A History of Freemasonry in Croatia
Freemasonry made its appearance in Croatia in the second half of the 18th century. The first Masonic Lodge on Croatian soil was founded at Glina, most probably in 1764, although some sources give 1759 as the year of its foundation.
Individual Croats, however, had entered the Craft somewhat earlier. Count Sigismund Gondola (Gundulić) was among the founders of the first Austrian Lodge, “Zu den drei Kanonen” (rendered in Croatian as “Tri počela”, “The Three Principles”), in 1742, and became its Grand Master two years later. Count Josip Kazimir Drašković (father of Count Ivan Drašković) and Count Franjo Esterházy were members of the same Lodge.
The Lodge “Ratno prijateljstvo”
Though there is no agreement as to the year of its foundation, it is certain that the first Lodge in Croatia was established at Glina. According to Branko Šömen in his book “Mudrost” (“Wisdom”), Croatian officers serving in the Austrian army during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) were admitted to the French military Lodge “La Parfaite Union” (“Perfect Union”) while held prisoner in the Prussian city of Magdeburg. On their return to Croatia, a group of these officers founded a Lodge at Glina under the name “Ratno prijateljstvo” (“Wartime Friendship”). As Dr Ivan pl. Bojničić – Croatian historian and archivist, and Director of the Land Archives in Zagreb – recorded: “The very name tells us that the Lodge was founded by Brethren who had sworn a bond of friendship during the war.” The Lodge met under the open sky, and its rituals were at first conducted in French and later in Latin.
Ivan Drašković of Trakošćan, a Croatian count and colonel, fought in the Seven Years’ War, in which he was wounded and taken prisoner. It is supposed that it was during this period that he first came into contact with Freemasonry, and that he may have become a member of the Order. On becoming Grand Master of the Glina Lodge he reshaped it and drew into its membership many distinguished and powerful men. Among them was Baron Franjo Jelačić – a Croatian officer, general and Lieutenant Field Marshal of the Austrian imperial army, and father of Ban Josip Jelačić.
Count Ivan Drašković is regarded as the pivotal figure in the development of organised Freemasonry in Croatia, and is frequently named as one of the fathers of Croatian Freemasonry. At his prompting, Lodges were founded across Croatia – in Varaždin, Zagreb, Otočac, Karlovac, Križevci and Osijek among other places.
The Provincial Grand Lodge of Croatia
The first Grand Lodge in Croatia was constituted at Brezovica Castle, near Zagreb, in October 1777, when members of the Lodges of Glina, Zagreb, Varaždin and Križevci assembled to proclaim the independence of the new Croatian Provincial Grand Lodge. Count Ivan Drašković was elected its first Grand Master, and at once introduced into all the Lodges his own constitution and rituals, known as the Drašković Observance. The number of Lodges in Croatia grew year by year. Noblemen, officers, merchants, judges and a part of the clergy joined their ranks. Alongside Croatian nobles and officers, the Lodges numbered among their members the men of the Enlightenment of that age, as well as representatives of the Church – among them the bishops Josip Galjuf and Maksimilijan Vrhovec.
An adherent of the Enlightenment, Maksimilijan Vrhovec was one of the intellectual progenitors of the Croatian National Revival. He founded a printing house in Zagreb which published chiefly in the Croatian language, and from his personal fortune he was patron to many artists. He founded, supported or inspired many of the cultural, educational, social and charitable institutions of his day, and worked tirelessly for everything that might advance learning and the spiritual welfare of the Croatian people. He is remembered, too, for having changed the face of Zagreb for ever by beginning to lay out what is today Maksimir Park.
It is worth noting that in 1785 a Convent of European Freemasons sat in Paris for several months, attended by delegates from the Austrian, Hungarian and Croatian Lodges – testimony to how early the Croatian Lodges were linked with their counterparts elsewhere in the world.
The Lodge at Glina worked for 36 years, until Freemasonry was proscribed throughout the Habsburg Monarchy. With the ban on Freemasonry in Austria and Hungary in 1796, the Lodges vanished from Croatia.
Lodges in the Illyrian Provinces under French Rule
Masonic Lodges began to reappear with the establishment of the Illyrian Provinces under Napoleon Bonaparte at the beginning of the 19th century, particularly in Dalmatia – at Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik and Šibenik. These Lodges were founded by French officers and officials. After Napoleon’s departure the Freemasons disappeared once more, for with the return of Habsburg rule in 1813 the Lodges were again prohibited. They were not revived until the 1870s. Up to the First World War, all Croatian Lodges belonged to the Grand Lodge of Hungary.
Freemasons and the First World War
With the outbreak of the First World War, division and intolerance began to spread among the Freemasons of Europe. The Masonic cosmopolitans, writes Branko Šömen in “Mudrost”, deprived of any political role, alarmed by world events and by suspicion at home, left their Temples, closed their workshops and withdrew into private life. The Masonic Lodge “Ljubav bližnjeg” sought to offer relief during the war, but under wartime conditions its labours were suspended.
Once a state of emergency had been proclaimed throughout Austria-Hungary, the émigré community became the principal force in Croatian political endeavour. The first steps of the political emigration are bound up with Ivan Meštrović, who, as Šömen notes, became a Freemason in 1913. When the assassination at Sarajevo set off the First World War, Meštrović was exhibiting his work in Venice. Together with Frano Supilo and Ante Trumbić (likewise a Freemason), he protested to the Entente Powers against the intended cession of Istria and Dalmatia to Italy, and through diplomatic activity promoted the idea of a common state of the South Slav lands. Despite the disagreements between Croats and Serbs over the new state and over Greater Serbian ideas, the South Slav Freemasons, under the influence of the Great Powers, contributed significantly to the founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The Freemason Dr Eugen Laxa wrote of this: “Modern Masonry began towards the close of the last century, at the very time when the Yugoslav idea was emerging in all its romanticism, and when the propaganda of the Kingdom of Serbia – through the Serbs living across the Sava and Danube and the Croat-Serb Coalition, abetted by Khuen – had drummed into the heads of many of the Croatian intelligentsia that they were no longer Croats but Yugoslavs, or rather merely one part of a nation with three names. The reactionary character of old Austria on the one hand, and the energy and militancy of Serbia on the other, led a great part of the young generation of that day astray. The propaganda grew ever more intense, and so the madness of the Yugoslav idea brought us to 1 December 1918 – to the day on which our national agony began, when, through our own folly and ignorance, we set about discarding, and even denying, those essential attributes which make possible the life of a nation.”
Croatian Lodges after the First World War
After the war, the Grand Council of Serbia proposed the formation of a single Grand Lodge of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, “Jugoslavija”, with its seat in Belgrade. The extraordinary assembly at which it was constituted was held in Zagreb on 9 June 1919. The new body also embraced the Croatian Lodges “Maksimilijan Vrhovac” and “Ivan grof Drašković” of Zagreb and “Budnost” of Osijek. The founding document of this Grand Lodge made no mention of the Zagreb Mother Grand Lodge “Ljubav bližnjega”, under whose protection the Lodge “Grof Ivan Drašković” had been established. For these and other political reasons, Croatian Freemasons founded a number of new Lodges, among them “Pravednost” in Zagreb in 1919, “Sloboda” in Dubrovnik in 1925, “Ivanjski krijes” in Karlovac in 1925 and “Zora” in Kotor in 1926.
Among them was the Lodge “Prometej”, founded in Zagreb in 1926, whose declaration criticised the political activity of the Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia. In contrast to the Serbian Freemasons, who bound their activities to politics, the Croatian Freemasons upheld the traditional Masonic values of humanism, liberty and equality, and set themselves against the influence of politics. Their declaration stressed that there is no such thing as national – and hence no Yugoslav – Freemasonry. For these views the Grand Lodge “Jugoslavija” suspended the Zagreb Lodge “Prometej” on 3 January 1927. Part of its membership, together with members of the Lodges “Pravednost” and “Grof Ivan Drašković”, founded a new Lodge, “Amicitia”, which the Grand Lodge “Jugoslavija” refused to recognise. A few months later, on 29 May 1927, an assembly was held at which these Lodges united and proclaimed the Symbolic Grand Lodge “Libertas”. Lacking the support of the international Masonic bodies, “Libertas” was at the time dubbed a “wild Lodge”. It was therefore vital to obtain legitimacy from the great Masonic Grand Lodges of Europe. The turning point came in 1937, when the Grand Lodge “Libertas” was recognised by the Grand Orient of France.
Freemasons in the Second World War and the SFRY
Under the totalitarian regimes of the Second World War, and in the years that followed, Freemasons were persecuted and their activities banned. The Nazi and Fascist authorities in Europe did not recognise the Freemasons, and in consequence all Lodges on Croatian territory ceased their labours.
After the Second World War, Masonic organisations and activities were outlawed and severely punishable in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), so that Croatian Freemasons had no possibility of working throughout that period.
The Revival of Masonic Lodges after the Democratic Changes
Ivan Mužić – a Croatian lawyer, historian and publicist, an active Catholic layman and the author of the monograph “Masonstvo u Hrvata” (“Freemasonry among the Croats”) – held that Croatian Freemasons had worked against the interests of Croatia, promoting the idea of a Yugoslav state and setting themselves against the concept of an independent Croatian state. This controversial and unfounded thesis was disputed by Branko Šömen, among others. “Many tried to halt the break-up of Yugoslavia, but the Freemasons were not among them. Freemasonry in south-eastern Europe only began to develop after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and so could have had no influence on the dissolution of the former state,” Šömen maintains.
With the onset of democratic change came the revival of Croatian Masonic activity. A number of Croatian and Slovenian Freemasons supported the initiative of the Austrian Freemason Čedo Kirchner to launch Masonic work in Croatia and Slovenia. On 21 March 1992 the Deputation Lodge “Illyria” was formed in Vienna, admitting 13 Freemasons from Croatia and five from Slovenia. On 21 September 1994 the Ministry of Administration of the Republic of Croatia approved the entry of the Grand Lodge of Ancient and Accepted Freemasons of Croatia in the Register of Citizens’ Associations.
A Brief History of the Grand Regular Lodge of Croatia (VRLH)
The Grand Regular Lodge of Croatia (formerly the Grand Orient of Croatia) has its origins in the historic schism within Freemasonry in the former Yugoslavia – then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – in 1919.
After a group of some twenty men from Croatia had been entered into the Craft in Belgrade, the first founding Lodge was formed on 28 January 2017. On 24 March 2017 it held its first working in the First Degree, in Zagreb, at which 48 Brethren were entered into the Craft – and so began the formation of a Grand Lodge under the name of the Grand Orient of Croatia. On 25 March 2017 the Light was restored to the Grand Orient of Croatia. The Light that returned to Zagreb has roots reaching back to 1919. Since all the other Lodges formed in Croatia over the past 30 years received their Light from Austria or Italy, we hold our Light to be the original one, restored to Croatia after almost a hundred years. On 12 May 2021 the name was changed from the Grand Orient of Croatia to the Grand Regular Lodge of Croatia.
The very next year, on 18 June 2022, a Charter of Co-operation and Recognition was signed between the Grand Regular Lodge of Croatia and the Grand Lodge of France (GLdF). On 19 June 2023 the Grand Regular Lodge of Croatia was admitted to full membership of the International Confederation of United Grand Lodges (ICUGL), which brings together 31 Obediences from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America.
Today seven Lodges work under the aegis of the Grand Regular Lodge of Croatia, in Zagreb, Rijeka and Split.
Some of the other Grand Lodges active in the Republic of Croatia:
The Grand Lodge of Croatia (VLH) is the oldest Grand Lodge in the country. It was founded in Zagreb in 1997 and recognised by the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) in 1999.
The National Grand Lodge of Croatia (VNLH) belongs to liberal, adogmatic Freemasonry and is a mixed Obedience, admitting both women and men. It was founded in Rijeka in 2014.
Le Droit Humain (LDH) is the Croatian branch of the international Masonic Order of the same name for men and women, founded in France in 1893. Its first Lodge in Croatia was founded in Zagreb in 2016.
The Women’s Grand Lodge of France (Grande Loge Féminine de France), GLFF for short, is an exclusively female Masonic Grand Lodge belonging to liberal, adogmatic Freemasonry. It was founded in Paris in 1952.