One of the most persistent myths about the origin of the Illuminati you frequently see being repeated online without any source is a claim that Weishaupt was recruited to form the Illuminati by Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
The story goes that either in 1770 or 1773 Rothschild presented Weishaupt at a meeting to 12 unidentified business partners.
The facts are that Mayer Rothschild was still pretty small potatoes when the Illuminati was founded in 1776, just a local business man in Frankfurt. No conceivable way he could have had influence over anyone at Ingolstadt university. It was following the French Revolution that his business really began to take off. And not till the 19th Century he truly became an International Banker.
Also all through the 18th Century both the Bavarian Illuminati and Freemasonry strictly forbid Jews from joining.
His tenuous connection to the Illuminati is through Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel, he was patronaged by him since the 1760s and eventually became his main Banker. Wilhelm himself is not known to have been either Illuminati or a Mason. But his brother Karl Langrave of Hesse-Kassel was the number two man in German Freemasonry and the Strict Observance Rite, and among the former Strict Observance members who joined the Illuminati after the Masonic Congress at Wilhelmsbad in 1782. He'll be a subject of future posts of this blog.
There is one other connection, Baron Karl Theodor Dalberg (1744-1817)
The Rothschilds certainly became part of the Oligarchy over time. But they didn't start it.
Seems about right. I would only add that during this period he was still an illiterate Jew living in the ghetto. The Illuminati were mostly comprised of intellectuals from the rising middle class and minor nobility who congregated in centers of higher learning and the state apparatus. If you weren't highly educated and christian, you weren't been privy to this milieu.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, nowhere is Rothschild is mentioned in the confiscated correspondences from the Illuminati and he's definitely not on any of the lists of members. Historians would not have suppressed it if he were a member, or even if he had significant association with the Order.
" through the 18th Century
ReplyDeleteboth the Bavarian Illuminati and Freemasonry
strictly forbid Jews from joining"
. did you mean /practicing/ Jews?
I was under the impression that Weishaupt,
founder of Bavarian Illuminati and a member of Freemasonry
was himself of Jewish ancestry .
That is something often claimed but there is no evidence for it.
DeleteMost Jews don't really practice their Faith, doesn't stop the discrimination they face. Anti-Semitisism isn't about their Religion.