Die drei ältesten Kunsturkunden der Freimaurerbrüderschaft. The English text found in the book has been rendered here in this color , to distinguish it from the translation.
Please refer to the Guide to the Translation. From the overview of everything that the sources of the history of the Masonic societies in the Middle Ages had taught me, I surmised in the second volume of this work Dresden, , pp.
Since the Strasbourg document has now come to light, everyone can now be convinced of the correctness of this assumption. I have already mentioned here in I , p. CXXIV and here p. Stieglitz , who had earned a considerable amount of merit in the field of research of Masonic history, with the permission to publish it. Stieglitz has obtained that copy in , during his architectural trip in southern Germany; during which he has also collected other facts and documents which are important to the history of German Masonry, and which have been partly imparted in his book On Old German Architecture , published in the year Meanwhile Bro.
Heldmann had also received in a certified copy of the Strasbourg Statutes, a which literally agrees with the one of Stieglitz mentioned before, but differs from it in the spelling. Stieglitz's copy. Finally, since this document has been proved to be historically genuine, even being present in the first original copy at Strasbourg, it is, therefore, a perfectly reliable monument of the older Masonic history. What I compiled in about the erection of the Cathedral Church at Strasbourg, and as a result about the documentation on historical information still extant in the Strasbourg archives, and what I have said in explanation thereof, d contains the necessary knowledge for the understanding and correct evaluation of the Strasbourg Statutes.
Heldmann says about this in his book on The Three Oldest Historical Monuments of the German Fraternity of Freemasons , etc. Arau , p. During my travel through Strasbourg in , I made every conceivable effort to procure this document for myself; but all my attempts were in vain. The failure of them, however, did not deter me from continuing my investigations in other places, especially those which I had known as locations of the Lodge, or where else I only assumed, for some reason or another, to be still an old archive of the building.
