Illuminati Membership

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  1. proposed as member to the Order of the Illuminati
  2. handed in test essay for an Illuminati membership
  3. signed a Revers for the Order of the Illuminati
  4. All Illuminati code names (including names of places and regions) with their real name correlates

Lists of Illuminati members are not exactly rare. Several lists began to circulate in the mid 1780s with the discoveries, with allegations, insinuations and hostile exposures. It should be worth the effort to gather their information and to see where they coincide and where they differ, since they too offer interesting network information - views from outside of people who might belong together in a system that remains beyond grasp.

The more interesting are internal lists which the Order created in order to let the higher ranks understand the network that was under constructions. Most of these are comprised today in volume 10 of the "Swedish Box". All of them have local focuses: local superiors handed them in with juxtapositions of the code names and real names and often with background information like birth dates and occupations of their local members. The problem with these lists is, that they are lacking definitive dates. We get snap-shots, not the final picture.

All members had to be proposes and Illuminati usually began proposing new members of their respective networks within months of their membership as this would, supposedly bring them into a new position within the Order and among their best friends. The Order would try to gain background information before the proposals were processed. A test essay was usually the next step, to be handed in and to be assessed by internal reviewers.

Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, the man whose archive created the bulk of materials extant, the provincial of the last active province and the subordinate of Ernest II. of Gotha, the highest member in the hierarchy after 1785... Bode handled the signing of the "Revers" as the entry point. The Revers was the declaration of loyalty which the Order demanded. A standard version was used in Bode's province but it allowed variations.

The Revers is otherwise a dubious sign. The Illuminati Friedrich Christian Rudorf recruited in Buttstädt, the last local group we know of, signed their Reverse letters in 1785 and 1786 and felt confused. Were they members? When and where would they undergo the initiation? But then they were writing monthly reports... they began receiving answers in July/August 1786 - somehow they were members of the Order that provided them with topics to write about, and eventually they were wondering whether they still were members of the organisation which unilaterally ended this very correspondence.

The local protocols of fully functional Minerval Churches like Gotha's depict membership under the hierarchical view of the grade system. Each monthly report would list the members present and absent on the ladder from Minerval through the Freemasonic ranks to Regent.

We are trying to use the FactGrid database with the aim to give the nuanced picture. Who was proposed? Who was actually invited to sign a Revers? Who got listed in a certain rank at what time? Who held positions, whether local or in the geographical space which the Order was trying to embrace? Who was eventually listed by the Bavarian state institutions and by individuals trying to get a picture of the affair? Any of these questions gives an interesting picture; here, however, the database is work in progress. The two questions that can be asked with relative conclusive data are presently the Questions 1 and 3 of the list above: Who was proposed and who signed a Revers. We are not yet in a position where we can give links straight to all the documents behind these statements. We are also not yet able to offer the more interesting lists which will include biographical information in additional columns. All this needs a massive data input and people who harvest data from the roughly 9,000 documents extant. The searches above give, however a rough picture of the Order. We will probably get information of about 1350 people who were proposed and about 1250 men who must have signed a Revers between 1776 and 1787.

We would need data experts in order to show how the Order grew. On were the people who proposed more members than others? When and where did the Order infiltrate whole lodges on its geographical expansion. Here we need people who can ask the SPARQL questions that give the more interesting answers. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:36, 13 March 2019 (CET)