Freemasonry is a supranational ethical movement that associates people who want to do good from a moral perspective. Masons repudiate ethnic, national, racial, political, religious and professional prejudice, do not subscribe to libertinism, and require faith in a Supreme Being, referred to as the Great Architect of the Universe. The first Poznań lodge opened on 5 October 1780 and took the name “Crowned Permanence”. It accepted both Poles and Germans and was run by Count Ignacy Działyński. Subsequent Polish and German lodges emerged from it later.

The most interesting figure of the Wielkopolska group of Freemasons was Gen. Augustyn Gorzeński, who built a new palace, whose construction (especially the plan) was modelled on the Masonic Square, in place of the existing defensive manor in Dobrzyca (Pleszew County) between 1795 and 1799.

Polish lodges in the Prussian partition ceased functioning after 1794 and did not reopen until the Napoleonic period. Gen. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski was a Master Mason and practically all the generals in the Duchy of Warsaw were lodge members, as was Józef Wybicki, who penned the words of our national anthem.

Wielkopolska’s Masonic heritage mostly survives in the Dobrzyca palace and park complex and the reconstructed Poznań lodge at ul. Grobla 25. The Independent Section of Masonic Collections is kept in the University Library in the Wielkopolska capital. Wielkopolska’s Masonic literature has been stored, catalogued and open to the public at a branch of the University Library in the former Poznań Bishops’ Palace in Ciążeń (Słupca County) since 1969. This is the largest collection of Masonic literature in the country and one of the largest in Europe.