Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati

The reality of the Bavarian Illuminati is much less dramatic than conspiracy theories would indicate. It wasn’t a mystical organization, but a protest organization formed by a rather conceited man who was frustrated with the Catholic church.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:42Holly Frey?

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• 2:15Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:26Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:31Holly Frey?

  I've been thinking about secret societies lately for no particular reason.

• 2:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:35Holly Frey?

  I really don't. Just one of those things that I'm like, huh. I've also been thinking a lot about conspiracy theories for more particular reasons, which is that they are rampant right now, but.

• 2:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:44Holly Frey?

  The historical secret society that gets the most attention, that springs to people's minds when you mention those words, is of course, the Illuminati. It gets invoked anytime someone believes that people are acting in secretive ways to manipulate various happenings in the world. BBC correspondent Sophia Smith-Gaylor wrote of the Illuminati in 2020 that it has become, quote, "the conspiracy theory to dwarf all conspiracy theories." We're going to talk more about her work later, but that's the truth. I mean, it's an easy one to invoke because it's all secret. Nobody knows. You can make stuff up. But in reality, the Illuminati, at least the Bavarian group that is generally considered

• 3:28Holly Frey?

  the main start of the Illuminati, although there are people that will say it goes back farther than that, it is much less dramatic, at least in terms of machination, than conspiracy theories would lead you to think. For one, it's been defunct for more than 200 years. And for another, it was not any kind of mystical or particularly conspiratorial group. You could argue that there were some conspiratorial things going on, but it was, at its heart, a protest organization formed out of frustration with dogmatic church practices and trying to find ways to undermine those and overcome them. So today, we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about the founder of the Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt, how he came

• 4:09Holly Frey?

  to form the Bavarian Illuminati, how that group functioned, question mark, and then was disbanded, and how the idea of the Illuminati as a secret, controlling society, it's sometimes called the New World Order, how that concept came to be. Also, this is a little bit of an anticipatory topic, as Tracy and I look forward to our upcoming trip to Germany. We're going to be spending time in Bavaria with some of our listeners at the end of September.

• 4:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Holly Frey?

  So I'm preempting our trip instead of doing things after the fact.

• 4:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  So the man at the heart of the Illuminati story, as Holly just said, was Adam Weishaupt. He was born in 1748 in Ingolstadt, Bavaria. That's part of Germany today. Ingolstadt, incidentally, was also where Dr. Victor Frankenstein created his creature and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Historically, the Weisaupts were Jewish, but they converted to Christianity long before Adam was born.

• 5:12Holly Frey?

  Yeah, generations before him. I will also say that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, there are people that think that she specifically placed it there because of the stories of the Illuminati.

• 5:26Holly Frey?

  But as for Weishaupt, he was born at a time when the people of Bavaria were largely seeking reform. After years and years of being heavily governed by Catholic Church doctrine, there was a lot of unrest, as the greater population saw the churches in Bavaria had seemingly endless wealth while the average family was struggling to get by. Additionally, church officials seemed kind of untouchable, and there was a lot of corruption. But in the mid-17th century, some of that started to shift. When Maximilian III Joseph became a lector of Bavaria in 1745, he was kind of like a breath of fresh air. He was very much in line with Enlightenment ideals, and he sought to expand agriculture

• 6:10Holly Frey?

  and industry in Bavaria, and he also sought to loosen the church's grip on day-to-day life.

• 6:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Adam's father, George Weishaupt, was a criminal law professor at the University of Ingolstadt, and his uncle, Johann Adam von Ixtot, was the director of the university and was embroiled in intense fights with the church over the books that were chosen for the school curricula. Ixtot wanted to use texts that were not approved by the Catholic Church, and this led to a really fierce battle. As a quick note, Ixtot is often referred to as Adam's godfather, but Ixtot was also really at odds with the church, so it just seems a little odd to refer to him by that religiously oriented title rather than just calling him uncle.

• 7:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  So if you pursue additional reading about this and you're wondering, that's why.

• 7:06Holly Frey?

  That's what's up. So as that battle over books was going on, George Weishaupt died, and Ixtot became seven-year-old Adam's caretaker. It is unclear to me where the mother figure might have been in this. But because he was so wrapped up with this conflict with the church, Ixtot, in a somewhat contradictory move, sent Adam to the Jesuits for his schooling. That seems contradictory, but I also suspect it was kind of the only option. It was like homeschool or this. Those are the ways your kid's going to get an education. Weishaupt was a very, very curious child, super smart and a voracious reader, and he supplemented his education by also reading books that he selected from his uncle's very expansive library.

• 7:52Holly Frey?

  Vernon Stauffer, writing in his 1918 book, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati, cites this as a formative exposure to new ideas, stating, quote, "The boy's questioning spirit was deeply impressed by the brilliant though pretentious works of the French philosophers with which the shelves were plentifully stocked. Here was food for the fires of imagination just beginning to flame up in this unsophisticated and pedantic youth. Here also were ready solvents for the doubts with which his experience with the Jesuit teachers had filled his mind." Many accounts also say that Weishaupt was a Jesuit for a period of time. That is a little bit unclear to me. I never found any definitive statement that said that he took orders.

• 8:38Holly Frey?

  But there is also a caveat here, because most of the more in-depth biographies of Adam Weishaupt are written in German and are not translated, and I do not speak German.

• 8:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  All of this reading did seem to ignite a desire for more knowledge, both for Weishaupt and for others. He wanted to continue the family's tradition of being educators and dedicated himself to learning as much as he could about a lot of topics, but he concentrated on law, politics, philosophy, and history. He attended the University of Ingolstadt and graduated with a law degree in 1768 at the age of 20. Following his graduation, he worked as a tutor of both law and church doctrine. By that time, his uncle, Ixtot, was no longer actively involved in the workings of the university, but he was still highly respected.

• 9:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  And as we're about to discuss, Adam benefited very highly from his uncle's remaining power in academic circles.

• 9:39Holly Frey?

  In 1772, Weishaupt secured a position as a professor at Ingolstadt, and the following year, he was made Chair of the Canon Law Department. That was unusual. That role, which specialized in the legal laws of the church, had been held by people chosen by the Jesuits and was often a member of the Jesuits. So Weishaupt was the first in almost a century who was not. Again, there is some fuzziness here because of the claim that he was a Jesuit for some period of time. I have to wonder if there wasn't conflation where it was like, of course, everyone that held that job was a Jesuit.

• 10:17Holly Frey?

  Again, unknown to me. But this appointment is generally believed to have happened thanks to his uncle's influence. But that relationship between himself and Ixtot experienced some strain in the months that followed this appointment, because Adam got married to a young woman that his uncle did not approve of. I wish I had more detail about her and what this whole marriage situation was. But despite whatever friction this marriage caused, Adam continued to benefit from nepotism, or at least from association with his uncle. In 1775, he became the Dean of the Faculty of Law. He was 27. This is not a case where that happened back then. It was just as weird then as if it happened today.

• 11:03Holly Frey?

  It also kind of sounds like he had the overconfidence and lack of diplomacy of youth, because in this role, he was very outspoken in his criticism of the church.

• 11:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is not a great idea, and we will talk about the repercussions of it after we pause for a sponsor break.

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• 12:36Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:13Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:40Holly Frey?

  We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 15:23Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:49Holly Frey?

  Naturally, watching a very young and inexperienced academic rise through the ranks to a significant leadership at the university while simultaneously trash-talking the church made the Jesuits at the university deeply unhappy. So for context, the Jesuits had a very significant presence at the school for more than 200 years at this point. In 1549, several Jesuits had become members of the faculty at the University of Ingolstadt. And this had come about because the Duke of Bavaria at the time, Wilhelm IV, had specifically asked for it. He had written to Pope Paul III, asking if the church could send academics to fill out the theology and philosophy departments.

• 16:34Holly Frey?

  In 1688, the Jesuits became the sole controllers of the philosophy department. They were deeply entrenched in the school's identity and social structure, and they had a strong effect on policy decisions. So to have a dean openly criticizing an entire segment of the university stirred up a lot of conflict. It was also incredibly foolish on the part of Weishaupt, who may have enjoyed a degree of protection due to his family's long connection with the school, but who was still provoking the incredibly powerful Catholic Church with all of this negative rhetoric. And that was on top of the fact that the church had already been angry with his family

• 17:14Holly Frey?

  over that book selection issue and with Ixtot's very anti-clerical stance.

• 17:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  All of this bubbled up into a conflict. Weishaupt used it to characterize himself as a free speech martyr who was being unfairly targeted by the church. During this time, he also further distanced himself from his uncle when he helped a Jesuit professor get a prestigious appointment. Ixtot felt like that was a betrayal. It also felt like a move that went against everything that Weishaupt claimed to stand for. At that point, his uncle severed all ties with him.

• 17:52Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that is another instance where it's a little unclear what's going on there to me. I know that he made that, that connection or whatever agreement or assistance he was giving this Jesuit, that was all kept secret. And then they had a falling out, and then it came out when it happened. He clearly knew that it looked shady for him to be doing that. It was also at this point where he's in conflict with everyone around him, that the idea of a secret society to combat the power of the church started to really grow in Weishaupt's mind. He wanted to build up a group of Enlightenment-minded people who could surreptitiously work against the church and against anything the group believed was not in line with the ideals of

• 18:37Holly Frey?

  reason. So things like superstition, fear-based beliefs, folk tales, et cetera. The Vernon Stouffer account from 1918 that we referenced earlier has a footnote offering a read on Weishaupt's mindset at the time that he was planning this group, which is, quote, "The motives which led Weishaupt to consider the formation of a secret organization of the general character indicated were not all of a kind. In part, they were creditable; in part, discreditable. That he had a genuine interest in the cause of liberalism and progress, born largely of the personal discomfort and injury he had experienced at the hands of intolerance and bigotry, there can be no honest doubt.

• 19:20Holly Frey?

  But a thirst for power was also a fundamental element in his nature. The despotic character of the order which he attempted to build up is in itself a sufficient proof of this. Besides, the cast of his personal affairs at the time the organization was launched smacks loudly of the man's overweening vanity and yearning for personal conquest."

• 19:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  And that's probably a pretty good take on the situation. Weishaupt was entirely against dogmatic insistence on one idea of truth as set forth by the church, but he had been burning down a variety of relationships since his promotion to dean of the faculty. In addition to the rift between him and his uncle, he had fallings out with other faculty who had been his allies previously. He also started to poke his nose into business in other areas of the university that really had nothing to do with him. He was kind of stirring up fights, possibly using the subsequent rebuttals to bolster his claims that his right to speak was being infringed.

• 20:27Holly Frey?

  Yeah, he was just going to other departments and being like, oh, I heard you're having a problem with this person. Here's what you need to do. And they'd be like, hi, what? We got this.

• 20:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  I feel like I know people who are on University Faculty Today who would describe their working lives as like this still, with just a lot of petty drama and, and like infighting.

• 20:52Holly Frey?

  Some universities and academia were great.

• 20:57Holly Frey?

  A lot of people that I know as well as Tracy have similarly unpleasant drama stories. Weishaupt is said to have actually attempted to become a mason at this time, thinking that he could leverage the connections of that society to achieve these goals of undermining the church. But he wasn't able to become a member, at least initially, for both ideological and financial reasons. For one, there was an initiation fee and then annual dues, and Weishaupt was really not in a position to cover those costs. But for another, as he began to read through the available literature, he realized he was not aligned with Freemasonry.

• 21:38Holly Frey?

  He actually thought it was not secretive enough, that it was too accessible, and that its rituals were kind of silly. He wanted, at least initially, to have a true, secret society of like-minded people who were willing to put in the work to achieve the goal of diminishing the Catholic Church's power.

• 21:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  On May 1, 1776, Weishaupt established the Covenant of Perfectability. This was not a big group. It was just him and five of his students. Once again, quoting Stalfer, quote, "It was Weishaupt's original purpose to style the new order, the perfectableists. But this, he later renounced as too bizarre and lacking in the element of mystery." Although he claimed that he found the mason organization to be silly, he still modeled his group on it in a lot of ways, including having three levels or grades of membership, which he called novice, minerval, and illuminated minerval.

• 22:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Interestingly, he did wind up joining the Masons in 1777, possibly to study their structure and governance as part of refining his plan for his own group.

• 22:50Holly Frey?

  I want a T-shirt that says illuminated minerval. Weishaupt was intent that recruitment of young people was the key to the group's success. He wrote to his friend Franz Anton von Massenhäusen in September of 1776 about it. Quote, "Every day, I think about and apply myself to our great building project. Continue working at your end, too, and send along some building blocks. Don't let up on your efforts. Seek the company of younger people, observe them, and if you find one who is suitable, take hold of him. I, too, have found another one who is attractive and insightful. What you cannot accomplish yourself, do through others.

• 23:33Holly Frey?

  Agathon, Danaias, and Schaffsbury are given modem imperi, to mingle with young people, observe them, have them recruit others, make suggestions, and then wait for orders. This must happen immediately." Using the form that was sent to him, Agathon should send a list of the young people that he encountered during his stay. This is imperative.

• 23:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  The setup of this society was pretty sloppy at the beginning, but over time, Weishaupt codified or made notes about each of these classifications. And it quickly becomes apparent that he started to lose the plot regarding those Enlightenment and Reason ideals. The novice designation was for younger members who held the qualities that Weishaupt sought to promote, which were virtue, docility, curiosity, and, here's the kicker, wealth. If a novice was accepted, he was to be assigned an older member to teach him about the organization while he was keeping anything that could identify other members a secret.

• 24:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  As part of this stage, a novice was to make a comprehensive inventory of the books that he owned and his family tree, his personal enemies and the explanation of that status, a self-assessment of his personal character, and a similar analysis of all family members. This was the first of many reports that were expected from members, as they were also to write up each month how they had benefited in the previous weeks from their involvement with the group. They also had recruitment goals that determined when they might achieve one of the higher levels, so it was sort of like an MLM-structured, secret society.

• 25:21Holly Frey?

  Yes, I have recruited you, and now you must recruit more people. And when you recruit enough people, you will come to my level, but I will move up because you have recruited more people. It's like, um, oh, oh, Adam. If a person rose to the minerval level, that meant that they still had to do all the novice stuff, but they also had additional assignments. Studies became a really high priority, with regular reports and papers submitted to the group's leadership. And Weishaupt envisioned the society becoming kind of like an underground university, with leadership directing the lower-tiered members in their scholarship. And all of this scholarship, of course, was about the superiority of reason over faith-based

• 26:04Holly Frey?

  belief systems, and moreover, reason over authority. This also was the time when members would meet other people from the order when they got promoted to minerval.

• 26:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Illuminated minerval was the highest rank, so obviously that went only to members who really stood out as exceptional, quote, "in the judgment of their superiors." It indicated a high level of scholarship with mastery of many subjects, as well as service to the order. At this level, members were encouraged not only to continue reporting on their studies, but also to write more involved academic papers about them. These men were also given the task of closely observing the minervals who were immediately under them and reporting up to them as a means of learning about human psychology. This was so they would become adept at what was considered to be directing people down

• 27:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  the correct intellectual path. But there was definitely a plan to manipulate with this knowledge. It was always couched as being something very beneficial, like manipulating people to be better, but this was still a manipulation, and the people being targeted with that manipulation had no say in any of it. They were expected to report on the men under them in a special meeting that was scheduled every month for this exclusive group alone.

• 27:29Holly Frey?

  I like to imagine that as a very gossipy session.

• 27:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  It seems like it must have been.

• 27:33Holly Frey?

  Do you know what so-and-so did? All of this was set up, according to Weishaupt, to evolve humanity to a better state in which base emotions would no longer govern anyone's behavior. This was different from a political revolution. It was a social and intellectual one, in Weishaupt's view. He also felt that through this system of manipulating people, it was going to force them to self-reflect and grow. This is one of those things that might sound good on paper, like you're encouraging people, but it ignores the concept of personal agency completely. It also is all sort of contradictory in that Weishaupt did want to overthrow the clerical

• 28:16Holly Frey?

  components of education and government, which is more of him imposing his will on something than everyone evolving together. And just to be clear, he always said he was not anti-religion. He just felt that religion had become corrupt and that religious institutions relied on the fanaticism of their followers to enrich those at the top and consolidate power.

• 28:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  By 1780, there were four more chapters of the Bavarian Illuminati in Munich, Regensburg, Friesing, and Ixtet. But as the group grew, and more and more people were needed to manage these downstream members, the same thing happened as happens in any large group. There were disagreements and dissent. It's hard to keep lots of people, a big group, on the same page in any group. And when you're part of a secret society, there are also fears that if somebody is unhappy and dissatisfied, they're going to blab the secrets of that society. So a lot of the meetings started to be less and less about scholarship and planning,

• 29:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  as Weishaupt had originally intended, and it became more about settling disputes among the increasingly large membership.

• 29:31Holly Frey?

  Additionally, the Illuminati was not a group that was flush with cash, even though they had specifically targeted people who were wealthy. There had been this purposeful decision to keep money out of any of the planning or written materials as a way to keep everything on the down low. If money had started changing hands with no explanation in 18th century Bavaria, it could have raised some questions. And it wasn't as though they could fundraise without inviting attention. So it seems like the presumption was that the dedication of these wealthy members would maybe lead them to financially support any plans that the group came up with. But that did not materialize, and eventually dues were implemented.

• 30:14Holly Frey?

  To members who signed up because they believed the rhetoric that this group was going to change the world through intellectualism, it's probably started to feel a lot less cool right around then.

• 30:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  There is some good news coming for Weisheit and his followers, but before we get to it, we will pause for a word from our sponsors.

• 30:37Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 31:02Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 31:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  And downloading your videos so you can watch them anywhere, even without a Wi-Fi connection. Whenever I'm traveling, if I'm going to be away from Wi-Fi for a while, I love having things that are loaded up and ready to go, so I don't have to worry about it. Smart Downloads also automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download things ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you will love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 32:21Holly Frey?

  We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 33:03Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 34:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 34:29Holly Frey?

  The Bavarian Illuminati may have started to splinter at that point had it not been for the recruitment of a man named Adolf Fräher Knigge. We're going to call him Adolf because I feel like saying his last name is fraught and sounds like other things I don't want to say. Adolf was several years younger than Weishaupt, and he was born to landed gentry, although his parents had accumulated a large amount of debt before they died, which happened when Adolf was still a child. He went to law school, and he also became a writer and a mason. And his status as a noble brought a level of social influence to the Illuminati that it had been lacking. He had held a number of governmental positions in Hesse-Cassel in his career, but he had

• 35:14Holly Frey?

  retired in 1777, which offered him plenty of time to cultivate a life in Weishaupt's Illuminati. His involvement opened the door for a relationship between the Illuminati and the masons. Adolf was also given a lot of responsibility right out of the gate. He was tasked with refining and formalizing the Illuminati's rules and structures because that messy start had been an ongoing problem. Clearly, Weishaupt was just not good at this. The three original levels of members were completely restructured, and what emerged was much more complex, but it also clarified things.

• 35:54Holly Frey?

  For example, instead of the second minnaval grade on its own, Adolf broke that into three sub-levels. So there was room for promotion to higher positions without jumping right to the highest level. Ultimately, there were three classes of members still, but there was a total of 13 different degrees within those three classes. There was also testing for members to achieve the higher ranking levels instead of just going on vibes. There was also a formalized system of rituals, like when people were promoted, there was a ritual to acknowledge that. Unfortunately, the ritual scenarios were all lost, so we don't know what those entailed.

• 36:36Holly Frey?

  Code names were also introduced at this time, with each member being given one that was kind of based in antiquity and historical studies. Weisaupt, for example, was called Spartacus. And there was also a coded way for all of the members to communicate that was introduced.

• 36:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  The biggest change was in the target age group for recruiting. In Weisaupt's original scheme, they were focused on boys and men between the ages of 15 and 20 because they were malleable. But Adolf's ideology was that more mature and experienced men were needed to fully round out the membership and also optimize the chances of affecting change.

• 37:17Holly Frey?

  And all of this work that Adolf did was a boon to the organization. A lot of people in Bavaria and surrounding areas at the time, as we said at the top of the show, were frustrated with the level of power held by the church. And many self-professed free thinkers were really eager to connect with others who shared their views. Soon, very respected men from a variety of fields and professions had become part of the group. And it is estimated that the numbers of the Illuminati swelled to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 members by the mid 1780s.

• 37:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  A group that grows from five people to at least a couple thousand in eight years was naturally going to gain attention, even though its members were sworn to secrecy, in part because you can't contain it once a group expands like this, but also because once again, fracturing happens when you get large groups of people to try to come together on things. And in the case of the Illuminati, Weishaupt and Adolf were increasingly at odds with each other. Their conflict began in 1783 as Weishaupt started to evidence more and more of a very domineering personality.

• 38:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  And the two men's visions for the future of the society became increasingly more divergent. By the summer of 1784, Adolf had left the organization, and another man, Joseph Utschneider, had also left in frustration. That happened in 1783, and he had taken several members with him. And it appears he outed the society in a letter to the Bavarian Electress, Elizabeth Augusta of Sulzbach. In this letter, Utschneider made a lot of claims that were not true about controversial beliefs of the members of the order, and also hinted that this group was in league with Austria to bring down Bavaria.

• 39:16Holly Frey?

  Yeah, he included some of the things that they were doing that were real, but it seems like he kind of added some additional flavor to make them sound really, really dangerous. And this was a time when Bavaria and Austria were deeply at odds, and Elizabeth naturally brought this letter to her husband, Duke Elector Charles Teodor. His response was to ban any society that was not sanctioned by the Bavarian government. Weishaupt didn't seem too concerned and things initially continued more or less as they had before the edict, although still with the same internal problems of the organization. But then the following year, the Bavarian Illuminati was named specifically in an edict that banned the group.

• 40:00Holly Frey?

  At this point, things got quite serious. Weishaupt was fired from the university. Members of the group were outed and subsequently arrested, and materials that the government found in the raids of members' homes only damned the group more. Topics like atheism, abortion, and insurrection were rumored to have been in the documents that were seized. I know I find myself wondering with all of these scholarly papers they were writing, how many of these were kind of examinations of these topics rather than saying like, we should be doing these things. But it was enough to get the Bavarian government very upset. The Illuminati at this point was completely vilified, and in 1787, a third edict was

• 40:42Holly Frey?

  issued that made it punishable by death to be a part of it.

• 40:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Weishaupt fled to Gotha, and there he was under the protection of Ernest II Duke of Saxagotha Altenberg, who had been a member of the Illuminati. Weishaupt was given a teaching position at the University of Gottingen, and it was believed by most that the Bavarian Illuminati was disbanded once Weishaupt left Ingolstadt, but recent scholarship indicates that he did try to start a new branch while he was in Gotha called Ionia. Comprehensive paper detailing this new information is expected to be published in 2027. Adam Weishaupt lived out the rest of his life in Gotha, and he died there on November 18th of 1830.

• 41:30Holly Frey?

  So, how did the Illuminati become this organizational boogeyman that sparks endless conspiracy theories? Well, that actually started relatively soon after it was disbanded. In 1798, Scottish scientist John Robison published "Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried On in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies," in which he alleged that the Illuminati and Freemasons had conspired to bring about the French Revolution as part of a larger effort to destabilize Europe and make it fertile ground for the Enlightenment to move in.

• 42:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  In more modern years, there's another explanation. In 2020, journalist Sophia Smith-Gaylor, writing for the BBC, pointed to a 1963 book written by Gregory Hill and Carrie Thornley. This was originally published as photocopies, not as a printed book, but it was called Principia Discordia. And that was the start of a hoax disinformation campaign that seems to have seeded a lot of the modern mythology of the Illuminati. Discordia was a chaos-based belief system that these two men came up with to try to shake up a world that they thought was too rigid and controlled.

• 42:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  These were two people that had grown up together. This work was very jokey. It's surrealist and absurd, and it's been rumored to have been written while one or both of the authors were on an acid trip. It outlines the workings of the Discordian religion, which appears to be from another world, and it references the Bavarian Illuminati, sort of. It features an advertisement placed by the Bavarian Illuminati that invited new members, touting, quote, "If your IQ is over 150 and you have $3,125 plus handling, you might be eligible for a trial membership in AISB Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria.

• 43:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  If you think you qualify, put the money in a cigar box and bury it in your backyard. One of our underground agents will contact you shortly. I dare you tell no one, accidents have a strange way of happening to people who talk too much about the Bavarian Illuminati."

• 43:54Holly Frey?

  This was originally just a few, by which I mean five, copies that got passed around in counterculture circles. But the authors and their friends wanted to continue to drop misinformation anywhere it might be picked up as a way to generate the chaos that they were after. The idea was that if you were given something that made you look at the world in an absurd way, you might start thinking about all of the very normal things that are actually absurd in our lives. One of the avenues they used to do this was the letters from readers section of Playboy magazine. In the 1960s, Carrie Thornley's friend, Robert Anton Wilson, was working at Playboy. I think he was an associate editor, but I'm not positive.

• 44:39Holly Frey?

  And he and Thornley came up with this idea that they would plant fake reader letters in the magazine that talked about the Illuminati as a global control society. And then they would send in fake replies to those original letters that started a debate about it. And this actually got people talking, wondering what the heck the Illuminati was.

• 45:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Today, we call this astroturfing.

• 45:02Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  So then Wilson and his friend Robert Shea wrote three books known as the Illuminatus Trilogy. They had the titles Eye in the Pyramid, Golden Apple, and Leviathan. These are satirical novels. They are fiction, but it was in these books they started a variety of rumors that still persist in some circles today. They had very disjointed plots, but there's a battle between the Discordians and the Illuminati, and the Illuminati are linked to the American Medical Association and Hitler and the Kennedy assassination. And over the years, a lot of these ideas have really gotten traction and then been repeated over and over without any sourcing. So unless you really go digging, it can be hard to trace the origins.

• 45:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  As for why these ideas are so alluring, journalist Gaylor put it pretty perfectly, stating, quote, "The idea of an untouchable secretive elite must resonate with people that feel left behind and powerless."

• 46:02Holly Frey?

  Yeah, those were not the only conspiratorial things that they linked the Illuminati with, but that is just a sampling to give you an idea. If you have spent any time in conspiracy theory spaces, you've heard all of those things repeated as though they are truths. I just find it funny that this campaign of like, let's do something so silly and satirical that it will make people kind of wake up and rethink everything they're doing critically, and instead it had the opposite effect in a lot of cases. Today, there is a historical marker plaque on Weishaupt's home in Ingolstadt noting that it was an Illuminati meeting place. In 2017, Michael Klarnor, who at the time was leading history tours in Ingolstadt that

• 46:47Holly Frey?

  were Illuminati-themed, I don't know if he still does those, but he told the BBC, quote, "Of course, we get some conspiracy theorists on the tours I do, but we can educate them to what is the real truth and what is conspiracy."

• 47:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  And just in case you're tempted to start thinking about a new world order controlling everything that happens here on planet Earth, it is worth remembering that in spite of starting out with the relatively noble idea of getting out from under a very rigid educational system that didn't allow free thought, the Bavarian Illuminati was actually a pretty small, poorly organized group that fell victim to the same kind of infighting that plagues pretty much every group. It was also led by a man with ego issues, and it could not hold itself together or keep the secret of its own existence. So not an organization that is likely to have pulled off any world domination.

• 47:42Holly Frey?

  Yeah, yeah. When you look at it, it's like, oh, these are a bunch of messy kids. See what they're doing? They're not all kids in the sense of being youths, but you know what I mean.

• 47:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure.

• 47:55Holly Frey?

  You messy children.

• 47:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Holly Frey?

  I just find that funny. So anytime someone references the Illuminati as like a thing, I'm always like, cute. Let me tell you about Adam Weishaupt. He's the guy that everyone at the party is saying, I wish this guy would leave. I promise it. I promise it. I have a fun little listener mail about our recent episode on my beloved Huxley.

• 48:27Holly Frey?

  This is from our listener Lauren who writes, hi Holly and Tracy. I've been a listener since 2013 when I was looking for ways to jazz up a long, boring commute to my summer internship. I've never felt compelled to write in until now, but your recent episode on Thomas Huxley made me want to share a quirky bit of family history. I have an ancestor named Darwin Huxley McLaughlin. The Darwin is self-explanatory, but I never knew much about the Huxley part of his name other than Huxley was a scientist and I had a vague sense he was related to Aldous Huxley. I was therefore delighted when I saw you done an episode on Thomas Huxley. The family lore is that Darwin Huxley's father named him thusly because he was really interested in science. But after listening to the Huxley episode, it sure seems like he was interested in evolution

• 49:12Holly Frey?

  specifically. Darwin Huxley was born in 1872, the youngest of 11 children in absolutely the middle of nowhere, Kansas. His father, William, who chose the name, was born in absolutely the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, and received only a rudimentary education. William spent his adult life as a farmer in Kansas, but clearly he was well-read, not to mention unconventional enough, to name his son after Darwin and Huxley only 13 years after On the Origin of Species was first published. I think he must have been a fascinating person. I do too. According to his obituary, he wrote a series of articles on the birds of Kansas for the local newspaper. I wish I knew if he referenced their evolution.

• 49:54Holly Frey?

  I have attached photos of William McLaughlin and Darwin Huxley McLaughlin with their wives. William is the one who appears to have been a victim of early Photoshop techniques. That often happens with old pictures. For pet tax, I also enclosed photos of our three cats, the twins Copernicus and Galileo, and our void girl Ricky Tiki Tabby. You can tell Copernicus and Galileo apart because Galileo has pointy ears and Copernicus has rounded ears. I'm like, maybe that was true of the bin they're named for. Probably not. If you are looking for a possible episode topic, I recently ran across some reference to the medieval tradition of officially sanctioned relic stealing, and it was surprisingly swashbuckling wild ride.

• 50:35Holly Frey?

  Apparently Thou shalt not steal had a well-understood exception when it came to bits of saints that were housed in other cities' churches. We talked about this a little bit when we talked about the catacombs of Rome. Not in this specific sense, but people wanting to go steal things to be part of of their own religions. Lauren continues, they shrugged it off by saying if the saint didn't want their corpse stolen, the saint would have done something to prevent the large group of armed men from making off with it. Keep up the good fight educating the world. I love this letter for so many reasons. I mean, there are fabulous pictures. These older photos are spectacular. I love them.

• 51:16Holly Frey?

  And the kitties, listen, Galileo and Copernicus are big fluffy. They look like double-coated gray cats, which is near and dear to my heart. Also Ricky Tiki Tabby, beautiful. We all love a void here. That stuff you missed in history class. We have voids in our families. Tracy has two. I have but one. But mine is extra fluffy, I guess to make up for the gap in fur. I don't know. But I love it. This is so very cool. I love the idea of this, not only just because it's fun, family trivia, but it is one of those things that I always want to highlight as a very real and also near to my heart

• 52:01Holly Frey?

  thing, which is like the autodidacts of the world. There are so many people that did not grow up with a formalized education or the opportunities to learn in the ways that others have, who are smarter than the rest of us put together in many cases, and choose to follow their curiosity to really become incredibly knowledgeable. And this is clearly one of those people. So you have a winner in your family tree, probably many, but he specifically wins my heart for today. If you would like to write to us and tell us about your family and its delightful naming schemes for children or anything else, or cats for that matter, you can do that at [email protected].

• 52:43Holly Frey?

  You can also find the show notes for today's episode or any episode we do at missedinhistory.com. You just click into any episode, you will see all of the references that we used, and I hope you do and enjoy those. You can also subscribe to the show. It's easy as pie. You can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.

• 53:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:23Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

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  Hola a todos. Soy Jamie Lynn Segler. Cuando me diagnosticaron tenía veintitantos años y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones, la elección para mí fue obvia. Boom, eso es KISSIMTA. Obtenga más información sobre KISSIMTA o fotumab en kissimta.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.