Page - 321 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

321Disruption of Old Structures and the regular discussion of its outcomes with fellow masons at reading ses- sions specifically designed for this purpose (Übungslogen)—and the social re- sponsibility of men of learning to effect positive change.30 Besides the more arcane Journal für Freymaurer (Journal for freemasons) intended for masonic audiences, from 1783 Zur wahren Eintracht also published as its own learned journal the Physikalische Arbeiten der einträchtigen Freunde in Wien (Works in physics of the harmonious friends in Vienna), dedicated to the dissemination of specialized but synthetic knowledge, aimed at the general public and pre- sented as conducive to progress, about the “physics” of the lands of the Habsburg monarchy.31 This was a broadly understood concept, derived, as in physiocracy, from physis: besides natural history in the strict sense, the pur- view of the journal included topics like agriculture and mining and so forth, in a cameralist perspective. On top of the patriotic endeavor, placing domestic developments in the context of recent advances in these fields in the interna- tional Republic of Letters, and the ambition to integrate Austrian scientific dis- course in it, added a distinctly cosmopolitan flavor. Zur wahren Eintracht be- came a coveted target for foreign visitors in the Austrian capital—several of them also inducted as members—while letters of introduction from the lodge carried by members during their own travels identified them as its representa- tives and gave them access to similar exclusive venues of sociability all over Europe. The reasons for the brevity of the flourishing and the quick demise of Zur wahren Eintracht and, more generally, freemasonry in the Habsburg realm in the later 1780s, are too complex and controversial to discuss here in any detail. The insufficient “density” of true “republicans of letters” who could be mobi- lized for the scientific–philanthropic–universalist–patriotic utopia of the lodge and the Physikalische Arbeiten; the loss of leverage from the illuminati after the banning of the order in Bavaria (where it had originated) in 1784; ten- sions among the lodges in regard of the overall direction and institutional strategy of freemasonry; tensions between von Born and von Sonnenfels; and and the Fine Arts in Late-Eighteenth-Century Austria,” Austrian History Yearbook 31 (1999): 1–15. 30 Morrison, “Pursuing Enlightenment,” 201, 210–12. 31 On the journal, its relation to the lodge, and their integration in the scene of Viennese intellectual and scientific sociability, see Heather Morrison, “Harmony and Discord in the Sciences: Vienna’s Scientific Enlightenment and Its Engagement with the Republic of Let- ters,” in Multiple kulturelle Referenzen in der Habsburgermonarchie des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Wolfgang Schmale, Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert und Österreich 24 (Bochum: Dieter Winkler, 2010), 103–22.