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Frederick the Great helps a Brother's Widow

Blake Bowden

Administrator
Staff Member
Frederick the Great, a Mason without any doubt, while in a jewelry shop in Potsdam, Germany, observed a middle-aged woman exhibiting an article of silver having certain Masonic symbols, possibly a Past Master's jewel. She was trying to borrow money on it. She said she had come to this particular shop to avoid the usurers and because the owner of the shop was a Mason. The jeweler told her that he was not in the pawnbroking business and couldn't make the loan.

Another person in the shop asked her many questions concerning the jewel, whose it was, how she had possession of it, etc. The man offered to buy the jewel and kept raining the price. When he decided to make her the loan, he discovered he had no money in his pocket. He then disclosed to the surprised woman that he was the King.

Fredrick shook his staff at the jeweler and told him that he was not fit to be a Mason and threatened to file charges against him. The following morning the woman went to see Fredrick and the palace and he instructed her to return whenever she was in need of help.
 

mike97

Registered User
I do not believe it to be an Urban Legend, for Fredrick the Great was a member of the Fraternity, as well as a member of my family.
 

tom268

Registered User
Well, the membership of a peer in the fraternity has not much to say about his actions in real life. The later Emperor Wilhelm I. was a member of the craft, nonetheless he is called the Grape-Shot-Prince because he ordered his soldiers to fire at civilians during an upstand, and Goethe in his time as a politician and state minister in Bayreuth personally signed the degree to close and forbid masonic lodges in his country.

I'm careful with glorifications.
 

mike97

Registered User
Well, the membership of a peer in the fraternity has not much to say about his actions in real life. The later Emperor Wilhelm I. was a member of the craft, nonetheless he is called the Grape-Shot-Prince because he ordered his soldiers to fire at civilians during an upstand, and Goethe in his time as a politician and state minister in Bayreuth personally signed the degree to close and forbid masonic lodges in his country.

I'm careful with glorifications.

You are correct, I should do a little more research on him, at which time I will give a grand glorification... One should be careful of what snide remarks on makes about another.
 

tom268

Registered User
Thos brothers back then were children of their time, and it was an extremely different time than today. Judged in their own light, it is truely remarkable what they have done, achieved or said, but judges in our modern light they are most of the time the same old absolutistic powermongers, sometimes even warmongers than everyone else in that timeperiod.
 
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