Introduction

BY ROBERT WELTSCH Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 No greater discrepancy can be imagined than that between the three men with whom we begin the present volume of the Year Book. It is almost a reflection of what, since Sir Charles Snow's famous lecture, has become the current formula of "The Two Cultures". Ismar Elbogen devoted his whole life to Jewish scholarship, he was a true representative of the humanities. Fritz Haber on the other hand was a great scientist, though his biographer, doctor and friend, is eager to point out that at his time the two cultures were not yet so far apart, and that Haber was devoted to poets like Goethe and himself made verses. But what about our third man? For his sake, we may be tempted to add to the array a "Third Culture", the world of Mammon, seen not from the aspect of greed, but, in this special case, to be linked in a unique way with active work for the good of fellow-men — in philanthropy of a magnitude which has very few parallels in the history of all nations. There is little that we could add, in the way of introduction, to the story of Baron Hirsch as told by Mr. Adler-Rudel. Among the Jewish public it is not always remembered that the man was a German Jew, a descendant of a Bavarian family of court bankers who acquired the castle of Gereuth. Owing to the early transfer of his residence to Brussels and later to Paris, and perhaps also due to his collaboration with the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Hirsch is in the mind of the uninformed public often associated with French Jewry. Furthermore, his foundation, the ICA, was an English Company registered in London. Hirsch was an inter- national Jew in the true sense and his work extended beyond national boundaries. He became a legend in his lifetime when he spent millions with ease, but still more after his death when he left his immense fortune to the Jewish people. Perhaps one day a scholarly, objective and critical history of the ICA will reveal the difficulties arising out of the administration of such a bequest. What was dedicated by the warm heart of a single person (or perhaps one should say, a couple, as Clara Hirsch was no less dedicated to this work than her husband) necessarily assumes an impersonal character when it passes into the hands of an inevitably bureaucratical administration, and not all of the hopes of the original sponsor are fulfilled. Hirsch had the fantastic idea that one man single- handed could cope with the destiny of a whole people. It was typical of the pre-democratic age, but bound to collide with the growing desire for self-emancipation among Eastern Jews. Some of Hirsch's plans, as when alone he wanted to finance an emigration of 100,000 people yearly from IX X Robert Weltsch Russia and their resettlement in the Argentine, had necessarily to end in disappointment. In the context of this Year Book (which is confined to the history of German Jewry) we cannot deal exhaustively with the activities of ICA which were on a world-wide scale and transcend parochial restrictions. This most important enquiry we have to leave to others: but the personality of Baron Hirsch does belong to German-Jewish history. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 It is the fascinating case of an adventurous man of great skill and wide outlook who, in a certain period of European development, attained a commanding position in finance, and who never deserted the Jewish people, and cared for the poor with exemplary generosity. His great foundations survived two world wars and are an instrument of Jewish aid and reconstruction up to the present day. True, his financial transactions were sometimes criticized, as happens almost always with millionaires who — in Europe or America — amassed vast fortunes which they later dedi- cated to public purposes. Such inquiries we have to leave to objective historians of economics. It is astonishing that Hirsch has not yet found a biographer. The material collected for the essay in this Year Book may, in the words of the author Mr. Adler-Rudel, be regarded as Prolegomena to a future full biography.

Ismar Elbogen, who died 20 years ago and would have reached the age of 90 next year, was for more than 30 years for many people in the world, and particularly for students of Judaism, the central figure of German Jewry, mainly in the intellectual and organisational field. Foreign Jews often came to Berlin from abroad with nothing but an intro- duction to Elbogen. He was known for his readiness to give help and advice; he was in constant touch with Jewish scholars in many parts of the world, with whom he exchanged letters. Part of this correspondence is now stored in the Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, and although these are only letters which he received and none of his own, they give an impression of his world-wide connections. Elbogen was the last pillar of the specific brand of Wissenschaft des Judentums that had developed in Germany since the idea first issued from the Culturverein of 1822 in which the leading figure was Leopold Zunz — the man who afterwards became the very founder of this Wis- senschaft.1 Some of our readers may object to this generalisation, pointing out that Elbogen and his Hochschule — for he was the Hochschule, as Dr. Rosenthal rightly says — represented only one section of the Jews, though numerically the largest. Orthodox Jewry did not accept the Hochschule as the authoritative place of learning. In pre-Hitler Berlin there were also other Jewish trends and other schools, whose influence !On Zunz cf. A. Altmann in Year Book VI, pp. 3-59; also Nahum Glatzer in Year Book V, pp. 122-139, a.o. — The correspondence of Zunz is now edited by professor Glatzer. The first volume has been published by the LBI (London 1958), the second will follow shortly. Introduction XI on their adherents in the outside world was not less effective. We mention only the famous Hildesheimer Seminary which produced a whole school of orthodox Jewish learning. We hope we shall be able to do justice to these institutions on some future occasion.

We also take the opportunity to record with satisfaction that a Memo- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 rial Volume in honour of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau has just been published. Originally planned on the occasion of the cen- tenary of the famous institution in 1954, it tells the comprehensive story of the development of the Seminary in essays reprinted from earlier publications or contributed by living authors.2 In the Appendix, Ismar Elbogen is listed as a student at the Seminary from 1893 to 1899, and the volume contains a reprint of his essay "From Graetz to Dubnov — Fifty Years of Jewish Historiography", which is also discussed by Dr. Rosenthal in this Year Book. As to the Hochschule, we have evaluated in earlier volumes of this Year Book the work of some of its leading teachers like Leo Baeck, Julius Guttmann, Eugen Taubler. But no picture of the Hochschule and of the last phase of Jewish scholarship in Germany could be complete without an appreciation of Elbogen. Dr. Erwin Rosenthal had to concentrate his study on this aspect, leaving Elbogen's communal activities to a later biographer.

Fritz Haber was a great scientist and bearer of a Nobel Prize, but, from the Jewish point of view, it might easily appear that a man who as a student converted to Christianity in the eighteen-nineties, has no claim to a place in Jewish history. Yet that would be a simplification of a complicated issue. As a matter of fact, the Jewish higher middle class, and especially the great majority of the educated academicians, were at the turn of the nineteenth century completely alienated from Judaism in all its aspects. Religion meant nothing to them — especially to the new generation of scientists in the age of Darwinism and of Haeckel's monism — in a wholly secularized society. Culturally they felt no other bond than the German one, and they were anxious, as Dr. Stern observes, to follow Theodor Mommsen's advice to complete their assimilation by joining the official church of the state. Mommsen, whose attitude Profes- sor Liebeschiitz discussed in Year Book VII,3 was certainly not an anti- semite. In an enquete conducted by the Austrian writer Hermann Bahr in 1893 Mommsen said he considered antisemitism to be "the attitude of scoundrels" (,,die Gesinnung der Kanaille").4 His idea was to end dis-

*Das Breslauer Seminar. Judisch-Theologisches Seminar (Fraenckelscher Stiftung) in Breslau 1854-1938. Gedachtnisschrift. Herausgegeben von Guido Kisch. J.C.B. Mohr Tubingen 1963. 442 pp. •Year Book VII, p. 177. *See Olga Schnitzler, Spiegelbild der Freundschaft, Residenz-Verlag, Salzburg 1962, p. 104. (This fascinating book provides real insight into the turn of century great literary XII Robert Weltsch crimination by abolishing a difference which seemed a mere formality. On the Jewish side there were often few intellectual or moral scruples about conversion. These men indulged without inhibition or reservation in the cult of German classical literature, ignoring the fact that the German people themselves had changed since the era of Humanitdt and that the image of the Jew in the German mind was, anyhow, quite different Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 from that which educated Jews would have liked it to be. This was perhaps a tragic misunderstanding, but for a certain period it seemed to work, and this period is part of German-Jewish history no less than any other. The historian's job is not to moralize but to understand the con- ditions under which people lived and how their way of thought developed. Looking back, many Jewish observers may have misgivings about Haber's political views and even about his brand of patriotism. But those who wonder about his scientific work for the German government during the 1914—1918 war and his involvement in the invention of gas warfare have to remember that the government for which he worked, in spite of the bad reputation its militarist background earned it in the Western world, was not a Nazi government.40 If there are stories circulating about the reluctance of German scientists in 1944 to speed up Nazi Germany's atomic research in order to prevent her from obtaining the atomic bomb prior to the western Allies, there was no such legitimate reason for ob- struction during the first world war. Yet there is some uneasiness about the invention of poisonous gas even as a method of warfare, and this fact is not suppressed by Dr. Stern, though he stresses the motives that justify it. In any case, this was not the only one of Haber's chemical achieve- ments. His main invention was the synthesis of ammonia and nitrates from the gases of the atmosphere. Experts say that without this discovery Germany would have had to stop fighting in 1915 as no nitrates were available for fertilizers (indispensable for the growing of food) or for essential ammunition. It is noteworthy that a scientist of Jewish origin made such an im- portant contribution to Germany's war effort in that war, while on the other side of the barricades another great Jew — of much more outspo- ken Jewishness, to allow for an understatement — placed his scientific abilities at the disposal of his adopted country, England: Chaim Weizmann. By a strange whim of history, the two men became closely connected in their scientific work during the post-war period, with another great Jew- ish chemist of genius, Professor Richard Willstatter, joining in. In the sombre last chapter of German-Jewish history, when Haber, too, was not spared the fate of other Jews, baptized or not, there was a significant

epoch; it also contains brilliant chapters on Arthur Schnitzler's relations with Theodor Herzl and Richard Beer-Hofmann.) *«Even General Ludendorff, an undisguised antisemite, cannot avoid to state that ..Geheimrat Haber hat sich um die Fiihrung des Gaskampfes verdient gemacht". (Erich Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen, Berlin 1919, p. 266). Introduction XIII aftermath when Weizmann tried to help Haber in his plight and even would have liked to win his services for the Hebrew University in Jeru- salem. Haber's letters from the years 1933/34, kept in the Weizmann archives, and printed in this Year Book, are an illustration of this last episode in Haber's life when he, a dying man, became an emigrant, wandering from place to place in search of a new home. Unfortunately Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 Weizmann's replies to Haber's letters could not be traced, but it seems to us of absorbing interest to observe the upheaval apparently going on in Haber's mind with regard to the Jewish problem. He even goes so far as to condemn (in the letter of 6.1.1934) the behaviour of those German Jews who, instead of listening to the voice of the Jewish prophets, seemed to acquiesce in a humiliating position inside Germany as long as their livelihood was not endangered. There are also some pungent details in these letters about the technical and psychological aspect of the emigration of scientists and about the fate of other famous men. Although before 1933 there is not much of overtly Jewish interest (except by implication) in Haber's life story as told by Dr. Stern, and Jewish questions are hardly mentioned apart from some allusions to anti- semitism, what strikes the reader is the fact that, consciously or not, even in this neutralised world of science there seems to have been an automatic, perhaps unnoticed, drawing together of Jews in their social and professional life. Even at the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Institute there was a kind of unintentional Jewish colony. Among the men most frequently mentioned as Haber's associates or visitors are Einstein, Willstatter, James Franck, Carl Neuberg, all of them, like Haber himself, holders of Nobel prizes; all of them were later refugees from Nazi Germany. We know of the in- tense antisemitism displayed in German universities even during the comparatively happy years of the Weimar Republic. It must have become very difficult for these scientists to ignore the Jewish factor. We know from Willstatter's memoirs of the grief which the situation caused the great man as early as 1924 when he resigned his chair at Munich University because of an antisemitic incident. He remained a faithful Jew5 and a German patriot, but in 1939 he had to flee from Germany. About Einstein one need not say much; his identification with the Jewish people and its cause is common knowledge. As to James Franck, it is worth while recalling the letter he wrote to the Rector of Goettingen University thirty years ago. 1963 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the upheaval caused by Hitler's first anti-Jewish decrees, of which the most spectacular for the outside world were those directed

«In 1933, Willstatter wrote an introduction to a work planned and almost accomplished in that year, the book ,Juden im Deutschen Kulturbereich". The book, however, was banned and destroyed by the Gestapo before it reached the public; in a much enlarged form it was published only 25 years later, re-edited by the late Siegmund Kaznelson (d. 1959), by Jud. Verlag, Berlin. XIV Robert Weltsch against the academic and scientific celebrities. James Franck, who would have been 80 last year, had a chance to remain at his post, at least temporarily, because he belonged to the category of those who had fought in the first war. Like Haber himself (whose letter of resignation is

printed in Dr. Stern's essay) Franck refused such privilege while other Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 Jewish scientists were ousted. On 17th April 1933 he wrote to his Rector:

"I have requested my superior authority to release me from my post. I will endeavour to continue my scientific work in Germany. We Germans of Jewish descent are treated as aliens and as enemies of the Fatherland, and it is required that our children shall grow up in the knowledge that they may never prove themselves to be German. Jews who fought in the war are to receive permission to serve the State further, but I decline to avail myself of this favour, though I understand the standpoint of those who to-day consider it to be their duty to remain at their posts". In 1934, Franck became professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. In 1945, he was the chairman of the Chicago committee which drafted the so-called "Franck Report", warning the American authorities of the consequences of atomic warfare in Japan. The report, handed in in June 1945, was disregarded.6 When Haber, in his letter of resignation on 30th April 1933, wrote to the national-socialist Minister of Education, Dr. Rust, that in a scientific Institute only the professional ability and not the race of applicants should be considered, the Minister told the press: ,,Ich mache es den Herren nichtarischer Abstammung keineswegs zum Vorwurf, dass sie in ihrem Blutinstinkt versuchten, den blutmassig ihnen naherstehenden Privatdozenten und Assistenten heranzuziehen. Und wenn mir ein bekannter Pro- fessor des Kaiser Wilhelm-Instituts gestern geschrieben hat, er konnte sich auf keinen Fall darauf einlassen, iiber die Zusammensetzung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft, die er begriindet, sich Vorschriften machen zu lassen, so muss ich erklaren: Ich bin nicht berechtigt, die Gesetze des deutschen Volkes, die es sich durch die Reichs- regierung gegeben hat, nicht auszufiihren. Wir miissen in Zukunft einen arischen Nachwuchs auf den Universitaten haben . . .7 Professor Willstatter also relates how the government tried to prevent the memorial meeting for Haber, arranged one year after his death by the President of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, Professor Max Planck, by prohibiting all state employees to take part. The meeting took place, nevertheless, on January 29, 1935, at Harnack House, Dahlem, after a protracted correspondence between Planck and the Ministry. It was boycotted by all official persons and even by the Society of German Chemists which warned its members not to attend.8 While this volume was going to press, a symposium of famous bio- chemists from all over the world was held at the Weizmann Institute 6Cf. Rob. Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns (Penguin), pp. 168-170. 7Quoted in Richard Willstatter, Aus meinem Leben. Verlag Chemie, Weinheim 1949, p. 274. sibid., pp. 274-276. Introduction XV at Rehovoth, Israel, in the summer of 1963. Papers were read and prob- lems discussed from the whole range of the science which was the domain of Haber and Weizmann and for which Rehovoth has become one of the international centres, also due to the co-operation of Jewish scientists originating from Germany. This congress was also the occasion for Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 dedicating a new building, called The Ullmann Institute of Life Sciences. In the inner courtyard of this building stands a plaque which bears the following inscription: This Institute stands as a living monument to FRITZ HABER (1868-1934) RICHARD WILLSTAETTER (1872-1942) CARL NEUBERG (1877-1956) OTTO MEYERHOFF (1884-1951) MAX BERGMANN (1886-1944) RUDOLF SCHOENHEIMER (1898-1941) and those German Jewish scientists who were victims of Nazi tyranny. Its creation was encouraged and supported by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Now from the world of science to that of literature. The problem of the Jewish writer, and especially the poet, in German literature has preoccupied many students both Jewish and Gentile. Dr. S. S. Prawer has dealt with this subject in a lecture he gave at the Leo Baeck Institute in London on which his contribution to the present volume is based. There is a proud array of Jewish poets but apart from the bio- graphical facts the problem is complex enough. What is "Jewish" in poetry will always remain controversial. Does the mere fact that the author is of Jewish origin make his poetry "Jewish"? Or is it the con- tents? The believers in the omnipotence of race have often condemned some poetry as inferior only because they knew that the writer was Jewish, but it remains doubtful whether they judged by a genuine intelligible criterion or were prejudiced — and sometimes misled — by the notion of the author's Jewishness. On the other hand, Jews, accustomed to being made responsible for members of their community who do not add prestige or respectability, are often eager to claim as Jewish those who do so. The ambiguity of the situation where just such creative Jews were blamed as corruptors of the German spirit and language, is of particular irony. It is undeniable that in many cases an objective evaluation and exact determination of the Jewish factor is quite impossible, but that does not imply that it does not exist. Jewishness may be a reality although it defies definition. This applies not only to poets. Sigmund Freud, vrho was neither a religious nor a nationalist Jew and who certainly was aware of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021

KURT BLUMENFELD born 1884 at Marggrabowa (East Prussia), died 1963 in Jerusalem Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 Introduction XVII gldubigen Volke)", says Karl Otten. He felt an urgent impulse to atone, in the field of literature, for what had happened in Germany. Another man who was closely related to some of these poets was Erwin Loewenson (Golo Gangi), whose death in Jerusalem this year was

deeply mourned by his friends. Shortly before his death he published a Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 monograph on one of the most promising young pre-war poets, Georg Heym (1887—1912). It is based on an obituary speech delivered in 1912 before the club of Neopathetiker, as they called themselves.13 This, too, is a document of cultural activity to which Jews were attracted at that time. Many of the poets for whom Karl Otten pleaded are listed by Dr. Prawer when he deals with the period of expressionism. As he says, the poem Weltende by Jacob van Hoddis is usually regarded as the starting point of this kind of poetry. Van Hoddis also belonged to the Neopathe- tiker of whom Erwin Loewenson speaks.14 His strange name was formed from an anagram of his real name Hans Davidsohn; in his revolutionary enthusiasm he apparently wanted to disguise his Jewish middle-class origin. Van Hoddis was seized by a nervous illness in 1913 and was deported from a nursing home by the Nazis on 30th April 1942. A recent issue of "Germania Judaica", Cologne, laudably devoted to the handling of the Jewish question in the teaching of German literature in German schools, contains an article on expressionist poets under the headline "Jakob van Hoddis oder Hans Davidsohn?". The author (Seidler) pre- sents expressionism as "the only epoch of German Literature where the difference between Jewish, Catholic or atheistic Germans — or Ger- i»Erwin Loewenson: Georg Heym oder Vom Geist des Schicksals. Verlag Heinrich Ellermann, Hamburg 1962. - See also: Expressionismus, Literatur und Kunst 1910-1923, Catalogue of an exhibition held at Marbach a.N. in 1960. Albert Langen Georg Mullet, Munchen, pp. 23-24. "Another member of the Neopathetiker of 1912, who also wrote an essay on Hoddis a few years ago, was professor David Baumgardt (born in Erfurt in 1890) whose death in New York occurred (July 1963) when this book went to press. Baumgardt had been professor of philosophy at Berlin University in 1932 just before Hitler came to power. His published books included: Franz von Bader und die Philosophische Romantik, Maimonides the Conciliator of Eastern and Western Thought, a.o. He was working on a History of Ethics. In 1935 Baumgardt gave the official Maimonides Memorial Lecture at Madrid University on the 800th anniversary of the birth of the great Spanish Jewish philosopher. The celebrations were organised by the short-lived republican Spanish Government. Baumgardt was also a contributor to the publications of the Leo Baeck Institute. In Volume II of the Year Book we published his essay "The Ethics of Lazarus and Steinthal". The Board of the Leo Baeck Institute and the Editor of the Year Book deeply mourn his untimely death. — On Baumgardt see Obituary in MB (Mitteilungsblatt) Tel Aviv, 9.8.1963. In an essay ,,Friihexistentia- list unter Fruhexpressionisten" in Deutsche Rundschau Jg. 1962, p. 331 ff, Dr. Friedrich Schulze-Maizier describes his experiences with the Neopathetiker and tells of his common youth with Baumgardt with whom he went to school in Erfurt, had many differences and a lively correspondence over many years. A volume of essays in honour of Baumgardt, prepared by his friends for his seventieth birthday, appeared, alas, only shortly after his death (Horizons of a Philosopher, Leiden 1963). XVIII Robert Weltsch mans, Jews, people from Prague — or Jewish middle-class people and Prussian revolutionaries could no longer be perceived".15 The position of the Jewish writer in modern poetry and literature, so enigmatic and disturbing in Germany fifty or forty years ago, was per-

haps not an exclusively German-Jewish affair. In our days it has become Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 a constant subject of perplexity, self-analysis and discussion in the Eng- lish-speaking world. An astonishing number of Jews of the second or third generation of East-European immigrants have become productive in art, in literature and in the theatre, both in England and in the United States. Most of them do not evade the Jewish problem, and the market is swamped with novels and plays full of Jewish lore, and/or presenting complex Jewish characters. But what, indeed, is the Jewish- ness of a Jewish writer, what makes a novel Jewish? In spite of many self- confessions, enquetes and interviews no clear answer has emerged to this harassing question. If, to quote only one instance, Mr. Maurice Edel- man, M.P., himself a Jewish writer of distinction, says16 that to be classified as Jewish a book should convey "Jewish ideas", he apparently has in mind universalist humanism. Many will agree with him, but Orthodoxy or some nationalists may hold a different view. The concern about this fundamental question was reflected at a conference of Ameri- can and Israeli writers which took place in Israel in June 1963. Almost all the participants from both sides agreed, and quite rightly, that the aim of an author is and should be to be a good writer, not a "Jewish" writer. But that does not answer the question whether his work appears, intentionally or not, as Jewish, and why. The definition of Jewishness as being alienated, being an outsider, led to the astonishing retort that most Jews in the United States as well as in Israel "have become insiders and have ceased to be Jews".17 But there were also appeals for the preservation of Jewish identity which should be defended against hostile outside forces. When Dr. Prawer recalls the half-forgotten Karl Beck (of Hungarian provenance) and his songs of hate against the Jewish nouveaux riches and their lust for money more than a hundred years ago, we find a common denominator with some novels by English-language authors of our own days, which are aggressively critical of Jewish bourgeois society. While many of these writers have socialist leanings, the older generation,

15Germania Judaica. Kolner Bibliothek zur Geschichte des deutschen Judentums. 1963 Neue Folge 3-4. Die Judische Frage im Deutschunterricht, pp. 24-27. - On Hoddis see also Expressionismus I.e., p. 27. This brilliantly edited and useful Catalogue (359 pp.) gives also short encyclopaedic biographies of other poets mentioned here like Alfred Mombert, Else Lasker-Schiiler, Alfred Lichtenstein, Karl Kraus, Ivan Goll, etc., and also of Karl Otten. "In Jewish Chronicle London, 25.1.1963, p. 14. 17New York Times, 19.6.1963. — See also Amos Elon: "There is no Jewish problem for the young writers" in Haaretz, Tel Aviv, 23.6.1963 (Hebrew). A full verbatim report of this Conference was published by Congress bi-Weekly, New York, September 16, 1963. Introduction XIX mostly of immigrant and East-end background but now living in pros- perity, is being accused of materialism, egotism and general indifference. In England, this so-called "Golders Green novel" became controversial in Jewish circles. As to the authors themselves, they know they are

Jews but they do not consider it of significance. It is noteworthy that Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 similar problems as those which bedevilled German Jewry half a century ago, reappear in other surroundings when similar conditions of cultural amalgamation — and conflict — arise. In the wake of the newly aroused interest in Jewish writers and poets in post-Hitler Germany, many books and essays have been published which try not only to arrive at a deeper understanding of this literature which had been obliterated in Germany during the Hitler period, but also to re-trace the close intertwining of Jewish figures with German lit- erary life and with the various trends which developed there. It is im- possible to give an account here of even a part of these writings, but as Dr. Prawer also mentions Alfred Mombert we should like to draw atten- tion to the publication by the Academy of Mainz18 of his correspondence with Richard and Ida Dehmel. In the introduction to this book we are told that Mombert was deported from Heidelberg to the concentration camp of Gurs in October 1940 and was ransomed from there by Swiss friends in November 1941. He died at Winterthur, Switzerland, on 8th April 1942. Professor Wolffheim quotes Mombert's letter, written after the "Kristallnacht" of 9th November 1938, in which he describes the ex- perience of that night as a ,,leibhaftige Renaissance" of medieval times, and concludes: "While thirty years ago no art was needed for living, today this is a real art, and challenges me to a high degree". This is certainly an original reaction to what Wolffheim correctly calls a "bar- barian" event. Mombert did not emigrate, he was "a great poet condemned to solitude" who "knew himself to have been rescued upwards into the world of Heraclitus and Empedocles". Mombert's library was preserved and is now placed separately in the Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe. But his papers, letters and manuscripts disappeared after they had been taken to Berlin by special order of the SD in 1942. Therefore, only few letters from Ida Dehmel to Mombert have survived. Ida Dehmel, n£e Coblenz (from Bingen), one of the Jewesses near to Stefan George19,was sometimes described as "the only woman whom George had loved". The presence of remarkable Jewish personalities in the George Circle has for a long time been noticed as a startling pheno- menon. Although only a small number of persons were involved, and, owing to its esoteric character, the George Circle never affected a wide mass-public, in the sphere of art and spirit it was one of the outstanding "Alfred Mombert: Briefe an Richard und Ida Dehmel. Ausgewahlt und eingeleitet von Dr. Hans Wolffheim. Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, 1956. "See Hans Tramer in LBI Bulletin 2-3, 1958, p. 91. - There also on Mombert, p. 98. XX Robert Weltsch chapters of the Jewish-German encounter. It has often provoked comment and caused amazement. Dr. Wera Lewin's study, published in this volume, will contribute to its clarification. She approaches this relationship as a Jewish problem — the psychological spectacle of George's impact on his

Jewish followers, the attraction and also the conflicts. It is certainly Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 difficult to trace the "Jewish" element in those personalities though they were known to be Jews, but deeper analysis shows that their Jewishness can not be treated as meaningless. When Wera Lewin sees an unconscious affinity between the personality cult of a Hassidic rabbi and the venera- tion of George, this George-cult practised by Jews appears almost as a Jewish heresy. This fascinating subject was also treated in a lecture given at the Leo Baeck Institute in London by Dr. Ernest Kahn; to avoid over- lapping, we can publish here only parts of this, in a shortened version. It is, alas, a memorial to its author; to our great regret this able student of literature died in London in March 1963 as this Year Book was being prepared. One of the Jewish writers close to the George Circle, Mrs. Mar- garete Susman, who lives in Switzerland, has been elected a Fellow of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York on the occasion of her ninetieth birth- day. Her essay on Georg Simmel has been published before in the Schriftenreihe des Leo Baeck Instituts (Mohr Tubingen). The occasion of her birthday was also marked by a lecture on this great woman and writer, given in New York in October 1962, by Mrs. Use Blumenthal, the poetess, under the auspices of the LBI. Perhaps we may follow Mrs. Blumenthal in quoting one sentence from Margarete Susman's post-war book "Hiob": ,,Das Heldische und das Messianische lebt in Israel nur verborgen. Aber aus solcher messianischer Tiefe und schon im Wissen um sie ist es herrlich, trotz aller irdischen Fraglichkeit herrlich, Jude zu sein". (Only hidden lives the Heroic and the Messianic in Israel. But out of such messianic depth, and by the mere knowledge of it, it is magnificent to be Jewish, in spite of all the earthly troubles.) We cannot, however, leave this subject20 without dwelling for a moment on another side of the problem which has been widely discussed during the last years and belongs, perhaps, more to the German than to the Jewish complex. This is, of course, the relationship — or alleged relation- ship — of the George movement to the evolution of Nazism. It would be ridiculous to burden a man like Stefan George with anything approach- ing responsibility for the wilful advancement of views preparatory to the Nazi rule. He hated nothing more than he hated vulgarity; he be- lieved in a kind of spiritual redemption of the world by Art. He also later showed in his private conduct that he had nothing to do with Nazism. Though — as one of his famous poems reveals — fully conscious of the difference between the two tribes, he certainly rejected antisemi-

also the profound analysis by Werner Kraft ,,George und die Juden" in MB (Tel Aviv) of 5th April, 1963. Introduction XXI tjs/n and was eager to attract Jews to his Circle. In 1933 he leit Nazi Germany and when he died, he was not buried in German soil. But ideas which originate from a man often go their own way. Actual history is not always in accordance with the intentions of acting personali-

ties. Some of George's ideas, or more exactly, some side effects of his and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 his Circle's conduct, produced in those who came under his spell the notion that leadership was a necessary factor in higher human association. From this emerged a cult of the Leader and a thorough aversion to democracy. Thus, although George himself loathed all mass display — and the Nazi version of leadership was not at all to his taste — it may not be completely unreasonable to assume that some ingredients of his doctrine, accepted by a section of intellectual youth, played their part in preparing for an enthusiastic welcome to a political system which was based on leadership and on rejection of democracy. It is, therefore, understandable that in some inquiries into the emer- gence of the mentality which made the Third Reich possible, Stefan George is listed as one of the spiritual forerunners. This has been done, for instance, in the volume The Third Reich, published in 1955 under the auspices of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies and with the assistance of UNESCO. This book is composed of 28 independent essays, each under the responsibility of its author. One chapter in Part One, i.e. in the part delineating the intellectual antece- dents of the Nazi ideology, is devoted to George. It is written by Claude David, professeur a la Faculte des Lettres de Lille, under the title "Stefan George: Aesthetes or Terrorists?". After a long and absorbing analysis, Professor David comes to the following conclusion:

"... The poet's thought, with its love of courtly gestures, of generosity and sacrifice, is both traditionalist and warlike ... He seeks a regime that offers him order and a hierarchy that meets his demand for adventure and greatness. The aristocracy he longs for is a thing of the past. Today the only political form that could satisfy a belief of this kind, placing honour before justice, is Caesarism . . . This doctrine, conservative in origin, soon despairs of saving the values of the past. It comes round to the belief that they can be restored only by first destroying the entire present. It sees no hope of salvation except in great cataclysms and an excess of evil. Were not the barbarism and cruelty of the Hitler regime foreshadowed in George's works? Was not Hitler, the Hi of the 'Burning of the Temple', destined to ruin culture for 500 years so that it might reappear stronger than ever? Apart from this feature, apart from the will to subversion, the taste for the apocalyptic, George's doctrine and Hitlerism probably have little in common. It was not our purpose to disguise George as a Nazi, however, but to show what part he plays in the movement of thought which made National-Socialism possible." Another author, Professor Hans Kohn, in a chapter on "George and Germany", in his standard work "The Mind of Germany",21 though doing justice to George's greatness as a poet, stresses the effect of his disdain of western liberalism. Although George idealised the spiritual

"Professor Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany, New York 1960, pp. 233-244. XXII Robert Weltsch potentialities of Germany his very attitude, Professor Kohn says, "helped to accelerate the growth of a German nationalism which repeated all the old mistakes while at the same time it regarded itself confidently as a new and higher form of life." In the 1920's George collaborated closely with the most nationalist wing of his followers, much to the dis- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 may of his older friends, and he never disavowed Friedrich Wolters' nationalist interpretation that he, George, was Germany's saviour. Ab- surdly enough, Professor Hans Naumann dedicated the sixth edition of his popular "Deutsche Dichtung der Gegenwart" to "Our Leaders", meaning Hitler and George! There was, of course, a disastrous element of misunderstanding in all this. From a personal point of view George can certainly not be made responsible for Hitler, who was in many respects his very opposite. We are here concerned with the involuntary, unforeseeable and to a large extent uncontrollable, effects of both a certain brand of irrational thought and an inclination to a nationalist mystique which appear in this period of German history in many disguises. For the sake of honest analysis and perhaps also as a warning for the future, these inferences cannot be overlooked. In this respect George is part of the ominous process of the vacillation of ideas which moulded the mind of the German intelligentsia, so that it became more amenable than other nations to such a temptation as National Socialism. A momentous chapter of this intellectual development has been traced by Professor Fritz Stern of Columbia University (who appears elsewhere in our present volume as the editor of his father's posthumous essay on Fritz Haber). In a comprehensive and revealing study, "The Politics of Cultural Despair"22, Professor Stern analyses three of the men who prepared the ground in Germany for a nationalist ideology based on a passionate rejection of Western liberalism: Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn and Moeller van der Bruck. Whilst we cannot enlarge here on the impact of these three men, or on the merits of this book, its general outlook seems to us pertinent to our context. It raises a point hitherto neglected by the western world, apart from the UNESCO volume quoted above; and Dr. Stern rightly suggests that

"while in our historical interpretations of Hitler's triumph we have noted everything, from the dangers of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to the role of Big Business, we may not have sufficiently reckoned with the politically exploitable discontent which for so long has been embedded in German culture." Such widely ranging outlines have recently been a cause of vehement controversy inside Germany, when William Shirer23 tried to detect the historical roots of National Socialism in earlier German philosophers and in mystical romanticism. By implication such speculations touch on the

*2Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. University of California Press, 1961. "In his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". Introduction XXIII hotly debated question, whether Germans were, by their own history and way of thought, more preconditioned than other nations to such a philosophy as National Socialism.

As we said above, what is Jewish in the creative work of a writer cannot Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 be easily defined. At a certain stage, at the height of assimilation, there were many writers — and indeed intellectuals — who resented being labelled as Jews. It seemed to them a malevolent suggestion of inferiority because in their honest view, there was no Jewish element of relevance in their character or work. They regarded it as an insult to be separated by irrelevant classification from the cultural community in which they felt themselves to be completely integrated. In the present volume Dr. Weiler recalls the figure of Fritz Mauthner, a philosopher, whose work was intimately bound up with the German language; he was an avowed atheist and he hated and despised his Jewishness. In 1881, he had discussed the Jewish question, in the manner usual at that time, in a novel Der neue Ahasver. Mauthner was one of those Bohemian Jews who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, felt fanatically German both politically and culturally and outdid their "Aryan" counterpart in opposition to the Czechs. Among the young German students (many of them Jewish) in the Habsburg monarchy this pro-German feeling, in the era of rising German nationalism, expressed itself in the adoration of the figure of Bismarck, who was the idol of German unity. Gazing across the frontier was tanta- mount to disloyalty to their own country, Austria, which had been the victim of Bismarck's aggression in 1866; but pan-German sentiment seemed paramount to them. They were the forerunners of the Pan-Germanists of Austria and of the Sudeten Germans who provoked a world crisis in 1938. Both of these groups became radical racist antisemites and excluded Jews from their societies. But a few years earlier the Jew Fritz Mauthner of Horzice in Bohemia becomes almost blasphemical in his invocation "Sancte Bismarck, ora pro nobis!" Olga Schnitzler, widow of the poet, in her moving and enlightening reminiscences mentioned above, tells a story of Hermann Bahr, whom many regard as the very incarnation of Austrianism, but who as a young man went to Berlin in 1885 in order to hand over to Bismarck an address of fervent Pan-German loyalty from Austrian stu- dents. He was very disappointed when the wise statesman seemed cool and advised him to care more for Austria, his own country.24 We are reminded of this when we read the Czech-born Fritz Mauthner's enthusiastic praise of Bismarck. Jews, too, were seized by the wave of Pan-Germanism which later, alas, became so closely identified with antisemitism. Even a thinker like Mauthner could not get rid of this Jewish (or anti- Jewish) complex. Of this the extracts from letters, published here for the first time, provide striking evidence. He had forgotten all the Jewish

"Olga Schnitzler, I.e., p. 114. XXIV Robert Weltsch wisdom of his near ancestors and had succumbed to the current aversion towards Eastern Jews. That is why he was struck and fascinated by the discovery of the work of a polnische Judenjunge, dating from the end of the eighteenth century, which suddenly came his way. This was the

autobiography of Solomon Maimon, one of the most remarkable figures Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 in Jewish intellectual history of the enlightenment period, of whom our contributor Noah J. Jacobs gives a philosophical profile. The "Pole" Maimon was, in a strange way, an early forerunner of later Jewish participation in German philosophy. His autobiography, apart from its German editions, was also published in an English translation, edited and commented on by Professor Hugo Bergman about ten years ago.25 Mauthner could hardly harmonize the image he held of an Eastern Jew with the emergence of a philosopher of highest standing, a pupil and controversialist of Kant, whose intellectual superiority he had to admit. He also was perplexed by what Judaism might mean, when in 1906 the young Martin Buber, ignoring Mauthner's aversion, spoke to him in his tolerant way about Hassidism. Mauthner's contact with men like Buber and Gustav Landauer led to frequent clashes of views on Jewish matters. Evidence of this can be found in Gustav Landauer's letters, edited by Ina Britschgi-Schimmer under the supervision of Buber.28 In a letter to Gustav Landauer (quoted in English by Dr. Weiler) Mauthner wrote on 10th October 1913: „... Ich fiihle mich nur als ein Deutscher; weiss dabei, dass mein Gehirn irgendwie einen Ductus hat, den man jiidisch nennt; um so schlimmer oder um so besser, ich kann und will es nicht andern. Deine Conclusio ist anders und nur darin gehen wir auseinander." To this Landauer replied: ,,Darum ..., ob Du die Eigenschaft des Jiidischen einen .Duktus des Gehirns* nennst und etwa das Wortchen ,nur' hinzufiigst, handelt es sich doch wohl nicht, sondern darum, dass Du, indem Du diesen Duktus jiidisch nennst, nicht bloss von einem Zug sprichst, der Dir individuell eignet, sondern von einem, der Dir mit einer Anzahl Menschen gemeinsam ist. Und welchen Wert ich dieser, von gemein- samer Geschichte stammenden Gemeinschaft beilege, das entscheidet mir nicht die Logik. Ich fur mein Teil finde nicht so viele in die Jahrtausende zuriick- gehende Gemeinschaften in unserer Zeit, dass ich auf eine verzichten mochte, zumal wenn ich keinen Grand dazu habe. Und eine Gemeinschaft, die man - mit Deinen Worten — an einem .Duktus im Gehirn' erkennt, ist eigentlich Wirklichkeit genug." This leads us back to the question of the imperceptibly ,Jewish" element which may or may not impress itself on the work of a writer whose brain, in Mauthner's own admission, contains a ductus not avail- 25The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon. With an essay on Maimon's philosophy by Hugo Bergman. East and West Library London 1954. Professor Bergman also wrote a Hebrew book on Maimon (as mentioned by Mr. Jacobs). 26Gustav Landauer. Sein Lebensgang in Briefen. Unter Mitwirkung von Ina Britschgi- Schimmer herausgegeben von Martin Buber. 2 Bande. Riitten & Loening, Frankfurt 1929. Vol. I, pp. 450-51. - Mauthner's book Die Sprache, published in the series Die Gesellschaft of which Buber was the editor, is dedicated to Gustav Landauer. Introduction XXV able in other brains26". In this respect, one could also refer to the charac- teristics, which Willy Haas gives, of another great and lovable man of the same generation as Mauthner and Landauer, and their friend: Mo- ritz Heimann, who was for many years reader of S. Fischer Verlag and

the mentor of a great number of writers at the beginning of this century. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/8/1/IX/938684 by guest on 27 September 2021 Haas calls him a talmudischer Kopj and says of him: „. . . Er wollte Leben schaffen wie Jean Paul oder Goethe, nicht wie Maimon oder der Hohe Rabbi Low. Aber er hatte nur die Mittel Maimons oder des Hohen Rabbi Low. Er versuchte den geometrischen Menschen, den kultischen Menschen, die kultische Natur, die 'Architektur der Formeln', auf eine weltliche Art in den organischen Menschen, die organische Natur, in die abendlandische organische Formung iiberzufuhren. Nichts ist unmoglicher. Er hatte am Ende, wenn er Gliick gehabt hatte, eher noch einen tonernen Golem beleben konnen, als lebende Natur, unbeschadigt und lebendig, in tonende Buchstaben zu verwandeln. . . . Nicht nur als guter und weiser Mensch und als der ausgezeichnete Schriftsteller, der er ist, sondern auch als diese einzigartige problematische Gestalt scheint mir Moritz Heimann eine der merkwiirdigsten judischen Erscheinungen unserer Zeit gewesen zu sein."*7 As we see, many people — and not only antisemites — have meditated on the problem of the "Jewish" elements which constitute a Jewish writer or poet. It is certainly one of the most subtle and intricate enquiries into the analysis of what is Jewish at a time when visible religion has almost disappeared. It will continue to occupy the mind and provoke comments as do so many things for which words are not easily found. As no general rules are applicable the results are bound to be, to a large extent, the expression of subjective views.

Finally, in publishing one or two pieces based on documents discovered in the German Bundesarchiv or in private possession, we should like to repeat the appeal to our members and readers to search their own archives and files for documents or letters of public interest, and to place them at the disposal of the Leo Baeck Institute. The New York branch of our Institute has acquired a great number of documents and papers which are kept in its steadily growing archives which even now are unique as a collection of material relevant to the history of German Jews in all its aspects. This can be substantially increased if all those who are in the position to do so, will comply with our request.28 Among the most precious documents are personal reminiscences of men and women who recorded the experience of their lives, throwing light on the conditions of the period. Autobiographies, family histories, diaries,

MaApparently Mauthner regarded Czech, Hebrew and Judendeutsch as the languages of his ancestors, and in his Memoirs he complained that "in my words I have had to drag around with me the corpses of three languages" ("ich hatte so die Leichen dreier Sprachen in meinen Worten mit mir herumzutragen" - Erinnerungen, p. 51). *7Willy Haas, Gestalten. Essays zur Literatur und Gesellschaft. Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1962, pp. 240-41. l8The Leo Baeck Institute, New York, publishes a regular sheet "LBI News" which gives all information with regard to such donations.