ALTENBURG, CONGRESS OF

Altenburg is a town in Germany about twenty-three miles south of Leipzig and capital of the Duchy of Saxe-Aitenburg. Here in the month of June, 1764, the notorious Johnson, or Leucht, who called himself the Grand Master of the Knights Templar and the head of the Rite of Strict Observance, assembled a Masonic Congress for the purpose of establishing this Rite and its system of Templar Freemasonry-.

But he was denounced and expelled by the Baron de Hund, who, having proved Johnson to be an imposter and charlatan, was himself proclaimed Grand Master of the German Freemasons by the Congress (see Johnson and Hund; also Strict Observance, Rite of).