Wort, Das.
Zeitschrift / Monatsschrift fur die allseitige Erkenntnisse Gottes und seines Waltens in Natur und Menschheit / Organ des Illuminaten Ordens. Monatsschrift fur allseitige Erkenntnis.
1893--1914 Monthly (very irregular)
Bitterfeld, then Dresden, Germany. Language: German. Publisher: F.E. Baumann; Engel; Illuminaten-Orden. Editor: Leopold Engel.
Succeeds: Wahrheits Sucher Succeeded by: Das Wort: Zeitschrift der Freunde des Neu-Salems-Lichtes
Corporate author: Verein des Illuminaten-Ordens / Organ der wissenschaftlichen Vereinigung Kosmos
1/1, October 1893-10/15/1914. 40-48 pp., 6 Marks a year.

Das Wort in its early years was strongly Theosophical (though in a way that had little to do with the Theosophical Society proper) but by 1899 it had become more independent. The journal serialized Engel's history of the Order of the Illuminati (published as a book in 1906) and his proto-science fiction novel "Mallona," as well as poetry, book reviews, articles on natural healing , and general filler on archeology, astronomy, geography, history, and literature, etc. It had contributions by P.Ch. Martens, who played a considerable role in Theodor Reuss' O.T.O. and Parzival Braun's Grail Order. On Martens see the notes under Christliche Theosophie, Zum Licht, Der Gral, Lebens-Spuren, Erudistisches Monatsblatt, Der Erudist, and others.

In an advertisement in 1899 the journal claimed: "'Das Wort' ist nicht das Organ irgend einer bestehende Sekte oder Gesellschaft, sondern will ein Wegweiser sein zur individuellen Selbstentwickelung. Ausgewahlter Lehrstoff, weder trockene noch pietistische Darstellung desselben. Rundschau aller epochemachenden Entdeckungen." In practice it functioned as the organ of Engel's Order of the Illuminati, though for a short period it proclaimed itself the Organ der wissenschaftlichen Vereinigung Kosmos, and of the the "Ludwig Lodge," which held its patent from John Yarker's Swedenborg Rite in London.

Leopold Engel (1858-1931) deserves a more careful study than he has received as a footnote to discussions of Theodor Reuss. He was born in St. Petersburg in a German family resident there (his father was concert master in the Russian Theater). He was an actor (and consequently itinerant), a disciple of the German Jakob Lorber (1800-64), who was inspired by voices to produce his own Gospel of Saint John (in 10 volumes, to which Engel later added an eleventh). In the 1890s he had revived Weishaupt's Illuminatenorden, joined the similarly named group founded by Reuss, and help found the Verband Deutscher Okkultisten (with Max Rahn and August Weinholtz, editor and publisher of the Sphinx and Die Ubersinnliche Welt) and the Theosophische Gesellschaft in Europa (Deutschland) (the Judge-Tingley version of Theosophy, with Franz Hartmann as president, Reuss as vice-president, and Engel as treasurer). In 1901, again with Reuss, Rahn, Weinholtz, et al., he founded or revived the Ludwig Lodge that, after Engel's expulsion in 1903 formed one of the underpinnings of the Reuss's O.T.O., the Ordo Templi Orientis. Ellic Howe called Das Wort "a tedious little periodical"--and it is. Howe, "Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23," Transactions of the Quator Coronati Lodge (1978), now online at http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/aqc/reuss/notes.html#14. The advertisements for the journal in Ubersinnliche Welt in 1894 described it as representing "a free-religious and yet still Christian worldview" devoted to seeking the development of "an undogmatic religion of the future." Engel went on to found various other occult groups, to write a history of the Order of the Illuminati and several occult novels and a series of penny-dreadfuls, and to publish Luzifers Bekenntnisse, the record of confessions received by him as a medium for Satan. A journal of the same name as this from Lorber-Verlag in Bietigheim, Germany, was published at least from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s as Monatsschrift fur vertieftes Christentum: Zeitschrift der Lorber-Freunde, but the relationship to Engel's journal is unclear. Engel's obituary appeared in Das Wort: Zeitschrift der Freunde des Neu-Salems-Lichtes in 1932, but the relationship of the journal to Engel is unclear and the journal concentrated on the work of Jakob Lober. See Helmut Moller and Ellic Howe, Merlin Peregrinus: Vom Untergrund des Abendlandes (Wurzburg: Konigshausen + Neumann, 1986), 329. Engel may also have had a hand in Die Musen: Zeitschrift fur Kunst, Literatur und Theater (Berlin, 1907) since it was edited by a man of the same name and dealt with theater. ZDB: Munchen UB; Coburg LB; Berlin SBB; Gottingen SuUB; Leipzig DNB, NYPL.

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