina (especially for the regions recapturated by the Hungarian army) than for the rest of the Carpathian Basin, since it regularly (if not always) contains references to place of birth, occupation, denomination status and office held in Lodges proper. I submitted all these information to a statistical analysis, adding to the aforementioned factors the national aspect of names as an indicator of ethnic background.
URL: http://adatbank.transindex.ro/inchtm.php?kod=315