Szabadkőműves előadássorozat, filmsorozat, workshop - Sheffieldben

Szabadkőműves előadássorozat, filmsorozat, workshop - Sheffieldben


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NEWS FROM THE CENTRE FOR RESEARCH INTO FREEMASONRY AND FRATERNALISM

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No. 30: SEPTEMBER 2008

September 30, Sheffield



Dear colleagues, dear friends!

I hope you all have had a good summer break. The Centre marked its new name as The Centre for Research Into Freemasonry and Fraternalism (CRFF) on September 11th together with, among others, Nigel Brown, Grand Secretary of UGLE, and Diane Clements of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London. Images of the event are available on our new Flickr-account on www.flickr.com/people/crff/

1) New CRFF website launched in September

As many of you might have noticed, we have had a long period during which our website was a holding page with a link to the old version. During the summer we have worked on moving the content from the old site to a new one which can be found at: www.freemasonry.dept.shef.ac.uk We are still experimenting with the content and functions and not all texts are updated, but we hope that the new site will attract many new visitors. Comments and suggestions are welcomed through the new Enquiries feature on the website. Lane’s Masonic Records can be found under “Resources” and will shortly be updated with new items. Please feel free to visit the site.

2) Lecture Series • Launch October 2

Our series of public lectures will begin this Thursday October 2 with Thierry Zarcone who will speak on “French Pre-Masonic fraternities, Freemasonry and Dervish Orders in the Muslim World”. Thierry Zarcone is senior researcher (directeur de recherches) at the “Centre Society, Religion, Laicity” (team UMR 8582 of the National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris). He has published many books and articles on Freemasonry in Islam and in the Mediterranean area, and on Muslim mystical orders and fraternities. He is also the editor of an international journal on the history of Sufism (mystical Muslim orders) and an adviser at the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Warsaw (OSCE).

In two weeks time, on October 16, Dorothe Sommer will speak about Freemasonry in late Ottoman Syria and on October 30 Isaac Lubelsky will present a lecture on Occultist Perceptions of the Mystical Orient. For details, please visit our homepage, www.freemasonry.dept.shef.ac.uk

All lectures will be held in The Douglas Knoop Centre in the HRI/CRFF building at 34 Gell Street, Sheffield S3 7QY. They take place on every second Thursday starting on October 2, beginning at 5.15pm followed by questions and refreshments.

3) Film Series • Premiere October 13

In cooperation with Adelphi Translation (www.adelphitranslations.com/index.php) we have produced the first ever English subtitles for the French anti-masonic propaganda film “Forces Occultes” (1943).

The film was commissioned in 1942 by the Propaganda Abteilung, a delegation of Nazi Germany’s propaganda ministry within occupied France by the ex-mason Mamy. It denounces Freemasonry, parliamentarianism and Jews as part of Vichy’s propaganda drive against them and seeks to prove a fake Jewish-Masonic plot. This topic is still alive today and part of various anti-masonic conspiracy theories from far right Catholicism to Muslim fundamentalism. But the film contains also scenes of Masonic initiation ceremonies and lodge meetings.

The premiere of this subtitled version of the film will be showed at The Showroom Cinema Sheffield S1 2BX on October 13 (www.showroom.org.uk). Professor Phil Powrie, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Sheffield and expert on French cinema, will introduce the film. The screening will be followed by an opportunity for discussion led by Professor Phil Powrie, Dr Tim Baycroft, an expert on French history, Jen Farrar (a PhD-student working on anti-masonry during the occupation) and Andreas Önnerfors of the CRFF.

4) Workshop on The Temple Legend November 1 2008

The Centre will host an academic workshop on the subject of The Temple Legend: Links between Freemasonry, Theosophy and Anthroposophy

10.30 am Registration and Refreshments

10.50 am Opening: Dr Andreas Önnerfors, Director of the CRFF

11.00 am Dr Isaac Lubelsky, Tel Aviv University, “Theosophy and Anthroposophy in 1913: Doctrinal Differences and Resemblance”

11.40 am Dr Andreas Önnerfors, University of Sheffield, “Steiner’s Temple Legend seen from the Background of Research into Freemasonry”

12.20 pm Lunch break – numerous local facilities available, please return promptly

13.30 pm Nick Thomas, Freelancer, “The position of Freemasonry in the Formation of Steiner’s Anthroposophical Ideas”

14.15 pm Dr Helmut Zander, Humboldt University Berlin, “Anthroposophical Transformation of Freemasonry”

For more information and to register, please contact the workshop organizer at: a.onnerfors@sheffield.ac.uk or by telephoning 0114 222 9893. Please register your interest no later than October 24th

5) Journal for Research into Freemasonry & Fraternalism Deadline November 15

We are proud to announce that the Centre in cooperation with Equinox Publishers in London has opened the first Call for papers for the first issue of this brand-new academic and peer-reviewed journal. The first edition is expected to be published in May 2009.

Please visit the website www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/JRFF/index for more information on submissions. This special issue welcomes papers dealing with any aspect of the role of associational life in the formation of national identity and its historical roots in any part of the world. Possible topics can include, the role of fraternal organizations in the formation of the nation state and its ideological foundations, tensions between universal/cosmopolitan concepts and particularism as expressed through the formation of national identity, the influence of national contexts upon the material culture and symbolism of associations, and interaction between memberships.

6) Guest Researcher

The Centre welcomes its first post-doctoral guest researcher, Dr. Robert Collis. Robert Collis graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2001 with an MA in Russian and East European Studies. He was then admitted to PhD-training at the University of Turku/Åbo in Finland where he in 2007 successfully defended his thesis The Petrine Instauration: Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689-1725. He has also published several articles on Russian freemasonry. Financed by the Finnish Ehrnrooth foundation, his research project will treat “Esotericism at the Russian Court from Ivan IV to Nicholas II, 1547-1917”, a topic that has many connections to research into freemasonry and fraternalism. More information to follow soon.

7) CRFF newsletter survey

We want to thank all of you who have participated in our survey on in what format you would like to receive this newsletter. However, as this request was sent out in the middle of the summer, we would like to encourage those who haven’t yet taken part to do so. We have created an online-questionnaire which will take only a few minutes to complete and which can be found at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DTSeVRxy_2b2hM_2boO3rkSeWA_3d_3d

8) Conference participation

The Director of the CRFF has participated in a number of events during the last month. Andreas Önnerfors gave a paper to a conference on German Migration at the University of Liverpool. At the European Science Foundations Conference in Vadstena, Sweden, he presented a paper on, “The European State System in the long Eighteenth century”, Masonic certificates, their imagery and functions was the subject discussed together with PhD-student Harriet Sandvall at the “Art, Religion and Identity” conference in Glasgow. As part of its 10th Anniversary celebrations, Andreas Önnerfors presented a paper on “Masonic certificates: a neglected source for research into freemasonry” to The Masonic Library and Museum group in England. During October, Andreas Önnerfors will participate in the annual conference of the German Society for Eighteenth Century studies in Bonn, Germany and will attend the International congress in Bern, Switzerland on “The practice of knowledge and the figure of the savant in the 18th century” (in honour of the tercentenary of Albrecht von Haller’s birth). At the end of the month he will speak at the Annual Canonbury Masonic research centres conference (see www.canonbury.ac.uk for details).
Kind regards,


Andreas Önnerfors


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Dr. Andreas Önnerfors
Director / Senior Lecturer in History
Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism
34, Gell Street
Sheffield S3 7QY
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 9893
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 98 94
Email: a.onnerfors@sheffield.ac.uk
Website: www.freemasonry.dept.shef.ac.uk/
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