[427] Zwack’s name had been on the list of members which Renner had put into the hands of the government. He was at the time a councillor of state. A short time before his house was invaded by the police and his papers seized, he had been deposed from his position on account of his relations with the Illuminati. At the time of the seizure he was living at Landshut in circumstances of disgrace and suspicion. Cf. Engel, p. 303; Forestier, pp. 480, 498.
[428] These documents were published by the Bavarian government, under the title: Einige Originalschriften des Illuminaten Ordens, Munich, 1787. Engel, pp. 259–262, publishes the list compiled by the government.
[429] Among these papers were found two smaller packets which gave a foundation for the most inveterate hostility to the order. These contained intimations of the order’s right to exercise the law of life and death over its members, a brief dissertation entitled, Gedanken über den Selbstmord, wherein Zwack, its author, had recorded his defence of suicide (cf. Engel, p. 262), a eulogy of atheism, a proposal to establish a branch of the order for women, the description of an infernal machine for safeguarding secret papers, and receipts for procuring abortion, counterfeiting seals, making poisonous perfumes, secret ink, etc. (Cf. Forestier, pp. 499 et seq.) The receipts for procuring abortion were destined to have a very ugly personal association in the public mind. Weishaupt, while still a resident of Ingolstadt, had stained his private life because of a liaison with his sister-in-law. On the 8 of February, 1780, his first wife had died. Her sister, who was his house-keeper at the time, continued in the household, and during the time that Weishaupt was waiting for a papal dispensation, permitting his marriage with her, she was found to be with child. Thrown into a panic on account of the failure of the dispensation to arrive (as a matter of fact it did not reach Ingolstadt until three years after it was first applied for), Weishaupt contemplated recourse to the method of procuring an abortion, in order to extricate himself from his painfully embarrassed position. In August, 1783, he wrote Hertel, one of the prominent members of the order, admitting the facts just stated. This letter fell into the hands of the authorities and was published by them in the volume entitled, Nachtrag von weiteren Originalschriften, Munich, 1787, vol. i, p. 14. The stigma of a new disgrace was thus attached to the order. Weishaupt made a pitifully weak effort to suggest extenuating circumstances for his conduct, in his volume, Kurze Rechtfertigung meiner Absichten, 1787, pp. 13 et seq. Taken in connection with the objectionable papers referred to above, this private scandal of the head of the order made the accusation of gross immorality on the part of the Illuminati difficult to evade. A spirit of intense revulsion penetrated the public mind.
[430] Other secret documents of the order were seized by the police in a search of the quarters of Baron Bassus, whose membership in the order on account of his close friendship with Zwack, brought him under the government’s suspicion. The police visitation referred to yielded no very important result, apart from establishing more solidly the government’s claim that the order had not obeyed the first edict. The papers seized in this instance were published by the government under the title, Nachtrag von weiteren Originalschriften … Zwei Abtheilungen, Munich, 1787.
[431] Forestier, pp. 504 et seq.
[432] Mändl, in the most cowardly fashion, charged the order with unmentionable practices. He seems to have been the Judas in the order’s inner circle. Cf. Forestier, pp. 505 et seq. Cf. Engel, pp. 331 et seq.
[433] Massenhausen was Ajax in the order. The papers seized by the police identified him as one of Weishaupt’s intimates.
[434] The “revelations” of Mändl appear to have been immediately responsible for the edict. Cf. Forestier, p. 507.
[435] Engel, op. cit., p. 280.
[436] “Unter der nemlichen confiscations—und relegations Straf werden die illuminaten Logen, sie mögen gleich auf diesen oder anderen Namen umgetauft seyn, ebenfalls verbothen, worauf man auch allenthalben gute Spehr’ [Späher] bestellen, und die Gesellschaften, welche entweder in Wirth—oder Privathäusern mit versperrten Thüren oder sonst auf verdächtige Weise gehalten werden, als wahre Logen behandeln lassen, und die so leer als gewöhnliche Ausrede, das es nur ehrliche Compagnien von guten Freunden sind, zumal von jenen, welche sich des Illuminatismi und der Freygeisterei vorhin schon suspect gemacht haben, nicht annehmen wird….” Quoted by Engel, p. 280.