At the start of their new periodical in 1847, its initiators asked themselves – with good reason – whether the publishing of yet another Masonic periodical would be of any use considering the already numerous existing papers. However, it was with equally good reason that they observed that the situation of the union was developing so rapidly that it appeared nearly impossible to do justice to the important events within the individual lodges.
«On the way to human perfection there must be no stillstand; and where human beings earnestly and successfully improve their education in thinking, feeling, and willing, there will be no conservatism considering all that man has created; he is, in his nature and in his acting, meant to develop... To teach the Mason from all the lodges which he cannot visit, from all the men whom he cannot watch doing good works, from all the hearts into whose workshops he is unable to look – to all this the press will provide an opportunity, and it is this purpose which this new periodical can also serve. At least that's what it should try.»
Under the editorship of Rudolph Richard Fischer the weekly issues, which could only be purchased by identified members of the lodges, offered information on ethical principles of Freemasonry, on the lives of the single lodges, news about their legislations and their constitutions. It published biographies of brothers of outstanding merit and articles about procedural questions on politics and religion. Furthermore, the Freimaurer-Zeitung did not neglect to write about foreign events so that «it [the periodical] shall also establish a connection to these long distances and thus bring lodges, as well as Masons, closer together».