Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1959-10-01 / 10. szám

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FRATERNITY

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and on March 31, 1946, the Grand Lodge resumed its functions with eight Lodges and more than 400 members.

FINAL DISSOLUTION

The daily press of June 13, 1950, contained a dispatch from Budapest to the effect that the Ministry of Interior had just announced the dissolution of Freemasonry in Hungary. The of- ficial announcement was quoted as stating that the reason for the dissolution of the Lodges was that they were “the meeting places of the enemies of the People’s Democratic-Communistic-Republic, of capitalistic elements, and of the adherents of Western imperialism.”

ENDURING MONUMENTS

Special honor should be given to all Hungary’s Freemasons, who have built well their monuments, more enduring than shafts of stones or images of bronze, in the hearts of men, particularly to Count Bathyany, Count Julius Andrassy, Karl Eötvös, Stephen Turr, Frantz Pulszky, Dr. Geza Supka, Dr. Joseph Balassa, Andrew Gero, Vilmos Franknoi and Lőrinc Schlauch.

A famous priest and Mason of Budapest, Father Janos Hock, became a national hero. In 1918 Brother Hock refused a vacated Roman Catholic episcopacy which was offered to him in order to serve his people and his land. Dr. Vince Nagy, a Mason and former Hungarian Minister of the Interior, who knew Father Hock intimately during and after the turmoil of World War I, notes that he was a highly respected and greatly loved statesman who attracted not only Roman Catholics but Protestant and Jewish intellectuals as well to his cause. A staunch defender of the Craft, he was a member of the Hungarian Parliament and the leader of the Independent Party. He was a protagonist of church-state separation and of free public education.

Father Hock was forced into exile in Austria in 1919 when the communists took control, and during his absence from Hungary he visited the United States, lecturing on the principles of free government to Hungarian groups here. In 1934 he returned to Hungary where he was promptly arrested and imprisoned for a year on a charge of slandering the Horthy regime. Upon his release, he was honored as one of the foremost patriots of his day. Dr. Nagy then states that: