BEGEMANN, GEORG E. W.

Georg Emil Wilhelm Begemann was born in 1843; died in 1914 in Berlin, where he had lived since 1895. After having been made a Mason in Rostock, Mecklenburg, he was instantly attracted to the study of the Old Charges.

From 1888 until his removal to Berlin he was Provincial Grand Master, the Grand National Lodge of Berlin. From 1887 until his death he was a member of the Correspondence Circle of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, No. 2076, contributed much to Ars Quatuor Coroiatoruni, and was among the most learned of specialists in Masonic archeology and the study of the text of the Old Charges.

He published Vorgeschichte und Aufänge der Freimaurerei in Ireland, in 1911; a book of similar title on Scotland, in 1914; his principal work was Aufänge der Freimaurerei in England; Vol. I, in 1909 ; Vol. II, in 1910. This latter work was to have been translated and published by Quatuor Coronati Lodge, with Bro. Lionel Vibert, Secretary, as translator-in-chief, but was stopped by the latter's death; it is on the market in the United States in German.

German Freemasonry was begun under the patronage of the nobility and members of the upper brackets of the aristocracy, and had its source in French Masonry ; and therefore departed in the main from many Ancient Landmarks, so that oftentimes the Craft Degrees were under jurisdiction of High Grades; High Grades and Rites proliferated; Rites not Masonic in any sense were suffered to attach themselves to Freemasonry; and racial and religious discriminations were allowed. Begemann was one of the greatest in a line of German Masonic scholars whose work was aimed at restoring the German Craft to the original design. (See articles by and about Begemann in A,Q,C., especially the paper by Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones in 1941.)