(The following article is a chapter from the book Final Warning: A History of the New World Order by David Allen Rivera)
Dr. Charles Frederick Bahrdt (1741-1793), an Illuminati member, Mason, and German theologian, who was the professor of Sacred Philogy at the University of Leipzig, took advantage of the Illuminati's apparent demise by recruiting several of its members for his so-called "German Union" in 1787. Bahrdt, the son of a minister, called his group the German Union for Rooting Out Superstition and Prejudices and Advancing True Christianity. In 1785, Bahrdt had received an anonymous letter, containing the plans for the German Union, which was signed: "From some Masons, your great admirers." That same year, he was visited by an Englishman who urged him to establish the Union, promising to link it with the British masonic structure. In 1787, he received another letter containing more details and organizational details. Bahrdt had done some religious propaganda work for Weishaupt, "to destroy the authority of the Scriptures," and it was commonly believed that it was Weishaupt who was directing the activities of the organization behind the scenes in order to carry on the goals of the Illuminati. The German Union appeared to be a Reading Society, and one was set up in Zwack's house in Landshut. Weishaupt wrote: "Next to this, the form of a learned of literary society is best suited to our purpose, and had Freemasonry not existed, this cover would have been employed; and it may be much more than a cover, it may be a power engine in our hands. By establishing reading societies, and subscription libraries, and taking these under our direction, and supplying them through our labors, we may turn the public mind which way we will...A literary society is the most proper form for the introduction of our Order into any State where we are yet strangers." They planned about 800 such Reading Rooms. The membership initially consisted of 17 young men, and about five of Bahrdt's friends. Knigge helped him to develop the organizational structure, which was divided into six grades: 1) Adolescent , 2) Man, 3) Elder , 4) Mesopolite , 5) Diocesan, and 6) Superior. The "Society of the 22" or the "Brotherhood" was its inner circle. In a pamphlet entitled To All Friends of Reason, Truth and Virtue, Bahrdt wrote that the organization's purpose was to accomplish the enlightenment of people in order to disseminate religion, remove popular prejudices, root out superstition, and restore liberty to mankind. They planned to have magazines and pamphlets, but by 1788, Bahrdt had sunk over $1,000 into the group, and was spending all of his time working on it. Despite his efforts, they still only had 200 members. Near the end of 1788, Frederick Wilhelm, the King of Prussia, worried about the growth of the organization, had Johann Christian von Wollner, one of his ministers, write an opposing view to Bahrdt's pamphlet, called the Edict of Religion. Bahrdt responded by anonymously writing another pamphlet of the same name to satirize it. In 1789, a bookseller by the name of Goschen, wrote a pamphlet called More Notes Than Text, on the German Union of XXII, a New Secret Society for the Good of Mankind, in which he revealed that the group was a continuation of the Illuminati. The German Union, which represented Weishaupt's "corrected system of Illuminism," never really got off the ground because of its openness, which provoked hostile attacks from the government and members of the clergy. Bahrdt left the group and opened up a tavern known as "Bahrdt's Repose." The German Union ceased to exist after he died in 1793.
