German Jews Beyond Judaism 0253325757, 9780253325754

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
I A Cultural Emancipation
II German Jews and German Popular Culture
III Intellectual Authority and Scholarship
IV A Left-Wing Identity
V The End and a New Beginning?
Notes
Index

Citation preview

G E R M A N JEW S B E Y O N D JU D AISM

T H E M O D ERN JE W ISH E X P E R IE N C E

Paula H ym an and Deborah Dash M oore, editors

Lavater and Lessing Visit Moses Mendelssohn, a paint­ ing by Moritz Oppenheim, signed and dated 1856. Mendelssohn is playing chess with Johann Caspar La­ vater. Standing is the writer and dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Courtesy of the Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum, Berkeley, California.

George L . Mosse

GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

Indiana University Press •

bloomington

Hebrew Union College Press • C i n c i n n a t i

This book is based on the Gustave A . and Mamie W. Efroym son Memorial Lectures delivered at the Hebrew Union Colleee-Jew ish Institute o f Religion in Cincinnati» O hio, in A pril 1983.

First Midland Book edition 1985. Copyright €> 1985 by Hebrew Union College Press All rights reserved N o part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. Manufactured in the United Sûtes of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mosse, George L. (George Lachmann), 19 18 German Jews beyond Judaism. (The Modem Jewish experience) Based on the author’s Efroymson lectures at Hebrew Union Colleee. Bibliography: p. Includes index. i. Jews—Germany—Intellectual life. 2. Germany— Intellectual life. 3. Germany—Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series: Modem Jewish experience (Bloomington, Ind.) D S135.G 33M 59 1983 30j.8'924*043 84-42841 ISB N 0-253-32575-7 cl. ISBN 0-253-20355-4 pa. i 2 3 4 5 89 88 87 86 85

CONTENTS

PR EFA C E

I. A Cultural Emancipation I L Germ an Jew s and Germ an Popular Culture

ix

i 21

III. Intellectual A uthority and Scholarship

42

I V . A Left-W in g Identity

55

V.

The En d and a N e w Beginning?

72

n o tes

83

IN D EX

95

PREFACE

W hat started as the E froym son lectures at H ebrew U nion C ollege has becom e a book. W hen I was invited to give these lectures, they seemed an excellent opportunity to analyze a heritage which has both fascinated and puzzled me over a long period o f tim e. Stu­ dents at the U niversity o f W isconsin in the 1960s first brought the present-day attraction o f this heritage to m y attention; courses in European cultural history were filled w ith young people searching fo r a new identity. For many, the ideas discussed in this book came as revelation— supplying an inspiration which their ow n Am erican tradition had som ehow failed to provide. I have had sim ilar experi­ ences in G erm any in recent years. Some o f the Germ an ideas w hich had provided G erm an-Jew ish intellectuals w ith their iden­ tity w ere fam iliar, but their Jew ish context was all but forgotten. T his book is meant as an introduction to a G erm an-Jew ish identity destined to remain relevant. It points to Germ an culture in the age o f Jew ish em ancipation as first providing a G erm an-Jew ish identity; it was subsequently an inspiration fo r m any men and wom en searching to humanize their society and their lives. It also show s how intellectual and articulate Jew s drifted out o f the main­ stream o f Germ an culture and politics into an intellectual isolation even before the N azi seizure o f power. Such isolation m ight have remained w ithout consequence except fo r the use made o f it b y the Germ an political right. T his book can also be read as a study o f the Germ an Bildungsbürgertum , im plying m ore than the English "cu l­ tured bourgeoisie”— the social group to which so m any Germ an Jew s belonged and w ithin which they played a controversial role. I w ant to express m y specific gratitude to the late U riel Tal fo r m any discussions on this topic over the years. D avid Sorkin’s description o f Bildung has largely determined m y own analysis o f this im portant concept. The holdings on the history o f Germ an Jew ry o f the N ational and H ebrew U niversity L ib rary in Jerusalem have proved inexhaustible, and it has been necessary and pleasant to consult the libraries o f the Leo Baeck Institute in N ew York and Jerusalem as w ell. W ithout the friendship and encouragem ent o f Paul Breines, this book w ould not have been w ritten at all. IX

G E R M A N JEW S B E Y O N D JU D AISM

I A Cultural Emancipation

T o d is c u s s once m ore the G erm an-Jew ish dialogue seems super­ flous at best, an effort to recapture a history which seems to have failed. W hile som e claim that the dialogue never took place at all, and others believe that Jew s had a large space in w hich to become Germ ans, both seem to have m issed the m ost im portant fact about this dialogue, w hich, in a tru ly unprecedented fashion, became an integral part o f the European intellectual tradition, in spite o f its apparent failure after the N azi seizure o f power. For exam ple, the G erm an-Jew ish dialogue largely determined what w e perceive as Weimar culture (although this was only one o f its aspects)—Jew s interacting w ith Germ ans on m any levels o f art and literature. Tw enty years after the collapse o f the Third Reich, students throughout the western w orld returned to that tradition in their search fo r a better society, an alternative to the constraints im posed upon the individual. Although this dialogue did not affect all G er­ man Jew s in equal manner— those in the city m ore than those in the country, the articulate m inority m ore than the inarticulate ma­ jo rity — m ost w ere touched b y its ideal o f self-cultivation and lib ­ eral outlook on society and politics, based upon the need to tran­ scend the gu lf between their ow n history and the Germ an tradition— to stress what united rather than divided peoples and nations. The Germ an-Jew ish dialogue w ith which w e are con1

2

GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

cem ed not only served to produce a unique heritage fo r the Jew s them selves and fo r intellectuals all over Europe, but also became a part o f the G erm an-Jew ish identity, infiltrating to some extent m ost aspects o f Jew ish life in Germ any. The Jew s w ere a sm all m inority in Germ any, never much m ore than i percent o f the total population, and w hile G erm any between 18 7 1 and 1933 grew from 4 1 m illion to about 65 m illion, the Jew ish population hovered between 500,000 and 600,000.' It was this tiny m inority w hich entered into a dialogue w ith the m ajority. The very term “ dialogue” connotes a conversation be­ tween equals, and the G erm an-Jew ish dialogue was such a conver­ sation at tim es. I prefer, however, to define “ dialogue” as an in­ teraction on different intellectual levels, not necessarily equal (which seems to me irrelevant and difficult to define in this con­ text) but alw ays w ithout giving up one’s ow n identity— Germ ans as Germ ans and Jew s as Germ an Jew s. That Jew ish identity had to be redefined, as Jew ish em ancipation led to Jew ish assim ilation, did not mean a rejection o f that identity, as is often asserted in retro­ spect; Germ an Jew s were fo r the m ost part fu lly aware o f their Jew ish origins. A s a 1930 article in the journal o f the C entral A ssociation o f Germ an Jew s (C. V. Zeitung) put it, w e m ust place the highest value on hum anity as a w hole, w hile at the same tim e loving the Germ an people and our specific Jew ishness.2 W hat, then, was the nature o f this dialogue and the reason fo r its great attraction fo r Germ an Jew ry and fo r others, later, w ho lived long after its end? The answer to that question, as I w ill attem pt to present it, transcends the specifically Jew ish and G er­ m an; it lies in the search fo r a personal identity beyond religion and nationality. I w ill first ask w h y im portant and articulate G er­ man Jew s in interaction w ith their Germ an environm ent em barked upon the search fo r such an identity— and when they thought it established, clung to it until the bitter end. Then I shall ring som e im portant variations upon this theme— how Germ an Jew s at­ tempted to connect w ith the Germ an people, to Germ an popular culture; the new kind o f scholarship which grew out o f this search; and, finally, the characteristics o f the peculiar left-w ing identity that em erged, although liberalism continued to be the political hom e o f m ost Jew s. The tim ing o f G erm an-Jew ish em ancipation determined the

A Cultural Emancipation

3

definition o f Jew ishness. Jew s w ere emancipated during the first decade o f the nineteenth century in the autumn o f the Germ an Enlightenm ent. T his gave them their optim ism , a certain faith in them selves and in humanity. Sulamith, the journal founded in or­ der to speed up the process o f Jew ish em ancipation, w rote in 1 8 1 1 that the “ people o f Abraham , fighting against obstacles o f all kinds are w orking their w ay upwards to hum anity.” 1 From darkness to light— that theme o f liberalism and, later, o f socialism — was deeply ingrained in Germ an Jew ry. But if the Enlightenm ent made Jew ish em ancipation possible, gave it a faith and an aim , it also supported an ideal o f self-education which was decisive fo r the history o f Germ an Jew ry. Jew s w ere emancipated at a tim e in Germ an history when what w e m ight call “ high culture” was becom ing an integral part o f both Germ an citizenship and the Enlightenm ent. The w ord B il­ dung com bines the meaning carried by the English w ord “ educa­ tion” w ith notions o f character form ation and m oral education.4 M an m ust grow like a plant, as H erder put it, tow ard the unfolding o f his personality until he becom es an harm onious, autonom ous individual exem plifying both the continuing quest fo r knowledge and the m oral im perative.1 G oethe’s Wilhelm Meister*s Apprentice­ ship (179 5-9 6 ) summed up this ideal in one phrase— “ the cultiva­ tion o f m y individual self just as I am ” ("mich selbst, ganz w ie ich da bin, auszubilden“).* Such self-education was an inward process o f developm ent through which the inherent abilities o f the indi­ vidual were developed and realized.7 The term “ inw ard process” as applied to the acquisition o f Bildung did not refer to instinctual drives o r em otional preferences but to the cultivation o f reason and aesthetic taste; its purpose was to lead the individual from superstition to enlightenment. Bildung and the Enlightenm ent joined hands during the period o f Jew ish em ancipation; they w ere meant to com plem ent each other. M oreover, such self-cultivation was a continuous process w hich was never supposed to end during one’s life. Thus those w ho follow ed this ideal saw themselves as part o f a process rather than as finished products o f education. Surely here was an ideal ready­ made fo r Jew ish assim ilation, because it transcended all differences o f nationality and religion through the unfolding o f the individual personality.

4

GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

H erder had already envisioned the concept o f Bildung as a means o f overcom ing the inequality between men. H e wanted to level the differences between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy b y confronting the n obility w ith an ideal which w ould deflate its pretensions.' The instrum ent used to abolish the inequality be­ tween bourgeois and aristocrat m ight also w ork to transcend the differences between the Germ an and the Jew ish m iddle classes. The centrality o f the ideal o f Bildung in G erm an-Jew ish con­ sciousness m ust be understood from the very beginning— it w as basic to Jew ish engagement w ith liberalism and socialism» funda­ mental to the search fo r a new Jew ish identity after em ancipation. The concept o f Bildung became fo r m any Jew s synonym ous w ith their Jewishness» especially after the end o f the nineteenth century» when m ost Germ ans themselves had distorted the original concept beyond recognition. Berthold Auerbach» considered b y his fellow Jew s to be one o f the m ost representative Germ an Jew s o f the nineteenth century» w rote that "form erly the religious spirit proceeded from revela­ tion» the present starts w ith Bildung."9 H is Schrift und Volk (The People and the Book, 1846) called fo r religion to becom e Bildung — "an inner liberation and deliverance o f m an, his true rebirth; not through w ords or custom s, but through his deeds, his character, the totality o f his life, the cleansing and healing o f all human labor.” 10 Generations later, from exile in London in 1939, R abbi Ignaz M aybaum lamented that w hile during the Weimar Republic som eone w ho did not believe in the prevalent concepts o f G od could still be considered a man o f culture, today, he w rote, such a man can choose only "barbarism o r faith .” u Judaism had becom e a position o f last resort in a w orld increasingly deprived o f Bildung. That Germ an Jew s so w holeheartedly accepted the ideal o f Bildung as a new faith suited to their Germ an citizenship w as a result o f their social structure. Germ an Jew ry contained a sm all upper class w hich corresponded to the various levels o f the gentile m iddle class, but m ost Jew s were poor (Jewish beggars were not unknown), and others lacked a steady source o f incom e. Perhaps because they were w ithout roots in any established class or occu­ pation, it was relatively easy fo r m ost o f them to embrace the ideals and goals o f the bourgeoisie into which they had been eman­ cipated.12 H ow ever, unlike the Germ an m iddle class, Jew s had no

A Cultural Emancipation

5

organic or fam ily ties to the low er classes and no experience w ith G erm an popular piety and Germ an popular culture. For exam ple, Berthold Auerbach, as the author o f the popular Black Forest Peasant Tales (Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten, 1843J, enjoyed an unprecedented esteem and popularity among Jew s and gentiles alike. Auerbach was bom in a village, but when he came to define the nature o f peasant society in his Schrift und Volk, his peasants reflected a m iddle-class outlook on the w orld. Those w ho live on the land, he tells us, regard life not as a means to find pleasure but as directed b y a sense o f duty, where righteousness prevails and action is based on reflection.13 A uerbach's peasants are assim ilated into bourgeois society as they break out o f their nar­ row regional vision and religious bigotry. A fter all, whatever one’s class o r station in life, "the developm ent o f the human spirit know s no boundaries and cannot be confined b y religious dogm a. ” MTo be sure, Jew s seldom appear in his village stories, and never as ped­ dlers, w hich w as the w ay m any villagers encountered Jew s. The few Jew s in his stories were usually teachers or merchants at the periphery o f village life and yet existing harm oniously side by side w ith the peasants.” A t one tim e, when anti-Sem itism was on the rise, Auerbach wanted to w rite a story about a Jew ish village (after all, such villages existed in Germ any) but gave up w ithout explana­ tio n ,” perhaps because such a subject was not congenial to one com m itted to transcending religious differences through Bildung. Sm all w onder then, that A uerbach’s popularity declined hand in hand w ith the original ideal o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent— his Dorfgeschichten were eventually forgotten. The taste o f the bourgeoisie changed, and as the twentieth century began, they wanted to read about peasants w ho exem plified the ideal o f rootedness in the nation which they had made their ow n. N o w it was H erm ann Lön s’s D er W ehrwolf (19 10 ) which pre-em pted the popularity once granted to A uerbach's village stories. H ere the peasants sym bolize the elemental forces o f Germ anic nature, coursing beneath the surface, as they defend their land during the T h irty Years W ar; cruelty was accepted as a part o f everyday life .17 Lons exalted a Germ an peasant type quite different from the peas­ ant b oy in A uerbach’s Barfüssle (The G irl without Shoes, 1856), w ho repudiated all thoughts o f revenge against his persecutors and left his village harboring ill w ill tow ard no one. Bildung and the

6

GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

Enlightenm ent, the substance o f Auerbach’s Jew ishness, respected during the nineteenth century, were being repudiated at the begin­ ning o f the twentieth. Several presuppositions o f the Enlightenm ent were basic to the concept o f Bildung — the optim ism about the potential o f hu­ man nature and the autonom y o f m an; the belief that acquired know ledge w ould activate the m oral im perative; and, last but not least, the belief that all w ho w ere w illing to use and develop their reason could attain this ideal. “ The possession o f a higher Bildung is the knighthood o f m odernity, and, unlike the m edieval knighthood, one w hich Jew s as w ell as gentiles could attain. A s Sulamith w rote, “ I f w e talk about equality, then its meaning m ust focus upon m an's potential, if w e deny the equal potential o f man, then all equality vanishes.” 19 It was the degree o f a person’s B il­ dung, not his religious or national heritage, which ultim ately de­ cided the degree o f equality. The quest fo r harm ony was basic to the concept o f Bildung in a G erm any touched b y the industrialization o f Europe, frightened b y the French R evolution. The aesthetic was the keystone o f that harm ony, linking the intellectual and the m oral. That this should have been the case is difficult to understand in our own tim e, when beauty has becom e relative and the aesthetic is either regarded as a luxury o r trivialized into the knickknacks o f daily life. But during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, w riters such as W ilhelm von H um boldt, w ho elaborated the concept o f Bildung, stood under the pow erful influence o f the G reeks. Ancient beauty seemed to give form and direction to individual and communal ideals. The classics provided the modes o f thought and taste essen­ tial to the cultivation o f the personality. The aesthetic was linked to the intellectual faculty, and both activated the m oral im perative w hich resided in every man. The beautiful as the essence o f aesthetic education was not rom anticized but understood through reason, as lean as G reek sculpure itself. The beautiful, in accordance w ith the G reek ideal, was conceived as harm onious and w ell proportioned, w ithout any excess or false note which m ight disrupt its quiet greatness. Beauty was supposed to aid in controlling the passions, not in unleashing them, em phasizing that self-control which the bourgeois prized so highly. The ideal o f G reek beauty transcended the daily, the

A Cultural Emancipation

7

m om entary; fo r H um boldt, as fo r G oethe and Schiller, it sym ­ bolized the ideal o f a shared hum anity tow ard which Bildung must strive. T his beauty was a m oral beauty through its strictness and harm ony o f form ; fo r Schiller it was supposed to keep hum anity from going astray in cruelty, slackness, and perversity.20 Bildung w as not chaotic or experim ental but disciplined and selfcontrolled. A rtists and w riters could play a key role in pointing the w ay to true Bildung. For exam ple, G oethe understood his role in soci­ ety as that o f an educator, and so did Schiller in his Über die

ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (The Aesthetic Education o f M ankind, 1795). Indeed, some o f the m ost im portant Germ anJew ish w riters continued this tradition; precisely because they w ere w riters, they had a special m ission to educate their fellow citizens in Bildung. Eventually, they became the custodians o f the classical concept o f Bildung when tow ard the end o f the nineteenth century m any Germ ans attempted to nationalize and rom anticize it— to see beauty as a substitute religion that consoled, reconciled, and saved— beauty as truth, as holy.21 To later Germ ans, beauty satisfied em otional needs rather than strengthening rationality and self-discipline. The classical concept o f Bildung largely determined the postem ancipatory Jew ish identity. “ H e w ho wants to be filled w ith a sense o f beauty,” H um boldt tells us, "m ust have clarity o f con­ sciousness.”22 The concept o f Bildung was on one level an attempt to keep control in the m idst o f social and political disruption, but on another level, through its emphasis on aesthetics, it reflected the fact that the nineteenth century was becom ing an increasingly vi­ sually oriented age as the largely illiterate masses w ere integrated into politics and culture through the use o f sym bols— from cheap reproductions o f pictures to national monuments. The Jew s w ere eventually the losers here, as it proved easy to attack their em anci­ pation through the creation o f visual stereotypes. But at first they benefited from this developm ent, fo r the concept o f Bildung seemed ready-m ade fo r their needs— everyone could attain B il­ dung through self-developm ent and education. G oethe, fo r exam­ ple, held that men were bom w ith an innate drive tow ard Bildung. Bildung made it easy fo r Jew s to "em brace E u ro p e,” as Sulamith put it.22 Thus, in H am burg in 1837, Rabbi G otthold Salom on

8

GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

praised K ing D avid as a man o f Bildung and concluded that w ith ­ out self-control no human greatness or virtue was possible. Even m ore typical, perhaps, Ludw ig Philippson's journal fo r rabbis and Jew ish schools made a sharp distinction in 1834 between the cere­ m onial culture o f the ancient Jew s and m odem Bildung.1* The Jew s, unlike the m asses, reached fo r Bildung in order to integrate them selves into Germ an society. The Jew s and the G er­ man masses entered Germ an social and political life at roughly the same tim e, but the Jew s w ere apt to reject the w orld o f m yth and sym bol, the w orld o f feeling rather than reason. Through the very process o f their em ancipation, they were alienated from the G er­ man masses. The struggle fo r Bildung itself played an im portant part in this alienation. H um anity, w rote H um boldt in 179 2, has attained a level o f culture from which it can progress only forw ard through the self-cultivation o f individuals. Thus all institutions which hinder this self-cultivation, which transform men into the m asses, are harm ful. H um boldt used this argument to w arn against the interference o f the state in the process o f education. H um ­ boldt’s educational ideal, w hich, as Prussian m inister o f education (18 0 9 -10 ), he wanted to put into practice in the gym nasium as w ell as at the new ly founded U niversity o f Berlin, joined students and professors in an academic com m unity based solely upon m utual self-cultivation through learning.25 Yet in spite o f the religious to­ lerance w hich was supposed to prevail among those engaged in the process o f Bildung, the contrast between the individual and the m asses, the cultured bourgeoisie and the m any so-called uncul­ tured men and wom en, was a potential menace to Jew ish assim ila­ tion. T hey w ere in danger o f isolation through their consistent com m itm ent to H um boldt’s Bildung rather than to that nationalized and rom anticized concept o f self-cultivation w hich had managed to pervade popular piety and culture. Jew s w ere emancipated not only into the bourgeois w orld o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent but also into the Germ an w ars o f liberation against N apoleon. Jew s were patriots attem pting to docum ent their em ancipation and new citizenship b y enlisting in these w ars, and M oritz O ppenheim in 1835 painted a Jew ish volunteer returning home from the w ar in order to celebrate the sabbath w ith his fam ily. For the first time in Germ any, Jew s w ere portrayed b y a Jew ish artist, and in a manner w hich linked Jew ish

A Cultural Emancipation

9

religious observance to Germ an patriotism . But in the picture the patriotic overshadow s the Jew ish ritual, and both are embedded in a scene o f m iddle-class fam ily life.“ The Jew ish com m unity o f Berlin exhorted its departing sol­ diers, “ N ever forget that all w arriors are part o f a com m on human­ ity. ”27 Germ an nationalism itself was still at the crossroads in these w ars, and until the occupation o f Prussia b y N apoleon, patriotism and cosm opolitanism w ere often joined, and even fanatics o f G er­ man unity like the poet K lopstock held that Germ ans w ere en­ nobled b y their tolerance tow ard other peoples.“ W hen the an­ niversary o f the Prussian victory over the French at the batde o f Leipzig w as celebrated all over G erm any in 1814, there was a feeling o f pride that Jew s joined in the singing o f Christian chorales during the celebrations and that “ cultured” men and wom en re­ joiced in the victory o f Germ an arms w ithout regard to their reli­ gious differences.“ Patriotism retained its eighteenth-century m eaning o f solidarity rather than dom ination.10 Ernst M oritz A rndt, w hose num erous w ritings exhorted G er­ mans to fight fo r their freedom against the French, equated G er­ man freedom w ith the freedom o f all m ankind.11 Yet at the same tim e he w rote w ith contem pt about those Germ ans whose pa­ triotism was sim ilar to the religion o f N athan in Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise, 1779)— one w hich loved the w hole w orld w hile those at hom e w ere left to freeze in the cold .” This attack on the M agna C harta o f Germ an Jew ry served a purpose— the Jew as a cosm opolitan Bildungshurger was made into a sym bol fo r a com m itm ent to Bildung and the Enlightenm ent that was said to have caused G erm any’s defeat by the French— and previously enlightened thinkers such as Fichte, under the grow ing weight o f nationalism , came to share this outlook. H ow ever, Germ an Jew s b y and large did not follow the example o f patriots turned nationalist. A fter all, men w ere transform ed into citizens b y the enlightened concept o f Bildung, not by an em otional appeal to nationalist m yths and sym bols. O nce man had begun his self-cultivation, H um boldt believed, he w ould spontaneously enter political life as the culm ination o f this process. Individual freedom was o f the essence, and H um ­ boldt used the exam ple o f G reece, where citizenship and individu­ ality had been identical11— the G reeks w ere “ too noble, sensitive,

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GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

free and human” to tolerate any interference w ith the unfolding o f the human personality.14 H ere, then, was another aspect o f Bildung bound to appeal to the new ly emancipated— citizenship was not contrary to individual freedom ; indeed, citizenship could not exist w ithout individual freedom . “ The further m odem Bildung pro­ gresses,” w rote Berthold A uerbach, “ the m ore it is based upon the individual w ho from out o f his ow n unique personality joins the state. ” 1S W hat counted was individual self-cultivation and the net­ w ork o f personal relationships. The process o f em ancipation and w ith it the grow th o f auton­ om y o f the individual became a reality fo r m any Jew s through personal friendships. The eighteenth-century cult o f friendship in G erm any was part o f the ideal o f Bildung itself— differences o f personality and character m ust be recognized and then subm erged in a com m on effort at self-cultivation. For exam ple, G oethe’s Wilhelm M eistert Apprenticeship, w hose definition o f Bildung w as cited earlier, saw man’s greatest happiness in friendships consisting o f giving and receiving out o f each friend’s richness o f personality developed through mutual self-cultivation.16 Lessing, in his drama D ie Juden (The Jew s , 1749), has a Jew say to a stranger whom he has met on his travels, “ I saw that although you indicated hostility tow ard m y nation [the Jew s], you w ere favorably disposed tow ard me. A nd a man’s friendship, w hoever he be, w ill alw ays be invalu­ able to m e.” 17 Such an ideal made a substantial contribution to Jew ish eman­ cipation; indeed, m any contem poraries saw this process as part o f the cult o f friendship. M oses M endelssohn was usually pictured w alking o r talking w ith his Jew ish and Christian friends. M oritz O ppenheim painted him in the com pany o f Lessing and Lavater (see Frontispiece). The poet W ieland greeted M endelssohn “ in the sacred name o f friendship,” 1* and so did others w ho wanted to accept the Jew as an equal. Berthold Auerbach, reflecting the Jew ­ ish attitudes o f his tim e, w rote in 1839 that it was through friend­ ships w ith men such as M oses M endelssohn that humans are dis­ tinguished from anim als.1* The ideal o f friendship went deep, and w e shall com e across the tendency to personalize all relationships once m ore when w e consider how some G erm an-Jew ish w riters attempted to carry the concept o f Bildung to the Germ an people. W hen Lu dw ig Geiger, tow ard the end o f the nineteenth cen­

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tury, reflected on the literary salons which had existed in Berlin alm ost a century earlier, where Jew s and Christians had freely associated w ith each other, he saw such friendships not as a tem po­ rary bond but as a solid and durable chain linking Christians and Je w s.40Jew s w ere apt to idealize such friendships; fo r exam ple, in 1 8 1 2 , Joseph W olf saw personal friendships as the paradigm o f the relationship between G od and m an.41 N o single factor seemed to sym bolize the threat from the new w ave o f anti-Sem itism o f the 1880s better than the sacrifice o f personal friendships to so-called higher considerations o f religion, race, o r nation, as som e C h ris­ tians broke o ff their friendship w ith Jew s.42 N o other single factor can better characterize both the liberalism and the socialism o f G erm an Jew s than their desperate efforts to preserve o r to restore the autonom y o f personal relationships. The fate o f Bildung, friendship, and Jew ish em ancipation was determ ined b y historical forces w hose im portance seems clear in retrospect, even if contem poraries w ere unaware o f their signifi­ cance. The concept o f Bildung was created b y a new class reaching fo r power. For the bourgeoisie, it fulfilled tw o vital functions— it helped legitim ize the m iddle class com pared to the upper and low er classes, and it facilitated the creation o f a bourgeois elite w hich, as H um boldt intended, w ould provide better civil servants fo r the Prussian state. Jew s were emancipated into a bourgeoisie w hich needed the concept o f Bildung fo r its ow n ends. T his did not mean that it was taken ligh tly; it became an article o f faith, a striving tow ard greater things as an integral part o f bourgeois exis­ tence. W ith the passage o f tim e, Bildung itself, like its aesthetic com ponent, became detached from the individual and his struggle fo r self-cultivation and w as transform ed into a kind o f religion— the w orship o f the true, the good, and the beautiful.41 Thus T heodor Fontane, the gentle critic o f bourgeois society, w rote about his Jen n y Treibel in 1892: “ She's a dangerous person and all the m ore dangerous fo r not really know ing it herself, and she sincerely im agines that she has a feeling h e a r t . . . fo r 4the higher th in gs.’ B ut she has a heart on ly fo r what has weight . . . that counts and bears in terest."44 Bildung as a means o f gilding bourgeois materialism — this was not the ideal Jew s had so readily em braced. H ow ever, the original ideal o f Bildung had never sufficed to establish the restraint and

12

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control which w ere o f the essence fo r bourgeois society. From the very beginning, nationalism had com e to the rescue in order to reinforce the cohesion o f society against the onslaught o f m oder­ nity. A certain vagueness had alw ays plagued the concept o f B il­ dung. A t the beginning o f the nineteenth century, Fichte had put forw ard a definition o f Bildung which reappeared much later in Friedrich Paulsen’s classic Das Deutsche Bildungswesen (German Culture, 1 9 1 2 )—Bildung was a means o f reshaping reality through the pow er o f ideas— but, Fichte added, ideas rooted in the Germ an character.45Jew s clung to the idealism o f Bildung and seem scarcely to have realized that both bourgeois society and the people them­ selves needed m ore tangible signposts in order to make the abstract concrete. The history o f Germ an Jew s from one point o f view is that o f chasing a noble illusion, but in that process, m any political and scholarly perceptions w ere reshaped. H ow typical it was that a Germ an Jew , Ernst Bloch, in exile from N ational Socialism , w rote that w ithout daydream s and the building o f castles in the air the w orld w ould never be changed.45 D aydream s and castles in the air could cope w ith neither the pressures o f G erm any’s abrupt industrialization nor the alw ays latent danger o f the revolt o f the masses. Bildung had to be ad­ justed to the im perative o f keeping control over public and private life. D iscipline and conform ity, in the last resort, took precedence over self-cultivation and spontaneity o f citizenship. Indeed, the so-called Volksschule, in which the great m ajority o f Germ ans re­ ceived a rudim entary education, alw ays required subm ission and docility. But then H um boldt was interested only in the elite gym ­ nasium and the university.47 Bildung should have been open to all those w illing and able, but soon the ideal was controlled b y a selfperpetuating elite. Bildung was institutionalized in the gym nasium and the university, to be controlled by the mandarins— the full professors at the university and, at a great distance, the professors at the secondary schools. The university as the “ conscience o f the nation” m aintained academic freedom , perhaps better in W ilhelm inian G erm any than in the years before Germ an unification. This freedom produced astounding results— m ore through research than teaching— and propelled G erm any to the forefront in the sciences and hum anities. Yet m ost professors, as Praeceptor G ermaniae, claim ing to be the conscience o f nation, in reality became

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the guardians o f the existing order. Even if some professors led m ovem ents fo r social and political reform and helped to prevent the introduction o f censorship in W ilhelm inian Germ any, the al­ liance between professors and bureaucrats restricted any openendedness— it was the product and not the process o f education w hich counted.4* Patriotism , duty, and discipline threatened to re­ place the critical m ind o f the Enlightenm ent, a prerequisite fo r the self-cultivation o f man. W hat remained o f Bildung was charac­ terized b y Ludw ig M arcuse, w ho, w riting about his teachers at the beginning o f the twentieth century, said that they “ w orshipped Prussian arm y barracks adorned w ith D oric colum ns and C orin ­ thian capitols.” 4* T his change was gradual but accelerated in the last decades o f the nineteenth century. In 1804, Friedrich Schleiermacher, perhaps the m ost influential Prussian clergym an, under the influence o f pietism and the w ars o f liberation, had warned the so-called cul­ tured Germ ans not to regard the state as m erely a negative factor in Germ an life (as, in fact, H um boldt view ed it) but instead as a m oral authority. T he fatherland gives the highest meaning to life. A t the same tim e, Fichte began to see in the state the sole m oral, political, and econom ic force which must shape and control the m ass o f individuals that com prise it.MJew s had been excluded from academic life and from the civil service at the very beginning o f their em ancipation in spite o f the prom ise o f equal rights. H um ­ boldt had made no distinction between Jew s and Christians as he described the new bourgeois elite. But a century later, in 19 0 9 -10 , less than 3 percent o f the fu ll professors at Germ an universities w ere Jew s— that is, had penetrated the m andarins.51 A s the concept o f Bildung changed and com prom ised w ith the new nationalism , as conform ity w as demanded instead o f continuous individual selfcultivation, the Jew s w ere increasingly isolated. That individualism which had provided an anchor fo r Jew s reaching out to G erm any was in danger o f being cut loose. W hat had happened to the ideal o f friendship, so crucial fo r Jew ish as­ sim ilation, was typical o f a new, sterner age. N ationalism claim ed dom inance over personal relationships. Fichte’s assertion, made during the French occupation o f Prussia, was to gain general ac­ ceptance tow ard the end o f the nineteenth century— man could not love him self or anything outside him self unless ideas rooted in the

14

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Germ an character w ere part o f the system o f belief.52 O nce such system s o f belief w ere regarded as m ore im portant than the free choice o f friends and personal self-cultivation, rom antic, pietist, and patriotic traditions com bined to exclude as “ outsiders” those w ho had not shared the Germ an historical experience. A s the nineteenth century progressed, few er Germ an Bildungsbürgers used the popular w ord *G eist* in order to describe the critical m ind engaged in m aking em pirical discovery through the use o f reason; instead, they saw the mind as identical w ith the volk — the soul. The G reeks w ere thought b y som e to provide im mutable beauty only inasmuch as they gave form and content to the G er­ man national stereotype.” Together w ith the transform ation o f Bildung into a new kind o f religion, these factors helped erode the com m on ground between the Germ an and Germ an-Jew ish B il­ dungsbürgers which had once seemed so certain and prom ising. T his erosion o f the classical concept o f Bildung was not sud­ den but gradual and never com plete; it gained its full momentum on ly after W orld War I. Yet the new anti-Sem itism o f the 188os w as not on ly a Jew -hatred stim ulated b y an econom ic depression, the m aladjustm ents o f industrialization, and the menace from unruly classes and im patient you th ; it had deeper and longer-lasting roots. O n the surface, this was the Indian summer o f the bourgeois w orld and Jew s had never lived m ore com fortably in Germ any. In reality, their isolation w as being prepared and their role as “ outsider” established. A lthough m any Jew s accepted the changed demands o f soci­ ety, how ever uneasily, m any others clung stubbornly to the older ideal o f Bildung. The quarrels and divisions among Jew s w ere, w ith the exception o f a very few Zionists and a m inority o f the or­ thodox, fought upon a shared commitment to the ideal o f Bildung. Som etim es it seemed that regardless o f their religious or political conviction they m ight have joined the young W alter Benjam in in praise o f his friend Ludw ig Strauss’s statement that “ above all, in a study o f G oethe one finds one’s Jew ish substance.” 54 Translated into the w ay o f life o f the Jew ish Bildungsbürgertum, this meant that “ quotations from G oethe were part o f every m eal.” ” K urt Blum enfeld, the Z ionist leader, argued in 1 9 1 4 that a Jew w ho understood Germ an culture and had made G oethe, Fichte, and K eller a part o f his life w ould m ore easily acquire Jew ish national

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consciousness." T his statem ent, in turn, is not far removed from E rn st Bloch ’s belief that true M arxism was the heir o f that human­ ism w hich inform ed the bourgeois during its classical period— the age o f G oethe and H um boldt.S7 The optim ism so much a part o f the earlier ideal o f Bildung was alive among Jew s w ho had, after all, seen m any o f their hopes fulfilled. A s the liberal Rabbi Caesar Seligm ann w rote, “ From a m artyr the Jew has becom e a b o u rg eo is.*" Reason and culture w ere perceived as bulw arks against reac­ tion, and Jew s found allies in m any educated Germ ans. There w ere those, Jew s and Germ ans, w ho until the very day o f the N azi seizure o f pow er w ere convinced that som eone as uncultured as H itler could never attain high office in G erm any— culture had that special meaning fo r Jew s w hich was shared b y som e, but no longer m ost, m iddle-class Germ ans. Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise was and remained the M agna C harta o f Germ an Jew ry, the popularization o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent. The play was thought to provide a clear statement o f Lessing’s love fo r hum anity regardless o f religion, a love exem plified b y his close friendship w ith M oses M endelssohn. Hannah A rendt calls Lessing the classical w riter on friendship. For Lessing, friendship meant conversation keeping hum anity alive in dark tim es." G abriel Riesser, one o f the first Jew s to enter Germ an politics and in 1848-49 vice-president o f the Frankfurt parliam ent, w rote that w ith Lessing w e attain a new phase o f Bildung, a “ heavenly b liss.” H e went on that during Lessing’s lifetim e, hu­ m anity awakened from its slum ber in order to strive tow ard “ ju s­ tice and com passion, beauty and B ildung."* D uring the 1880s, Jew s led the subscribers to Lessing m onu­ ments as a confession o f faith, according to th e Allgem eine Zeitung des Judentum s.“ M uch earlier, G abriel Riesser, in his call to erect a Lessing m onum ent, had counseled contem porary Jew s to look to a m ore recent rather than to their faraw ay past. T hey should ask them selves in any given situation what Lessing w ould have done.62 So much fo r the relevance o f the Bible or a specific Jew ish tradi­ tion, and that from a religious Jew , a leader o f the H am burg tem­ ple! W hat, after all, was Jew ish about N athan? Was it that he was a rich m erchant o r that his fam ily was killed in a pogrom ? To m ost Jew s, it was his Bildung — his w isdom and tolerance— w hich

16

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counted. T his could be interpreted as allow ing fo r diverse religions provided they dedicated them selves to serve all o f humanity. A t Lessing’s tw o hundredth birthday in 1929» the official newspaper o f the largest G erm an-Jew ish organization (the C .V . Zeitung) praised Lessing both fo r his ideal o f a perfect and united hum anity and fo r his refusal to dissolve religious differences into m erely an ethical culture. Lessing, so w e read, teaches how one can be a believing Christian or Jew and yet fuse one’s faith w ith the religion o f humanity, “ just as one can be sim ultaneously a Germ an and a citizen o f the w orld. A t the same anniversary, the theater critic Julius Bab warned Germ an Jew s not to exaggerate N athan's im portance— after all, he never existed and w as a mere phantom o f the poetic im agination.44 Yet, in 1933, w hen, excluded from Germ an cultural life, the Jew s founded their Jüdische Kulturbund (Jewish C ultural O rganiza­ tion), it was Ju liu s Bab, as director, w ho decided to inaugurate its first season w ith a perform ance o f Nathan the Wise in order to encourage that “ great Germ an culture which gave us nourish­ m ent.”45 Even so, the N azis on this occasion forced the Kultur­ bund to issue an explicit denial that it sought to keep alive the true Germ an spirit among the Jew s. This perform ance was a confession o f faith, m ore m eaningful than the subscription to the Lessing m onument. N athan's Jew ish identity was given a new emphasis through the production, although it was hoped w ithout in any w ay dim inishing the p lay’s basic message o f tolerance and universalism . Thus N athan is made to hum a H asidic tune in the first act, and a m enorah and a prayer stool graced w ith a Star o f D avid were placed in his house. Still, it was the change o f emphasis at the end o f the play w hich caused the m ost comment— even Lessing has M uslim and Christian leave the stage arm in arm , new ly adopted relatives, w hile N athan makes a separate although happy exit. In the 1933 production, however, N athan stayed behind, proud and lonely at the front o f the stage, as the curtain fell.44 The Zionists on the w hole w ere satisfied w ith a perform ance they had opposed as m erely repeating assim ilationist themes. But in this perform ance they saw their ideals closely tied to specific groups and peoples, apparently corresponding to their contention that the nation w as a necessary stepping-stone tow ard humanity. N evertheless, the Kulturbund had far to go if it wanted to re­

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pudiate the assim ilationist past. H ow ever, the Central-Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, b y far the largest or­ ganization o f Germ an Jew s, took the opposite stand— N athan’s loneliness belied his jo yfu l belief in G od and negated the lessons o f the play, which joins different peoples together through their com ­ m on hum anity and m utual toleran ce." H ere the optim ism , the faith in the potential o f m an, was still intact, though the Germ anJew ish dialogue no longer existed and the Jew s had become the sole custodians o f H um boldt's ideal o f Bildung. The defeat in the F irst World War and the difficult transition from w ar to peace heightened the tendencies tow ard the irrational in Germ an life. The start o f the Weimar Republic was as turbulent and noisy as its end fourteen years later was m iserable but quiet. The concept o f Bildung became an ever narrow er vision in the hands o f die Germ an political right: nationalist and racist, yet proud o f its educational and cultural status. The A ryan race alone w as said to possess the depth o f feeling which Bildung required; on ly A ryans could understand the meaning o f the good, the true, and the beautiful. M any, perhaps m ost, Germ ans, did not yet agree w ith such pretensions; the classical ideal o f Bildung was not so quickly de­ feated. Perhaps there was still hope, even after the war, and in this situation som e Germ ans, and above all som e o f the m ost prom i­ nent Germ an Jew s active in political life, attempted to redress the grow ing irrationality o f Germ an public life by turning to France fo r support. The nation which had been the home o f the Enlight­ enm ent, and w hich had rehabilitated Captain D reyfus w ithin re­ cent m em ory, m ight yet redress the balance in Weimar Germ any. F o r exam ple, Theodor W olff, the famed editor o f the Berliner Tageblatt, wanted to m odel the new ly founded Dem ocratic Party on the French Radical Socialists; his ideal state was the Third French Republic. G eorg Bernhard, the editor o f the rival Vossische Zeitung, had a sim ilar v isio n ." M odris Ekstein’s study o f the m ajor dem ocratic newspaper in Germ any, owned and largely w ritten b y Jew s o r men o f Jew ish descent, concluded that these were journal­ ists in the tradition o f the French p h ilo so p h es N o sooner had the w ar ended than H ans Lachm ann-M osse, the proprietor o f the Ber­ liner Tageblatt, in a purposeful gesture o f reconciliation, brought Y vette G ilb ert to Berlin in order to sing French chansons in the

18

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Germ an capital. T his preoccupation w ith France dem onstrates the lack o f realism on the part o f those w ho hoped that the defeat w ould be easily forgotten, that the lessons learned from the w ar w ould lead to a restoration o f reason and enlightenment. These Germ an Jew s were joined by men such as the novelist H einrich M ann, w ho in 1918 believed that the intelligentsia on the one hand and the people on the other w ould proceed to build a “ republic o f reaso n ."70 Such lack o f realism in politics was strikingly characteristic o f the Jew ish bourgeoisie. It m ust be explained in large part by their com m itment to a G erm an-Jew ish identity which no longer corre­ sponded to the realities o f Germ an life. N o t only were Germ an Jew s faced w ith an increasingly narrow vision o f Bildung, but the prim acy o f culture had been one o f its unintended consequences. T heory came first, and politics was subordinated to culture. F or exam ple, Sulamith in 1806 explicitly exalted Bildung above all pragm atism .71 The Jew ish leadership during the W ilhelm inian Em ­ pire believed fo r a long time that liberal politicians w ould, as a m atter o f course, put principles before politics. Thus they ignored the frequent overt and tacit alliances between liberals and antiSem ites.72 A nd so it w ould rem ain, fo r Jew ish liberals as w ell as fo r those Jew ish socialists fo r whom criticism o f culture was o f much greater im portance than analysis o f the political economy. Yet because the concept o f Bildung was built upon theory rather than practice, it easily provided a new identity fo r m any articulate and intellectual Germ an Jew s, fo r despite its emphasis on the individual and the critical m ind, it could be lifted into immuta­ b ility and becom e a secular religion. A fter all, the eighteenthcentury Enlightenm ent had elevated nature into an im mutable if rational force which directed m en's search fo r truth. H um anity w as seen as an abstraction, a m oral im perative, which made all men equal— endowed w ith identical virtues and rational m inds. The religion o f hum anity had indeed becom e a secular faith, not depen­ dent upon revealed religion— a faith, however, which took nothing on trust and w hose truths w ere discovered only by a critical mind constantly refined through self-cultivation. The new self-identity o f the Germ an Jew s was expressed w ithin a fram ew ork that gave it form and discipline and served to transcend Judaism and Christianity. For exam ple, speaking before

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the Central-Verein in 1910, R abbi Cossm ann Werner o f M unich castigated Jew s w ho had been baptized into C hristianity fo r com ­ m itting a crim e not m erely against Judaism but above all against hum anity itself. Such Jew s opposed equal rights and hindered others in fighting fo r justice, fo r Mto be a Jew means to be hum an,” a statement which was greeted w ith thunderous applause.71 The argum ent against baptism was based not on Judaism as a revealed religion but on the religion o f humanity. The serm on itself was reprinted during W orld War I as part o f the so-called front-line lib rary published b y the Central Association o f Germ an Jew s. Germ an Jew s, especially those com m itted to Bildung, at­ tem pted to reach out to the Germ an people; in their desire to educate them, they follow ed a general trend among intellectuals excluded from the w orld o f m andarins. Such a trend w as, after all, also a part o f the original concept o f Bildung, where everyone— not just a closed and self-perpetuating elite— was thought capable o f reaching the goal. Som e Jew ish socialists wanted to join the G erm an w orking class, but once they had done so, they were often singled out as troublesom e intellectuals w ho refused to do their duty as foot soldiers in the workers* movement. O thers, scholars fo r the m ost part, ignored the masses and attempted to exorcise the irrational b y exam ining it rationally and dissecting it in the rational m ind. T hey w ere to initiate new w ays o f analyzing history and philosophy. The Jew s w ho seemed to have the greatest success in reaching out w ere those w riters w ho, before W orld War I and during the Weimar Republic, sought to transm it the classical ideal o f Bildung through their best-selling novels o r biographies. Stefan Z w eig became perhaps the m ost fam ous o f these w riters. A lthough he was A ustrian by birth, he m ust be discussed as a Germ an writer, fo r his w orks became part o f the popular culture o f Germ any. Zw eig was proud that he knew no nations, on ly individuals— that his interest focused on hum anity as a w h ole.74 H e attempted to infuse his w orks w ith a liberal spirit, one based on Bildung, but which at the same time made the abstract concrete so that it m ight be w idely understood. M aking the ab­ stract concrete meant view ing all issues from a private rather than a public perspective. Such an approach to contem porary problem s w as not apolitical, as som e have recendy charged,75 but part o f Z w eig’s belief in the prim acy o f individual developm ent and per­

20

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sonal relationships as a prerequisite fo r the very existence o f G e r­ man Jew ry. N o r was his belief in hum anity as naive as it appears to som e m odem com m entators; instead, he continued the tradition o f the Enlightenm ent/* Z w eig was not alone; the historian Em il Lu d ­ w ig, now forgotten, was equally popular. O thers also tried to reach out, alw ays trying to make popular literature relevant in order to change the perceptions o f the Germ an people— to put up a dike against the w ave o f nationalism and confrontation politics engulfing Germ any. The preceding discussion o f Bildung has given us the nineteenth-century foundation fo r understanding the dilem m as and frustrations o f twentieth-century Germ an Jew ry. It is from the m ountain o f a classical Bildung that these intellectuals descended to the people before and after W orld War I, hoping to find them ready fo r die message. I f their success was largely illusory in im ­ mediate term s, in the long run they presented an attractive definition o f Jew ishness beyond religion and nationalism .

II German Jews and German Popular Culture

G e r m a n J e w s w ere emancipated into a G erm any o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent w hose ideals were being transform ed b y the narrow ing horizons o f Germ an life. Yet under the W ilhelm inian Em pire, the isolation o f Germ an Jew s was latent rather than real, and the overwhelm ing m ajority o f Jew s lived com fortably as mem­ bers o f Germ an bourgeois society. W ith the founding o f the Weimar Republic after W orld War I, all discrim ination against Jew s ended and their full em ancipation was finally achieved. Jew s w ere prom inent in Weimar culture and, at first, entered Weimar politics as w ell. B ut what seemed the realization o f full and equal citizen­ ship, the dream o f previous generations, in reality proved to be a decisive stage in the increasing isolation o f the Jew s in Germ any. A decade after the founding o f the Weimar Republic, political parties o f all colors avoided, if possible, nom inating Jew s fo r public office, and the “Jew ish question” had becom e an integral part o f the political discourse, assum ing threatening dim ensions w hich it had not possessed earlier. The Jew s were the victim s o f the confrontational politics, the near civil war, o f the last years o f the W eimar R epublic— they became the foils o f mass movements o f the right and even the left in politics. M oreover, republican G er­ m any was the main battleground in Europe between the m odem m ovem ent and the forces o f tradition in literature, the theater,

21

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visual arts, and certain currents in m usic. The polarization o f poli­ tics w as accompanied b y a polarization o f culture. Jew s seemed to take sides— indeed, to play a visible and crucial role in encouraging the m odern rather than the traditional. W hat today w e are apt to call Weimar culture was largely the creation o f left-w ing intellectuals, among whom there was such a disproportionate num ber o f Jew s that Weimar culture has been called, som ewhat snidely, an internal Jew ish dialogue. These intel­ lectuals w ere them selves looking fo r roots, often reaching out to the Germ an people, whom they w ere apt to dehne as the w orking class. T heir dilem ma w ill occupy us later, but the high visibility o f Jew ish socialists fueled the quite unjustified belief that Jew s w ere anti-national and had turned their backs on the defeated and hum iliated Germ an people. H ow ever, som e o f the m ost im portant Jew ish intellectuals w ho wanted to make contact w ith the Germ an masses did not believe that the w orking class w as the appropriate medium. T hey wanted to reach out to the Germ an people through popular culture, to clothe their message in form s w hich required no historical or philosophical learning. It is w ith their attempt to make contact w ith the Germ an people, to help shape their culture, that w e w ill be concerned in this chapter. The polarization o f Germ an politics and culture locked m any Jew s into liberal and socialist positions, fo r anti-Sem itism had closed the door to the political right. Jew s did join parties such as the C atholic C enter Party and the Volkspartei which had succeeded the N ational Liberals— parties which had a conservative bent but which supported the republic. H ow ever, Jew s w ho wanted to join w ith those w ho called themselves conservatives during the Weimar R epublic, in the Deutschnationale Volkspartei or in sm aller con­ servative political circles, were less fortunate, despite a plea fo r adm ission by one Jew ish conservative, w ho pointed out that suc­ cessful conservative parties like the English T ory Party and the Italian Fascists knew no anti-Sem itism . Instead, the inquiries o f Jew s w ho wanted to vote in 1932 fo r the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, at that time closed to them, w ere either ignored o r answered positively only after the election was over.1 Political real­ ity reinforced the inclination o f Germ an Jew s to support liberal causes. Jew s did welcom e the new in culture; as a group, they w ere much m ore open to experim entation than the Germ an B il-

German Jew s and German Popular Culture

23

dungsbürgertum. Thus Jew s sent their children to experim ental boarding schools such as W ickersdorf, founded b y die radical school reform er G ustav W ynecken (where in 1922, 40 percent o f the student body w ere Jew s),2 and supported avant-garde culture as both patrons and audience. Indeed, at the end o f the nineteenth century, A u brey Beardsley in England had satirized the fascination w hich the newest in art and literature held fo r rich Germ an Jew s through an opulent and corpulent Jew ish audience in his blackand-w hite sketch o f "M ale and Fem ale Wagnerians at a Perform ­ ance o f Tristan and Iso ld e.” Som e Jew s had indeed supported the W agner "festivals* at Bayreuth,3 although there a love fo r the new in m usic m ay have been less im portant than proving one’s Germ an identity b y adopting the Wagnerian m yth. H ow ever, during the W eimar R epublic, such support was no longer given to a political and cultural right which condemned all experim entation and w hich, unlike Richard Wagner, consistently matched its antiJew ish rhetoric w ith the exclusion o f Jew s from its m idst. The tradition o f Bildung was im portant here as w ell. Even those w ho personally had little in com m on w ith the avant-garde or left-w in g intellectuals remained relatively interested in the new and the experim ental as necessary to the process o f intellectual grow th. F o r exam ple, the editors o f the prom inent liberal press, the men w h o ran die Berliner Tageblatt, the Vossische, and the Frankfurter Zeitung, w hile them selves o f m ore catholic tastes, opened their pages to the newest in m usic, literature, and the arts. T his reaching out to the new was reflected even in a classic analysis o f the mean­ ing o f Judaism itself. Leo B aeck's Das Wesen des Judentum (The Essence o f Judaism, 190 6) invoked the exam ple o f Jew ish m essianism against what he called the Kulturzufriedenheit— satisfaction w ith the cultural status quo— and called Judaism the yeast among the people, a ferm ent o f decom position.4 N o bridge could lead from such a dynam ic concept o f Judaism to the grow ing Germ an political right. Support fo r the avant-garde, fo r the new in culture, fo r w hat is called Weimar culture, in short, was built into the G erm an-Jew ish tradition o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent. O ver a century had passed since em ancipation, but the need to be ac­ cepted as equals, to find com m on ground between Germ an and Jew , had not changed, nor could it change. T his meant a constant effo rt to transcend Germ an historical traditions w hich Jew s could

24

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not claim as their ow n. Som e, such as Auerbach, cut the G erm an peasant loose from his local and provincial roots in order to g ive him a w ider vision ; m ost others supported cultural innovations, where the past w ould no longer haunt an enlightened present. M oreover, those Germ an Jew s engaged in intellectual p u r­ suits, the producers o f culture, w ere until 19 18 largely excluded from the w orld o f mandarins and thus were pushed into what w ere regarded as m arginal professions— journalism , the arts, the theater, and free-lance w ritin g.5T hey continued to crow d these professions under the Weimar Republic. W hether consum ers, patrons, o r creators o f avant-garde culture, Jew s w ere continually being cast in the role o f outsiders through their engagement w ith m odernity. T o be sure, they found m any like-m inded Germ ans to share their quest, and here, on the m argins o f established and conventional society, a true G erm an-Jew ish dialogue took place. Jew s, how ever, already isolated from the Germ an m asses, w ere com m itted to the pursuit o f a higher culture, m aking contact w ith the masses in­ creasingly difficult. Yet it was precisely their involuntary role as outsiders w hich left a heritage much m ore m eaningful to future generations than that left b y the insiders. N ationalist and rightw ing literature tends to be provincial, and in Germ any it was the logical descendant o f nineteenth-century w riters, w ho, obsessed w ith their Germ anic roots, had isolated Germ an literature at a tim e when French and English w riters were read all over the w orld. Left-w ing intellectuals, avant-garde artists, liberal journalists, and free-lance w riters were puzzled, hurt, and angered b y the lack o f popular support, b y the failure o f the Germ an people to re­ spond to their efforts. T hey regarded their task as educational, but the victory belonged instead to those w ho were able to m obilize the masses— not only b y prom ising their liberation but b y ap­ pealing to m ore traditional patterns o f thought. Som e Jew ish w riters did becom e popular in a manner closed to left-w ing intellectuals, avant-garde artists, o r the liberal press. T heir books reached m illions. H ow ever, it is unlikely that their w ork penetrated much beyond the m iddle class, although m ost o f their books w ere serialized, cheaply priced, and found in popular lending libraries. W riters such as Stefan Zw eig and Em il Ludw ig meant not m erely to entertain but to educate, to spread the ideals

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o f Bildung, to encourage the exercise o f a critical m ind. These men w ere liberals in the old tradition; fo r exam ple, like the liberal press, th ey rejected the m ilitant patriotism o f World War 1. The substance o f their Jew ishness, as they saw it, was expressed through their cultural stance, just as it was fo r m any other Jew ish intellectuals and m any Jew ish patrons o f Germ an culture. M en such as Z w eig and Ludw ig w ere progressive but not avant-garde, and that was part o f their strength as popular w riters. T h ey were not far ahead o f their tim es, and fo r all their com m it­ m ent to Bildung and the Enlightenm ent, a certain nostalgia fo r continuity in life and politics inform ed their w ork. To be sure, Z w eig believed that life should be lived passionately, but he re­ garded sustained passion as unhealthy— ending either in death or in a return to so-called norm al behavior.6 Bildung and the Enlight­ enm ent were permeated b y overt or im plied praise fo r the m iddleclass style o f life. H ere there was no avant-garde predilection fo r shocking the bourgeois or any left-w ing attack upon their life­ style. Em il Lu dw ig, fo r exam ple, pleaded fo r a balance between pleasure and accom plishm ent which w ould keep eroticism in check.7 Such w riters provide a good illustration o f what happened w hen Bildung and the Enlightenm ent attempted to reach out to popular culture. A nd the history o f Germ an Jew s raised a concur­ rent larger problem — how a high culture which was individualistic, hum anist, and pacifist could interact w ith popular culture. Em il Ludw ig and Stefan Z w eig have been singled out in the discussion above, but they w ere not alone; others shared their approach. A ll o f these w riters stood in the tradition o f Germ an Jew ry, and an analysis o f their w ork points to a particular Germ an-Jew ish heri­ tage, a Jew ish substance beyond religion and nationalism . The favorite literary medium fo r both Zw eig and Ludw ig was historical biography, perhaps reflecting the search fo r the individual in a G erm any w hose politics seemed to shift w ith the sw ay o f the irrational masses. T heir w ritings during the Weimar R epublic, their attempt to reach out to the people, to overcom e Jew ish isola­ tion, m ust be placed w ithin an already established G erm an-Jew ish tradition. Berthold Auerbach in his Schrift und Volk had idealized the Germ an people; Zw eig and Ludw ig were to follow his foot­

26

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steps over h alf a century later. Each individual, endowed w ith the potential fo r good rather than evil, carries the collectivity upon his shoulders, Auerbach tells us. The m ore that men and wom en sub­ ordinate the national and the regional to general human concerns, the m ore perfect the com m unity in which they live*. Auerbach reflected the optim ism o f the Enlightenm ent and Bildung, and so did the popular Jew ish w riters during the Weimar Republic. A u er­ bach's attem pt to form a unity out o f diversity, to unite regional traditions w ith those o f the nation and all o f humanity, were con­ tinued b y Stefan Zw eig, who liked to join together the m ost un­ lik ely characters in his collective biographies. Betw een 1 9 1 1 and 1938, Em il Lu dw ig's popular biographies sold 1.2 m illion copies in Germ any, 1 . 1 m illion copies in the U nited States, and 800,000 copies in the rest o f the w orld .’ Lu d ­ w ig’s name became a household w ord in the m ost unexpected places. Thus, when I entered England as a young refugee student and the D over custom s official found out that I studied history, his im mediate reaction w as, “Another Em il Lu dw ig?" Indeed, fo r the N azis, Em il Ludw ig sym bolized the so-called Jew ish decom posi­ tion o f Germ an culture, another tribute to his popularity. H is real name was Em il Ludw ig C ohen, and his father had encouraged him to drop the Cohen in order to have a better chance at a professional career. Ludw ig had neither a Jew ish nor a Christian education; straightforw ard m oral teaching had to suffice, as he w rote in his autobiography. W hy, he asked, should one fill the mind o f any European child w ith the history o f desert tribes foreign to his very nature?10 Ludw ig took the logical step and converted to Christian­ ity but fo r on ly a short time. Shocked at the m urder o f Walther Rathenau, he left the church in protest against the hatred fo r Jew s w hich had led to the m urder o f one o f G erm any’s finest men, saying, “ I feel a new attachment to m y race, now that it once again suffers persecution in the fatherland.” Ludw ig was indifferent to religious dogm a; G o d , nature, and G oethe, he said, determined his fa ith ." H is conversion to C hristianity had been m erely an effort to buy the respect o f Germ ans. W hether in or out o f the church, he saw him self as having a m ission to educate his readers in rationality and tolerance— to proclaim that autonom y o f the individual so crucial to the concept o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent. Stefan Z w eig, an equally popular writer, was a m ore con-

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cem ed Jew than Em il Ludw ig, although he also was brought up in a very lax fashion in m atters o f faith .12 A s a convinced although belated pacifist during W orld War I, he w rote to M artin Buber in 19 16 that Jew ishness m ust never lead to a retreat behind bars— a separation from the w orld— and that instead it represented an opr portunity fo r w orld citizenship.11 Som ewhat later in the war, he asserted that all nationalism , all narrowness o f vision, must be rejected; it was the m ission o f Judaism to dem onstrate the existence o f a spiritual com m unity which did not depend on the quest fo r territory.14 H e remained faithful to these ideals after the w ar as w ell. T hey w ere, in fact, built upon a definition o f Jew ishness w hose substance was Bildung and the Enlightenm ent; neither Z w eig nor Ludw ig felt the need fo r traditional religion. T heir Jew ishness was a search fo r a personal identity beyond nationalism and religion, and from this quest they sought to influence the G erm an people. Z w eig, like Lu dw ig, w rote historical biographies, but w rote novels and short stories as w ell, although the biographies w ere o f special relevance fo r his self-appointed educational task. Readers hungered fo r h istory after World War I, fo r personality and leader­ ship. The urge to fo llow a leader in tim es o f crisis, which was to have such fateful political consequences, also helped to popularize historical biographies. These centered on w ell-know n men fo r the m ost part, statesmen such as N apoleon o r Bism arck o r w riters such as G oethe o r B yron , w ho had becom e cult figures. Lu dw ig's fam e dated from his Bismarck, published before the w ar ( 19 11) and described b y his publishers on its cover as som ething new— not the w ork o f a politician or a historian but o f a psychologist w ho built upon history. The human personality was examined in isolation; historical forces which m ight have helped determine men’s actions w ere ignored, and on ly man’s inner life and his self-developm ent counted. Zw eig w rote that the masses could not grasp abstract thought; man him self m ust be substituted fo r the idea as a tangible sym b o l.11 Both Ludw ig and Zw eig, unlike those usually associated w ith Weimar culture, had an insight into needs o f popular culture, but neither wanted to use this insight to build national monu­ m ents. Lu dw ig’s biographies w ere critical up to a point; his biog­ raph y o f W illiam II (1924) blamed the em peror fo r having started

28

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W orld War 1 , 14 just as the arrogance o f individual statesmen w as given responsibility fo r the failure to keep the peace in Ju ly 19 14 . Ludw ig w rote that if he could dissolve historical analysis into a personal dynam ic, then the teacher, the barm an, and the seam stress w ould be gripped b y Bism arck’s am bition and strivin g.17 H istorical research was not necessary fo r his “ w ord pictures,” Ludw ig tells u s; enough secondary sources existed based on scholarship. “ T h e artist, not the scholar, is called upon to paint portraits as an exam ­ ple o r as a w arning fo r his age.” " The historical method follow ed b y Ludw ig and Z w eig was best described by a critic o f another popular biography, w ritten in England, where this genre proved equally popular after the war. Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victo­ rians (19 18 ) low ered a sm all bucket into the great sea o f docum ents and came up w ith characteristic specimens— a w orld where the w hole could be deduced from its p arts." But in this case the speci­ mens w ere meant to disillusion rather than to educate and w ere inform ed b y a cynical spirit rather than the urge to spread Bildung and Enlightenm ent. For Z w eig and Ludw ig, the driving forces o f h istory w ere individual character and fate. H istory creates decisive m om ents, Z w eig tells us— minutes in w hich the fate o f men and nations are decided. These biographies attained a mass readership because o f the w ay they w ere constructed— history was transform ed into a dram a, narrated w ith breathless intensity. Stefan Zw eig tided his m ost successful book Stemstunden der Menschheit (Tides o f For­ tune, 1927) and added additional biographies to it in each new edition. For exam ple, the history o f the entire nineteenth century was said to have been determined in the few minutes it took G en­ eral G rou ch y to make the decision that Zw eig believed lost the Battle o f W aterloo fo r N apoleon.“ The conclusions o f these biographies were usually satisfac­ tory, if not alw ays happy. Thus, as portrayed b y Ludw ig, L o rd G eorge B yron and Ferdinand Lasalle, subjects o f a double biog­ raphy, led storm y lives, yet both died at just the right moment— at the height o f their explosive energies. If they had lived, their subse­ quent lives w ould have been anticlim atic. Sim ilarly, W alther Rathenau was m urdered at the proper point o f his life, when all signs pointed to his fall from pow er.21 In these biographies, a robüst optim ism accompanies the drama o f life— history w orks fo r the best, the good in human nature trium phs over the bad.

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The on ly Jew thought w orthy o f a popular biography side b y side w ith N apoleon o r Bism arck was Walther Rathenau. It is inter­ esting to consider the extent to which Rathenau became a pow erful m odel fo r Germ an Jew s. H e seemed a sym bol o f the Weimar R e­ public, fo r w hich he sacrificed his life— as the official journal o f the B erlin Jew ish com m unity put it— o f its potential fo r true equality between Germ ans and Jew s.22 For Ludw ig and Zw eig, he sym ­ bolized the unity through diversity which was their ideal, as it had been Berthold A uerbach's shortly after em ancipation. Rathenau, Z w eig tells us, com bined knowledge, action, and a stupendous Bildung.13 H e succeeded, Ludw ig w rites, beyond the dream o f any Jew , but even in success he was lonely, betrayed by all around him ; his was a “ strength out o f w eakness,” reflecting the position o f Jew s in G erm any.24 Zw eig was m ore direct— Rathenau sym bolized the loneliness and grandeur o f the Jew ish spirit, which lacked the easy consolation o f religious faith.25 Both w riters thought that Rathenau's death was the logical consumm ation o f his life, fo r he could have gone no further. The portrait which emerges is built upon Rathenau's Jew ishness defined through the pow er o f intellect rather than faith. B ut, then, Rathenau him self had written that the cultivated Jew depends upon dogm atic religion less than any other contem porary man o f culture.26 Rathenau not only exem plified Jew ish contributions to G er­ m any but also sym bolized Jew ishness expressed through an active life inspired b y learning, self-cultivation, and friendship. Ludw ig and Z w eig were not alone in em phasizing that no m atter how busy, Rathenau found tim e fo r conversation w ith young friends.27 N o m ention is usually made o f Rathenau’s Germ an nationalism o r o f his Jew ish self-hatred. H e became a role m odel fo r Germ an Jew s to a greater extent than m ost rabbis o r com m unity leaders, until the em ergence o f Leo Baeck as a leader under the N azis. But even Leo Baeck, although a man o f profound religiosity, was perceived and looked upon him self as a man o f culture.2* The attem pt to educate, to spread the concept o f Bildung, was never far beneath the surface in the biographies o f Zw eig and Lu dw ig. Germ an genius, Ludw ig tells us, was never political but alw ays cultural, and Bism arck was made to exem plify to the w orld that rationalism and open-m indedness characteristic o f true cul­ tu re.2* Dogm atism was the enemy, as it had been fo r Berthold Auerbach so long ago, and it made little difference that Ludw ig,

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unlike A uerbach, was several generations rem oved from the proc­ ess o f Jew ish em ancipation. W riting about G oethe and Schiller, heroic figures o f Germ an culture, Ludw ig discussed the differences between them ; nevertheless, they were united in their rejection o f nationalism and ancestor w orship. Patriotism , clericalism , and aristocracy, Ludw ig tells us, had seen their day.10 These w ords could have been w ritten to good effect a hundred years earlier; b y 1924, when they w ere published, the liberalism fo r which they stood w as sadly outdated. It seems alm ost bizarre, in retrospect, that Stefan Z w eig w rote a biography o f Erasm us (1934) in order to protest the intolerance and confrontational politics o f his tim e. H um anism , he w rote, was constantly threatened b y passion.11 Both Z w eig and Ludw ig were doom ed to disappointm ent. Z w eig’s increasing bitterness eventually ended in suicide, but Lud­ w ig 's reaction to the Third Reich was m ore com plex and differ­ entiated. H is love fo r biography threatened to end in uncritical adm iration fo r strong leadership. H e had alw ays believed in the existence o f genius, a natural consequence o f his concentration upon individual character. W hen he interviewed M ussolini and Stalin, a note o f respect and awe crept into his description o f the dictators. T heir accom plishm ents w ere em phasized in order, so w e are told, to paint a realistic picture. Yet his adm iration fo r M usso­ lini and Stalin was a consequence not so much o f m isplaced realism as a journalist’s tem ptation to swim w ith the tide, facilitated b y his individualistic approach to history. “ H e fo r whom history is form ed b y personalities,” Ludw ig w rote in his Führer Europas nach der Natur gezeichnet (.Leaders o f Europe, 1934), “ must find a governm ent o f fou r hundred m ediocrities m ore alien than the rule o f one outstanding dictator.” But in the same breath he prophesied the end o f nationalism and condemned the w arlike education o f yo u th .” Such inconsistency under the pressures o f N ational Social­ ism dem onstrated an unease w ith the ideal o f Bildung , its earlier roots now irretrievably lost. It was not easy to stand alone in fro n t o f the stage when everyone else has left it. Ludw ig’s am bivalence about M ussolini and Stalin was a consequence o f his failure to influence the Germ an people through his ow n ideals, even though he had sold m illions o f books. Z w eig remained m ore consistent, sum ming up in 19 37 w h at Jew ishness meant to him : “ I did not w ish Judaism to repudiate its

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universalism and supranationalism in order to retreat into its H e­ brew and nationalist past . . . I believe that the Jew ish and the human substance m ust remain identical. ” ” The Jew ish reinforced the hum an; indeed, this was its prim ary task. M uch earlier, Em il Lu dw ig, w riting in M artin Buber’s journal D er Jude (19 25), had called his fellow Jew s not the salt but the pepper o f Europe in their idealism and com m itment to European unity.14 Both w riters stood on essentially the same ground and conceived their task in sim ilar w ays. W hen A ustria was annexed to the N azi Reich, Stefan Zw eig w rote, referring to his Erasmus o f fou r years earlier, “ We are too Erasm ian . . . to prevail against these men w ho have a battering ram in place o f forehead and brain. A gainst those possessed b y the m ania o f nationalism only those themselves possessed can stand: w e are poisoned b y our hum anity.” 11 The ideal o f hum anity was to be passed on to the Germ an m asses, and both Ludw ig and Z w eig did attract a new readership— men and wom en w ho had been w ithout books. T hey captured a popular audience, made contact w ith the Germ an peo­ p le, but m ost read their books as one m ight read a good detective o r adventure story. The mass sale o f books frequently bore little relationship to their effect. Thus, Erich M aria Rem arque’s anti­ w ar novel, Im Westen nichts neuese (AU Quiet on the Western Front, 1929), w as one o f the runaw ay best sellers o f the Weimar R epublic. The Germ an right launched a concerted onslaught against the book and against the film based on it but w ithout much success. Yet they need not have w orried, fo r the book had no discernible political im pact. The playfulness and conspiratorial de­ light o f Rem arque's young soldiers meant that the book could be read as a schoolboy's adventure story.14 Ludw ig and Z w eig w ere able to w rite according to popular taste, and here they w ere suc­ cessful but only at the cost o f their message. T heir failure to achieve their objective, and the reasons fo r this failure, illustrate the further isolation o f Germ an Jew s in Germ any. T he attitude o f Ludw ig and Z w eig tow ard the masses is significant, fo r it derived from the ideals w hich the cultivated m iddle class had em braced during the age o f Jew ish em ancipation but was fast relin­ quishing in favor o f the com m unity o f the Volk. Em il Ludw ig, in his life o f C h rist, D er Menschensohn (The Son o f Man, 1929), one o f his least successful books, pits C h rist the m oralist against the

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masses eager to see him crucified. The m asses, Ludw ig tells us, alw ays cry fo r blood and w ill do so tw o hundred years from now .17 Concentration on individual character necessarily consigned the m asses to a subordinate role; they became little m ore than extras in the unfolding dram a.M Ludw ig, like m ost Bildungsbürger o f his tim e, feared the leveling pow er o f the m asses. H e condemned both the alliance between Social Dem ocrats and the A rm y, w hich crushed the radical revolution in 19 19 , and the revolution itself. Instead, he declared, the spirit unarmed m ust revolutionize the wage slaves and unite all nations. The true enem y was the n ew ly awakened m ilitarism .1* H ere Ludw ig was close to som e left-w ing intellectuals and their ideal o f a revolution brought about b y the activation o f the categorical im perative w ithin men and w om en, w ithout violence or the use o f force. Stefan Z w eig looked w ith h orror at what he considered the dem onic masses. For him , the popular enthusiasm which accom ­ panied the early stages o f W orld War I was reason betrayed to passion. The revolution which follow ed was an expression o f the im pure drive fo r pow er b y corrupt individuals. H e feared that because so m any Jew s w ere revolutionary, a w ave o f anti-Sem itism w ould follow .40 Ludw ig and Z w eig, like Berthold Auerbach before them, attempted to diffuse the masses b y dissolving them into their com ponents. Personal friendships w ere the only human bonds w hich Z w eig recognized. H um anity, he believed, w ill progress tow ard universality not as a mass but as individuals.41 This paring dow n o f the masses was a concept in direct con­ flict w ith the main political and cultural currents o f the postw ar years. The longing fo r leadership which helped popularize L u d ­ w ig’s and Z w eig’s biographies was itself part o f the search fo r a m eaningful faith around which Germ ans could unite, into w hich they could retreat, during those crisis years. The m obilization o f the m asses through national m yths and sym bols and the ideal o f a leadership w hich shared a belief in such m yths and sym bols w ere foreign to Ludw ig’s and Z w eig’s w ay o f thinking. M oreover, the prim acy o f culture, inherent in the concept o f Bildung, served to alienate them still further from popular culture and popular p oli­ tics. Stefan Z w eig sensed this grow ing isolation when he w rote to Em il Ludw ig in 19 25, “Som etim es I am oppressed by the feeling

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that w e w ho possess an encyclopedic know ledge, men w ho pas­ sionately w ork at extending their Bildung, are already a kind o f fo ssil."4* Ju st as Ludw ig and Zw eig reduced the masses to their indi­ vidual com ponents, so did they also distinguish between culture and politics— as potential outsiders, they seem to have feared any totality as hom ogenization. Thus, Stefan Z w eig’s biography o f Joseph Fouché (1929) w as, as he w rote, "a book against politics w hich have no faith in ideas, in other w ords the politics o f Europe tod ay.” 41 Z w eig felt that culture m ust determine politics and that a high m oral purpose m ust inform political life. The com m itment to culture as the guardian o f m orality ex­ cluded overt political action; individual Bildung w ould in the last resort solve aÜ problem s o f life. Ludw ig never entered politics, and Z w eig prided him self on being a so-called unpolitical m an.44 Z w eig never voted and refused to sign protests against N ational Socialism fo r fear that they w ould be considered political acts. The only w ay to react to the crisis, he w rote in M ay 19 33, was through silent and tenacious perseverance.41 Zw eig had been a m ilitant pacifist during W orld War I, and both he and Ludw ig supported the Weimar R epublic. But their weapon was culture, not politics. Such a dis­ tinction ran counter to the popular w ish fo r fu lly furnished houses and the felt need fo r a civil religion w hich w ould integrate all aspects o f life. Lu dw ig and Zw eig sym bolized the alienation o f the Germ anJew ish tradition from popular culture. T hey could not see past their ow n ideals to fathom the wishes and desires o f the people. T h e ir conviction that the m oral, spiritual, and intellectual capacities o f individuals determined events was deeply held and thus not easily shaken. Yet, fo r all that, tolerance, com passion, and broadness o f outlook w ere not unknown to Germ an popular cul­ ture. Indeed, w riters o f immense popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as M arlitt (Eugenie John) and L u d w ig Ganghofer, had attacked religious dogm atism , exalted the d ign ity o f the individual, and advocated toleration o f the Jew s. P opular literature in G erm any was largely liberal, as exem plified b y D ie Gartenlaube, a journal which at its height had the unparal­ leled circulation o f half a m illion copies and w hich, fo r m ost o f its

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history, was devoted to perpetuating the tradition o f the revolution o f 1848. Volkish and anti-Sem itic literature never attained equiva­ lent popularity.44 Reading D ie Gartenlaube’s praise fo r Lessing's Nathan the Wise and its eulogy fo r Kant because he exalted reason,47one m ight think that Ludw ig and Z w eig should have encountered few er ob­ stacles in their efforts to influence popular culture. But the ideals o f Germ an popular literature did not stand in isolation; they w ere joined to popular culture’s quest fo r a faith which w ould encom ­ pass all o f life and w ould provide shelter and security. The liberal current o f Germ an popular culture was linked to its apparent op ­ posite through a revolutionary tradition which had becom e deeply rooted in Germ any. The apocalyptic view o f history gave hope that a new dawn w as about to break, that the scourges which preceded the rule o f G od w ould be overcom e, and that eternal justice w ould prevail. Paracelsus and Jacob Böhm e were the principal prophets o f the "underground revolu tion ," to use Ernst Bloch’s term , o r the "G erm an revolution,” as it was called b y the Germ an political right in order to distinguish it from the French R evolution.4* T his apocalyptic tradition had inspired W illiam W eitling and his Com m unist League (which K arl M arx found in place when he started his life's w ork), just as Ernst Bloch attempted to harness it to the left in Thomas Müntzer (19 2 1). But this revolutionary tradi­ tion strengthened the right rather than the left, fo r the divine unity between G od and nature, central to the apocalyptic vision, w as best exem plified b y the Germ an Volk as an ever-present utopia. A Germ anic continuity was said to exist which w ould break through, m ake time stand still, and abolish death. A t that point, a new dawn w ould unleash the potential in each individual and create a society o f decency and tolerance. But before that could happen, the enem y had to be slain— the country had to pass through tim es o f trouble before the thousand-year Reich could begin.4* The liberal utopia o f popular culture was postponed until the end o f tim e. M eanwhile, the w ay w ould be prepared b y elim inat­ ing the Jew s and other outsiders from Germ an life and waging w ar against G erm any's enemies. H itler was needed so that the fairy tale could begin. "T h e w ork which took a thousand years to accom ­ plish, which the greatest Germ ans m erely saw through the eyes o f the spirit, [was] about to be accom plished” through the self­

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sacrifice o f the few and the deeds o f one, A d o lf H itler.10 Thus the T h ird Reich did not yet exist but was alw ays about to becom e real and dom inate the earth, as had been prophesied in the B ook o f D aniel. The usefulness o f the Germ an revolution to explain un­ popular political action and to m obilize the masses was obvious, and it further strengthened a political right which could make fu ll use o f this tradition. The ideals o f Stefan Z w eig and Em il Ludw ig bore no relation­ ship to this revolutionary tradition, and there is no evidence that th ey recognized its force. The ideal o f Bildung and the Enlighten­ m ent, the m oral im perative which accompanied them, was antago­ nistic to this deep stream o f popular piety. Yet som e Germ an Jew s, such as Ernst Bloch and M artin Buber, understood its portent and sought to harness it in their ow n thought. Bloch him self, fo r all his later popularity, was isolated among left-w ing intellectuals. Start­ ing w ith his Thomas Müntzer (19 2 1), he attempted to use the apocalyptic tradition to give M arxism an explosive vision, radical hope, and openness tow ard the “ n o t-yet.” 5' These visions o f hope w ere to inspire, not replace, the class struggle. In contrast, M artin B u b er attempted to fuse this Germ anism with a Jew ish tradition. It w as no accident that Buber w rote his doctorate on Jacob Böhm e, dem onstrating the continuing relevance o f Germ an m ysticism . W hatever the connection w ith the Jew ish tradition o f Buber’s w o rk on the H asidim , which began to appear in 1906, it was partly inspired b y this “ underground revolution.” The H asidic stories stim ulated great enthusiasm among young Jew s just before W orld War I, precisely because here they had found a Jew ish popular culture which could quell their hunger fo r m yth. Buber provided a congenial Jew ish tradition already fam iliar through the Germ an m ystics. H e tidied up the distasteful ghetto past by equating Jew ish m ysticism w ith a respectable Germ an m ystical and apocalyptic tradition, laundering the H asidim fo r their use b y the eman­ cipated. The young G eorg Lukâcs suddenly discovered that he m ight be o f H asidic descent, and under their influence, W alther Rathenau becam e, fo r a short tim e, an avid student o f H ebrew. These w ere highly assim ilated Jew s w ho had no intention o f turn­ ing their backs on G erm any.” The argument could be made that b y assim ilating a Jew ish to a Germ an tradition, Buber’s H asidim had the best o f both w orlds, although on one level the Germ an dom i­

36

GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

nated the Jew ish because o f the literary style in which the stories w ere w ritten. These H asidic stories represented an alternative to the m ajor trends o f the Germ an-Jew ish tradition, as exem plified by Stefan Z w eig and Em il Ludw ig. Buber him self was aware o f this. T he traditional concept o f Bildung, he w rote, was solely futureoriented, but a point o f departure was as im portant as a point o f arrival.” T his perceptive criticism seemed warranted during the T hird Reich when Buber addressed the problem , yet it was pre­ cisely because the concept o f Bildung made a com m on point o f departure w ith Germ ans unnecessary that it had played such a m ajor role in the process o f Jew ish em ancipation, T lie children o f the ghetto could enter Germ an culture ignoring the burden o f their past. For Buber, the point o f departure was the Volk, but his Jew ish Volk, how ever sim ilar to the Germ an, was neither narrow n or chauvinist and tolerated a w ide variety o f opinions. M oreover, the Volk was only a stepping-stone tow ard a common hum anity.14 T hus, despite his point o f departure, Buber’s point o f arrival w as sim ilar to that advocated in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise. For all o f his advocacy o f a national m ystique, Buber had absorbed much o f the older Bildung and Enlightenm ent. M artin Buber’s G erm an-Jew ish tradition had a future in the Z ionist m ovem ent, w hile the Germ an-Jew ish tradition which has concerned us was beyond religion o r nationalism . Yet they shared a com m on substance, and im portant figures m oved easily between the tw o traditions— men such as G ustav Landauer, a socialist and individualist w ho found a home in the Jew ish people, ” and G e rshom Scholem , w ho com bined an interest in Jew ish m ysticism w ith the ideal o f Bildung and the constant exercise o f a critical m ind. The connections between these tw o traditions need fu rth er investigation. Thus one G erm an-Jew ish tradition did exist w hich, w hatever its specific Jew ish com ponents, also made use o f Germ an p opu lar culture— the revolutionary and utopian com ponent, com bined w ith its emphasis on faith and its concern w ith the totality o f life . The other tradition, however, was not only alienated from p opu lar culture as a faith but in addition failed to understand the revolu­ tionary and utopian com ponents o f popular culture. M artin B u b er

German Jew s and German Popular Culture

37

used his m ysticism as a m ainspring fo r Zionist political action, w h ile fo r Ludw ig and Z w eig the prim acy o f culture continued to preclude politics. I f M artin Buber narrowed the vision held b y Z w eig and Lu d ­ w ig , he still kept the idea o f a common hum anity firm ly in view. Yet there w ere some among Germ an-Jew ish intellectuals w ho w anted to shed the liberal culture fo r the sake o f a Volkish vision. Jak o b W assermann, a novelist as popular as Zw eig and Ludw ig during the years between the w ars, provides a good example o f such attitudes, and his eventual bitterness was that o f an unre­ quited lover rather than reflecting loss o f hope fo r the trium ph o f Bildung and humanity. Wassermann wanted to be a Germ an w riter, probing the Germ an soul, wandering through the narrow and crooked streets o f ancient provincial tow ns, analyzing the gnarled men and wom en w ho lived there. The image o f the Volk was engraved on his soul, he w rote in 19 15 , w hile m odernity threatened the m ythical force o f love fo r the fatherland and its custom s.5* Wasserman w rote the novel Caspar Hauser (1908) in order to establish his credibility as a Germ an w riter.57 It is the story o f a youth straight out o f a fairy tale, as he puts it, w ho appears, apparendy from now here, in a little tow n; the youth speaks w ith the pure voice o f nature, believing all men to be good and beauti­ ful. A s a “ m yth com e to life ,” Caspar H auser is persecuted b y men and wom en w ho cannot tolerate innocence and beauty, w ho m ust constandy probe and question, and w ho attempt to catch him in their w eb o f official rules and regulations.5* Eventually he is m ur­ dered b y a stranger, and w hile Wassermann im plies that C aspar H auser was a prince, his life is shrouded in m ystery. The dark forces o f the soul are defeated b y shallow reality. Surely Wasser­ mann is the counterpoint to the rational and optim isdc Germ anJew ish tradition. There was no lightness o f touch in Wassermannes w orks; he was alw ays in earnest, preoccupied w ith serious m atters. H is most famous novel, Gänsemännchen (Gooseman, 19 15 ), is filled w ith characters at the brink o f insanity from their com pulsive examina­ tion o f their ow n and other people’s souls. Suffering is total, corre­ sponding to the sm all and tortuous alleys o f the old provincial town w here the action takes place. But the end is rom antic and

38

GERMAN JEWS BEYOND JUDAISM

happy— the hero, a m usician, surrounded b y devoted students, has attained harm ony through his m usic, transcending his em otional agony and m aterial deprivations. Wassermann was troubled by his Jew ishness and by his fe llo w Jew s. N o t only w ere Jew s the "Jacobins o f our tim es," as he w ro te in his autobiography, but he hated the rootless Jew s— the Kulturju­ den, as he called them ” — precisely those Jew s who are our m ain concern. H e him self lacked all Jew ish education and felt no re li­ gious or national solidarity w ith his fellow Jew s, a characteristic he shared w ith m any o f those he condemned. H is Jew ishness also depended upon an inner substance fo r which he searched diligen tly until he found it in a so-called synthesis between a vague Jew ish "orientalism ” and the Germ an soul. The supposed Germ an reality is m easured against this ideal in Mein Weg als Deutcher und Ju d e {My Life as German and as Jew , 19 2 1), a book quite w rongly taken as typical o f Germ an Jew ry. The synthesis failed. Caspar Hauser w as not recognized as th e great Germ an novel o f its tim e, and in My Life as German and as Jew Wassermann struck out against the Germ an hatred o f Je w s which he blamed fo r that failure. H e contrasted such hatred not to the tolerance and rationality o f France, as did so m any G erm anJew ish intellectuals, but to the supposed liberality o f postw ar A u s­ tria— a bizarre contrast which reflects his paranoia as a G erm an w riter.“ Jew s them selves had to bear much o f the blame fo r Je w hatred because o f their "recognizable Jew ish traits”— instability, m aterialism , and cunning.“ Wassermann m oved easily from p ro b ­ ing people's souls to accepting their stereotypes. This preoccupa­ tion w ith the Germ an soul, the so-called m ysteries which coursed underneath the superficialities o f life, was apt to encourage the use o f obvious sym bolism . Thus, when the hero o f Gänsemännchen decides to m arry, a bat flies into the window, portending the tim e when his future w ife w ill bum all his m usic. W assermann’s books are forgotten, yet at the time he was considered the equal o f Thom as Mann as one o f G erm any's most fam ous w riters. It is easy to see w h y his fame has vanished— his books w ere carried on a w ave o f Volkish introspection. W asser­ mann’s pessim ism about his particular Germ an-Jew ish sym biosis was m isplaced; he was only too Germ an a writer. Typically, Stefan Z w eig criticized Wassermann fo r his inwardness, his lack o f open­

German Jew s and German Popular Culture

39

m indedness to the rest o f the w orld.*2 Yet Z w eig was too harsh a c ritic , fo r in spite o f his Volkish ideal, Wassermann believed that h is narrow focus w ould not preclude a w ider vision o f humanity. A lth ou gh the image o f the Volk was supposedly engraved on everyon e's soul, in W assermann’s essays and speeches he called fo r a "tru e hum anism ” based upon love fo r all men.*2 Com m itm ent to o n e’s ow n Volk w as a means o f overcom ing one’ s selfishness, o f taking the first step tow ard a true humanity.*4 Yet this theme is m uted in his novels, where the individual remains firm ly em­ bedded in the Germ an Volk.** Thus Wasserman was also touched b y a larger vision o f self-fulfillm ent, standing how ever shakily, w ithin the Germ an-Jew ish intellectual tradition. W assermann’s attem pt to reach out to the Germ an people w as different from that o f Berthold A uerbach, Em il Ludw ig, o r Stefan Z w eig. T hey had idealized the Germ an people b y transform ing them into a self-designed im age o f the cosm opolitan and cultured m iddle class. Wassermann was closer to the m ystical and apocalyp­ tic trend o f Germ an popular culture, although he did not share its som etim es aggressive intent or its revolutionary message. Wasser­ m ann, to a lim ited extent, and Buber, decisively, rejected Germ an popular culture's exclusive claim to truth and dominance. Indeed, although Wassermann supported the Weimar Republic, unlike Z w eig o r Lu dw ig, he was not m erely opposed to revolutionary violence but hostile to all political radicalism — a hostility based on the participation o f so m any Jew s in the Germ an revolution after the war. H e considered them to be opportunists w ho had wasted their lives in futile opposition— fanatics w ho had becom e mere hum an skeletons.** Wassermann feared and abhorred the root­ lessness he thought that Jew ish revolutionaries sym bolized because he considered it an obstacle to his own acceptance as a Germ an w riter. H ere W assermann departed from the tradition o f Bildung and Enlightenm ent, which had made Ludw ig and Zw eig take a m ore sym pathetic stand tow ards peaceful revolution. A nd yet the Germ anic commitment o f W assermann, like B u ­ b er's belief in a Jew ish Volk, although closely related to trends in G erm an popular culture, refused to acknowledge its logical polit­ ical im plications. Both men accepted a nineteenth-century pa­ triotism rather than the postw ar nationalism which was increas­ in gly m onopolized by the political right. In addition, however,

40

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concern fo r all hum anity played a role in their thought— central in Buber’s Zionism , peripheral to Wassermann’s identification w ith Germ any. B u ber's des to the mainstream o f the G erm an-Jew ish tradition were stronger than Wassermann’s. Such attitudes, espe­ cially the concept o f nationalism as patriotism , were rapidly be­ com ing archaic during their ow n lifetim e. Is it that the outsider w ho has becom e an insider—the new ly emancipated— can never shed the tradition o f his em ancipation? D espite his undoubted attraction to popular culture, he cannot share its faith, because he does not share the historical past so essential to its very being. Those w ho found consolation in Nathan the Wise w ere, after all, on firm er ground than those Jew s w ho attempted the plunge into Germ an popular culture— not to elevate it, but in order to sw im w ith the tide. The failure o f Z w eig and Ludw ig to make m eaningful contact w ith popular culture sums up the position not just o f those authors but o f an articulate and influential segment o f Germ an Jew ry. T hey continued to uphold ideals w hich had inform ed Jew ish em ancipa­ tion but w hich b y this time no longer presented a usable past. M oreover, they were apt to m istake the Germ an bourgeoisie fo r the Germ an people, as this was all they really knew— a result o f the successful em ancipation o f Jew s into the Germ an m iddle class. Yet b y the post-W orld War I years, the Jew ish m iddle class was becom ing increasingly isolated from the main currents influencing the Germ an m iddle class. Em il Lu d w ig's biographies did not survive W orld War II, and only Z w eig’s novels, rather than his historical w orks, are being republished in our time. Zw eig was no doubt a better w riter; Lu dw ig’s breathless style makes his books seem shallow, although both used the kind o f hyperbole which is out o f fashion today. The years w hich follow ed World War II encouraged instead the redis­ covery o f w riters like K afka, w ho w rote about existential situa­ tions w hich allow no clear-cut solutions. M oreover, historical w riting had changed, and even popular w orks o f history were better researched, less dependent on the decisive moment o r the w orkings o f a just fate. Yet Zw eig did paint a m em orable picture of the past in the one book which has outlasted his others, D ie Welt von Gestern (The World o f Yesterday, 1944), finished sh ortly be­ fore his death and published posthum ously. In it he used a broad

German Jew s and German Popular Culture

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c a n v a s rather than dram atizing history, and he relied on his ow n o b serv a tio n o f people and events. Although it was supposed to be an autobiography, his shyness denied him the concentration on p e rso n a l character which was typical o f his biographies. Since Em il L u d w ig could never transcend his own style, his autobiography d o e s n ot d iffer from his other popular w orks. E ven so, the Jew ish identity these w riters sought to convey w a s n o t lost, like Wassermann’s quest fo r rootedness. T hey w ere in th e trad ition o f Bildung and Enlightenm ent, presenting an alterna­ tiv e to the narrow ing cultural and political vision o f their tim e. T h e ir true im portance derives from their effort to reach out to p o p u la r culture. Jew s did becom e best-selling authors, and on that le v e l they entered into a dialogue w ith the Germ an people, even th o u g h it was a dialogue which missed its purpose. In contrast to those w riters concerned about m aintaining a w id e audience, other Germ an-Jew ish intellectuals attempted to co u n ter the ever-present dangers to Bildung and the Enlighten­ m en t from w ithin high culture. Some tried to rem ind Germ ans o f these ideals b y keeping alive the great w riters o f that age— G oethe, Sch iller, and Lessing w ould recall fo r Germ ans the glory o f their classical age. A t the same tim e, others— academics or private sch olars fo r the m ost part— sought to use scholarship and their intellectual authority as a weapon to stem the tide which threatened to engulf all rational and cultivated minds.

Ill Intellectual Authority and Scholarship

Many G

erm an

J e w s had broken their ties w ith a specific Jew ish

tradition and yet did not intend to becom e Christians. The vo id between traditional C hristianity and Judaism as a revealed religion was filled b y the ideal o f Bildung, w hich had prevailed among the Germ an bourgeois during the period o f Jew ish em ancipation. It provided a m eaningful heritage fo r some o f the m ost articulate and intellectual Germ an Jew s. Eventually, the belief in individualism and the potential o f human reason was eroded as nationalism — a w orld o f m yth and sym bol— attempted to take its place. M any Jew s refused to adopt this narrow ing vision ; the m ore the older concept o f Bildung came under attack, the m ore easily it could be accepted as one’s own Jew ish substance. A t a time when m any Germ ans found a secular religion in nationalism , Jew s also found a secular faith— in the older concept o f Bildung , based on individualism and rationality. The system o f thought that had served to further Jew ish em ancipation still seemed to provide the best hope fo r com pleting the process. G erm an-Jew ish w riters, journalists, and intellectuals typically believed that culture determined politics, a heritage from their process o f assim ilation. T hey gained no understanding o f the im ­ peratives o f mass politics in the m odern age— they w ere B il­ dungsbürger trying to be good citizens. H ow deep this com m it-

42

Intellectual A uthority and Scholarship

43

m ent to Bildung ran am ong Jew s w ill be seen in m ore detail in the activities o f the Jew ish cultural ghetto under the N az is, the Jü d i­ sche K ulturbund W ith great determ ination, it tried to furth er w h at it called the "tru e spirit o f G erm an y” b y staging Lessin g’s Nathan the Wise and p lays b y G oeth e and Schiller. H ow ever, w hen som e o f its leaders attem pted to introduce H ebrew o r eastern E u ropean p lays in translation, they w ere unable to generate w id e­ spread enthusiasm .1 G erm an Jew s constantly reaffirm ed their perception o f them ­ selves as representatives o f reason, enlightenm ent, and Bildung. T h e y confronted the rightist and nationalist ideal o f the "sim ple p erson unspoiled b y intellectuality, pure o f heart and filled w ith g o o d w ill.” 2 T he ideal G erm an o f the political right w as such a sim ple person, relyin g on instinct and em otion, provincial and n arro w in ou tlook. A fte r 1880, w hen an unprecedented new w ave o f anti-Sem itism sw ept through the country, G erm an Jew s still hoped that the G erm an classical tradition m ight trium ph over evil and that, like C aptain A lfred D reyfu s in France, G erm an Jew s w o u ld be rehabilitated— fin ally accepted into true citizenship. In fa ct, betw een 1900 and W orld War I, overt anti-Sem itism declined on ce m ore in a spectacular manner. French anti-Sem itism had been even m ore virulent than that in G erm any at the fin de sièclet) but un like France, G erm any contained no proper antibodies against the neorom anticism and nationalism surging to the fo re— no C artesian o r Enlightenm ent tradition cutting deep, no fre n ch revolu tion ary tradition to counter the threat in the long run. G erm an and Jew ish Bildungsbürger tried to keep the G erm an classics alive as one o f the ch ief bulw arks against the predom inance o f feeling and instinct. G oeth e, Schiller, Lessing, H erder, and F ich te w ere heroes fo r Jew s and gentiles alike, m ythical figures w h o served to define G erm an culture. H ow ever, in order to b ol­ ster their ow n concept o f culture, m ost G erm ans eventually began to define these classics d ifferen tly from G erm an Jew s. T h u s, fo r exam ple, in the m ainstream o f G erm an culture, H erder, w ho had been a man o f the Enlightenm ent, w as transform ed into a prophet o f nationalism , and even G oeth e, w ho had failed to support the G erm an w ars o f liberation against the French,4 w as considered a G erm an patriot. Fich te m ade such co-optation easy through his fam ous

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speeches to the G erm an nation, given in B erlin under N apoleon ic occupation, w ith their strident nationalism and hatred o f Jew s. Y et it is characteristic o f the m anner in w hich m any Jew s continued to view these classics that the early G erm an Z ion ists claim ed Fich te as one o f their ancestors, raising the cry, “ We m ust becom e little F ich tes.” T he you n g Z ion ists influenced b y M artin B u ber read Fichte d ifferen tly from m ost G erm ans. In Reden an die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation, 1807), they found not hatred and aggression but signposts o f h ow personal ethics m ight be reinforced through national com m itm ent.5 N ationalism w as an ethical im perative, a means o f developing one’s ow n personality. T he Fichte they read w as not the Fichte w hom m any G erm ans saw as the advocate o f the state as the sole m oral, ethical, and political authority. H erm ann C oh en, the an ti-Z ion ist, had a sim ilar view . Fich te w as the first, he w rote, to recognize the O ld Testam ent ideal o f a nation in the service o f universal freedom .4 In their undrstanding o f other classics as w ell, m any Jew s w ent back to the age in w hich these w riters had lived and w orked— a tim e in w hich nation, freedom , and individualism had been joined. G erm an Z ion ists such as R obert W eltsch used the appeal to Fichte in order to caution against chauvinistic national­ ism , not to furth er it. A p art from such Z ion ists, how ever, Fichte played a m inor role fo r Jew s com pared to Lessing, Schiller, and G oethe. Friedrich Schiller, in particular, w as perceived as an advocate fo r cosm opolitanism and equality, a spokesm an fo r hum anitarian ideals. H is exaltation o f freedom served as a bridge to European culture, especially fo r Jew s in eastern E u rope, w ho could read him in H ebrew o r Y id d ish . In this context, Schiller played a greater role than G oethe as the prophet o f freedom and equality— a poet w ho touched the em otions. T hose longing fo r a secular Bildung in eastern E u rop e talked about “ Sch iller-G oeth e,” reversing the order in w hich they w ere usu ally listed .7 F o r G erm an Jew s, how ever, G oethe fu lfilled an even m ore im portant function. H is ow n prejudice against the Jew s in the Frankfurt ghetto w as forgotten, as w as Schiller’s crafty brigand Spiegelberg. G oeth e's em phasis on individual freedom , his am­ bivalence tow ard all form s o f nationalism , and, finally, his b elief in Bildung seemed to foster Jew ish assim ilation. M ore im portant,

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u n lik e Schiller, G oeth e w as the em bodim ent o f the ideal B il­ dungsbürger o f the period o f Jew ish em ancipation. T hus one o f the m ost popular biographies o f G oeth e, that b y A lb ert B ielsch ow sky, w h ich sold som e 80,000 copies betw een 1895 and 19 12 , called G o e th e 's “ genuine hum anity” the goal tow ard w hich all m ankind m u st strive.* G oeth e, although a genius, w as said to exem plify n o rm ality ; although his feelings w ere m ore intense and his th ough ts deeper than those o f his fellow m en, his language w as restrain t, as he rejected all extrem es.9 Bielschow sky, like so m any G o eth e biographers a Jew , saw in G oethe the representative o f that b ou rgeoisie w hich had w elcom ed Jew ish em ancipation. “ U n til to ­ d a y G oeth e is still . . . a subterranean in fluen ce,” B ielsch ow sky w ro te in 18 9 3, “ one know s o f his existence, adm ires him now and th en , but one is not w illin g to be elevated and inspired b y h im .” 10 G o eth e, the “ norm al” bourgeois o f the classical period, w as sup­ posed to cure the bourgeoisie w hich had becom e infected w ith the extrem es o f nationalism and neorom anticism . T he fact that G erm an Jew s played a leading role in G oeth e societies and w rote so m any G oethe biographies docum ents the p o et’s im portance to the integration o f Jew s into G erm any. F or exam ple, L u d w ig G eiger, the son o f a fam ous rabbi active in the Jew ish reform m ovem ent, founded the Goethe Yearbook in 1880, and in the m id -19 20 s, Jew s w ere alm ost a m ajority in the B erlin G oeth e society. 11 H ere w as a bridge tow ard acceptance through identification w ith G erm an y's cultural hero. Because G oeth e w as being nationalized and rom anticized, and thus in danger o f being placed in the anti-Sem itic pantheon, it seem ed o f great im portance to G erm an Jew s to join G oeth e and H ein rich H eine, the m aster w ho w as likened to the sun in a cloud ­ less sk y .12 H eine w as the cynical and restless Je w w ho fo r antiSem ites sym bolized the destruction o f G erm an values. T he com ­ p lex and largely hostile relationship betw een G oethe and H eine w as transform ed into one o f respect and enduring frien d sh ip; H ein e as the supposed disciple o f G oethe becam e a m etaphor fo r Jew ish assim ilation. T he m ost fam ous G erm an-Jew ish w riter, in his close association w ith the G erm an sage, w as tam ed into the re­ straint and harm ony w hich G oethe w as thought to possess. W hen the w orsh ip o f G oeth e reached its greatest intensity in the B erlin salons presided over b y Jew ish w om en o f culture, R ahel von Y arn-

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hagen— frustrated and unhappy, never accepted as a Jew , so she thought, in the w orld o f G erm an culture— w rote in 1808 that “ he accom panies me throughout m y life w ithout fail . . . strong and healthy, he conveys a harm ony w hich unhappy and tom asunder I could never attain b y m y se lf.” 11 A century later, fo r m ost G erm ans, G oethe no longer stood fo r such balance and harm ony. F o r exam ple, a school principal talking to his graduating class in 1903 described G oethe as a lover o f nature and art, filled w ith faith in the G erm an Volk.14To be sure, som e Jew s played their part in rom anticizing G oeth e; Friedrich G u n d o lf constructed a m yth w hich called G oethe poetry becom e flesh .15 O thers, such as the G oethe enthusiast and Frankfurt rabbi, N ehem ia A n ton N o b el, one o f the m ost charism atic am ong the G erm an-Jew ish religious leadership, stressed G oeth e’s serenity and his em otional life as an artist. Judaism and G oethe had m uch in com m on, N o b el preached in 19 22— a serene w orld view and the b elief that every religion w as an artistic creation. “ Judaism and Bildung w ere as inexorably linked in the tw entieth century as they had been b y rabbis preaching during the age o f em ancipation. Lessin g, as noted earlier, w as destined to p lay a m ajor role am ong G erm an Jew s. Berthold A uerbach rhym ed that G oeth e and Schiller borrow ed their fire from Lessin g’s flam e.17 D u rin g the height o f the W ilhelm inian w ave o f anti-Sem itism , A uerbach tried to gather subscriptions fo r a Lessing m onum ent, a task w hich G ab riel R iesser had attem pted unsuccessfully m any years previ­ ously. T he call to subscribe asked that the m onum ent be b u ilt to rem ind present-day G erm ans o f a nobler p ast.11 W hile such a call m ay seem to us a touching and naive reply to the tide o f national­ ism and neorom anticism , w e m ust rem em ber that W ilhelm inian G erm any w as the age o f m onum ents. H ow ever, som e m ade fun o f “ G oethem ania, ” and others deplored the proliferation o f m onu­ m ents o f all kinds— to poets, generals, and k in g s.1’ W ith the founding o f a society to com bat anti-Sem itism in 18 9 3, Jew ish leaders took a m ore practical step to oppose the dangerous trends o f the tim es. L o ve fo r the G erm an classics w as thought to provide a barrier o f equal strength, though, to direct men back to an age o f tolerance and reason. Such uses o f the classics did not leave a lasting o r specific G erm an-Jew ish heritage. O thers, how ever, follow ed the sam e path

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47

o f Bildung, lookin g back to the same period o f h istory but, instead o f relyin g upon the classics, attem pting to use their ow n scholar­ sh ip to exorcise the irrational, to render it harm less b y filtering it th rou gh the rational m ind. Such scholars eventually left a m ore lastin g heritage than those w ho had tried to influence popular cu ltu re o r those w ho had appealed to the authority o f the G erm an classics. T h eir confrontation w ith the irrational forces o f the age w a s destined to reinvigorate w hole fields o f study and to extend th e boundaries o f traditional disciplines, founding a new kind o f cu ltu ral history. Scholarship o f this type rediscovered the im portance o f m yth as determ ining the actions o f men and society. T he study o f m yths w a s transferred from anthropology, w here it had played a leading ro le fo r som e tim e, to the social sciences and the hum anities. M yth w as no longer confined to the thought o f prim itive man but w as treated as a present concern, an enem y to be defeated and exor­ cised . These scholars considered the hunger fo r m yth to be a threat to liberal values. A t the beginning o f the tw entieth century, a w hole generation o f G erm an thinkers w as in search o f a m yth ology w hich w ould revive the suppressed em otions o f men as a counterw eight to cold reason. Such a m yth ology required thinking in visible and expe­ rien tial categories w hich had alw ays determ ined popular culture. Such thought w as supposedly based on eternal truth— the sub­ stance o f man w hich determ ined his w ishes and drives. T h is sub­ stance w as expressed through m yths like those about the G erm anic god s o r the equally ancient Edda— m yths w hich pointed to m an’s substance and gave him roots. M artin Buber shared these ideas, ju st as he had attem pted to harness the thought o f the G erm an m ystics to the Jew ish revival. B u t w hile this m yth ology w as rooted in the Jew ish Volk, it expanded to m anifest itself as a substance w h ich w as shared b y all o f hum anity. A m ong the G erm an political righ t, how ever, the m yth ology never expanded; the G erm ans alone w ere said to be in touch w ith the elem ental forces o f nature.20 T h e m yth o lo g y w as brought to earth through the invocation o f na­ tion al sym bols pointing to a h istory long past w hen the m odem age had not yet crushed the G erm anic soul. M illenarian and apoca­ ly p tic ideals played their part— the “ G erm an revolu tion " prom ised national salvation. T he ancient G erm ans, m edieval m ystics, and

48

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racial m em ories w ere conjured up in order to figh t a supposedly cosm opolitan, rational, and urban w orld . Such is the background against w hich those dedicated to the old er concept o f Bildung attem pted to exorcise m yth— not o n ly against the longing fo r a T h ird R eich in w hich the G erm anic soul preserved through centuries o f oppression w ould spring to life but also against the threat o f rightist m ass m ovem ents built on these foundations. Sigm und Freud sought to give a rational analysis to personal m yth against the background o f the first large-scale anti-Sem itic m ass m ovem ent in central E urope. T he fall o f V ienna to K arl Lu eger’s anti-Sem ites in the election o f 1895 w as a stunning b low to liberal culture. Freu d's com m itm ent to a w orld o f reason and his love fo r the G erm an classics hardly need docum entation. Freud harbored a form idable rationalist suspicion o f enthusiasm and dis­ counted all enthusiasm s alike. H e stood squarely in the tradition o f the Enlightenm ent and w hat it had m eant and still meant to m any Jew s, even though he lived in V ienna rather than B erlin . Sulamith had w ritten in 1 8 1 7 that man m ust grow in order to becom e an independent being, cultivating his reason in order to w eaken the p ow er o f in stinct; the parallel to the ego and the id seem s obvi­ o u s.2' O f equal relevance fo r Freud’s attack on m yth w as his at­ titude tow ard the tyran n y o f history. In the unconscious, he writes in The Interpretation o f Dreams (1900), nothing can be brought to an end, nothing is past and done w ith. It is the task o f psychotherapy to m ake it possible fo r the unconscious processes to be fin ally dealt w ith and forgotten .22 I f a w ish to be free from the fate o f his fello w Jew s w as present in D ie Traumdeutung (The Interpretation o f Dreams), as has been argued,22 then Freud’s am­ bivalence tow ard h istory could be seen as putting an end to this separate fate— the h istory w hich Jew s could not share w ith G er­ m ans o r G erm an A ustrians. Freud w as interested in the past, as his analysis of M ichelangelo show s, but this w as a com m itm ent to h istory as progress from anim ism through religion to science and culture— a typ ically liberal view o f history. T he ideals o f rationalism , prog­ ress, and hum anity m ade up Freud’s Jew ish substance, as they had inform ed the Jew ishness o f A uerbach and Z w eig .24 T he autonom y o f the individual w as pitted against the m asses, and Freud’s view of

Intellectual A uthority and Scholarship

49

the m asses w as no different from that o f the other Bildungsbürger w e h ave discussed. H is Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (G roup Psychology and the Analysis o f the Ego, 1 92 1) w as m eant to dem onstrate h ow the rational individual sinks into barbarism u n d er the com pulsion o f group life .25 T h e d iscovery o f psychoanalysis w as set in part w ithin the cu ltu ral tradition w hich has concerned us and seem s to have sp ru n g from a d rive to restore a w orld lost in the noise o f m odem m ass politics and industrial society. T he m odem psychoanalytic m ovem ent at first had the appearance o f a Jew ish sect, as the m arg in a lity o f Jew s in G erm an-A ustrian society w as com pounded b y the fact that psychoanalysts w ere outsiders in the m edical profes­ sio n as w ell. Freud w as quite aw are o f this double outsider status; it served , together w ith the political events in V ienna, to m ake him a self-con sciou s and self-questioning Jew . Freud and his circle o f frien d s and correspondents w ere preoccupied w ith the battle to m aintain reason and Bildung. Self-d ign ity and m utual support w ere regarded b y som e o f these intellectuals as part o f their Jew ish substance.25 T hus the w riter A rn old Z w eig w elcom ed a letter from Freud as a greeting from the “ heart o f the creative zone, from w arm th and goodness o f heart, and from the great European tradi­ tion o f reason. ” 27 Freud constantly sought to w iden the circle o f his disciples and adm irers, and through his correspondence and friendships he becam e a part o f a republic o f letters w hich tran­ scended any sectarianism . T ypically, this larger circle w as oriented tow ard culture; hardly any m edical men w ere a part o f this net­ w o rk o f personal relationships. T he rival psychoanalysts and sex­ ologists— som e, like K rafft-E b in g, m uch m ore fam ous than Freud— w ent their ow n w ay and all but ignored this Jew ish sect, w hich fo r a tim e m anaged to influence those concerned w ith litera­ ture and the arts rather than the m edical profession. D uring the years betw een the w ars, this republic o f letters w as com prised o f intellectuals tryin g to stem the tide o f irrationalism and authoritarianism , men w ho knew and w rote to each other across national boundaries. Rom ain R ollan d , the indefatigable co r­ respondent, played an im portant role in this republic, as d id, am ong others, A ndré G id e, Benedetto C ro ce, Thom as M ann, and O rtega y G asset. A true dialogue took place betw een these men and Je w s from G erm an-speaking lands, such as Sigm und Freud,

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M artin Buber, E m il L u d w ig, and Stefan and A rn old Z w eig. M any o f these w riters also appeared in journals edited b y left-w in g intel­ lectuals during the W eimar R epublic. T his republic o f letters cham ­ pioned the d ign ity o f the individual— the cause o f hum anity against darkening tim es. It has not yet found its historian, but w hen its h istory is w ritten, its part in furthering a Jew ish-gentile dialogue m ust not be forgotten. O f course, there w ere differences am ong these m en. F o r ex­ am ple, Freud’s relationship w ith Rom ain R olland began fraternally after W orld War I but ended in friction w hen R olland dism issed som e o f Freud’s m ost basic psychoanalytic theories.2* R eflecting popular prejudice in one o f his biographies, E m il Lu d w ig attacked Freud fo r projecting onto the healthy the notions Freud gained by observing the sick. H e accused Freud o f equating neurotics w ith norm al m en.” H is em phasis on norm alcy reflected the fear o f be­ ing thought abnorm al— o f departing from the standards set by bourgeois so ciety; this fear w as shared b y Jew s and gentiles alike. L u d w ig w as too sh allow to recognize that Freud also shared this fear— that he w ished to change neurotic behavior to conform to the standards o f society even w hile he argued fo r less repression o f the instincts w ithin the lim its o f respectability.10 T h e m em bers o f this republic o f letters w ere not alone in their exploration o f m yth as a w ay o f exorcising the irrational. T h ey w ere joined b y scholars w ho spoke prim arily to an academ ic rather than a lay audience. A b y W arburg m ight, at first glance, seem an u n lik ely subject fo r our study— a private scholar, w ithdraw n from p olitics, the author o f a ve ry few erudite articles o f far-reaching im portance fo r the field o f Renaissance art. W arburg's life 's w ork after 1902 w as the expansion o f his library, first affiliated w ith the new U n iversity o f H am burg. A fte r his death, the W arburg L i­ brary, in exile from N ation al Socialism , m oved to Lon d on , to be know n as the W arburg Institute. In both H am burg and Lon d on , it gave a new im pulse to cultural history. M uch has been w ritten about W arburg and his institute, em phasizing their contribution to the discipline o f art history. H is significance in continuing a tradi­ tion o f G erm an Je w ry has generally been neglected. A b y W arburg’s w o rk dealt w ith the persistence o f the classical tradition in the Renaissance— w hat the classical w orld had meant to Renaissance artists. Sym bols and im ages w ere said to be the

Intellectual A uthority and Scholarship

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m eans b y w hich man com m unicated his em otions, fears, and h opes to oth ers; each basic hum an attitude dem anded a particular sym b o l o r im age.31 T hrough an analysis o f sym bols and im ages, expressed in Renaissance painting b y the m ovem ents o f figures, W arburg gave a new and fresh interpretation to the influence o f the classics on Renaissance art. W arburg’s definition o f im ages as based o n m yths and expressed in sym bols reflects (perhaps uncon­ scio u sly) an understanding o f an age w here the visual w as becom ­ in g m ore im portant than the printed w ord — w here im ages ex­ pressed the hopes, fears, and w ishes o f the sem i-literate m asses. W arburg feared the m asses, and his analysis centered on m yth and sym b o l in ord er to exorcise the irrational through understanding its fu n ction ; he w anted to use the rational m ind to cope w ith the irration al. W arburg sought to dem onstrate that a principle o f ord er go v­ erned all phenom ena. T h is principle w as em bodied in the classics. W arburg’s disciple and collaborator, G ertrud B in g, w rote about h is b elief that “ the w orsh ip o f the classics had been com m onplace fo r all men o f culture (gebildeten) ever since the eighteenth cen­ tu ry .*” T he ideal o f Bildung prevailed once m ore. F o r W arburg, paganism m eant surrender to the im pulses o f fren zy and fear, w hile the classics w ere seen through the eyes o f N ietzsch e as both A p o l­ lonian and dem oniac. T hus classic inspiration could lead to un­ rest— the blow in g hair and b illow ing dresses o f som e Renaissance painting— but w ould eventually induce restfulness.33 Tow ard the end o f his life (he died in 1929), W arburg saw the dem oniac victo ri­ ou s m ore often than the A p ollo n ian .34 L ik e Freud, W arburg sided w ith reason against the dark side o f the psyche. H e considered it his d u ty to assist the struggle fo r enlightenm ent precisely because he knew the strength o f the enem y.33 W arburg w as fascinated b y astrology, and to the dualism between the A pollon ian and the dem oniac he added the one betw een m agic and logic. A th ens, he w ro te, m ust alw ays be saved from A lexan d ria.34 In his w ay, W arburg continued w hat the Enlightenm ent had attem pted— to exorcise the irrational b y com prehending it ration­ ally. T he ideal o f Bildung is alw ays present, reflected in the im por­ tance o f the classics, essential fo r the cultivation o f human selfconsciousness through the ages. W arburg's w as an A ufklärers (enlightener's) prescription fo r life in a w orld threatened b y irra­

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tionality. Indeed, G ertrud B in g states that Lessin g’s essay on the statue o f Laocoon— that sym bol o f restraint and quiet greatness in the m idst o f pain— w as a pow erful influence on W arburg’s youth and that he felt a deep obligation to the G erm an Enlightenm ent.17 T he urge tow ard totality m arked am ong all o f these intellectu­ als determ ined the arrangem ent o f books in W arburg’s fam ous lib ra ry ; books on ph ilosophy w ere next to those on astrology, m agic, and fo lk lo re, and sections on art w ere linked to literature, religion , and philosophy. W arburg thus im plem ented his b elief that m an’s consciousness m ust not be torn apart through one-sidedness and exaggeration; it m ust be in balance, ju st as the w orld should be governed b y reason. Surely A b y W arburg m ust be placed w ithin the tradition o f Bildung; like others, he attem pted to figh t a rear­ guard action against the narrow ing vision o f his tim e, but w ith different w eapons. H e had a clear vision o f the irrational forces w hich seem ed to dom inate his life and tim es. W arburg cam e from an orthodox Jew ish hom e and broke w ith its traditions early in life. T h is break seemed necessary to him in order to realize his you th fu l intention to define the “ typical character” o f an enlightened and assim ilated Jew . H e intended to place him self on neutral ground, neither a C h ristian nor a tradi­ tional Je w ; nevertheless, he considered his Jew ishness a proud heri­ tage.1* H is project o f defining the Je w w as never realized, but for him , as fo r other intellectuals, Jew ishness w as in fact identical w ith Bildung, because it exem plified the attitude tow ard life o f the G er­ m an bourgeoisie in its classical age. W arburg alw ays stressed the necessity o f space fo r quiet re­ flection (einen Raum der besonnenheit) w hich w ould strengthen rationality.19 B u t ju st as im portant as such space w as scholarship itself— control over the hum an im agination through a m eticulous exam ination o f docum ents. W arburg’s ow n essays are detailed ex­ am inations o f evidence, filigree w o rk in the tracing o f classical influence. G eneral statem ents are rare and m ust be pieced together from his approach to research and a few speeches o f a m ore reflec­ tive nature. F o r A b y W arburg, scholarship w as a w ay to m aintain rationality in an increasingly com plex and irrational w o rld , a m eans o f m aintaining control in a w orld bordering on chaos— to w arn, to exorcise, to encourage, never detached from the challenge o f the tim es.40

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53

E rw in Panofsky, one o f the W arburg lib ra ry 's m ost fam ous collaborators (and like alm ost all o f its early collaborators a Jew ), em phasized this ordering function o f scholarship. T he objects w h ich art h istory studies, he w rote, com e into being through an irration al and subjective process, the art o f creation, w hich the art h istorian m ust bring under control. T he hum anist m ust be suspi­ cio u s o f m ere “ art appreciation” ; know ledge o f classical languages, the h istorical m ethod, and relevant docum ents is needed in order to tru ly understand a w ork o f art— to integrate it into the structure o f the rational m ind.41 T he classics are crucial here as w ell; neither W arburg nor P anofsky had any use fo r the "n ervo u s” baroque, unrestrained b y the A pollonian. M oreover, as a believing C h ris­ tian , M ichelangelo had surrendered to m edieval and G oth ic p ro­ to typ es. T he classics signified the aw akening o f m ankind from C h ristian ity and the baroque to his Bildung and enlightenm ent.42 Such an aw akening w as crucial to m an's ab ility fo r self-cultivation. T he W arburg lib rary’s m ost p ro lific author, E rn st Cassirer, w anted to accom plish fo r ph ilosophy w hat W arburg and P anofsky had attem pted in art h istory— the im prisonm ent o f irrational activ­ ity w ith in a rational critique o f culture. F o r C assirer as w ell, sym ­ b o ls united hum an thought and existence through the structures o f language, religion , m yth, and art. Such a w orld w as know able b y virtu e o f the system atizing tendencies o f human reason.42 Lectur­ ing at the W arburg Institute in London in 19 3 6, C assirer p ro­ claim ed that the idea o f lib erty w as basic to any ph ilosophy o f h isto ry or culture and that lib erty w as founded upon the auton­ o m y o f hum an reason.44 B u t w here W arburg had been pessim istic ab ou t the victo ry o f hum an reason, C assirer w as optim istic, fo r he shared w ith K ant and H egel a teleological view o f hum anity’s p ro gressive enlightenm ent. M an w ould increasingly com e to understand the rational basis o f his ow n existence and in this w ay gain control over the irrational. M yth , he w rote, feeds on a w orld o f fan tasy— in m agic rites and religious cerem onies, man acts und er the pressure o f individual desire and violent social im pulse. B u t once man begins to ask w hat such m yths m ean, the answ ers w ill lead him aw ay from unconscious and instinctive life .42 The sim ilarity is startling between C assirer’s Myth o f the State (1946) and the ideas o f both Freud and W arburg, in spite o f the fact that there w as no close com m unication between the W arburg lib rary

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and the psychoanalysts. T h ey clearly shared a com m on Germ an tradition w hich defined w hat they regarded as the substance of their Jew ishness. W hy, then, did these men fail to apply their insights d irectly to the politics o f their tim e? In exile from N ation al Socialism , C assirer did analyze the political m yths o f his tim e, calling them serpents w hich paralyzed their victim s before attacking them . M odern man had not really surm ounted the conditions o f savage life , he said. N o r had m ythical thought lost its potency, even if artistic, intellectual, and ethnic forces had checked its influence for a tim e.44 T ypically, political forces seemed to p lay no role in check­ ing m yth. Instead, culture provided the antidote, and w h ile the preoccupation w ith m yth and sym bols in The Myth o f the State com es tantalizingly close to an analysis o f m odern m ass p olitics, its p olitical im plications w ere never explored. N o m ore than any o f the other G erm an-Jew ish intellectuals could C assirer free him self from his bias tow ard Bildung. T he new im petus these scholars gave to art history, cultural history, and ph ilosoph y is still w ith us, although less in Europe than in England and the U nited States, w here refugee scholars helped to assure continuity. Yet the kind o f bourgeoisie they repre­ sented, w ith its reliance on the classics, has lost its relevance. To m any intellectuals after W orld War II, living a balanced, rational, and steady life w as o f less consequence than questioning the very existence o f their society— posing existential dilem m as. T hey w anted to retain the idealism o f this G erm an-Jew ish tradition w ith ou t its “ stu ffy ” and com placent bourgeois heritage. T h e leftw in g intellectuals o f the W eimar R epublic helped them to accom ­ plish this feat.

IV A Left-W ing Identity

tradition reached its clim ax in a left-w in g identity. T h e increasing d ifficulties in carryin g on a G erm anJew ish dialogue w ere apparent in our analysis o f those w riters w ho w anted to break through their isolation in order to m ake contact w ith G erm an popular culture. O thers attem pted to interact w ith G erm an intellectual life through their scholarship, to use it in o r­ d er to exorcise the irrational then pressing in on all sides. Such men w ere dedicated to the proposition that in the long run the senseless m ust m ake sense; this proposition guided their analysis o f h istory and their attem pt to explain m yths and sym bols. M uch o f G erm an culture and politics no longer felt a need fo r rational explanations; instead, it w ith drew into a w orld o f faith. T hose w hose ideals w e have discussed felt uneasy am ong believers—Jew s o r gen tiles.1 T h e y had their ow n tradition o f G erm an culture, transm itted from the Bildungsbürgertum o f an earlier age, and w hile they felt their grow in g isolation, they w ere rarely conscious o f its effects o r pos­ sible consequences. T he left-w in g intellectuals exem plified a p ow ­ erfu l urge to integrate, to find their Jew ish substance in G erm an culture. M any o f them w ere aw are o f their Jew ishness but thought that through socialism they w ould arrive at the final point o f tran­ scendence beyond Judaism o r G erm anic roots. T h e ideal o f a com m on hum anity w hich w ould abolish the The G

erm an

- Jew

is h

55

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differences betw een all peoples w as the final goal fo r all w h o had stood in this tradition ; both Bildung and the Enlightenm ent were founded upon the autonom y o f the individual, the potential o f all m en regardless o f nationality o r religion. T h is concept o f hum anity had been vague, and both W ilhelm von H um boldt and the philosophers o f the Enlightenm ent w ere m ore concerned w ith how this ideal m ight be reached than w ith its special content. Later, it becam e a m etaphor directed against dogm atism and intolerance, the expression o f an individualism essential fo r the attainm ent of true culture. F o r men like Stefan Z w eig, hum anity m eant tran­ scendence o f nation and religion, o f all so-called artificial barriers am ong m en, until, as he put it, pure friendship reigned.2 L eft-w in g intellectuals found that socialism m ade concrete the ideal o f hum anity b y m odernizing the m anner in w hich such tran­ scendence could be accom plished. T he final victo ry o f the w orking class and the abolition o f existing property relationships w ould issue in the trium ph o f hum anity, but such a victo ry w ould be m eaningless unless it w as based upon Büdung and the Enlighten­ m ent. A s a result, theirs w as a peculiar socialism , opposed by socialist orthodoxies and advocated during the W eimar Republic b y men and w om en w ho w ere, fo r the m ost part, Jew ish intellectu­ a ls.2 To be sure, gentile intellectuals had also had a part in the creation o f this socialism , but Jew ish participation w as much greater than gentile in this dialogue between G erm ans and Jew s. F o r exam ple, o f the sixty-eigh t w riters fo r the m ost im portant leftw in g journal {Die Weltbühne) w hose religious origins could be established, fo rty -tw o w ere o f Jew ish descent, tw o w ere half-Jew s, and on ly tw en ty-fo u r n on -Jew s.4 The m any G erm an intellectuals w ho failed to rem ain liberals joined the orthodox right o r left, w here they could find shelter in a firm and sim ple ideology. To be sure, m any Jew s also joined the orthodox left, and as m em bers o f the Social D em ocrats o r o f the C om m unist Party they never questioned the official dogm as, serving as good foot soldiers o f the p arty and, at the beginning o f the W eimar R epu blic, in leadership positions as w ell. L eft-w in g intellectuals w ere those w h o either could not bring them selves to join an established social­ ist p arty or, if th ey joined, proved troublesom e, alw ays question­ ing party dogm a and policy. A s noted elsew here, the socialist par­ ties felt a grow ing h ostility tow ard intellectuals, and fo r som e

A Left-W ing Identity

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w o rk ers, to be a Je w w as identical w ith being an in tellectu als L eftw in g intellectuals saw them selves as the “ conscience o f the w o rk ­ in g class” and conceived o f their m ission as providing the yeast o f socialism , keeping its structure flexible. L eft-w in g intellectuals saw socialism as a h istorical process rather than as a finished product. T h e ir heritage becam e m eaningful to the youn g men and wom en after W orld W ar II searching fo r a socialism untainted b y the de­ m ands o f politics o r the struggle fo r power. N o t o n ly did the socialism o f the left-w in g intellectuals give b o d y to the vague ideals o f hum anity to w hich they paid al­ legiance, but open-m indedness to the new in G erm an culture, characteristic o f so m any G erm an Jew s, helped them to m ove be­ y o n d liberalism . T h is w ould have been m ore d ifficu lt w ithout the lib eral heritage itself; the ideals o f self-cultivation and the auton­ o m y o f man w ere central to their socialist ideology. T here w as an a ffin ity betw een the Jew ish bourgeoisie w hich supported the new ­ est in the arts, placing them selves squarely on the side o f the m od­ ern ists, and their w ayw ard socialist children, w ho w anted to over­ th ro w the existing social and econom ic order. T h is affin ity w as based on shared ideals that the sons w anted to realize m ore com ­ p letely than the fathers had. T he you n g socialists considered them selves M arxists— they advocated the class struggle, control over the means o f production b y the w ork in g class, and, finally, a classless society. T h ey agreed w h oleheartedly w ith the M arxist view o f capitalism as draining aw ay the surplus value produced b y the w orkers and enslaving m en through the fetishism o f goods. T h ey w ere less sure about the econom ic foundations o f M arxist analysis and its political rel­ ativism — w hether revolutionary tactics had to prevail until victo ry w as w on. M arxism , w rote E rn st B loch , w ants to preserve that id eal o f hum anity w hich the bourgeosie upheld in its classical pe­ rio d ,'i the tim e o f Jew ish em ancipation. M arx him self believed that in the late eighteenth century the m iddle class had had a historical and progressive m ission before it becam e an enem y in the class struggle. Som e left-w in g intellectuals, such as the young G eorg L u k acs, cam e to M arxism from a deep ethical rejection o f the capitalist w o rld and the desire to see oppressed peoples break w ith the old orders o f society in order to shape their ow n destiny.7 T he attem pt to hum anize M arxism dates back to the fin de

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siècle but found its clim ax in the W eim ar R epu blic as intellectuals attem pted to reinvigorate the H egelian roots o f M arxism o r to tie M arxism to K an t's categorical im perative. T he H egelian revival w anted to direct the attention o f M arxism aw ay from the w o rld o f things and to their hum an source. T hose w ho w anted to em phasize the H egelian dialectic tried to change the connection o f the w orld o f objects to m an b y altering how man perceived his w orld — how he com prehended the totality o f life. T h ey believed that m an m ust understand the w h ole o f his existence, the forces w hich shape it, and h ow he can attain his freedom . T he liberal division o f labor, o f p olitics from life , w as rejected, yet m uch o f the substance o f liberalism rem ained alive w ithin the totality o f true hum an con­ sciousness. T he concern w ith culture rem ained upperm ost, yet cultural phenom ena w ere to be seen not in isolation from their social con­ text o r so lely as products o f class struggle, but m ediated b y the to tality o f life, including thought, politics, econom ics, and artistic creation. O rth od ox M arxists w ere m istaken in deriving cultural phenom ena so lely from their substructural socioeconom ic base. N evertheless, fo r H egelian M arxists such as M ax H orkheim er and T h eod or A d o rn o , the class struggle w as not abolished but ex­ tended in dim ension. T he con flict between the old society and that about to be born w as not m erely a struggle fo r control over the m eans o f production but inform ed all aspects o f life.* C u ltu re w as givén relatively greater w eight than the m eans o f production— m odem m ass culture, based upon the fetishism o f goods through advertising o r upon the m anipulation o f popular taste as an opiate fo r the m asses (such as jazz, fo r A d orn o), prevented true con­ sciousness, the grasping o f the totality o f life. M oreover, furth er departing from the prevailing M arxist orthodoxy, the H egelian dialectic w as seen as open-ended (as indeed it had been fo r the you n g H egel)— one that w as interested, like Bildung, in the p roc­ ess rather than in the product o f the struggle— and therefore re­ fused to acknow ledge d ie Soviet U nion as the paradigm o f the new society. M any H egelian socialists show ed a bias in favo r o f aesthetics; Lu kacs’s preoccupation w ith literature and A d o rn o 's w ith m usic are good exam ples. T he im portance o f aesthetics in Bildung is accepted even though the self-cultivation o f man is not dependent

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so lely on his ow n volition but also on social reality. H ow ever, in spite o f the attem pt to balance individuality w ith social reality, it is m an w h o m ust act, as, fo r exam ple, Lukàcs tells us, providing he understands the to tality o f his existence and is not lost in this w o rld .’ M an m ust be freed from dom ination— that w as the m essage o f the so-called Frankfu rt school, the Institute fo r Social Research established in 19 23 at the n ew ly founded U n iversity o f Frankfurt, w h ich attained its fam e from 19 30 onw ard under the leadership o f M ax H orkheim er and T h eod or A d orn o. T he root o f all evil w as n o t m erely the structure o f social relationships but, above all, the tyran n y o f oppressive system s o f thought and culture over the m inds o f m en.10 Em phasis w as placed upon hum an cogn ition ; o n ly “ tru e consciousness” could free itself from the contem porary net­ w o rk o f dom ination designed to induce false consciousness. T h e term “ m ediation” is im portant here, fo r it w as the m ind o f m an w h ich m ediated betw een the individual and his com prehension o f social reality. A s the m ind grew in self-consciousness, man w ould com e to understand this reality better and w ould w ant to be part o f the dialectic o f change— facilitating the process b y w hich the existin g ord er w ould be transcended. T h e obstacles to such com ­ prehension, and therefore to a revolutionary com m itm ent, w ere the inducem ents offered b y contem porary culture, w hich had been co-op ted b y capitalism and, corrupted b y the system , had lost the lib eratin g function it had possessed in the age o f G oeth e and Schil­ ler. T h e capitalist system had destroyed all that w as genuine, w h eth er the hum an substance o r culture; thus, fo r exam ple, A d o rn o and W alter Benjam in (fo r a short tim e a m em ber o f the In stitute) w ere preoccupied w ith art in an age o f m echanical repro­ duction . T he dom ination o f system s over the m inds o f men m ade it im possible fo r men to m ediate betw een their ow n needs and those o f so ciety.11 D espite the rejection o f liberalism , a considerable am ount o f the concept o f Bildung w as assim ilated in this em phasis upon the cu ltivation o f the m ind. A esthetic perceptions occupied the sam e central place in this socialism that they had occupied in the concept o f Bildung. A ppreciation o f the genuinely beautiful w as an integral part o f the true consciousness that w ould advance the dialectical process in ord er to transcend the present. A ll o f these scholars

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w ere interested in the classics and classical beauty, although none o f them thought that classical concepts provided a perfect m odel fo r the present o r the fu tu re; socialism , like h istory and the origi­ nal concept o f Bildung , w as a process, a striving fo r perfection not y e t attained. T he prim acy o f culture entailed the prim acy o f theory, thus the term "critical th eo ry” is often used to describe the id eology o f the Frankfurt school. B a rry K ätz has w ritten that the so-called critical th eory placed its hope fo r hum an liberation not in the m isery o f industrial w orkers but in som e past ideals w hich re­ m ained true. T he theorists o f the Frankfurt school w ere sharply critical o f the Enlightenm ent, accusing it o f constructing a system o f dom ination w hich equated m athem atical abstractions w ith hu­ m an thought. Yet they insisted on the use o f the critical m ind, itself an Enlightenm ent legacy, as the k ey ingredient in preparing the "leap into a to tally other w o rld .” 12 T he search fo r transcendence— the attem pt to understand the m aterial w orld w ithout being subordinated to its dictates— m otivated m ost o f the G erm an-Jew ish intellectuals w e have dis­ cussed. F o r them , the search fo r transcendence w as essential fo r an ideal social and p olitical integration on the basis o f a shared hu­ m anity. B u t fo r these socialists, conscious "alien ation ” from the present w as a precondition fo r the "tru e consciousness” on w hich a better future could be built. O n ly b y standing apart could men understand society in its entirety and begin the w o rk fo r change. T hus outsiderdom itself becam e a necessary prerequisite fo r tran­ scendence. N eith er the Jew ish nor the gentile bourgeoisie o f the eighteenth-century Enlightenm ent w ould have understood such an idea; Jew ish em ancipation w as supposed to be a denial o f outsider­ dom , not its affirm ation. T he H egelian revival o f M arxism stressed not on ly m ediation, true rather than false consciousness, and the aesthetic but also the open-endedness o f h istory— its revolutionary potential. The H egelian socialists w anted to revolutionize society, even though in later exile from N a z i G erm any they disclaim ed such an intention. To them , h istory w as a process through w hich man w orked to th row o ff dom ination b y understanding the totality o f his exis­ tence. T hus the fossilized structure o f M arxism w as pried open, leading to a vision o f a future w hich m ight be never-ending, where

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m an w ould strive ever upw ard to a final liberation. T he avantgarde o f this revolution w ere no longer the proletariat but a kind o f Bildungsbürger— rational, inform ed, adept at theorizing, and w ith fin e ly tuned aesthetic sensibilities. T he im portance given to m usic and literature, in particular, as necessary to the attainm ent o f true consciousness seem s startling. Interestingly, the strong em phasis o n reason indicates French inspiration, as it did fo r the editors o f th e liberal press and men such as Z w eig and L u d w ig; according to H orkh eim er and A d o rn o , “ H um anity has alw ays been m ore at hom e in France than elsew here. T he concerns w hich had been central to the G erm an-Jew ish tradition w ere integrated into a revolutionary theory. T he m em ­ b ers o f the Institute fo r Social Research w ere apt to deny that their Jew ish n ess played any part in their lives, a denial that had its source in their socialism . M artin Ja y w as correct w hen he w rote that the m anifest intellectual context o f Judaism — using a d efin ition o f Judaism as either a religion o r based on specific and ancient Jew ish traditions— played no part in their liv e s.14 B u t their Jud aism w as v e ry m uch present if defined as a G erm an-Jew ish id en tity w hich w as becom ing increasingly Jew ish as m ost G erm ans repudiated it. T h eir Jew ishness played another role as w ell, one attuned to the concept o f alienation in critical theory— they w ere outsiders in G erm an u n iversity life, ju st as they w ere outsiders as far as the established socialist parties w ere concerned. T he scholars o f the F ran kfu rt school w ere conscious o f their position, and although th ey asserted that Judaism played no role in their lives, they shared w ith other left-w in g intellectuals the b elief that W eimar G erm any had to undergo m assive transform ation if anti-Sem itism w as to end. T h is conviction w as clearly an im portant factor w hich, as Istvan D eak tells us, led m any Jew s to becom e left-w in g intellectu­ a ls.1* M ax H orkheim er’s ow n grow ing concern w ith the G erm an hatred o f Je w s, w hich burst into the open in his old age, m ay w ell have been sim m ering throughout m uch o f his life. We cannot ex­ am ine in detail the attitudes o f the leading m em bers o f the Frank­ fu rt school tow ard anti-Sem itism and their Jew ish origins— B en jam in 's flirtation w ith Judaism is w ell know n, w h ile A d o rn o , o n ly h alf-Jew ish , w as m uch less concerned. W hatever their indi­ vidu al concerns w ere, the Frankfurt school as a w hole is a part o f

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the G erm an-Jew ish tradition o f Bildung and Enlightenm ent and brought this tradition to the socialist m ovem ent. Placing such socialists in the G erm an-Jew ish tradition is not m eant to d en y the obvious influence o f M arx, H egel, and others on their though t, but the roots o f this unorthodox socialism he in large m easure w ithin the peculiar nature and evolution o f a G erm an-Jew ish iden­ tity. T he ideals o f the Frankfurt school w ere lasting ones. T h e m ethods o f analysis— the H egelian concept o f m ediation betw een the individual and society and the nature o f hum an conscious­ ness— w ere im portant, but the interrelationship betw een to tality and freedom w as even m ore so. T he absence o f com m itm ent to a fixed class base w as destined to appeal to those disillusioned w ith the proletariat; so w as the attem pt to break w ith the religion o f industrial progress. T he w orsh ip o f industrial progress had com e to prevail w ithin M arxism , as in society as a w hole— the law s o f industrial production w ould lead to the victo ry o f the proletariat. Such M arxism seem ed to encourage the dehum anization o f society, w hich these socialists and their intellectual heirs deplored. H ege­ lian socialism led back to the centrality o f man him self— his m ind and its cultivation— and thus served to hum anize M arxism , so they thought, w ithout denying the pressing need fo r revo lu tio n .14 T he N e w L e ft o f the 1960s also criticized the w ay in w hich hum an life w as transform ed b y m odern capitalist society into things, m arket­ able goods, o r num bers.17 A lthough they took this criticism from the early w o rk o f Lu kâcs rather than from the Frankfurt sch ool, the thrust o f the you n g H ungarian activist intellectual and the G erm an academ ics w as m uch the sam e. T he cultural em phasis o f the Frankfurt school as basic to an understanding o f the to tality o f life also had profound m eaning to a generation o f bourgeois youth in E u rop e and the U nited States in the 1960s— no longer Je w s but m ostly gentiles, children o f prosp erity y et discontent. H erbert M arcuse, at one tim e a m em ber o f the Institute fo r Social R esearch, w as instrum ental in transm itting these ideas to later generations. H is One-Dimensional Man (1964) concentrated on the hum anist foundation o f socialism as he castigated both capitalism and Bolshevism . A form er student m em ber o f the N ew L e ft in the U nited States has described w hat it m eant to realize for the first tim e that exploitation w as not confined to ph ysical or

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econom ic su fferin g " but included alienation from on e's ve ry hu­ m anity, an alienation sym bolized b y m odem m ass culture. T he em phasis on dom ination w as once m ore present as M arcuse con­ tended that high culture did not sim ply deteriorate into m ass cul­ ture but that tw o-dim ensional culture becam e one-dim ensional culture through its co-optation b y the establish m ent." K arl M arx's critique o f the fetishism o f goods w as adapted to a th eory w hich, w h ile not denying the reality o f class struggle, em phasized the im portance o f hum an consciousness. M arcuse stated that true con­ sciousness m ust take up the fight against one-dim ensional m an, the co-op tation b y a restrictive society o f all that w as noble— tolerance and learning, literature and art. B ou rgeois society had corrupted the critical m ind through co­ optation , integrating it into a system o f dom ination; so ran one o f the principal theories o f the N ew L e ft in E urope and the U nited States, continuing the thought not o f orthodox M arxists but o f these earlier left-w in g intellectuals. T hose w ho opposed one­ dim ensional man m ust now com e to the rescue; the rescuers w ere not the proletariat, lacking consciousness but, above all, university students and the intelligentsia, w ho w ere not yet part o f the estab­ lishm ent and w ere therefore freely able to exercise their reason— m en and w om en o f Bildung. T he “ outsid er” w as assigned his task, v e ry sim ilar to the one that Kantian socialists gave them selves and that others assigned to the so-called free-floatin g intelligentsia. T he G erm an-Jew ish tradition had reached a decisive point— the free­ dom o f the individual from all dom ination could be accom plished o n ly b y those w ho had internalized the tradition o f selfcultivation , rationalism , and enlightenm ent. T he bourgeois dim en­ sion o f the age o f em ancipation had to be liquidated but its ideological substance preserved. T h e Frankfurt school did its w o rk in the shadow o f N ation al Socialism , m aking opposition to bourgeois society, as they per­ ceived it, not o n ly easier but a duty. Sim ilarly, M arcuse saw liberal­ ism as leading into fascism ,20 and the N ew L e ft in the 1960s in­ vented a fascist m enace in ord er to bring about the end o f bourgeois society. In reality, how ever, they shared the ideological roots o f liberalism , even though the liberalism o f the classical pe­ riod had changed. T he substance o f this liberalism becam e part o f the G erm an -Jew ish tradition, m uch o f it funneled through the

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concept o f Bildung, and it w as this kind o f liberalism w hich opened up M arxist orthodoxy, ju st as it had opened up religious and cultural orth od oxy earlier. O u r analysis o f die G erm an-Jew ish heritage dem onstrates this continuity— the constant, at tim es sub­ terranean, w orkin gs o f a Jew ish substance as it had been defined from the beginning o f Jew ish em ancipation. T he K antian socialists in the W eimar R epu blic, also Je w s fo r the m ost part, traveled a sim ilar road, although instead o f concen­ trating on the dialectical progress o f h istory o r the m ediation be­ tw een consciousness and society, they sought in a straightforw ard fashion to inject the categorical im peradve into M arxism — an eth­ ical standard w hich m ust determ ine all revolutionary action. The attraction o f K an t fo r so m any Jew ish thinkers w as in large part based on his cosm opolitan hum anism and his em phasis on a critical m ind inform ed b y reason.21 K ant expressed a m oral ideal o f Bil­ dung w hich you n g left-w in g intellectuals w anted to m odernize by linking it to the insights o f M arx. T h eir contention w as that if M arx had draw n his context from K ant rather than from H egel, his doctrine w ould not have been corrupted through tactics and disci­ p lin e; one dom ination w ould not have succeeded another. M en m ust never be the m eans but rather the end o f all striving, as the categorical im perative dem anded. K u rt Eisner, later to lead the M unich revolution o f 19 18 , w rote in his essay on “ M arx and K an t” (1904) that K an t’s ethic provided the living context w hich m ust determ ine hum an action taking place in h istory.22 L ik e other K an t­ ian socialists, E isn er did not negate the class struggle but put fo r­ w ard the standard b y w hich it m ust be judged. T he vision o f a just society called fo r the abolition o f capitalism . T he original m anifest o f the Weltbühne (19 18 ), the favorite journal o f the left-w in g intel­ lectuals, dem anded econom ic change but also asserted that the eternal im perative o f justice and freedom m ust prevail during the struggle as w ell as in victo ry.22 Intellectuals had an im portant function in the K antian schem e as w ell— they w ere the conscience o f the w orking class and w ere to keep the ideal o f the revolution unsullied until the final victory. D urin g the revolution ary crisis o f 19 18 , D ie Weltbühne called fo r the form ation o f a “ council o f the w ise” com posed o f those w ho had the proper ethical pow er o f w ill. T he “ cultured” w ere to be the “ true invisible ch u rch .” Som e intellectuals m ade an attem pt to

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form such a council» but the w o rk ers' m ovem ent felt no need fo r the service o f these intellectuals; indeed» both the Com m unists and the Social D em ocrats did their best to discipline o r expel them .24 T h e vagueness o f the ethical ideal is evident; so is the com m itm ent to an absolute, w ithout the tem pering influence o f the H egelian d ialectic. Both the K antian schem e and the H egelian revival called fo r a new hum anism w hich, w h ile based upon Bildung and the Enlightenm ent, w ent beyond G erm an liberalism and its increas­ in g ly narrow vision . W hat so m any G erm an Jew s had considered th eir Jew ish substance w as preserved and extended. T he connection betw een Jew ishness and the optim ism o f the Enlightenm ent continued fu ll-b low n in the ph ilosophy o f such m en. H ow ever, especially in the advocacy o f K antian socialism , Je w s w ere joined b y gentiles; thus the book m ost often cited w hich d erived from this view o f man and society w as not w ritten b y a Jew , although it sym bolized the w orld view o f m any Jew ish social­ ists. Leonhard Frank’s Man Is Good (D er Mensch ist gut, 19 19 ) activates the categorical im perative residing w ithin every m em ber o f the so-called m asses through the shrieks o f a m other w ho has lo st her son in the w ar and a w aiter running through the streets, callin g fo r an end to the conflict. T he m asses form an endless silent p rocession o f sisters and brothers, m arching tow ard the goal they all c arry in their hearts— their w ish to express love fo r all hum anity d espite the ruins o f war. T h ey m arch into a new society o f truth, freed om , and lo v e.25 T h is trium ph o f hum anity over death is based on a b elief in the goodness o f m an, in his enlightened substance, w h ich needs o n ly to be awakened in order to transform society. Frank, w ritin g as a pacifist under the im pact o f war, w as vague ab ou t the nature o f this new society. Such vagueness is typical o f m uch o f K antian socialism , although som e, such as K u rt Eisner, w anted to create a governm ent w ith shared pow er betw een soldiers and w o rk ers’ councils and an elected parliam ent, and others sug­ gested a form o f w elfare capitalism .26 A ll K antian socialists agreed, how ever, that the use o f force and political tactics to bring about the revolution w ould corrupt the revolution itself and therefore had to be rejected. K antian socialism had som e influence on later generations, b u t it w as m inor com pared w ith the H egelian revival o f M arxism . N everth eless, men such as Eisner, E rn st Toller, and the novelist

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L io n Feuchtw anger, w h o, at one tim e o r another, found Kantian socialism a congenial theory, w ere im portant Jew ish left-w in g in­ tellectuals, not to be forgotten even after W orld W ar I I .27 The Jew ish substance o f the Kantian left-w in g intellectuals is m ore elu­ sive than that o f the H egelian socialists, although men such as E isn er and T oller w ere quite aw are o f their Jew ishness. T h ey shared the ethical idealism that w as so strong in left-w in g intellec­ tuals— the urge to em ancipate contem porary society from all that w as fragm ented and d ivisive. T he "leap into freedom ” o f the K an t­ ian socialists w as necessary because the hum an substance de­ m anded it, not because o f a new self-consciousness brought about through self-cultivation , learning, and the developm ent o f aes­ thetic sensibilities. T he Enlightenm ent w as m ore im portant fo r K antian socialists than Bildung . Still, they subordinated the class struggle to an ethical individualism — the sole technique fo r revolu­ tion. T he Jew ishness o f these left-w in g intellectuals, from w hatever school o f socialist thought, w as best expressed b y the you n g Wal­ ter Benjam in, con sciou sly seeking to define his ow n brand o f Judaism . Benjam in, b arely out o f school at the age o f tw enty, rejoiced in his n ew ly discovered Jew ish identity. Jew ish intellectu­ als, he w rote in 19 12 , provide the principal support and dynam ic fo r true culture, w hich in this case included not o n ly literature and art but also socialism and the w om en's em ancipation m ovem ent. A m ong Jew ish intellectuals, he continued, w riters w ere in the van­ guard o f change; here the otherw ise m uch m aligned Literatenju­ den —Jew s as men o f letters— took a central role in creating alter­ natives to the existing order.2* Jew ishness becam e a m etaphor for the critical m ind and fo r Bildung; it is through the stu d y of G oeth e, he repeats, that the nature o f Jew ishness is fu lly revealed.2* T h is definition o f Jew ishness sum m arized in an alm ost uncanny m anner the Jew ish substance w e have endeavored to trace— here not as an idealization o f bourgeois society but as an alternative to the present. Benjam in’s Jew ishness w as in essence identical w ith that o f the socialists w e have discussed. T he Frankfurt school sought his col­ laboration and after his death in 19 4 1 published a m em orial volum e to secure fo r him the recognition denied during his life .10 Yet A d o rn o , fo r one, disapproved o f Benjam in’s preoccupation with

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Je w ish thought, w hich fo r a tim e, under the influence o f his close frien d G ershom Scholem , seemed to sh ift Benjam in’s early d efin itio n o f Jew ishness tow ard a sporadic interest in cabala and Z io n ism .31 N evertheless, Benjam in never departed far from the literatu re w hich he had defined as his Jew ish substance. G ershom Scholem rem em bered that it w as Benjam in’s study o f G oeth e and H ö ld erlin and his translation o f Baudelaire and Proust into G e r­ m an that led him to express a w ish to know H ebrew in order to un ravel the problem s he had encountered in these activities.32 N o th in g m uch cam e o f Benjam in's n ew ly found interest, but it w as not surprising that the road to a know ledge o f H ebrew and to Z ion ism passed through the study o f G erm an culture.33 A sim ilar exam ple w as B u b er’s H assidim , w ith their close ties to G erm an m ysticism . Jew ish socialist intellectuals w ere the prim e targets o f Social D em ocratic and C om m unist cam paigns against intellectuals. A u ­ gu st B ebel, the socialist leader w ho stood in the vanguard o f the fig h t against anti-Sem itism in W ilhelm inian G erm any, called Je w ­ ish socialists b rilliant but pushy, d ifficu lt to subject to p arty disci­ p lin e .34 T h is attitude becam e rooted in orthodox socialism , and indeed the kind o f socialism w e have discussed did challenge o r­ th od oxy, because it gave intellectuals a decisive role in the class struggle. T h e "o u tsid er” w anted to becom e the "in sid er” in social­ ist thought as w ell— to find his roots in the w orkin g class, although the w o rk ers’ m ovem ent continued to reject left-w in g intellectuals. Ju st as the Jew ish bourgeoisie w as increasingly isolated w ithin the G erm an m iddle class, Jew ish left-w in g intellectuals w ere isolated w ith in the w o rk ers’ m ovem ent. O f course, anti-Sem itism played a part in that isolation, especially w ithin the Com m unist Party. T he kin d o f socialism that Jew ish intellectuals adopted w as an equally im portant facto r; neither socialist parties nor the w o rk ers' m ove­ m ent could accept the contention that theory m ust dom inate prac­ tice. T he w o rk ers’ m ovem ent and the socialist parties stood in the m idst o f the p olitical and social struggle, and it is no coincidence that the heirs o f such left-w in g intellectuals w ere idealistic and utopian m iddle-class u n iversity students and professors. T hese W eim ar intellectuals, w ith their theoretical and cultural preoccupations, w ere often unable to deal w ith the urgent political dem ands m ade on them ; fo r exam ple, w hen it cam e tim e to choose

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a presidential candidate fo r the elections o f 19 3 2 , D ie Weltbühne, after m uch soul-searching, recom m ended the Com m unist candi­ date, E m st Thälm ann— representing the very orth od oxy that the left-w in g intellectuals had fought so bitterly.” L eft-w in g intellectu­ als such as the novelist L ion Feuchtwanger, in exile from N azi G erm any, m ay have had a better excuse fo r their flirtations w ith bolshevism , fo r the Soviet U nion seemed to be the o n ly nation com m itted to fighting fascism in the 1930s. U nder C om m unist P arty pressure, G eo rg Lu kâcs repudiated his earlier w ritin gs. H e believed that staying in the Com m unist Party m eant keeping in touch w ith the m asses and thus avoiding the political isolation o f his fello w left-w in g intellectuals.” T he m em bers o f the Frankfurt school, such as H orkheim er and A d o rn o , never descended from their p olitical aloofness into the arena o f d aily p o litics; A d o rn o despised popular culture and contem porary m ass m ovem ents.17 T he left-w in g intellectuals w ere isolated not on ly from the reality o f G erm an politics and the dom inant culture but also from their fello w Je w s, how ever m uch they shared m any o f their liberal ideas. A fte r 19 18 , they w ere repeatedly attacked as radicals w ho endangered all that Jew s had m anaged to accom plish in G erm any. G o o d reason existed fo r such attacks—Jew s w ere h igh ly visib le in m any o f the postw ar revolutions, not on ly in B olsh evik R u ssia but also in Budapest, M unich, and B erlin . T hat these Jew s w ere fo r the m ost part B olsh eviks and not left-w in g intellectuals m ade no d if­ ference to the popular perception. Indeed, on ly recently have his­ torians begun to see the profound differences betw een the first stage o f the Bavarian revolution, under K u rt Eisner, and its sec­ ond, B olsh evik stage, under Eugen Leviné and others. To be sure, it is easy to see w h y Jew s becam e B olsh eviks in eastern E urope, w here their oppression had been harsh; the left-w in g intellectuals, how ever, w ith their scruples about the use o f force and their com ­ m itm ent to theory, stood at the other end o f the spectrum in revolution ary E urope. A nti-Sem ites and racists ham m ered hom e the lesson the revo­ lutions w ere supposed to teach all G erm ans—Jew s w ere B olsh e­ viks and anti-national. D uring the postw ar crisis, b elief in Jew ish conspiracies and subversive activity w as not ju st a curious notion held b y professed haters o f Je w s; in 19 18 , even W inston C h urch ill associated Jew s w ith the B olsh evik conspiracy.” It is no surprise,

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th en , that left-w in g activity w as deplored b y m ost Jew s. T he Je w ­ ish establishm ent had long been suspicious o f Social D em ocrats; as n oted earlier, at the beginning o f the tw entieth century, Jew s had continued to support the liberals w ho flirted w ith anti-Sem itism , rath er than the Social D em ocrats, w ho proved to be their true frie n d s.” Yet the left-w in g intellectuals troubled Jew s on a deeper level as w ell. In M y L ife as German and as Jew , w ritten ju st after the high tid e o f Jew ish involvem ent in revolutionary activity, Jak o b W asser­ m ann asked w h y political radicalism sprang from a Judaism rooted in ancient and sacred traditions. H e professed not to know the answ er, p ard y because he failed to realize that to m any Jew s Social­ ists drew on the tradition o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent rather than on older, sp ecifically Jew ish traditions. W assermann w ent on to characterize those attracted to left-w in g radicalism as the up­ ro o ted , the professional “ n ay-sayers.” 40 T h ey w ere the “ ou t­ sid e rs,” w ho could not find stab ility in m iddle-class life. L eft-w in g intellectuals challenged G erm an Je w ry ’s assim ilation into the G e r­ m an bourgeoisie. T h ey threatened the close lin k betw een Bildung an d the m iddle class w hich had existed since the creation o f the con cept. T he m iddle-class w ay o f life, including m iddle-class m or­ als and m anners, w as considered an integral part o f being cultured, gebildet; the Jew s had been em ancipated sim ultaneously into the age o f Bildung and m iddle-class respectability.41 N arrow in g the h o rizo n o f Bildung did not change this w ay o f life ; indeed, it rein forced it. Ju st as Jew s clung to the older concept o f Bildung, they clung to a m iddle-class w a y o f life w hich continued to sign ify respecta­ b ility. Ism ar Schorsch has dem onstrated how M oritz O ppenheim ’s scenes o f pious Jew ish fam ily life, im m ensely popular am ong G e r­ m an Jew s, m im icked G erm an m iddle-class Gemütlichkeit even w h en they w ere set in the ghetto before em ancipation.42 N o r w as it coincidental that G eorg H erm ann in his Jettchen Gebert (1906), requ ired reading fo r youn g Jew ish girls, praised the tranquil and stead y life o f the m iddle class. T he left-w in g Jew ish intellectuals disrupted this life and thus threatened one o f the principal pillars o f Jew ish em ancipation. Socialist em phasis on grasping the totality o f life challenged the bourgeois divisions o f labor at the w orkplace and in everyd ay life. T he left-w in g intellectuals w ere accused o f

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politicizin g all aspects o f life (an accusation leveled against the N e w L e ft in the 1960s as w ell). M any G erm an Jew s in their ow n attitudes dem onstrated a com partm entalization o f life. T h ey supported the avant-garde and sided w ith the m odem in arts and letters, but they never extended these attitudes into social behavior o r radical p o litics; the fab ric o f m iddle-class life w as never tested. M oreover, in spite o f their broader definition o f Bildung, m ost G erm an Jew s agreed w ith the m ajority o f the cultured bourgeoisie that citizenship m eant respect fo r legitim ate political authority, “ w hich know s b est.” G erm an Jew s o r G erm ans, the “ little m en” o r the w ealthy, w ere apt to fo llo w K an t's precepts that a law w as a law and that there can be no exceptions. T h e cultural and the political w ere tw o different w o rld s, and Jew ish em ancipation w as a d ecisively cultural em anci­ pation. T he m iddle class w as successful in m eeting all challenges to its w ay o f life and survived unbroken even beyond W orld W ar II. W hen discontent flared once m ore am ong the sons and daughters o f this bourgeoisie in the 1960s, m any o f the N ew L e ft, in E urope and the U nited States, adopted the W eim ar left-w in g intellectuals as their m odel. T h is heritage o f the left-w in g intellectuals can be b rie fly sum m arized, although w ith the splintering and p rolifera­ tion o f the N ew L e ft, m any different influences cam e into play. T he hum anizing o f M arxism had great appeal— it allow ed em pha­ sis on the centrality o f the individual in the revolutionary process and the need fo r self-cultivation in ord er to understand the totality o f existence. T he quest fo r totality w as pitted against the fragm en­ tation o f m iddle-class life. L ife-styles had to express p olitical com m itm ènt, w hile aesthetic taste w as part o f political consciousness. T hus the intellectual, the student, and the professor could take a crucial role in the vanguard o f revolution— a role that the estab­ lished socialist parties and trade unions had denied them . F o r ear­ lier Jew ish left-w in g intellectuals, their particular socialism had provided hope fo r true em ancipation, dissolvin g in the blinding light o f a shared present and future an unusable past w hich had divided Je w from gentile.0 T he N ew L e ft w as gentile fo r the m ost part, but fo r them the w ay out o f their academ ic o r bourgeois isolation w as along m uch the same path that the earlier generation had traveled. T h ey also w anted em ancipation from a supposedly

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sterile society and a debased culture, as they saw it, attuned to the p rocess o f revolution. T he W eimar left-w in g heritage w as espe­ c ia lly appropriate fo r the revolt o f those w ho had not com e from th e w ork in g class and w hose setting w as the university rather than th e factory. A p art from providing a revolutionary theory fo r a N ew L e ft, left-w in g intellectuals in the W eimar R epu blic, w hether under the influence o f H egel o r K an t, began a new theoretical discourse w h ich had lasting consequences fo r M arxist scholarship. T h eir greatest contribution m ay have been the application o f new in­ sigh ts and different angles o f vision to the past and their dem on­ stration o f h ow the past m ight becom e relevant to the present. A cad em ic scholars such as A b y W arburg and E rn st C assirer, H ege­ lian M arxists such as the you n g G eorg Lu kâcs, and Kantian M arx­ ists such as m any o f those w ho w rote in D ie Weltbühne began a process o f intellectual questioning and debate that is still w ith us.

V The End and a N e w Beginning?

o f cultured and articulate G erm an Jew s had becom e a fact lon g before A d o lf H itler’s declaration o f w ar against the Jew s in 19 3 7: “ I do not w ant to force the adversary into b a t d e . . . instead, I tell h i m . . . I w ant to annihilate y o u ! A n d then m y cleverness w ill aid me in m aneuvering yo u into a com er so that y o u cannot strike m e, but I can pierce yo u r h eart.” 1 T he isolation o f G erm an Jew s in G erm any w as due m ainly but not so lely to the w aves o f anti-Sem itism w hich sw ept over the land. M uch m ore dangerous anti-Sem itic m ovem ents had existed in France before W orld W ar I, yet French Je w ry w as never so isolated. In G erm any, how ever, w ith the lost w ar and the lost peace, the Je w s' cultural em ancipation turned back upon them . Its ideas had becom e deeply rooted am ong G erm an Jew s. O f course, they had also offered the best hope fo r Jew ish assim ilation, w ith their em phasis on the uni­ versality o f reason and the p ossib ility that anyone could attain citizenship through Bildung. Acceptance o f these ideas w as linked to the unique social structure o f G erm an Je w ry ; it w as so lid ly m iddle class, w ith no p o o r and alm ost no peasants o r w orkers. The transform ation to the bourgeoisie o f the Jew s w as perfect, and even you n g Jew ish socialists w ho rejected bourgeois capitalism retained the core o f this cultural em ancipation. Jew s clung to an id eology that had been abandoned b y m ost

The

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g r o w in g is o l a t io n

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G erm ans and upheld it under conditions w hich should have m ade its failu re o b vio u s; they flew its banner high under the N az is, startin g w ith the perform ance o f Nathan the Wise as the inaugural p la y o f the new ghetto theater. T h ey lived the life o f the cultured m iddle class even under the shadow o f im m inent death. It is no su rp rise, then, that the Jew ish notables, cultured and respectable, failed to com prehend the G erm ans w ith w hom they negotiated the fate o f the Je w s; apparendy equally respectable and cultured, the N a z is w hom they faced across the table liked to m ake a show o f th eir Bildung. A lthough the N azis prided them selves on a rein­ vigorated Volk com m unity w here everyone had an equal chance, in reality the traditional educational elite had increased its share o f u n iversity students com pared to the rest o f the population.2 B u t the Bildung o f the N ation al Socialists w as no longer the Bildung o f the G erm an-Jew ish tradition. T h e patterns o f thought w e have analyzed led to dangerous illu sion s about the nature o f the G erm an people and the im pera­ tives o f m odem politics. Jew s w ere not the o n ly group am ong G erm ans that failed to understand the need w hich chauvinist and racist nationalism filled in a tim e o f crisis and the success o f m ass p o litics built upon such an irrational foundation— but fo r Jew s this lack o f understanding w as fatal. T h eir b elief in the prim acy o f culture subordinated politics to lo fty principles. A d o lf H itler w as underestim ated as a form er house painter, a m em ber o f the uncul­ tured petty bourgeoisie. T he fam ous B erlin theater critic A lfred K e rr even poured contem pt on D ie D iktatur des Hausknechts (The Dictatorship o f the M enial Servant 19 34), as he called it; A d o lf H itle r w as the em bodim ent o f the m ob— a m ob w hich had read N ietzsch e.1 Yet in his b ook , contem pt w as paired w ith in sigh t; fo r exam ple, K err believed that as far as G erm any w as concerned, W orld W ar I had never ended; he felt that the N azis w ere continu­ ing the w ar through their lies, aggressiveness, and brutality. B u t it w as in his title and his belittlem ent o f the N azis that K err ex­ pressed ideas current am ong m any o f his fello w G erm an-Jew ish exiles. G erm an Jew s had little experience in w orkin g w ith the ex­ trem e righ t; they believed that culture w as a liberal and left m o­ nopoly. T h at culture could be successfully co-opted b y the right seem ed beyond reason, and they failed to see that the once noble elem ents o f Bildung w ere, in fact, being used and distorted in the

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p olitical litu rg y o f N ation al Socialism . T h is litu rgy m ade good use o f the em phasis on aesthetics, classical m otifs, and educational purpose. T he link betw een Bildung and the Enlightenm ent had been d estroyed ; instead, Bildung w as linked to racism and nationalism . N ation al Socialism w as m erely the clim ax o f a long developm ent during w hich the Bildung o f H um boldt, Lessin g, and G oeth e had becom e an ever narrow er vision . T he G erm an Jew s w ho have concerned us stood still w hile h istory advanced in an unforeseen direction. In 1904, R ab b i C aesar Seligm ann, a leader o f the G erm anJew ish reform m ovem ent, preached a serm on in the great syn a­ gogue o f H am burg on the occasion o f the centennial o f Jew ish orphanages founded on the educational principles o f the eight­ eenth-century Enlightenm ent. H is serm on sum m arized the h istory w e have endeavored to isolate and exam ine. B efore the em ancipa­ tion o f the Je w s, he said, Judaism ’s w ill to live had died, and the Jew s w ere surrounded b y darkness. Suddenly, like a m iracle, they w ere resurrected and light penetrated darkness. T he them e of m ovem ent from darkness to light seem s to accom pany the h istory o f G erm an Je w ry as a typical m etaphor dating from the Enlighten­ m ent. H o w did this m iracle occur? T he fertilization o f Judaism w ith G erm an culture w as the kiss that awakened the slum bering prince. Seligm ann w ent on to exclaim , “ Shall w e tear a cen tury of . . . G erm an Bildung out o f Jew ish breasts?” 4 G erm an Je w s, he w arned, m ust not be lulled to sleep b y rom antic notions o f the past. T h ey m ust rem em ber w hat it w as like to live as a Je w in G erm any a century ago ; they m ust acknow ledge the trem endous tasks that w ere accom plished to raise G erm an Je w ry to a state o f culture now taken fo r granted.s Yet, Seligm ann continued, w e do not serve this culture w ell if w e discard our Jew ishness. T he very survival o f Judaism through the ages im poses a m oral d u ty ; it contains a categorical im perative w hich cannot be denied. T he specifically Jew ish does not oppose but com plem ents G erm an culture, fo r all men o f goodw ill share identical aspirations.4 H ere Seligm ann turned to the concept o f the Enlightenm ent to proclaim the identity o f Judaism and G erm an culture— all men shared an innate goodness and m orality; they w ere part o f the system o f natural and m oral law s decreed b y G o d . T h is b elief in G o d ’s natural and m oral order, according to Selig-

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m ann, m eant concern fo r the w elfare o f the state, w hich every religiou s com m unity supported, as w ell as the cultivation o f lo y ­ alty, reverence, and fam ily feeling. T he dem ands o f the natural and m oral ord er coincide w ith the needs o f bourgeois society, as they d id during the Enlightenm ent. Seligm ann integrated Judaism into th is natural and m oral ord er; Jew ish religious cerem onies sym ­ b olized m an’s m oral obligations and his relationship to G o d . H ere the Jew ish and the G erm an m et in the deism o f the Enlightenm ent, and this m eeting w as m ade possible through the pow er o f G erm an Bildung, w hich brings light into the Jew ish so u l.7 Seligm ann w as a leader o f reform and liberal Judaism , but it m ust be clear from ou r discussion that the ideas w hich he put fo rw ard w ere to a greater o r lesser extent those o f m ost articulate and intellectual G erm an Jew s. T h ey inform ed w riters and scholars, lib erals, and left-w in g intellectuals. B u t they also played their role in G erm an Zion ism . In its attem pt to construct a secular Jew ish n ation, the Jew ish national aw akening w as influenced b y G erm an nationalism as w ell as b y an appeal to specific Jew ish biblical tradi­ tion s. T he G erm an influence derived, fo r the m ost part, from that strand o f G erm an nationalism w hich had focused on solid arity rather than on dom ination and w hich had regarded the national com m unity as encouraging, not aborting, individual selffulfillm en t. T h is nationalism referred to Fichte and H erd er as in­ terpreted during the age o f Jew ish em ancipation rather than taking its cue from the aggressive nationalism about to trium ph over the o ld er patriotic tradition in G erm any. H ans K oh n , then a Z io n ist o fficia l, sum m arized in 1929 the ideals o f a group o f G erm an Z io n ­ ists, including M artin B u ber and R obert W eltsch, the editor o f the o fficia l G erm an Z io n ist paper, the Jüdische Rundschau. Since 1909, w hen they had first m et, he w rote, this group o f friends had con­ ceived Z ionism as a m ovem ent through w hich they could realize their m ost fundam ental personal convictions— pacifism , liberal­ ism , and hum anism .1 B u ber him self w rote a few years later that w h at w as ethically w ron g fo r the individual could not be regarded as righ t fo r the com m unity, fo r the individual and the com m unity w ere as one in the sight o f G o d .9 W hen the Jüdische Rundschau criticized the choice o f Nathan the Wise as the first p lay perform ed b y the Kulturbund in 19 33, it specifically rejected any im putation o f provincialism and instead dem anded that Jew s m ust be receptive

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to universal ideals— but as Je w s.10 Such sentim ent appears vague, but, m ore specifically, lo y alty to the Volk w as regarded b y these Z ion ists as a necessary step tow ard com m itm ent to the needs o f hum anity. T h is w as not a nationalism m ost Europeans w ou ld have recognized after W orld War I. To be sure, the leader o f G erm an Zionism at the tim e, K u rt Blum enfeld, m aintained that the nationally conscious Je w should m aintain a certain distance between him self and G erm an cu ltu re ," yet he him self appealed to the authorities o f the G erm an classical period. A clean separation m ay w ell have proved im possible, and it w ould be interesting to determ ine how m uch the elem ents o f B il­ dung and the Enlightenm ent w ere incorporated into this selfconscious Jew ish identity— into the Jew ish h istory and tradition w hich they claim ed as their ow n. T h is m ay be easier to learn from the w ritings o f M artin B u ber and his group, and even o f A h ad H aam , the H ebraist o f O d essa ," than from the youn ger m en and w om en w h o advocated a m ore aggressive postassim ilatory Z io n ­ ism . A fte r all, M artin B u ber and his friends w ere united in the struggle fo r a Jew ish -A rab binational state in Palestine. T hese Z ion ists attem pted to hum anize nationalism in spite o f the Völkisch vocab ulary w hich som etim es crept into their lan­ guage; as far as B u ber w as concerned, the soul o f the individual had to em body the soul o f the Volk. H ow ever, nationalism w as not supposed to annihilate individual w ill and person ality; on the con­ trary, fo r men such as B u ber and W eltsch, affin ity to the Volk m eant cultivating on e's ow n personality from out o f on e's Jew ish substance. T h is self-cultivation differed from the concept o f B il­ dung because o f its em phasis on intuitive cognition and experience. N evertheless, the goal w as the same— a continuous process o f in­ dividual self-expression. To be sure, all nationalism b y its very nature stands close to the abyss o f hatred tow ard other people and undue pride in one’s ow n nation. B u t these Z ion ists tried to avoid such dangers through their ideal o f com m unity and their b elief that the nation w as m erely a step tow ard a com m on hum anity. N athan the W ise entered once m ore, although through the back door, w h ile the ideals o f Bildung and Enlightenm ent w ere used to tem per m odem nationalism . It w as not m erely because o f the w eakness o f the Jew ish people— w ithout an arm y and w ithout a state— that such men advocated their hum anist, even pacifist, nationalism but

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ra th er from a deep conviction that the Jew ish nation m ust d iffer fro m others in its love fo r all m ankind and respect fo r the d ignity an d potential o f the individual. T h e attem pt to hum anize nationalism is one o f the m ost im ­ p o rta n t legacies o f G erm an Jew ry, although Z ion ists from eastern E u ro p e shared these ideals. A ro n D avid G ord on , fo r exam ple, w h o had em igrated from R ussia to Palestine in 1904, inspired Z io n ists such as H ans K ohn and H ugo Bergm ann, men o f G erm an cu ltu re, w ho used his term “ the human people” as the title o f one o f th eir books. G o rd o n ’ s b elief that a people cannot be redeem ed b y p olitical success and even less through m ilitary victory, but o n ly th rou gh their m oral and spiritual rebirth, spoke to the ideals o f the G erm an Z io n ists.>} T his is a part o f Z ion ist h istory w hich dem ands to be w ritten, and although it w as to be aborted w hen it clashed w ith p olitical reality, it did represent one o f the few attem pts in recen t tim es to steer a national revival from a narrow and p rovin ­ cial vision to a larger hum anist ideal, calling on patriotism rather than a nationalism w hich had plunged E urope into som e o f the b lo o d iest w ars o f its history. Jew ish orthodoxy, like Zion ism , w as influenced b y the cul­ tu ral em ancipation o f G erm an Jew s. Sam son Raphael H irsch , its leader, thought that freedom under the law, virtue, and m orality, as proclaim ed b y the age o f Jew ish em ancipation, w ere based upon Je w ish thought and Jew ish values “ w hich sang their w ay into the hearts o f the G erm an p eo p le.” S till, he continued, it w as a noble sp irit like Schiller w ho had m ade it possible fo r Jew s to live like hum an beings am ong hum anity.14 G erm an-Jew ish orth od oxy did n o t w ant to return to the ghetto and accepted em ancipation as jo y fu lly as C aesar Seligm ann, the leader o f Jew ish reform . T he retu rn to a past rem em bered as depriving Jew s o f their very hu­ m an ity w as not a viable alternative fo r any segm ent o f G erm an Je w ry . We have show n that w hat once had been a part o f G erm an culture becam e a central Jew ish heritage. To understand this redefinition o f the Jew ish substance, w e m ust lo o k at the h istory o f G erm an Je w ry from the perspective o f its em ancipation rather than from o u r know ledge o f its brutal exterm ination, w hich hardly any Jew s o r gentiles could have envisioned during m ost o f its history.

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O bviou sly, not all G erm an Jew s shared these id eals; am ong m ore than h alf a m illion men and w om en, there w ere m any varieties o f thought and opinion, especially since m ost G erm an Jew s w ere educated and articulate. E ven so, the heritage o f the cultural em an­ cipation found a continuing place in their d aily lives. M oreover, to w hatever extent the G erm an heritage o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent had inform ed the Jew ish substance o f men and w om en, this heritage w as used to figh t a new ghettoization once the N azis excluded Jew s from G erm an cultural life. Ju st as n ew ly em ancipated Jew s had appropriated this G erm an culture as their ow n , so the Jew s about to becom e disenfranchised turned to Bildung and the Enlightenm ent in order to keep the door open to the gentile w o rld , to create a space w here they could rem ain G e r­ man Jew s. W hen the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden w as founded in 19 33, Ju liu s B ab exp licitly denied that the Jew s w anted to erect their ow n ghetto w alls through this cultural organization: “ We do not w ant to cultivate a one-dim ensional Jew ish culture but the grand G erm an culture w hose soil nourished u s,” fo r this culture, he continued, “ represents the m ost dignified approach to all that is hum an, an integral part o f Jew ish n ess.” 15 It w ould be d ifficu lt to find a better sum m ary o f w hat G erm an culture m eant to G erm an Jew s— how it had becom e part o f their very substance. T h is reaffirm ation o f G erm an culture w as m ade at a tim e w hen the Jew ish cultural ghetto w as not yet a total reality, fo r until the tightening o f anti-Jew ish polices in N ovem ber 1938, Jew s could attend G erm an cultural events and w ere not dependent upon the Kulturbund fo r such sustenance. A fte r N ovem ber 1938, th ey had to turn to the Kulturbund; how ever, it now led a shadow existence, its activities directed tow ard encouraging Jew ish em igration from G erm an y.15 T hus even though the Kulturbund had to com pete w ith the G erm an cultural scene fo r its audiences during the first five years o f the T h ird R eich , it forced upon G erm an Je w ry a discus­ sion o f w hat had been “Jew ish ” in their cultural em ancipation. H ans H in k el, the N az i o fficial charged w ith control over Je w ­ ish cultural life , told a N azi party new spaper that the Kulturbund could present pieces w ritten either b y Jew s o r b y non-Jew s w ho dealt w ith Jew ish them es, w hile names like Shakespeare, M olière, V erdi, Johann Strauss, Shaw, and Ibsen occupied a prom inent place

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in the repertory. R equests to perform w orks b y Beethoven, M o zart, and G oeth e bordered on presum ption and had to be re­ jected. Foreign literature w as allow ed, but G erm an cultural goods had to be protected. Yet M ozart's Magic Flute, Beethoven, and Schubert w ere all part o f the 19 3 6 program o f the Kulturbund .17 T h e inconsistencies o f H in k el’s censorship can perhaps be ex­ plained b y the pressure he faced from local p arty organizations. F o r exam ple, a B erlin branch o f the N az i Party com plained to its propaganda o fficer about the tactlessness o f perform ing Fidelio w ith an all-Jew ish cast in N az i G erm any and w as angry w hen the Kulturbund Newsletter praised G oeth e: “ W hat do G oethe and Beethoven have in com m on w ith the Je w s?” '8 T he answ er should have been, "M uch m ore than present-day G erm an s," but H in k el, w h o had joined the N az i P arty in 19 2 1 (his m em bership num ber w as 287), w as h ard ly the person to perceive this tru th ; fo r all his boasting that the Kulturbund proved the N a z is' generosity tow ard th eir greatest enem y, he spent m uch o f his career as a journalist attacking the Jew s as "m asters o f lies. ” ” T he Kulturbund took fu ll advantage o f the non-G erm an clas­ sics. In addition, since A u stria w as treated as a foreign cou n try u n til 1938, so-called G erm an w orks did slip b y in the early days. G erm an Jew s could now claim Nathan the Wise as tru ly their ow n , fo r L essin g's p lay w as no longer perm itted on the G erm an stage.20 T h e Kulturbund m ade the m ost o f the "grand culture” it could present w h ile agonizing about the new definition o f Jew ishness dem anded b y the tim es. N o clear definition w as in sigh t: at the p len ary m eeting o f the Kulturbund in 1936, the group exp licitly rejected once again the form ation o f any "cu ltu ral ghetto” and proclaim ed that no uniquely Jew ish culture existed but that the great classical w o rk s w hich belonged to all m ankind could be pre­ sented in a Jew ish fram ew ork.21 G eorg H erm ann, the author o f Jettchen Gebert, praised b y a lecturer o f the Kulturbund as exem ­ p lify in g the best traditions o f the G erm an-Jew ish p ast,21 responded in 1936 to an in q u iry about the future o f Jew ish literature. H e asserted that so-called Jew ish literature w as m erely literature w rit­ ten and felt b y Jew s, w h ile H ebrew and Y id d ish literature had, at best, a future on ly in Palestine.21 W hen w ritin g about the Kultur­ bund theater, one Jew ish new spaper tried to cut the gordian knot

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b y asserting that content did not determ ine cultural values but that the actor him self m ust portray Jew ish d ign ity and character to the audience through his com portm ent, w hatever the play.24 G erm an Jew s had been robbed o f their G erm an-Jew ish iden­ tity and did not know w here to tu rn ; it had been far easier to fin d a new identity in the heady days o f em ancipation than w hen con­ fronted w ith a sudden ghettoization. To cling to the b y n ow trad i­ tional values w as an understandable reaction, ju st as the form er leaders o f the Jew ish w om en’s organization (Jüdischer Frauen­ bund) w ere found reading G oethe as they w aited fo r d eportation .2* Eastern European Jew ish culture w as not accepted as a valid su b sti­ tu te; indeed, the Kulturbund believed that outside the religious sphere it w as fragm entary at best and did not represent a cultural unity.24 W ho w ould w ant to return to a ghetto past, rem em bering h ow Jew s had lived w ithout dignity, as tradition had it, th eir v e ry hum anity stripped aw ay? Indeed, w hen the first G erm an -Jew ish painter, M oritz O ppenheim , painted scenes from the ghetto sh ortly after em ancipation, it w as transform ed, as w e have seen, into a com m unity perm eated w ith G erm an m iddle-class values27— lifted from darkness into light. A gainst such a background, it is not d ifficu lt to account fo r the lack o f interest b y Kulturbund audi­ ences in plays translated from the Y id d ish o r the H ebrew .2* In ­ stead, the new Jew ish ghetto resisted being pushed back into d ark­ ness through a new, and fo r them archaic, definition o f Jew ishness and continued to seek solace in Bildung and the Enlightenm ent. T he inconsistency o f H in k el’s censorship, noted already, per­ m itted Jew s to com m ent p u b licly in 19 3 6 on the hundredth an­ n iversary o f W ilhelm von H um boldt’s death. O nce m ore, th ey could lo o k to true Bildung in dark tim es. D er Morgen , a Jew ish jou rnal w hich had alw ays been com m itted to the ideals o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent, recalled that at the 1867 celebration o f H um bold t's hundredth birthday, a Jew , the philosopher H eym ann Steinthal, had addressed the G erm an students. Tim es had changed but not the com m itm ent o f G erm an Jew s to these ideals, as the journal confirm ed w hen it continued, “ We are no longer allow ed to raise our voices at the hundredth anniversary o f H um boldt’s death. H ow ever, w ith gratitude, w e w ish to pledge our allegiance to H um boldt’s ideals, fo r together w ith Lessing and K an t, G oeth e and Schiller, they represent that inner G erm an spirit o f w hich w e

The End and a N ew Beginning?

81

are a part and w hich w e can never lose as long as it inform s ou r strivin g. *” Yet b y 1940 it seemed that N a z i pressure had succeeded in b rin gin g about the final cultural separation between G erm an and Jew . T he catalog o f books sold b y the Kulturbund, no longer printed but m im eographed, contained no G erm an w o rk s, not even m ilestones o f the G erm an-Jew ish sym biosis like G eorg H erm ann’s Jettchen G ebert Eastern European Jew ish literature dom inated the list, together w ith w orks b y G erm an Jew s about eastern European ghettos and w ork s b y w riters considered b y the N azis to be ty p i­ cally Jew ish , such as H einrich H eine and M oses M endelssohn.10 Yet a listed biography o f M oses M endelssohn fo r Jew ish you th , w ritten before the N azi seizure o f pow er, advocates the ideals o f tolerance, friendship betw een C hristians and Jew s, and the accept­ ance o f the G erm an language and custom s.11 T h is w as prob ably not the o n ly w o rk w hich claim ed to deal w ith a uniquely Jew ish sub­ ject but in reality continued to praise the best o f G erm an culture. T he h istory o f G erm an Je w ry w as draw ing to a close and w ith it that definition o f Jew ishness w e have endeavored to trace. Yet w hen N athan rem ained behind on the stage, lon ely and fo rlo rn , as the sultan and the tem plar m arched out arm in arm , appearances proved deceptive. Behind N athan stood new generations eager to take up a heritage thought long dead and forgotten. We have sketched o n ly a part o f this heritage— m ainly as it affected the academ ic disciplines and left-w in g intellectuals— yet the ideal o f Bildung based on the Enlightenm ent continued to find new adher­ ents in G erm any after W orld War II. To be sure, this heritage is d ifficu lt to trace; direct and unam biguous references to the G e r­ m an-Jew ish tradition are few . But as this tradition is disentangled from the general h istory o f G erm an Jew s as a specific form o f Jew ish identity, w e w ill find m easuring its legacy an easier task. T hat this heritage contained m uch o f w hat w as best and m ost noble in G erm an culture seem s obvious. Self-cultivation, toler­ ance, and rationality are still very prom ising ideals in a volatile w o rld , w h ile the hum anizing o f society, o f M arxism , and, above all, o f nationalism is a pressing concern fo r survival. G erm an Jew s after em ancipation took on a Jew ish substance w hich com m anded respect; they acted from a perceived necessity as they w ere pushed b y the process o f em ancipation into assum ing a new Jew ish iden­

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tity. T h is Jew ish identity did not, fo r the m ost part, exclude the m aintenance o f religious beliefs, ritual, and cerem onies. We have m entioned these o n ly occasionally, because w e are concerned here w ith a secular identity in an increasingly secular age. T he G erm an-Jew ish dialogue did take place, and in it the Jew s cam e to exem plify a G erm an hum anist tradition w hich at one tim e had provided the space fo r G erm ans and Jew s to m eet in friend­ ship. T he hum anist ideals o f Bildung and the Enlightenm ent lived on , even under the N azis. A m ong liberals and left-w in g intellectu­ als, the flam e w as kept alive from exile; w hether it continued to bum inside G erm any is m ore d ifficu lt to determ ine. B u t it w as the G erm an-Jew ish Bildungsbürgertum w hich, m ore than any other single group, preserved G erm an y's better self across dictatorship, war, holocaust, and defeat.

N O TE S

1. A C ultural Emancipation 1. Jacob Toury, Soziale und Politische Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (Düsseldorf, 1977), p. 112 . 2. Quoted in Eva G . Reichmann, Grösse und Verhängnis deutsch-jüdischer Existenz (Heidelberg, 1974), p. 22. 3. David Frankel, ed., Sulamith, Eine Zeitschrift zur Beförderung der Kul­ tur und Humanität unter den Israeliten, Jahrg. 3, 2(18 10 :239. 4. This definition derives from David Sorkin, “Wilhelm von Humboldt: The Theory and Practice of Self-Formation (Bildung), 17 9 1-18 10 ,” Journal o f the History o f Ideas (January 1983):$ 5—73. This is one of the best discussions of the meaning of Bildung; see also David Sorkin, “Ideology and Identity: Political Emancipation and the Emergence of a Jewish Subculture in Germany, 1800-1948” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1983). I am much indebted to this work. 5. Hans Weil, D ie Entstehung des Deutschen Bildungsprinzips (Bonn, »930). p- 47 6. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (New York, 1962), p. 274. 7. Sorkin, “Ideology and Identity,” p. 20. 8. Hans Bayer, “ Zur Soziologie des Bürgerlichen Bildungsbegriffs,” Paedagogica Historica 15(1975)133** n. 1. 9. Berthold Auerbach, Schrift und Volk (Leipzig, 1846), p. 323. 10. Ibid., p. 300. 1 1. Ignaz Maybaum, Synagogue and Society: Jewish-Christian Collabora­ tion in the Defense o f Western Civilization (London, 1944), p. 86. 12. Toury, Soziale und Politische Geschichte, p. 112 ; Heinz Holeczek, "The Jews and the German Liberals,” Yearbook X X V III (Leo Baeck Institute, 1983), p. 80. 13. Auerbach, Schrift und Volk, pp. 267-68. 14. Berthold Auerbach, Neue Dorfgeschichten, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1876), p. 86. 15. Klemens Felden, “Die Übernahme des antisemitischen Stereotyps als soziale Norm durch die bürgerliche Gesellschaft Deutschlands, 1875-1900” (Ph.D. diss., Heidelberg, 1962), p. 33. 16. Brief, 9 April 1881, Berthold Auerbach Briefe and seinen Freund Jakob Auerbach, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1884), p. 453. 17. George L. Mosse, The Crisis o f German Ideology (New York, 1965), pp. 25, 26. 18. Weil, D ie Entstehung, p. 149.

83

84

Notes fo r pages 6 - 1 2

19. Sulamkh, Jahr. 3, 2(1808): 182. 20. Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (Stutt­ gart. *96 j), P- j6. 2 1. Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1800-1866 (Munich, 1983), p. 340. 22. Wilhelm von Humboldt, "Wesen der Schönheit,” Gesammelte Werke (Berlin, i 843):344. 23. Sulamith, Jahrg. 1 (1806) 19. 24. G . Salomon, Auswahl mehrerer Predigten zunächst fü r Israeliten (Des­ sau, 1818), passim; Israelitisches Predigt- und Schul-Magazin 1 (Magdeburg, 1834)18. 23. Wilhelm von Humboldt, "Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen,” Werke in Fünf Bänden, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, i960), p. 103. 26. Benno Offenburg, "Das Erwachen des deutschen Nationalbewusteins in der Preussischen Judenheit” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hamburg, 1933), p. 61; Karl Schwarz, D ie Juden in der 'Kunst (Berlin, 1928), p. 123. 27. Z u ruf an die Jünglinge welche den Fahnen des Vaterlands folgen (Berlin, 1813), p. 38. 28. Christoph Prignitz, Vaterlanddiebe und Freiheit. Deutscher Patriotismus iy jo bis i 8j o (Wiesbaden, 1981), p. 31. 29. Karl Hoffmann, Des Teutschen Volkes Feuriger Dank und Ehrentempel (Offenbach, 1813), pp. 239, 536. 30. Rudolf Viernaus, " ‘Patriotismus’—Begriff und Realität einer moralisch­ politischen Haltung,” Deutsche patriotische und gemeinnützige Gesellschaften, Wolfenbüttler Forschungen 8(n.d.):i3. 3 1. Prignitz, Vaterlandsliebe und Freiheit, p. 133. 32. IbuL, p. 134. 33. Sorkin, "Wilhelm von Humboldt,” p. 60. 34. Ibid., p. 72. 33. Auerbach, Schrift und Volk, p. 322. 36. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, p. 206. 37. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Die Juden (scene 21), quoted in Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew s in the Modem World (New York and Oxford, 1981), p. 36. 38. Moses Mendelssohn, Ungedrucktes und Unbekanntes von ihm und über ihn, ed. M. Kayserling (Leipzig, 1883), p. 21. 39. Berthold Auerbach, Dichter und Kaufmann, ein Lebensgemälde aus der Zeit Moses Mendelssohns, vol. 1 ; Berthold Auerbachs gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12 (Stuttgart, 1864), p. 208. 40. Ludwig Geiger, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin (Berlin, 1871), p. 107. 41. J. Wolf, Sechs Deutsche Reden gehalten in der Synagoge zu Dessau, etc, vol. 2 (Dessau, 1813), p. 16. 42. George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, Respectability and Abnor­ mal Sexuality in Modem Europe (New York, 1983), ch. IV. 43. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, p. 340. 44. Theodor Fontane, Jenny Treibei (New York, 1976), p. 80. 43. F. Paulsen, Das deutsche Bildungswesen in seiner geschichtlichen Ent­ wicklung (Leipzig and Berlin, 1906), pp. 110 -14 . 46. Emst Bloch, Das Prinzip der Hoffnung, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1959). especially vol. 1.

Notes fo r pages 1 2 —i j

85

47. Kenneth Barkin, "Social Control and the Volksschule in Vormärz Prus­ sia,” Central European History 16 (March 1983): 32; Peter Berglar, Wilhelm von Hum boldt (Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1970), p. 87. 48. Rüdiger vom Bruch, Wissenschaft, Politik und öffentliche Meinung, Gelehrtenpolitik im Wilhelminischen Deutschland (1890 -19 14) (Husum, 1980), especially pp. 414-26. 49. Das Tagebuch (26 September 1933): 1326. $0. Christian Boeck, Schleiermachers Vaterländisches Wirken 18 0 6 -18 13 (Berlin, 1920), pp. 7, 10; Leonard Krieger, The German Idea o f Freedom (Bos­ ton, I 9 Î 7)* PP- i8 3 ff$1. Fritz K. Ringer, The Decline o f the German Mandarins: The German Academ ic Community, 1890-1933 (Cambridge, 1969), p. 136. 32. George L. Mosse, "Friendship and Nationhood: About the Promise and Fulfillment of German Nationalism, ” Journal o f Contemporary History 17 (April 1982): 338. 33. George L. Mosse, Towards the Final Solution (New York, 1978), ch. 2. 34. Walter Benjamin to Ludwig Strauss, 7 January 1913. Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, Archives Ms. Var. 424, 196/9, p. 4. 33. "Gespräch mit Maria Jahoda,” Ästhetik und Kommunikation, no. 31 (June 1983): 72. 36. Jehuda Reinharz, ed., Dokumente zur Geschichte des Deutschen Zionis­ mus, 18 8 2-19 33 (Tubingen, 1981), p. 138. 37. Emest Bloch, Auswahl aus seinen Schriften, ed. Hans Heinz Holz (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), p. 138. 38. Caesar Seligmann (1860-1930). Erinnerungen (Frankfurt am Main, I 97 J). P- »43 39. Hannah Arendt, quoted in Karl S. Guthke, "Lessing und das Judentum. Rezeption. Dramatik und Kritik. Krypto-Spinozismus,” Wolfenbüttler Studien zur Aufklärung 4 (Wolfenbüttel, 1977): 236. 60. Gabriel Riesser, Einige Worte über Lessing’s Denkm al (Frankfurt am Main, 1881, first published 1831), p. 7. 61. Allgem eine Zeitung des Judentums, Jahrg. 43, no. 7 (13 February 1881): too. 62. Riesser, Einige Worte, pp. 12, 13. 63. Elizabeth Petuchowski, "Zur Lessing-Rezeption in der deutsch­ jüdischen Presse. Lessing’s 200. Geburtstag (22. Januar 1929),” Lessing Yearbook X IV (1980), p. 47. 64. Ibid. 63. Julius Bab, “Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, ” D er Schild, Jahrg. 12, no. 17 (14 September 1933): 148: Jüdische Rundschau, no. 79/80 (4. IX. 1933), p. 624. 66. Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Deutschland (Tübingen, 1964), p. 27. 67. Jüdische Rundschau, no. 39, (23. VIII. 1933), p. 363; Ib id , no. 63 (8. VIII. 1933), p. 40368. Modris Eksteins, The Limits o f Reason: The German Democratic Press and the Collapse o f the Weimar Republic (Oxford, 1973), pp. 37, 1x8. For the influential German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen, the release of Captain Dreyfus from prison was a messianic event. Nathan Rotenstreich, "Hermann Cohen’s Position in the Development of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Philosophy and His Philosophy of Judaism,” International Conference on G er­ man Jew s (Clark University, Worcester, Mass., October 8 - 11, 1983).

86

Notes fo r pages 1 7 - 2 8

69. Eksteins, The Limits o f Reason, p. 307. 70. George L. Mosse, Masses and Man (New York, 1980), p. 135. 7 1. Sulamith, Jahrg. 1 (Leipzig, 1806): 128. 72. Marjorie Lamberti, Jewish Activism in Im perial Germany (New Haven and London, 1978), pp. 25, 37, and passim. 73. Rabbiner Dr. Werner, Judentaufen (Rede zum C. V. 9 February 1910), Im Deutschen Reich, Feldbücherei des C. V. (n.d.), pp. 22, 42. 74. Stefan Zweig, D ie Welt von Gestern (frankfurt am Main, 1962), p. 10$. 7 j. Leon Botstein, "Stefan Zweig and the Illusion of the Jewish European,” in Marion Sonnenfeld, ed., Stefan Zweig (Albany, New York, 1983), especially pp. 90, 92. 76. David Turner, "The Humane Ideal in Stefan Zweig’s N ovelle: Some Complications and Limitations,” in Sonnenfeld, ed., Stefan Zweig, p. 160. 2. German Jews and German Popular Culture

1. George L. Mosse, The Crisis o f German Ideology (New York, 1964), pp. 243-44; Rudolf Kaula, D er Liberalismus und die Deutschen Juden. Das Judentum als konservatives Element (München and Leipzig, 1918), p. 99. For the conflict between traditionalists and modernists in the Weimar Republic, see Wal­ ter Laqueur, Weimar Culture (New York, 1974), ch. 4 and ch. 3. 2. Gustav Wyneken, Wickersdorf (Lauenburg, Elbe, 1922), p. 33. 3. While some Jews continued to support Bayreuth, some, such as Rudolf Pringsheim, left after Wagner’s increasingly violent anti-Semitic outbursts. Cosima Wagner, D ie Tagebücher, vol. 2 (1878-84) (Munich and Zürich, 1977), p. 162. 4. Leo Baeck, Das Wesen des Judentums (Frankfurt am Main, 1926), p. 281. 3. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr, "The Study of the Jewish Intellectual: Some Methodological Proposals,” in F. Malino and P. Cohen Albert, eds., Essays in Modem Jewish History: A Tribute to Ben HaJpem (Rutherford, N .J.: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1981), p. 16 1. 6. David Turner, "The Humane Ideal in Stefan Zweig’s N ovelle: Some Complications and Limitations,” in Marion Sonnenfeld, ed., Stefan Zw eig (Al­ bany, New York, 1983), p. 138. 7. Emil Ludwig, Genie und Charakter, Zwanzig Männliche Bildnisse (Ber­ lin, 1923), pp. 273, 281. These comments were made in a hostile portrait of the melancholy and homosexual writer Hermann Bang. 8. Berthold Auerbach, Schrift und Volk (Leipzig, 1946), pp. 38, 80, 92. 9. Leo Löwenthal, Literatur und Gesellschaft (Neuwied and Berlin, 1964), p. 196, n. 3. 10. Emil Ludwig, Geschenke des Lebens. Ein Rüdeblick (Berlin, 1931), pp. 103-104. 1 1 . Ib id , p. 373. 12. D. A. Prater, European o f Yesterday: A Biography o f Stefan Zw eig (Ox­ ford, 1972), p. 316. 13. Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ed. Grete Schaeder, vol. 1 (1897-1918) (Heidelberg, 1972), p. 431. 14. Ib id , p. 499. 13. Quoted in Erich Fitzbauer, ed., Stefan Zweig, durch Zeiten und Welten (Graz and Vienna, 1961), p. 27. 16. Emil Ludwig, Wilhelm der Zweite (Berlin, 1928), p. 10.

Notes fo r pages 2 8 - 3 4

87

17. Annamaria Rucktaschel and Hans Dieter Zimmermann, eds., Trivialliteratur (Munich, 1976), p. 233. 18. Emil Ludwig, Kunst und Schicksal, vier Bildnisse (Bern, 1933, first pub­ lished 1927), p. 7. 19. Leon Edel, Bloomsbury (New York, 1961), p. 233. 20. Stefan Zweig, Stemstunden der Menschheit (Insel Bücherei, n.d.), p. 116 . 2 1. Biographies in Ludwig, Genie und Charakter, passim. 22. “Walther Rathenaus Weltbild,” Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Gem einde zu Berlin, Jahrg. 17, no. 7 (1 July 1927): 1. 23. Stefan Zweig, “ Walther Rathenau,” in Europäisches Erbe (Frankfurt am Main, i960), p. 922. 24. Ludwig, Genie und Charakter, p. 141. 23. Zweig, Europäisches Erbe, p. 238. 26. Walther Rathenau, Zur Kritik der Zeit (Berlin, 1912), p. 219. 27. For example, although critical of Rathenau’s talent for friendship, see Count Harry Kessler, Walther Rathenau: H is Life and Work (New York, 1969), ch. V. 28. Leonard Baker, Days o f Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jew s (New York and Toronto, 1978), p. 99. 29. Ludwig, Genie und Charakter, pp. 31, 34. 30. Ib id , p. 236. 3 1. Prater, European o f Yesterday, p. 399. 32. Emil Ludwig, Führer Europas nach der Natur gezeichnet (Amsterdam, *934). PP- i o - " 33. Alfred Wolf, “Stefan Zweig and Judaism—A Letter and an Interview,” Judaism 31 (Spring 1932): 242. 34. D er Jude, Sonderheft Antisemitismus und Jüdisches Volkstum (1923), p. 132. 33. Prater, European o f Yesterday, p. 270. 36. This is suggested by Helmut Gruber, The Politics o f German Literature, 19 14 to 19 33: A Study o f the Expressionists and Objectivists (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1962), p. 196. 37. Emil Ludwig, D er Menschensohn (Berlin, 1928), p. 262. 38. Ludwig Marcuse noted this point in “Die Emil Ludwig Front,” Das Tagebuch, p. I2(i93i):i42. 39. Emil Ludwig, An die Laterne! Bilder aus der Revolution (Char­ lottenburg, 1919), pp. 55* 8340. Stefan Zweig, D ie Welt von Gestern. (Berlin, 1962), p. 219; Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. 2 (1918-38) (Heidelberg, 1973), P- *7 4 1. For a good expression of his ideas on this subject, see Stefan Zweig, Erasmus o f Rotterdam (New York, 1934), pp. 3 -13 . 42. Stefan Zweig, Briefe an Freunde, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Frankfurt Am Main, 1978), p. 133. 43. Prater, European o f Yesterday, p. 174. 44. Zweig’s contrast between humanism and politics is clearly stated in Zweig, Erasmus o f Rotterdam, pp. 243-44. 43. Ib id , p. 228. 46. George L. Mosse, “What Germans Really Read,” Masses and Man (New York, 1980), pp. 32-69.

88

Notes fo r pages 3 4 - 4 3

47. D ie Gartenlaube, no. 20 ( i 882):4$ 1-5 5; Die Gartenlaube, no. 19 (1881): 308-14. 48. Mosse, "Death, Time, and History: Volkish Utopia and its Tran­ scendence,” Masses and Man, pp. 69-86. 49. Ibid., pp. 69-71. I am discussing the apocalyptic and millenarian tradi­ tion as it affected the political right—a counterweight to the liberal tradition of German Jewry. But this German revolution took many forms; it was also part o f the so-called life reform movement and influenced the many wandering semi­ anarchist prophets in Weimar Germany. Ulrich Linse, Barfüssige Propheten. E r­ löser der zwanziger Jahre (Berlin, 1983), passim. 30. Heinrich Anacker, D ie Fanfare, Gedichte der Erhebung (Munich, 1936), p. 116 . 31. David Gross, "Marxism and Utopia: Emst Bloch,” Towards A N ew Marxism (St. Louis, 1973), pp. 83-100. 32. Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Je w in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 180 0-19 23 (Madison, Wise., 1982), ch. 6; Some who were inspired by Buber's tales to become active Jews and Zionists remained so, for example, Salman Schocken, founder of the Schocken publishing house and of the Hebrew daily, Haaretz. Stephen M. Poppel, "Salman Schocken and the Schocken Verlag,” Yearbook X V II (Leo Baeck Institute, 1974), p. 93, n. 2. 33. Martin Buber, "Bildung und Weltanschauung” (frankfurter Lehrhausrede), Mittelstelle fü r Jüdische Erwachsenen Bildung, Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland (Frankfurt, April 1937), p. 1. 34. George L. Mosse, Germans and Jew s (New York, 1970), pp. 83-89. 33. Ib id , pp. 90-92. 36. Jakob Wassermann, "fragment über das Nationalgefühl,” Lebensdienst (Leipzig and Zürich, 1928), p. 190. 37. Jakob Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Ju de (Berlin, 1921), pp. 76 ff. 38. Jakob Wassermann, Caspar Hauser (Berlin, 1908), pp. 43, 62-63. 39. Siegmund Bing, Jakob Wassermann (Berlin, 1933), p. 82. 60. Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude, p. 103. 61. Ib id , p. 91. 62. Although Zweig praised Ludwig's biography of Goethe, he also seems to have considered Ludwig shallow and too much of an aesthete on occasion. Johanna Roden, "Stefan Zweig and Emil Ludwig,” in Stefan Zweig, Sonnenfeld, cd., pp. 236-43. 63. Jakob Wassermann, "Rede über die Humanität” (1922), Bekenntnisse und Begegnungen (Bamberg, 1930), p. 127. 64. Wassermann, "Fragment über das Nationalgefühl,” pp. 120, 190. 63. Marta Karlweiss, Jakob Wassermann (Berlin, 1933), p. 336. 66. Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude, p. 116 .

3. Intellectual Authority And Scholarship 1. Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland (lubingen, 1964)» PP- 94- 9 Î* 2. Friedrich Andrae, ed., Volksbücherei und Nationalsozialismus (Wiesba­ den, 1970), p. 147.

Notes fo r pages 4 3 - 5 0

89

3. George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History o f European Racism (New York, 1978), ch. 10. 4. Christoph Prignitz, Vaterlandsliebe und Freiheit (Wiesbaden, 1981), p. 1 1 6. 3. Hans Kohn, Martin Buber, Sein Werk und seine Zeit (Köln, 1961), p. 93. 6. Sidney M. Bolkosky, The Distorted Im age: German-Jewish Perceptions o f Germans and Germany, 19 18 -19 3 j (New York, 1973), p. 139. 7. Ibid., p. 93; Samuel Meisels, Goethe im Ghetto. Kleine Beiträge zu einem grossen Thema (Wien, 1932), p. 29. 8. Albert Bielschowsky, Goethe, Sein Leben und Seine Werke, vol. 1 (Munich, 1914), pp. i, ix. 9. Ib id , pp. 2, 369. 10. Ib id , pp. x, 1. 1 1. Wolfgang Goetz, Fünfzig Jahre Goethe-Gesellschaft (Weimar, i93Ö)»p. 13 ; M itglieder Verzeichnis der Goethe-Gesellschaft (Weimar, 1926), passim. The predominance of Jews in Goethe research was one fact upon which Jews and Nazis could agree, though with quite different conclusions. Meisels, Goethe im Ghetto, pp. 10 -12 ; Franz Koch, "Goethe und die Juden,” Erforschungen zur Judenfrage, vol. 2 (Hamburg, 1937), p. 118 . 12. Albert Ludwig, Schüler und die deutsche Nachwelt (Berlin, 1909), p. 109. 13. Karl Robert Mandelkow, ed., Goethe im Urteü seiner Kritiker, vol. 1 (Munich, 1977), p. 72. 14. Ib id , pp. 3 16 -2 1. 13. Wolfgang Lepmann, Goethe und die Deutschen (Stuttgart, 1962), p. 246. 16. Nehemia Anton Nobel, "Goethe, sein Verhältnis zu Religion und Reli­ gionen,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts, Jahrg. 12, no. 48 (i9é9):}23, 326. 17. Berthold Auerbach, Epilog zur Lessing-Feier (Dresden, 1830), pp. 8-9. 18. J. Riessei; "Widmung an Berthold Auerbach” in Gabriel Riesser, Einige Worte über Lessing's D enkm al (Frankfurt am Main, 1881). This is a reprint of the original 1831 call for a Lessing monument. 19. George L. Mosse, The Nationalization o f the Masses (New York, 1973), ch. 3. 20. George L. Mosse, The Crisis o f German Ideology (New York, 1964), pp. 64-63; see also Theodore Ziolkowslu, "Der Hunger nach dem Mythos,” in Reinhold Grimm and Jost Herrn and, eds., in D ie sogenannten Zwanziger Jahre (Bad Homburg, 1970), pp. 169-201. 2 1. Philip Rieff, Freud: The M ind o f the Moralist (New York, 1961), p. 263. 22. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation o f Dreams (New York, 1963), p. 617. 23. Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1980), pp. 187-88. 24. Dennis B. Klein, The Jewish Origins o f the Psychoanalytic Movement (New York, 1981), pp. 130 -3 1. 23. Rieff, Freud, p. 233. 26. Klein, The Jew ish Origins, p. 141. 27. Briefwechsel von Sigmund Freud und Arnold Zweig, ed. Ernst L. Freud (Frankfurt am Main, 1968), p. 37. 28. David James Fisher, "Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland: The Terres­ trial Animal and His Great Oceanic F ie n d ,” American Imago, 33 (Spring 1976): 1-59.

90

Notes fo r pages 5 0 - 5 8

29. Emil Ludwig, D er Entzauberte Freud (Zurich, 1946), pp. 18, 21. 30. George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, Respectability and Abnor­ mal Sexuality in Modem Europe (New York, 1985), pp. 39-40. 3 1. Felix Gilbert, "From Art History to the History of Civilization: Gombrich’s Biography of A by Warburg, ” Journal o f Modem History, 44 (September 1971)1 383. 32. Gertrud Bing, "A. M. Warburg” (1965), in Aby M. Warburg, Aus­ gewählte Schriften und Würdigungen, ed. Dieter Wuttke (Baden-Baden, 1979), p. 461. 33. E. H. Gombrich, A by Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (London, 1970), p. 308; Werner Kaegi, "Das Werk Aby Warburgs,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau, Jahrg. 1 ( *933) : 187. 34. Kaegi, "Das Werk Aby Warburgs,” p. 288. 35. Gombrich, A by Warburg, p. 21. 36. Bing, "A. M. Warburg,” p. 432. 37. Gertrud Bing, A by M. Warburg (Hamburg, 1938), p. 29; Peter Gay, "Weimar Culture,” in Donald Fleming and Bernard Baylin, eds., The Intellectual Migration (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), p. 39. 38. Hans Liebeschütz, "Aby Warburg (1866-1929) as Interpreter of Civiliza­ tion,” Yearbook X V I (Leo Baeck Institute, 1971), pp. 229-30. 39. Gombrich, A by Warburg, p. 228. 40. Ib id , pp. 13 -14 . 41. Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York, 1933), pp. 1 3 16, 19. 42. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the A rt o f the Renaissance (New York, 1962, first published 1939), pp. 229-30. 43. David R. Lipton, Ernst Cassirer: The Dilemma o f a Liberal Intellectual m Germany, 19 14 -33 (Toronto, 1978), pp. 92-93, 13 1. 44. Ernst Cassirer, Critical Idealism as Philosophy o f Culture, cited in Maurizio Serra, "Sui miti e la crisi storica dell umanesimo borghese negli anni trenta,” Storia Contemporanea 14 (October i983):383. 43. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth o f the State (New Haven, 1946), pp. 43-46. 46. Ib id , p. 298.

4. A Left-Wing Identity 1. D. A. Prater, European o f Yesterday: A Biography o f Stefan Zweig (Ox­ ford, 1972), p. 308. 2. Stefan Zweig, Briefe an Freunde, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Frankfurt am Main 1978), pp. 132-33. 3. Istvan Deak, Weimar Germany's Intellectuals (Berkeley and Los A n­ geles, 1968), pp. 24-29. 4. Ib id , p. 24. 3. George L. Mosse, "German Socialists and the Jewish Question in the Weimar Republic,” Masses and Man (New York, 1980), ch. 13. 6. Emst Bloch, Auswahl aus seinen Schriften (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), p. 138. 7. Andrew Arato and Paul Breines, The Young Lukacs and the Origins o f Western Marxism (New York, 1979), pp. 2 14 -15. 8. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History o f the Frankfurt School and the Institute o f Social Research, /92J-/950 (Boston, 1973), p. 34;

Notes fo r pages 5 9 - 6 9

91

Russell Jacoby, "Marxism and the Critical School,” Theory and Society I( I 974):2 3 I - 3&* 9. Arato and Breines, The Young Lukacs, p. 138. 10. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adomo, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Am­ sterdam, 1947), p. 53. 1 1 . Ibid., p. 63. 12. Barry K itz, H erbert Marcuse and the A rt o f Liberation (London, 1982), p. 100. 13. Quoted in George Friedman, The Political Philosophy o f the Frankfurt School (Ithaca and London, 1981), p. 187. 14. Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, p. 33. i j. Deak, Weimar Germany's Intellectuals, p. 29. 16. Arato and Breines, The Young Lukacs, p. 212. 17. Ibid., p. 224. 18. Paul Breines, "Marcuse and the New Left in America,” in Jurgen Haber­ mas, ed., Antworten a u f Herbert Marcuse (Frankfurt am Main, 1968), p. 146. 19. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology o f Advanced Industrial Society (Boston, 1964), p. 37. 20. Herbert Marcuse, Kultur und Gesellschaft, vol. i (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), ch. 17. 21. Jürgen Habermas, Philosophisch-Politische Profile (Frankfurt am Main, 197»)» P- 4 Î22. George L. Mosse, Germans and Jew s (New York, 1970), pp. 179-80. 23. Alfred Enseling, D ie Weltbühne (Münster, 1962), p. 94. 24. Ibid., pp. 183-86. 23. Leonhard Frank, D er Mensch ist gut (Potsdam, 1919), p. 74. 26. Thomas E. Willey, Back to Kant (Detroit, 1978), p. 104; Kurt Eisner, D ie Halbe Macht den Röten, ed. Renate and Gerhard Schmölze (Köln, 1969), passim. 27. Mosse, Germans and Jews, ch. 7. 28. Walter Benjamin to Ludwig Strauss, 1 1 September 1912. Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, Archives Ms. Var. 424, 196/9, pp. 2-3. 29. Walter Benjamin to Ludwig Strauss, 7 January 1913. Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, Archives Ms. Var. 424, 196/9, p. 3. 30. Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, p. 198. 31. Ibid., p. 201. 32. Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin— die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), p. 173. 33. Robert Weltsch, "Deutscher Zionismus in der Rückschau,” An der Wende des modernen Judentums (lubingen, 1972), p. 33. 34. Mosse, Masses and Man, p. 294. 33. Istvan Deak, Weimar Germany's Left-W ing Intellectuals, pp. 183-84. 36. George Lichtheim, Lukacs (London, 1970), especially ch. 3. 37. E.g., T. W. Adomo, "Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America,” in Donald Fleming and Bernard Baylin, eds., The Intellectual Migra­ tion (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 340 ff. 38. George L. Mosse, Towards the Final Solution (New York, 1978), pp. 178-79. 39. Marjorie Lamberti, Jewish Activism in Im perial Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1978), pp. 23 ff.

92

Notes fo r pages 6 9 -7 8

40. Jakob Wassermann, Mein Weg ah Deutscher und Ju d e (Berlin, 1921), pp. n j- 16 . 41 George L. Mosse, "Jewish Emancipation between Bildung and Sittlich­ keit, * in Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schattberg, eds., The Jewish Response to German Culture (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1985). 42. Ismar Schorsch, "Art as Social History: Oppenheim and the GermanJewish Vision of Emancipation,” Moritz Oppenheim, The First Jewish Pointer (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1983), passim. The Jews who were disciples of the poet Stefan George also challenged the respectability of German Jewry, abandon­ ing the humanitarian Enlightenment for an emotional, although disciplined, po­ etic view of the world. This has been brilliantly sketched in only a few pages by Hans Liebeschütt, "Ernst Kantorowicz and the George Circle,” Yearbook IX (Leo Baeck Institute, 1964), pp. 343-47* This movement did not outlive Nazi Germany. 43. Maurizio Serra has analyzed in a fascinating manner the controversy of the tyranny of history over the minds of men during the 1930s in "Sui mid fascisti e la crisi storica dell’umanesimo borghese negli anni trenta,” Storia Contemporanea 14 (October i983):$77-6o3.

V: The End and a New Beginning? 1. Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1972), p. 123, n. 63. 2. Michael H. Kater, "Erkenntnisstreben oder Obskurantismus? Kritisches über neuere Literatur zur Sozialgeschichte Deutschlands seit 1879,” Archiv fü r Sozialgeschichte 21 (1980:373. 3. Alfred Kerr, "Die Diktatur des Hausknechts,” in D ie Weh im Licht, friedlich Luft, ed. (Köln and Berlin, 1961), p. 383. 4. Caesar Seligmann, Festpredigt zur Jahrhundertfeier des Philantrophin, 16 April 1904 (Hamburg, n.d.), p. 4. 3. Ibid., p. 3. 6. Ib id , p. 3. 7. Michael A. Meyer, "Caesar Seligmann and the Development of Liberal Judaism in Germany at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” H ebrew Union College Annual, vol. 40-41 (1969-70), p. 343. 8. Hans Kohn, "Zionism Is N ot Judaism,” reprinted in Paul R. MendesFlohr, ed., A Land o f Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jew s and Arabs (Oxford, *9 * 3). P* 97* 9. Martin Buber, "And If N ot Now, When?” (July 1932), reprinted in Mendes-Flohr, ed., A Land o f Two Peoples, p. 104. 10. Jüdische Rundschau, no. 39 (23 July 1933), p. 363. 1 1. Jehuda Reinharz, "Martin Buber’s Impact on German Zionism before World War I ,” Studies in Zionism, no. 6 (Autumn 1982): 182. 12. Ibid., p. 183. 13. Hans Kohn, Living in a World Revolution (New York, 1964), p. 48. 14. Samson Raphael Hirsch, "Worte bei der Schulfeier der Unterrichtsan­ stalt der Israelitischen Religionsgemeinschaft zu Frankfurt am Main den 9. November 1839, am Vorabend der Schillerfeier” (Frankfurt am Main, 1903), pp. 3, 11. 13. Julius Bab, "Kulturbund Deutscher Juden,” D er Schild 12 (14 September >933): *48.

Notes fo r pages 7 8 - 8 1

93

16. For an account of the Kulturbund from a Nazi point of view, see Hans Hinkel, ed., Judenviertel Europas (Berlin, 1939), pp. 12 -14 . 17. Reichskulturwalter Hinkel to die Nationalsozialistische ParteiKorrespondenz, quoted in the Frankfurter Zeitung, no. 129/40 (13 May 1937). Jüdischer Kulturbund, Spielplan fü r Frankfurt am Main (1936). Wiener Library, Tel Aviv, Jüdischer Kulturbund, Box 4. For the career of Hans Hinkel, who eventually played a role in the deportation of Jews from Berlin and Vienna, see Willi A . Boelcke, ed., Kriegspropaganda 19 39 -19 4 1, Geheime Ministerkonferen­ zen im Reichspropagandaministerium (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 83-88. I owe this reference to Alan E. Steinweis. 18. Letter to Propaganda Amt, Kreisleitung I, Gauleitung N SDAP Berlin, to Propagandaleiter Hicketier, 19 November, 1934. Wiener Library, Tel Aviv, Jüdischer Kulturbund, Box 1. 19. E.g., Hinkel, ed., Judenviertel Europas, p. 14. 20. For the background of the Nazi theater, see Boguslaw Drewniak, Das Theater im N S-Staat Szenarium deutscher Zeitgeschichte 19 33-19 4 } (Düsseldorf, 1984). 2 1. “Zur Kulturbund-Tagung,” /£d«d>e Rundschau, no. 43 (11 April 1936). 22. Walter Perl, “Jettchen Gebert," 11 June 1933. Wiener Library, Tel Aviv, Jüdischer Kulturbund, Box 3. The novel was performed as a play that same year. 23. "Gegenwart und Zukunft der Jüdischen Literatur,” D er Morgen, 12 (September i936):26o. I owe this reference to Itta Shedletzky. 24. Israelitisches Familienblatt (10 September 1936). 23. Marion Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germ any (Westport, Conn., 1979), p. 203. 26. "Zur Kulturbund-Tagung, ” Jüdische Rundschau, no. 43 (11 April 1936). 27. Ismar Schorsch, "Art as Social History: Oppenheim and the German Jewish Vision of Emancipation,” Moritz Oppenheim, The First Jewish Painter (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1983), p. 31. 28. Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland (Tübingen, *9 73 Horkheimer, Max, 58, 59, 6 1, 68 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1 1 , 12,

13. 56 Im Westen nichts neuese (Remarque), 31 Intellectuals, 49-50 See also Left-wing intellectuals Irrationality, 47, 50-54 Jay, Martin, 61

Jettchen Gebert (Hermann), 69 Jewish culture under National Socialism, 7881 Jewish identity Bildung, effect of, 7-8, 52 redefinition of, 2 religion and, 18 -19 Jewish literature, 79, 81 Jewish orthodoxy, 77

Jews alienation of, 8 assimilation of, 45 emancipation of, 2 -3 , 1 0 - 1 1 German-Jewish identity, 80 isolation of, 72 middle-class orientation, 69-70 National Socialism, failure to com ­ prehend, 72-74 as outsiders, 14, 24 patriotism of, 8-9 political activity, 18, 22 social structure, 4-5 See also Left-wing intellectuals Judaism German culture and, 74-75, 77-8 1 nationalism and, 75 -77 Jude, D er (journal), 31 Juden, D ie (Lessing), 10

Jüdische Kulturbund See Kulturbund Deutscher Juden Jüdische Rundschau (newspaper), 75 Jüdischer Frauenbund, 80 Kafka, Franz, 40 Kant, Immanuel, 34, 64 K itz , Barry, 60 Kerr, Alfred, 73 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 9 Kohn, Hans, 75, 77 Kulturbund DeutscherJuden, 16 ,4 3 ,7 5 , 7 8 80, 81 Lachmann-Mosse, Hans, 17 Landauer, Gustav, 36 Left-wing intellectuals Bildung, interest in, 63 as conscience o f the working class, 64-65 cultivation o f the mind, 59-60 heritage of, 70 -71 isolation of, 67-68 Jewish opposition to, 68-70 Jewishness of, 6 1-6 2 , 6 5-67 Kant, interest in, 64 Marxism and, 57-58 party affiliations, 56 revolutionization o f society, 60-6 1 socialism and, 55-57, 58-59 "totality o f life" concept, 62 transcendence, search for, 60 Weimar culture, influence on, 22, 23 Lessing, Gottlob Ephraim, 9 ,1 0 , 1 5 - 1 6 ,4 6 ,

S*

Lessing monuments, 15 Leviné, Eugen, 68 Liberalism, 63-64

Index Löns, Hermann, 5 Ludwig, Emil, 20, 24-25, 26, 27-28, 29-30,

3 ! ~ 32 » 33» 39* 4° » 4 * » 5®

Lukâcs, Georg, 35, 37, j8 , 59, 62, 68, 71 Mann, Heinrich, 18 Marcuse, Herbert, 62-63 Marcuse, Ludwig, 13 Marlitt (Eugenie John), 33 Marx, Karl, 57, 63, 64 “ Marx and Kant" (Eisner), 64 Marxism, 57-58, 60, 62

Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (Freud),

97

historical biographies, 2 5 -3 3 , 4°~~4I Jewish writers, popularity of, 24-25 liberal nature of, 33-34 mysticism, 3 5 -37 Volkish vision, 37-39 Psychoanalysis, 49 Rathenau, Walther, 26, 29, 35

Reden an die deutsche Nation (Fichte), 44 Religion, 4, 5, 18 -19 , 42

Remarque, Erich Maria, 31 Riesser, Gabriel, 15 , 46 Rolland, Romain, 50

49 Maybaum, Ignaz, 4 Mediation, 59

Mein Weg als Deutcher und Ju de (Wasser­ mann), 38, 69 Mendelssohn, Moses, 10, 15, 81 Mensch ist gut, D er (Frank), 65 Menschensohn, D er (Ludwig), 31 Morgen, D er (journal), 80 Myth o f the State (Cassirer), 53, 54 M ythology fantasy and, 53 o f German political right, 47-48 o f Jewish Volk, 47 political, 54 rational analysis of, 48-50

Nathan der Weise (Lessing), 9 ,15 - 17 ,4 0 ,4 3 ,

73» 75* 7 9 . National Socialism, 72-74, 78-81 Nationalism, 13 - 14 , 42, 75-77 N ew Left, 62-63, 7°~ 7 l Nietzsche, Friedrich, 51 Nobel, Nehemia Anton, 46

One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse), 62-63 Oppenheim, Moritz, 8, 10, 69, 80 Panofsky, Erwin, 53 Paracelsus (T. von Hohenheim), 34 Paulsen, Friedrich, 12 Philippson, Ludwig, 8 Philosophy and irrational activity, 53-54 Political right, 47^48 Politics, 18, 22, 33, 54 See also Left-wing intellectuals Popular culture apocalyptic tradition, 34-35 Bildung in, 29-30, 32 -3 3, 36 experimentation in, 22-24 German-Jewish contact through, 39-40 German-Jewish heritage in, 25-26 Hasidic stories, 3 5-37

Salomon, Gotthold, 7 Schiller, Friedrich, 7, 44 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 13 Scholarship irrationality, confrontation with, 47, 50-

54 mythology and, 47-49 ordering function of, 53 rationality and, 52 Scholem, Gershom, 36, 67 Schorsch, Ismar, 69 Schrift und Volk (Auerbach), 4, 5, 25 Seligmann, Caesar, 15, 74-75» 77 Socialism, 55-57, 58-60, 64-66 Steinthal, Heymann, 80 Stemstunden der Menschheit (Zweig), 28 Strachey, Lytton, 28 Strauss, Ludwig, 14 Sulamith (journal), 3, 6, 7, 18, 48 Thälmann, Em st, 68 Thomas Müntzer (Bloch), 34, 35 Toller, Em st, 65, 66 Transcendence, 60 Traumdeutung, D ie (Freud), 48 True consciousness, 63 Vamhagen, Rahel von, 45-46 Volk, 37-39, 47, 76 Wagner, Richard, 23 Warburg, Aby, 50-52, 53, 71 Warburg Library, 50, 52, 53 Wassermann, Jakob, 37-39, 69 Wehrwolf, D er (Löns), 5 Weitling, William, 34 Welt von Gestern, D ie (Zweig), 4 0 -41 Weltbühne, D ie (journal), 56, 64, 68, 71 Weltsch, Robert, 44, 75, 76 Werner, Cossmann, 19 Wesen des Judentum , Das (Baeck), 23 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 10

98

Index

Wilhelm M eistert Apprenticeship (Goethe),

3» io

Wolf, Joseph, 1 1 Wolff, Theodor, 17 Wynecken, Gustav, 23

Zionism, 36 -37, 75-77 Zionists, 16, 44 Zweig, Arnold, 49, 50 Zweig, Stefan, 19-20, 24-25, 26-27, 2&» 29» 3 0 -3 1, 3 2 -3 3 , 3 8 -4 1, 50, 56

G E O R G E L . M O S S E is W einstein-Bascom Professor o f Jew ish Studies at the U niversity o f W isconsin-M adison and Koebner P rofessor o f H isto ry at the H eb rew U niversity. H e is the author o f m any books, including Germans and Jew s and

Towards the Final Solution: A History o f European Racism.