Look what I found this morning

[hanzosbm]

Google changed their logo today (as they typically do) to celebrate Carl Friedrich Gauss, the German scientist. I wasn't that familiar with him, so I pulled up his Wikipedia page for an overview. Upon looking over the article, they showed an old East German stamp with his face on it. Notice the implements to the right.

 

[hanzosbm]

For the sake of clarity, I wanted to add that I have not found anything suggesting that Gauss was a Mason. One of his earliest and most important works was managing to construct a complex geometrical figure using only a compass and straight edge, which I believe is what the image is intended to convey. The compass above, the straight edge in the form of a square at the bottom, and the figure (a heptadecagon) in the center point to this accomplishment. However, the choice to use a square as the straight edge as well as the arrangement of the three figures is so familiar that it causes one to wonder if they artist who designed the stamp may have been a brother giving a sly nod to the fraternity.

 

[Elexir]

For the sake of clarity, I wanted to add that I have not found anything suggesting that Gauss was a Mason. One of his earliest and most important works was managing to construct a complex geometrical figure using only a compass and straight edge, which I believe is what the image is intended to convey. The compass above, the straight edge in the form of a square at the bottom, and the figure (a heptadecagon) in the center point to this accomplishment. However, the choice to use a square as the straight edge as well as the arrangement of the three figures is so familiar that it causes one to wonder if they artist who designed the stamp may have been a brother giving a sly nod to the fraternity.

If it had been BRD sure but DDR was a communist dictatorship so the artist was not a mason. If he had been he had been discoverd by the secret police.

 

[Elexir]

Remember, in almost every family there was atleast one informant for Statsi.

 

[Howard Giang]

I think at least the artist may have been a Mason that was trying to convey a message. By looking at the picture, most anti-Mason persons would recognize that the compass positioning is resembling Masonic. If they really against Masonry they could have suggested to have the compass not formed a triangle and be at the top. There are some Freemasons might have good reasons for not to reveal themselves for what ever the reason other than for their safety. Anyhow, I am not yet a Freemason, but I can be the artist.

 

[Elexir]

I think at least the artist may have been a Mason that was trying to convey a message. By looking at the picture, most anti-Mason persons would recognize that the compass positioning is resembling Masonic. If they really against Masonry they could have suggested to have the compass not formed a triangle and be at the top. There are some Freemasons might have good reasons for not to reveal themselves for what ever the reason other than for their safety. Anyhow, I am not yet a Freemason, but I can be the artist.

First: DDR is east germany, not west germany where the people were free.
So in a society where people feared the secret police and where there was about one person in every family was an informant for the secret police?
Much of the old masonic litterature is still under lock and key in the statsi archive.

 

[Warrior1256]

Interesting, none the less.

 

[dfreybur]

Gauss was one of the major math geniuses of history. His most famous work is on the bell shaped curve that happens all over statistics. It's called the Gaussian Normal Distribution. Terms like standard deviation are based on it.

He was such a genius other math professors had no idea what he was talking about. It took a generation for the rest of the math community to catch up with him