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Forget me not

In 1934, shortly after Hitler's arrival to power, the Grand Sun Lodge in Bayreuth, one of the great German lodges, facing the imminent problems it faced decided to adopt the small blue flower "Blue Forget Me Not" as a Masonic emblem replacing to the squad and the compass, as a sign of identity among the Masons. It was thought that the new symbol would not draw the attention of the nazis , who were confiscating and seizing the lodges and all masonic properties. Masonry had gone underground and it was necessary for the brothers to have some easily recognizable means of identification.

When in 1947 the Grand Lodge of the Sun was reopened in Bayreuth, a small pin in the shape of the blue forget-me-not flower, was proposed and adopted as the official emblem of the First Annual Convention of those who had survived the most terrible years of darkness, bringing again the Light of Freemasonry to the Temples. One year later, at the First Annual Convention of the United Grand Lodges of Germany, the pin was adopted as the official Masonic emblem to honor the brave Brothers who had been carrying out their work under the most adverse conditions. So a small, insignificant blue flower became a significant emblem of the Order, becoming perhaps the emblem most used by German Freemasons.

By an extraordinary coincidence, the pin used by the nazis for the winter 1938 collection, was the same one chosen by the Masons in 1926 and was manufactured in the same Selb factory. No doubt, the Masons who had worn it in Bremen in 1926 were pleased to see it look good again 12 years later. But there is no doubt that this pin could not be used after the 1938 collection: using a mark or emblem that had not been distributed by the Party constituted a criminal offense during the Nazi regime. When the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Bayreuth Vogel installed a new Lodge in Selb in 1948, he remembered the anecdote of the pin “Do not Forget Me”. As the factory and molds still existed, Vogel ordered a large number of these pines, which he would distribute as a sign of brotherhood, wherever he went on official visits, especially to the United States in 1961. This also explains why, when North American Masons later founded military lodges in Germany, some of them chose the flower by name. Such is the case with the Forget me Not N Logia. or 896 at Heilbronn, recognized by the American-Canadian Grand Lodge in 1965.