FactGrid:The Global Genealogy of Lodges
More than 2000 data sets to cope with
FactGrid is most certainly the best resource on the Illuminati, the secret "Order" founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776. The Illuminati were our first focus. Weishaupt's Anti-Rosicrucian secret order had, after all, transformed itself in the late 1770s into a Masonic high-grade system in order to infiltrate Lodges all over the German speaking territories. About 100 of these lodges had therefore been among our first 16.000 data sets in 2018.
A second wave of Lodges came into the system with the first GND test input: 803, mostly German and Ex-German, Lodges. These data sets are not that satisfying from a Masonic point of view. Here two exemplary GND records (and remember this is Library information, not Masonic):
- Große National-Mutterloge in den Preußischen Staaten, genannt Zu den Drei Weltkugeln
- Große Loge von Preußen, Genannt Royal York zur Freundschaft
A further 600 Lodges have their archives in Berlin's State Archive and 500 Grand more Lodges came into the compound from the Wikipedia List of Grand Lodges with additional knowledge about their external affiliations. All these data can be edited by anyone with an account. The data sets of all all the lodges on FactGrid can be grabbed with these links:
- All the Lodges on FactGrid
- All Grand Lodges on FactGrid
- all Grand Lodges and how they are organised by chosing umbrella organisations: net work graph
The data set of Gotha's lodge is perhaps a pattern of what one could do:
But the The Global Genealogy of Lodges would demand a far wider perspective:
- One would love to have the list of all the Lodges that ever existed with structural information on
- the Lodges that granted the respective patents
- the changing parent organisations
- systems and rites
- members and their positions
- the geographic coordinates of historical buildings
- the histories of the respective name changes
- indications of archival materials
- links to publications
Some things one might like to know about lodges
- mother lodge
- ritual (do they change?)
- the various historical names with specific information about name changes.
- location (city)
- changing addresses/buildings over time
- offices
- members
- objects of interest (if lodges want to offer insight into interesting historical possessions).
- ...
Reaching out
We will need for this project a team of at least some 10 people who could organise the entire project independently on FactGrid. They should have
- connections into the Masonic world in order to win history minded Brethren in partnering lodges.
- the knowledge about web applications needed in order to create an interface which Masonic websites could use as their gate to FactGrid data.
- the necessary historical knowledge needed to ask the question the database should eventually answer.
- all lodges, by place of resident with information about founding date, constitution and mother lodge
Create an Item and set statements:
- P2+Q11211 = is a lodge
- P83+Q... = place of residence
- P49+date = date of constitution
- P50+date = operating until
- P137+94446 History and first active phase
- [Qualifier] P49+date from
- [Qualifier] P50+date until
- P361+Q99800 = System: St John's Lodge
- P361+Q99801 = System: St Andrew's Lodge
Links
- FactGrid search: All Lodges by date of establishment
- Lanes Masonic Records
- Search of the German National Library GND-Data, 800 data sets - these data sets will become FacgtGrid objects during the next year.]
- Bossu
- Wikidata query a masonic lodge - 255 datasets strangely meager.
- Logenbestände im Sonderarchiv Moskau
- Carl Broecker: Die Freimaurerlogen Deutschlands von 1737 bis einschliesslich 1893, Mittler, Berlin 1894.
- Wikidata folgt Wikipedia. Und dort haben Vereine eine schweren Stand, Logenhäuser als Denkmale gehen eher: Wiki likes Monuments. Die Verbindung läuft also oft über die Liegenschaft (Eigentum, Anschrift), siehe https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8610826 --Martin Gollasch (talk) 09:47, 30 August 2019 (CEST)