Forget-Me-Not Masonic Myth
The growing popular belief that Masons adopted the Forget-me-not flower during the Nazi period to identify themselves in secret, and as a substitute for the Square-and-Compasses, is nothing but a myth? For though it is true that the Nazis did outlaw Freemasonry in WWII, and that Masons were indeed sent to concentration camps where they allegedly seemed to have held meetings in secret, there is absolutely no record of the flower, or the pin depicting it, ever having been used or worn by Masons during the war anywhere in Germany, much less in concentration camps, as legends would have it. What happened was that the Grand Lodge zur Sonne of Batreuth in Bavaria commissioned a pin which in 1926 depicted a Forget-me-not, it being a symbol for love, fidelity, and remembrance in the region, including Germany. In 1934-1938, the Nazis used the same pin, manufactured in the same Selb factory, using the same moulds it did in 1926 for the Grand Lodge zur Sonne. After the war, the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of Germany distributed the same pin as a token of friendship whenever he made official visits abroad, most notably at a Conference of Grand Masters in Washington DC in 1953, where he recounted the tragic tale of Freemasonry under the Nazis. He there expressed the hope that the pin would be worn in remembrance of that oppression. This probably explains how the blue Forget-me-not became an adopted emblem by German Masons after the war and why, when American Freemasons later founded military lodges in Germany, at least one chose that flower as the lodge name. Many lodges in Germany, at least up until recently, presented a Forget-me-not pin to newly raised Master Masons.