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Eklektischer Bund

I don’t have a very clear picture of Farwerck’s Masonic network. I know that in the Netherlands he was acquainted with Freemasons outside his own organisation, most notably Denier van der Gon and probably Raemaekers. Farwerck was also involved in the foundation of lodges abroad, but in the cases of the Goethe lodge in Frankfurt and the Dubrovsky lodge in Prague, Dutch fellow-Esperantist brother Faulhaber was involved. In Frankfurt the fellow-Esperantist Schwalhaber who would later come to lecture in the Netherlands was involved as well. Once there were foreign lodges, these were involved in the foundation of other lodges, also in other countries, and Farwerck, initially in his capacity of representative for the foreign lodges and later as Grand Master of the Dutch federation of Le Droit Humain, was directly and indirectly involved with these lodges.

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Travelling

Some biographies of Farwerck mention that he travelled for work. My first thought was that he combined business with pleasure and took the opportunity to travel to places to take photos for his books. This proved to be not true. All photos that he used in books and lists as having been made himself, are taken in the Netherlands. He does use photos of other countries but these are either taken from other works or sent to him by correspondents. So or did he not travel as much as suggested?

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Farwerck and Le Droit Humain

A couple of years I paged through all Bulletins that were published between 1918 and 1933 in one afternoon rapidly taking pictures of what appeared to be interesting. Now I have all these issues myself, so I can check them for information without the rush.

The Dutch part of the international mixed gender Masonic organisation Le Droit Humain started in 1904. In Bulletin 3 from 1933 (March) a text is published about the first 25 years. The text was a lecture of Johannes Francisus Duwaer (1869-1944) which was reworked for publication by Anne Schlesinger-Kerdijk (1882-1944). Duwaer has a few details that were new to me.

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Two new photos

A fellow investigator found two new photos. One is from Farwerck’s N.S.B. time, the other is more interesting, it shows Farwerck as a 33 year old when a Masonic lodge was founded in Frankfurt in Germany. Click on the photos for more info.

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Esperanto Triumfonta

A brilliant finding of a fellow Farwerck investigator. In the 29 January 1922 edition of the Esperanto newspaper Esperanto Triumfonta there is photo of the founders of the first German Le Droit Humain lodge “Goethe Zum Flammenden Stern” (‘Goethe to the blazing star’). This photo includes Farwerck! This is not only the second non-military photo of Farwerck that I know, but also predates the oldest photo that I know of him by eight years. So here we have Farwerck as a young(er) man, 33 years of age.

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Kulmamitta

The Finish federation of Le Droit Humain (“Suomen Yhteisvapaamuurarijärjestön Äänenkannattaja”) has published a magazine called Kulmamitta which Deepl translates to “angle measure”. I suppose it is a reference to the building trade that Freemasonry took inspiration from. The magazine appears to have first been published in 1927.

The first issue from 1928 contains a text with the title: “Tietoja Hollannin Liiton Toömaalta” which Deepl translates to “information from the Dutch federation site”. I will give the Deepl translation below as it shows a bit how Farwerck was as a Freemason.

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Farwerck donated his photo collection

After all these years of looking for Farwerck information there are still people who point me to new information which again leads to new information. This time I was directed towards a book on Google Books that you can’t read, but you can see snippets of it. It is a book from 1969 concerning a report of a museum director. The report says that Farwerck donated his photo collection!

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Beethovenlaan 11

On the cover of ‘The symbol of death and rebirth’ (1953) you can see Beethovenlaan 11 as address for the publisher Thule. In most other cases the address is Farwerck’s Emmastraat 58. One other Thule book from the same year, also has Beethovenlaan. I also have a letter that Farwerck sent to a reader of Nehalennia on which he replaced the address Beethovenlaan by Emmastraat. More about that below. There are no issues of Nehalennia with Beethovenlaan as editorial address.

My guess was that somebody lived on Beethovenlaan 11 who cooperated with Farwerck. Years ago I wrote a text called “Who was mrs. Farwerck?” I found that name in combination with this address. Long searching made me conclude that “Mrs. Farwerck” had to be a daughter in law of Willy Farwerck. Now I find another ‘version’ of the “Mrs. Farwerck ad” which makes me doubt about that conclusion.

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De Opmarsch

On a search for possible new information, I ran into a texts in a local newspaper. De Limburger of 31 May 1935 announced a new magazine called De Opmarsch which means “The Advancement”. In Dutch there is more stress on the “mars” part which in English would be “march(ing)”. Given the time, the title is a reference to advancing troupes in war, but you could also use the expression to say that a soccer team is doing well. Or of course a political party.

In any case, De Opmarsch was initially a pamphlet for the political party “R.K. Staatspartij” or “Roman Catholic State Party”. They published De Opmarsch for their campaign, but it immediately became a bi-weekly newsletter of 8 or so pages.

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