masonic matters
Angelo Solimon
by Ed Halpaus
Grand Lodge Education Officer
Grand Lodge of A. F. & A. M. of Minnesota
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he
has his freedom.” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz; Malcolm X
“The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end,
make his way regardless of his race.” Brother Booker T. Washington
The night before I began writing this was the weekly date-night for my wife and
me. Because of where we went for the evening we got back late, just in time for
the 10 O’clock news. (There was a time when 10 O’clock wasn’t late for us, but
now it is.) There was a very short item on the news about the “Body World’
exhibit that is coming to the Twin Cities. You may have heard of this exhibit,
but last night was the first I heard of it.
This exhibit uses preserved human cadavers artistically posed as though in
every-day situations, such as giving a talk, playing chess and other poses. The
show also includes transparent body slices to show the difference between
healthy and unhealthy organs, tissue etc. The process of doing this has
something to do with preserving cadavers with plastic and was developed by a
German Doctor and Inventor. For the study of anatomy, medicine, or to learn
something more about the human body this exhibit is of value.
A while ago I had bought a book called “Mozart and Masonry;” I began reading the
book after Sharon and I returned from our ‘date night.’ It is a good book, and
in reading it I noticed a name I had heard before, and I new just a little bit
about the history of this Brother. A passage in the book talked about Zur wahren
Eintracht (“True Harmony Lodge,”) and the Masons who were members of it. The
year referred to had Brother Ignaz von Born as the Master of the Lodge, and it
is said there were a large number of other important intellectuals who were
members of the Lodge.
As members it listed some intellectuals, scholars, a Catholic priest,
professors, teachers, a sculptor, physician, engraver, famous members, and a
physicist. Finally it mentioned “Of considerable importance also was Angelo
Solimon, the ‘Noble Negro,’ an African Prince who played an important part in
the social life of Vienna and his never missing from the roll of the Lodge.”
When I read that name, Angelo Solimon, I immediately remembered why I knew his
name, and I also had a flash in my memory of the news story I saw a couple of
hours earlier about those cadavers posed in life like scenes. Once you hear the
story of Brother Angelo Solimon, (if you don’t know his story already,) I’m
certain you’ll never forget it, or his name. The story of his life and what
happened to his body after his death is something macabre and stays in a
person’s memory.
Angelo Solimon was a free man who lived in Vienna; he was married and had a
family.[i]
Brother Solimon and his wife were married in St. Stephen's Cathedral, which is
the same church where Brother Mozart and his wife Constanze were married.
Mozart’s Second degree of Freemasonry was conducted in True Harmony Lodge where
Brother Solimon was a member, and there are references in existing Lodge record
books, kept over the years, which indicate that Brother Angelo Soliman and
Brother Wolfgang Mozart frequently sat in Lodge together.
While Brother Solimon was a free man with a wife and family living a good and
happy life in Vienna his life wasn’t always pleasant. Our Brother was born in
North Africa in, what is believed, the early part of the 18th century. He was
sold into slavery as a child, transported to Europe and educated by a succession
of wealthy European slave-owners, and as a result he tutored the children of
many aristocratic families in Vienna. He was finally freed after many years in
slavery after which he married, eventually taking the degrees of Freemasonry,
and over the years he became Master of his Lodge.[ii]
This to me points out one of the main qualifications of a petitioner; that he be
a free man – free to make his own decisions, to enter into agreements and free
to follow through on promises.
It is said that Brother Solimon was a brilliant Chess Player, and a valued
member of his Lodge. Before World War II there was in the Liechtenstein Museum
in Vienna, and still may be there today, portraits of our Brother Angelo
Solimon, his daughter, and grandson; Baron Edward von Feuchtersleben.[iii]
The information and succession of the Emperors in Austria, referred to in the
book, ‘Mozart and Masonry’ is both interesting and shocking at the same time.
After the death of Emperor Joseph and his brother Leopold who succeeded him, and
also after Brother Mozart died, the Austrian Empire was under the ‘infamous
rule’ of Emperor Franz I. It appears that he really wasn’t a very nice person,
and it was as the patron of Metternich that Franz I presided over the
imprisonment of our Brother the Marquis de Lafayette. Franz I also presided over
the trials and executions of some of the republicans in Mozart's circle.[iv]
However, even if Franz I had been a nice person in all his dealings with others,
and if he had never imprisoned or executed anyone as emperor, what he did to
Brother Angelo Solimon and his family would put him in the notorious bad person
category, as far as I’m concerned, forever.
At the death of our Brother Soliman the emperor, for some unknown but speculated
reason, ordered Brother Solimon’s body seized and taken from his family while
they were mourning, and before they could bury it. The Archbishop of Vienna,[v]
Brother Masons and his family all protested, but their protests went unheeded
and unanswered. The emperor evidently had the power to do what he wanted to do
without answering to anyone.
Emperor Franz I then had the body of Brother Angelo Soliman ‘flayed,’ stuffed
and mounted; much as some people today will do with the carcasses of birds, fish
and animals taken in hunting and fishing trips, and then the emperor had this
work of taxidermy ‘proudly’ displayed among his trophies.
Brother Angelo Solimon’s stuffed effigy remained in the emperor’s museum until
the Austrian Revolution of 1848. During the revolution, in a battle at and for
the emperor’s palace a soldier threw a ‘grenade’ through a window and into the
palace library & museum; as luck would have it landed near the effigy of Brother
Solimon, and it was mercifully destroyed.[vi]
Some may rightly say, as Brother Benjamin Franklin did, that when the body no
longer serves what it was intended for it is a kind and beneficent favor that
there is a means to dispose of it, and that way is death. We know that our body
is really just a home for our soul, our real self while we live here on earth
and that after death we will be taken to our eternal home by The Great Architect
of the Universe.
However, it is my opinion that the body of a human being should be treated with
respect. The body we see may not be the soul, the character, the real person we
love and admire, but it is the symbol of all that the person really is. When we
think of those we love; our spouse, children, parents, siblings, Lodge Brothers
and friends, we see in our minds eye the image of them, the symbol of what we
have come to recognize and love. So that is to me just one more reason that what
Franz I did was wrong.
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who
prepare for it today.” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz; Malcolm X
From the Great light of Masonry = “And today, though I am the anointed king, I
am weak, and these sons of Zeruiah are too strong for me. May the Lord repay the
evildoer according to his evil deeds.” 2 Samuel 3:39
[i] He married Frau Von Christiani, widow of a Dutch general
[ii]
http://www.geocities.com/moorishorthodoxchurch/SAINTANGELO.html
[iii] Estonian Institute
[iv] http://www.schillerinstitute.org/
[v] Archbishop of the Catholic Church in Vienna
[vi]
http://www.geocities.com/moorishorthodoxchurch/SAINTANGELO.html
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