Lodge "Zur Freimüthigkeit am Rhein" Frankenthal

Since 2017, ten books from the library of the masonic lodge Zur Freimüthigkeit am Rhein in Frankenthal could be returned.

The St. John's Lodge Zur Freimüthigkeit am Rhein was founded in Frankenthal in 1808. It was dissolved and expropriated by the Nazis in 1933. The lodge was revived in 1950.

Some of the books had been stored in a depot of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) at Eisenacher Str. 11-13 in Berlin Schöneberg. The RSHA had collected looted books from all over Europe there. Some of these books were distributed by the Salvage Office (Bergungsstelle) to libraries in Berlin after the end of the war in 1945. Other volumes bear the provenance mark of the Foreign Policy and Foreign Studies Department of the German Institute for Foreign Studies, a Nazi research institution. The stamp of the lodge was blackened several times, but it was possible to clearly identify them by comparing the handwritten shelfmark of the lodge.

The ZLB would like to thank the German Masonic Museum Bayreuth for their support in returning these items.