Freidenker / Statuten des Freidenker / Enthüllungen aus der geistlichen Welt / Offener Brief an den katholischen Klerus... / Luzifer. Eine Bombe der Wahrheit...

This binding from Osijek presents an extremely interesting and almost complete collection of works by Michael Biron - former priest and hospital chaplain - organizer of the first free-thinking (Freidenker) movement in Austria. The binding is not just a collection of unrelated publications, but a logically complex whole that shows the development of his movement from organizational beginnings through public propaganda to open conflict with the Catholic Church and his exile from Austria.

1.) Freidenker. Blätter für Humanität, Aufklärung und Bildung (issues 1–30, 1869–1871) The first and largest part of the binding consists of all thirty issues of the magazine Freidenker (480 pages), the official newsletter of the Freidenker Society in Graz. Biron started it in 1869 with the aim of promoting humanity, education, freedom of conscience and critical thinking. Freidenker had a circulation of around 1,500 copies by February 1870, which was very respectable for a radical paper in a provincial center at the time.

2.) Statuten des Freidenker-Vereines in Graz (1869) The magazine is followed by the statute of the society, a kind of constitution of the organization. Today it is particularly interesting because it shows how moderate and legalistic the movement was at the beginning, with the proclaimed purpose of working in Graz "for Humanität, Aufklärung und Bildung". The organization was democratically organized, and both men and women could be members, which was quite advanced for 1869.

3.) Offener Brief an den katholischen Klerus und an alle Katholiken (Open letter to the Catholic clergy and all Catholics) - seventh edition, around 1870. This brochure represents Biron's public showdown with the institution to which he once belonged. The work is important because it shows the transition from organizational work to open public criticism of the Church.

4.) Enthüllungen aus der geistlichen Welt (Revelations from the priestly world) - Graz 1870, third edition. This book is probably Biron's most personal work, with features of memoir, confession and social criticism. The title does not mean the "spiritual world" in the mystical sense, but the world of clergy and church institutions. Biron's criticism of the church and clergy is interesting because it comes from a man who has long been part of the system he is now describing.

5.) Lucifer. Eine Bombe der Wahrheit in das römische Concil oder Vertheidigung der Religion des reinen Menschenthums (Lucifer. One bomb of truth in the Roman council or the defense of the religion of pure humanity) - Graz, Leykam 1870, 46 p.; in the copy to p. 40, last 6 pages missing. The last work in the binding represents the peak of Biron's ideological struggle. It was written at the time of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), when the dogma of papal infallibility was proclaimed.

In contrast to the moderate tone of the society's statutes, Lucifer is a distinctly polemical and combative work. It clearly shows why Biron became one of the most controversial figures of the Austrian free-thinking movement.

Viewed as a whole, this volume presents almost the entire intellectual biography of Michael Biron between 1869 and 1871. This is why this copy from Osijek can be seen as a small library of Austrian freethinking from the turn of the 1860s to the 1870s.