Deserving DeathUnder this headline in October 1988, the German news magazine "Stern" reported on a renegade Memphis-Misraim group in Hamburg. It said that the group's leader Lothar Arno-Wilke, who claimed to be "Grand Master for the German Reich" (with no fewer than fifty lodges and two thousand members), had caused threats to be made against an errant member called Hans F. Senkel, and also had him kept hostage (carried out by two lodge members). 
Hans F. Senkel [Colored with AI] 
Senkel was tortured because he was gay. An attitude that was also supported by member Ms Christiane-Maria Schwarzweller who claimed that homosexuals lead "impure and unclean lives". And: "It is my realisation that from the Old Testament such homosexuals are worthy of death." She announced to Senkel that she would "raise the question of how to think about the death penalty for a homosexual today" at the next lodge meeting. Since she herself did not have a sound judgement on this, he would have to come to the meeting as well; he was "morally obliged, since you alone have homosexual practice, to enlighten the Lodge" she wrote to Senkel. Schwarzweller published an essay on "Homosexuality and Freemasonry" in the official "Hanseatisches Logenblatt" in December 1987. In it, she stated with reference to the Bible: "The mason cannot therefore be a homosexual, for he would desecrate his own body i.e. the temple in which he dwells." In former times, according to her, "such corporae infames were buried alive or sunk in the bog! in any case emasculated and banished from the country for eternity. They fell prey to peacelessness and were - hunted like wolves". Schwarzweller's response in the next issue of "Stern": "Our Lodge is [...] a Christian one whose supreme law is the New Testament. I do not consider anyone 'worthy of death' because he is homosexual. The only decisive factor for us Christians can be the 'New Commandment of Love' from the New Testament". 
Christiane–Marie Schwarzweller Markus Kumer, who belonged to Hermann Joseph Metzger's inner circle of the Swiss O.T.O., reported that Frau Schwarzweller was a regular guest at Metzger's Temple workings. [Kumer in Conversation with P.R. Koenig on 8.9.91.] 
Senkel demonstrates for the police how he had been tied up. [Colored with AI] 
Some documents
[From: 'Materialien Zum O.T.O.'] The rituals as well as the records of this M.M. group had been forged by Wilke, opined Senkel, a claim which was substantiated by Jean Mallinger's successor as head of Memphis-Misraim for Germany, Martin Erler (It was Erler who had reintroduced the A.M.O.R.C. to Germany in 1949. Then in 1956 he founded a German O.R.A. (Ordo Roseæ Aureæ) circle in the Munich area, with himself as its Grand Master.) 
Wilke supposedly possessed successions from Georges Delaire and Francois Bruyninckx, and likewise was Jean Mallinger's heir. The group was registered with the local court by E.R.M Brandt, and published a condemnation of Ellic Howe and Helmut Möller's complicated 'biography' of Theodor Reuss, using the name "Lord Grand Master of the 'Memphis-Misraim Order of International Co-Freemasonry'." This piece was signed by Elizabeth Gould, Christiane-Marie Schwarzweller and Lothar-Arno Wilke. ['Bericht über die Jahrestagung der Forschungsloge Quatuor Coronati', Hamburg, 1990.] Allegedly, Wilke had "stolen" his system and rituals wholesale from Rudolf Steiner's published ceremonies, which only referred to the "Office of Misraim", like Metzger's earlier "O.T.O. Orient Thuricensium Rituals." Hans F. Senkel's letters
Feeling threatened, Senkel sent out a shoal of documents to the regular German Masonic Lodges between spring 1987 and spring 1988, in an attempt to clarify the situation. It appeared from these documents that a mass of competing Memphis-Misraim lodges existed in Europe; Senkel used them to expose the background of Wilke's Order, naming innumerable participants, and opined that Wilke's group had no claim to any tradition. 
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |