Discovering the Harp of Zion

Gustav Karpeles’ German Jewish apologetics in nineteenth-century literary history

Ezra Engelsberg

Dr. Yaniv Hagbi

Thesis Middle Eastern Studies: Hebrew and Jewish Studies

07-18-2018 Content

General introduction 3

Chapter 1: Heine as a Jewish writer in Gustav Karpeles' apologetic history

The poet, the rabbi and antisemitism 6

Rehabilitating Heine 8

Heine as a Jewish poet and man 10

Heine as a German 13

Heine and Goethe 16

The Nibelungenlied and the Thora 17

Chapter 2: Nationalism and cultural transfer in literary history

Two historians, two literary traditions 19

Different appreciations of the literary canon 21

Modes of explanation 23

Language: exclusive and inclusive 27

Nationalism compared 29

Chapter 3: Gustav Karpeles and the Wissenschaft des Judentums

Changing landscapes in Judaism 31

The Wissenschaft des Judentums 33

Reforming the practice of Judaism 34

The Wissenschaft, romanticism and nationalism 37

Knowledge as apologetics 38

Towards modern German Judaism 40

Conclusion: of rivers and the sea 42

Literature 44

Newspaper articles 47

2

General introduction

Bei den Wassern Babels saßen

Wir und Weinten, unsre Harfen

Wehnten an den Trauerweiden-

Kennst du noch das alte Lied?1

When Heinrich Heine was gravely ill and confined to his Parisian bed he wrote these words in the Romanzero. Recalling the lamentation of Psalm 137 the poet asks us if we remember the song of old. The somber Romanzero deals with personal distress, but Babylon here may just as well refer to the Jewish exile en gros. After all, Heine had chosen life abroad on his own accord. In this collection of poems he turns his attention to the age-old tradition of Jewish literature. Marveling at Judah Halevi, his grand precursor, the poet praises the power of the Jewish canon, Haggadah, Talmud and of course the Thora. Das alte Lied is thus more than only Psalm 137. Heine asks his readers if they still recall all those centuries of creativity, from biblical times up to Medieval Spain.

And sarcastic Heine would not be Heine had his question been a comfortable one. The nineteenth century well underway, Judaism had undergone significant changes since the poet’s birth. These can be expressed as twofold. The practice of Judaism had changed from within and Western society in which it was bedded had changed markedly. The Enlightenment had propagated reason and the centrality of man on earth, marginalizing traditional religion. Moreover, a new sense of equality ushered in new civic rights for Jews, threatening formerly natural cohesion within the Jewish community. Now that Jews were socially mobile, they need not stay within their traditional confines. Jewish religious observance was already somewhat shaky before the inception of the ‘Age of Reason,’ but now it seemed to plunge headfirst into crisis. Were the Jews to turn towards orthodoxy, or should they try to synthesize their heritage with the new current of modernity, finding a compromise? Heine himself belonged to the large group of German Jews who turned away from Judaism altogether, favoring baptism instead. Then again, this turning away was not so categorical, as the subject matter of the Romanzero shows. There were always ties with the tradition. These ties proved problematic in the light of greater societal shifts. With the rise of romantic nationalism, ones link with Blut und Boden became of paramount importance. Affiliation with a tradition that differed from this nationally bound one meant estrangement from society. Although Jews had lived in ghetto’s before, their otherness now took on new forms, supported by new theories of identity and nationhood. This is the tide Heine tried to turn by converting to Protestantism. Commitment to Jewish culture and religion was no longer obvious. This necessitated a thorough Jewish apologetics, lending the Jews a way to prove they could partake in the nationalist German project as good as their gentile compatriots.

Thus, the verse above can be interpreted as a critical question. Have you payed due respect to your tradition? Indeed, tradition was now taking precedence over religion. All of the abovementioned factors contributed to the prevalence of culture over religion. The Wissenschaft des Judentums, originated to reform Judaism to the needs of the day, advocated this shift. Founding fathers such as Eduard Gans and Leopold Zunz foresaw a fluent Hegelian aufheben of Judaism, in which ‘the Jews can neither perish nor Judaism dissolve; but in the great movement of the whole it shall seem to have

1 H. Heine, Romanzero (Hamburg 1851) 223. ‘Hebrew Melodies,’ the section these verses come from, is almost a genre on itself. The most notable example of it is Byron’s book of songs of the same name first published in 1815. This book inspired the German violinist Joseph Joachim to compose his own ‘Hebrew Melodies’ four decades later.

3 perished and yet live on as the current lives on in the ocean.’2 The literary historian Gustav Karpeles would carry on the projects of the Wissenschaft, but he opposed integration into German society at the cost of religious observance.

His extensive work testifies to contemporaneous polemics in Jewish circles and to the strenuous relationship between Jews and German gentiles. Born in Moravia three years prior to the publication of the Romanzero, he was the very first to write a systematic history of Jewish literature. Trained as a rabbi, he combined the scientific interest of the Wissenschaft with religious devotion. As such, he became editor of the weekly Jüdische Presse that represented a conservative religious stance, but also of the literary journal Auf der Höhe. After that he went on to edit several journals in both fields. He co-founded the Berlin Verein für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, an initiative that was soon to be copied in other German communities.3 He edited an anthology of Hebrew poetry translated into German4 and several overviews of Jewish literature.5 Karpeles’ special interest however was Heine. He published works on the poet time and again.6 Karpeles remained somewhat of an eclectic writer though, as can be illustrated by his writings on Napoleon III as translator of Goethe and his editing of the complete parliamentary speeches by Moltke the elder.7 These works attest to their author’s devotion to German history and culture. Although much of his work focuses on German literature, his books on Jewish literature found an international reading public. Karpeles’ grand, two-volume Geschichte der Jüdischen Literatur, his magnum opus, was translated into French in 1901, and collected essays on Jewish history were published in English by the Jewish Publication Society of America in 1911, two years after his death.8 Karpeles’ historiography of Jewish literature was thus an internationally known project. His activity in editorials and societies in Germany and the sheer size of his output make it safe to say his work was widely read at home as well.

In between religion, nationalism and apologetics, Karpeles’ historiography is a showcase for the issues German Jews faced in the dynamic latter half of the nineteenth century. It displays the different attitudes of Jews towards these aspects of life and the reaction of Christian Jews. This research follows three distinct veins in Karpeles’ oeuvre, all addressing subjects mentioned already in this introduction. They cover Karpeles and Heine, Jewish literary history in comparison to nationalist literary history and the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The structure of the thesis follows these three, setting next to each other three distinct parts. Much the same as in Karpeles’ Geschichte, each part is preceded by an introduction and followed by concluding remarks. These culminate in a conclusion that draws from all, presenting coherently once more Karpeles’ voice in the debates around loyalty towards religion, tradition and one’s country. It sheds light on the strategies minorities deploy in trying to grapple with their marginality. We follow the search for acceptance and see how this search

2 Quoted in: L. Wieseltier, ‘Etwas Über Die Judische Historik: Leopold Zunz and the Inception of Modern Jewish Historiography’ History and Theory, Vol. 20 no. 2 (1981) 135-149, 148. 3 M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik, ed., Encyclopedia Judaica Vol. 11 (Detroit 2007) 816. 4 G. Karpeles, ed., Die Zionsharfe: eine Anthologie der neuhebräischen Dichtung in deutschen Übertragungen (Leipzig 1889). 5 G. Karpeles, Ein Blick in die Jüdische Literatur (Prague 1895); G. Karpeles, Geschichte der Jüdischen Literatur (Berlin 1886) 2 volumes. 6 G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und das Judenthum (Breslau 1868); G. Karpeles. Heinich Heine: biographische Skizzen (Berlin 1869); G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und seine Zeitgenossen (Berlin 1888) G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine: aus seinem Leben und aus seiner Zeit (Leipzig 1899). 7 G. Karpeles, ‘Napoleon III als Goethe-Uebersetzer’, in: L. Geiger, ed., Goethe-Jahrbuch vol. 21 (1900) 292; H.K.B. von Moltke and G. Karpeles, ed., Graf Moltke als Redner: vollständige Sammlung der parlamentarischen Reden Moltkes (Berlin 1889). 8 G. Karpeles, Histoire de la littérature juive d'après G. Karpeles; [avec une lettre de Zadoc Kahn] (Paris 1901); G. Karpeles, Jewish Literature, and other Essays (Philadelphia 1911).

4 questions the meaning of tradition and assimilation. It seems to the author that in this day and age such an enquiry holds relevance not only for those interested in history. To everyone who is concerned with contemporary developments, too, this research should hold some meaning.

5

The poet, the rabbi and antisemitism

In Heine’s Der Rabbi von Bacherach [sic], published in 1840, the revered rabbi of the Rhine village Bacharach is forced to flee from his hometown together with his wife Sara on the first night of Passover. During a Seder celebration in the home of the rabbi, strangers appear at the rabbi’s door. In accordance to Jewish tradition, he promptly invites them to join the family. However, the rabbi finds out just in time that the unknown guests are planning to kill their hosts. Suddenly, he sees that underneath the dinner table lies a dead baby. The poet Heinrich Heine tells how German Christians used to hide corpses of baby’s in Jewish houses, only to use these bodies later as a pretext for starting a pogrom. Heine turns the well-known idea that Jews used to kill Christian baby’s during their feasts around. He doesn’t deny the fanciful story of the dead youngsters, but uses the tale instead to illustrate the animosity of German Christians towards their Jewish fellow-countrymen. He has rabbi Abraham notice the child and recognize the evil scheme of his guests. Keeping his fear at bay, the rabbi manages to think of a way to leave before the antagonists notice that they have been detected. What follows is the flight of the rabbi and his wife across Germany, stopped short only because Heine never finished the would-be novel.9 The first parts were conceived as early as 1824, but it is no coincidence that those parts of the text that actually were finished, were published only years later, in 1840.10 In February of that year, the French consul in Damascus accused the Jews of that city of the ritual murder of a Capuchin priest, resulting in the pogrom that became known rather euphemistically as the ‘Damascus affair.’11 Heine took particular interest in the affair and published several articles on it in the ‘Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung.’12 The similarity between these accusations and the corpse in the rabbi’s house is of course evident. The news from Damascus prompted the poet to resuscitate the old story and counter the old prejudice.

In the context of contemporary turmoil Heine’s plans are obvious. Before the narrative of the rabbi starts, Heine makes it abundantly clear that the story is about the relationship between German Jews and Christians. It need not be explained that the poet took this relationship to be a very difficult one.13 This focus Heine shared for a significant part with one of his fervent admirers, Gustav Karpeles. The literary historian dedicated much of his efforts to research and writing about his great literary hero. In the course of several decades a number of works on Heine were written by Karpeles. He also contributed to Heine-knowledge by editing and publishing works of the poet.14 These efforts combined make up the main part of Karpeles’ writings. Indeed, Karpeles may have been known

9 We may disregard Heine’s own story that the finished manuscript was lost in a fire in 1833. See: W. Vordtriede, ‘Anmerkungen’ in: H. Heine, Heinrich Heine: Dichterische Prosa/Dramatisches (München 1993) notes by Werner Vordtriede, 947. 10 G. F. Peters, ‘’’Jeder Reiche ist ein Judas Ischariot’’: Heinrich Heine and the Emancipation of the Jews’ Monatshefte, Vol. 104, No. 2 (2012) 209-231, 222. 11 E. Schreiber, ‘Tainted Sources: The Subversion of the Grimms' Ideology of the Folktale in Heinrich Heine's "Der Rabbi von Bacherach"’ The German Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 1 (2005) 23-44, 30. 12 H. Steinhauer, ‘Heine and Cecile Furtado: A Reconsideration’ MLN, Vol. 89, No. 3, German Issue (1974) 422-447, 430. 13 H. Heine, ‘Der Rabbi von Bacherach’ in: Dichterische Prosa/Dramatisches 513-552, 515-520. 14 In the first category we may mention: Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und das Judenthum; Karpeles, Biographische Skizzen; Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und seine Zeitgenossen and Karpeles, Heinrich Heine: aus seinem Leben und aus seiner Zeit. As editor Karpeles oversaw the publishing of the following works: H. Heine, M. freiherr von Heine-Geldern & G. Karpeles, Heine-reliquien: neue Briefe und Aufsätze Heinrich Heines, (Berlin 1911); H. Heine & G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine's Autobiographie: nach seinem Werken, Briefen und Gesprächen (Berlin 1888) and G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heines sämtliche Werke: in zwölf Bänden/ mit einer Biographie von G. Karpeles (Leipzig ca. 1895).

6 primarily as Heine-expert.15 This chapter will explain how different works on Heine fit in the greater oeuvre of Karpeles’ literary history and in what way Heine’s story is used by Karpeles to make a usually tacit political and social argument.

15 New York Times, ‘Heinrich Heine’s ‘’Memoirs’’ : An English Version of the Interesting Compilation Made by Gustav Karpeles, April 16, 1911.

7

Rehabilitating Heine

First of all, we must consider the question why Heine was so central a figure in Karpeles’ works, why he devoted so much effort to the poet. According to some modern theoreticians, the main function of literary history is appreciative, i.e. recording literary works that are worthwhile for posterity.16 Although Karpeles does express his love for Heine’s work, this barely enters his ongoing stream of publications. Those interested in Heine’s works will find next to nothing to aid their search for Heine’s literary output in Karpeles. In the foreword to his Biographische Skizzen, Karpeles confesses that the aim of the book is adding a positive view on Heine to the existing literature about the poet. He wants to ‘vanquish prejudices’ about the poet, because there is still a lot of negative attention for Heine. He apparently did not miss the mark. Two years after the original publication, a Dutch translation found its way to bookstores. The translator added his own preface, writing that the book ‘converted’ him in his understanding of Heine. He recognizes two distinct ways in which Heine is mistreated: either his genius is denied, or he is called morally despicable.17 The translator added his own view, since the former of the two problems isn’t addressed by the book at all. As the title suggests, it is about the life of the author, not his works. Karpeles maintained this view steadfastly, as can be seen from the preface to Heine und seine Zeitgenossen, written nearly twenty years later. For the first time here, he comes close to explaining why he has devoted so much energy to Heine. Noting that his research on the poet has proliferated for over two decades, he finds one basic idea to be the thread of all the flowers of this research. The project has from the start been:

'den Beweis zu führen, dass Heine in seinen Beziehungen zu den hervorragendsten Zeitgenossen als ein besserer Charakter und als eine vornehmere Natur sich gezeigt hat, als man dies nach den Urtheilen, welche unsere Literaturgeschichten über ihn verbreitet haben, noch immer anzunehmen geneigt und wohl auch genöthigt ist.'18

The main aim has thus always been rehabilitating the poet, where it concerns him as a person. Karpeles is not concerned with the quality of Heine’s work, only with the quality of the human Heine. The positive focus is deemed necessary, because other literary historians have besmirched the memory of Heine. This explicitly subjective approach is fundamental to our understanding of Karpeles’ project, as we will see later on.19 The caustic vein in Karpeles’ writing is often apparent. In the Biographische Skizzen he names a number of those ungrateful writers who have been wanting to monger lies about his subject. One of them is Max Heine, the author’s very own brother. Karpeles’ manner of fighting Max’s words is sometimes surprisingly acrimonious. The latter claimed his parents to be rich, Karpeles denies it vehemently. Would Heine ever have needed to lean on his financially successful uncle if his parents had been wealthy themselves, he asks rhetorically.20 Time and again Heine positions himself diametrically opposite others who have written about Heine. The sudden bitterness in Karpeles’ pen, when attacking Heine’s opponents, testifies to his devotion to the poet. It stands out in stark contrast to the usually lighter and meandering way of Karpeles’ descriptions of Heine’s life. The German press is also to blame for the decline of Heine’s status. The aforementioned ‘Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung,’ once even Heine’s employer, wrote a dismissive necrology on the poet’s death. Karpeles knows his writing to be structured around binary oppositions. The very last part

16 H. Schlaffer, Die kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (München 2002) 153. 17 G. Karpeles, translated by H.M. Bruna, Heinrich Heine: Biografische Schetsen (Nijmegen 1871) preface without pages. 18 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen, preface without pages. 19 Y. Hagbi, ‘Modern Hebrew Histories of Literature and the Formation of the Canon: A Preliminary Study’ Zutot Vol. 6 (1) (2009) 111-119, 113. 20 Biografische Schetsen 2.

8 of Biographische Skizzen is dedicated to Heine-biographers. Here Karpeles returns to the beginning of the book, placing his project in the Heine-historiography. He categorizes two types of biographers, those who are positive next to those who are negative about Heine. Of the first category, only Adolf Strodtman, who appears as an inspiration for Karpeles, is mentioned. This biographer, who called Heine the ‘two-legged God,’ is reprimanded by Karpeles for being all too uncritical of his subject.21 This is a slightly odd poke at Strodtman indeed, considering the utter lack of any critical assessment of Heine by Karpeles himself. It is not without reason that the translator of the book supposes Karpeles’ evident love for Heine to have affected his ‘professionality.’22

21 Ibid., 99. 22 Ibid., preface without pages.

9

Heine as a Jewish poet and man

Among other biographers mentioned in the last part of the book, we find Friedrich Steinmann. Karpeles dismisses his critique of Heine as ‘anti-Jewish polemics.’23 This is a rare instance where Karpeles is vocal as to Heine’s religion being a reason for the German defamation of the poet. As the effort Karpeles put into exploring Heine’s religious life and identity abundantly proves, this was a major theme in his history. He identifies certain perceived ‘Jewish’ traits in Heine’s writing: philosophical enquiry, subjectivity, and the typical Jewish wit.24 In the first characteristic we see a parallel with an apologetic point made by Karpeles in the essay A Glance at Jewish Literature, which takes its content from Karpeles’ heftier literary histories. There he states that ‘[t]he opinion is current that the Semitic race lacks the philosophical faculty,’ countering that opinion with the fact that the Jews were the first to bring Greek philosophy to Europe, before even the Arabs did.25 Karpeles sees Heine, whose works were widely-read by Jews and non-Jews alike, as another proponent of the philosophical in Judaism. Heine was for Karpeles not just a great poet, but also because of his genius an important instrument in Karpeles’ apologetics. Karpeles wants to prove the qualities of Judaism to the world by showing Heine as an example. A further indication is immediately found when we continue reading the preceding paragraph about the Jewishness of Heine’s work. Elaborating on the ‘Jewish wit,’ Karpeles opines that ‘English humor, French sparkle, German irony, and Jewish wit’ are all woven together in Heine’s works. Karpeles then wonders why of all these national humors, only the Jewish one has been overlooked by critics. He sees a direct link between the Talmud and the Midrash up to Heine’s work, for already in these important Jewish foundational works do we find the Jewish wit.26 It is no coincidence that Karpeles uses this enumeration of nationally bound types of wit.27 Heine’s genius is here presented as the cumulative result of different national affects from over Europe, to which the Jewish one contributes equally. This paragraph is an almost exact copy of the recurring theme in Karpeles’ large literary history, that is to say, that of the Jewish river flowing into the grand ocean of world literature together with all other rivers of the world.28 It becomes clear that Heine is important to Karpeles because he can serve as a case study for Karpeles’ overarching theory of Jewish assimilation and contribution to the (literature of) the world.

Heine’s Jewishness was however not an undisputed matter. First of all there was the case of his baptism. In 1825 the poet had chosen to renounce his Jewish ancestry and convert to Protestantism. Karpeles downplays the religious relevance of this episode in Heine’s life. He writes that the conversion was due only to practical matters. He wanted to enter into the service of the local government, which was strictly prohibited for Jews. Furthermore, he hoped to win over the acceptance of his enemies by joining their Christian ranks.29 They nonetheless would never really see him as part of Christianity, he remained ‘the Jew’ forevermore.30 At the same time, Heine himself never broke the ties to his ‘Stamm’ and, the new Christian names Christian Johann Heinrich notwithstanding, he kept signing with H. or even Harry Heine. According to the historian, this was an

23 Ibid., 102. 24 Karpeles, ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ in: Jewish Literature, and Other Essays (Philadelpia 1911) 340-368, 354. 25 Karpeles, ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ in: idem, 9-51, 23. Cf. Karpeles, Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur (Leipzig 1900) Vol. III, 76, where the Semitic ‘Mangel an abstrakten Denken’ is once again mentioned. This was apparently an important issue for Karpeles. 26 ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ 355. 27 Remember that for Karpeles, Judaism was closely linked to the concept of nationhood. This is not uncommon, consider for instance the Sephardi tradition to refer to the Sephardi community as the ‘Nação.’ 28 See for instance Geschichte der Jüdischen Literatur Vol. I 3; ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 51. 29 ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ 351; Biografische Schetsen 43. 30 Biografische Schetsen 45.

10 open reference to his Jewish heritage.31 Karpeles ardently wanted to prove Heine’s devotion to faith. Karpeles was right to note that the baptism didn’t mean that Heine actually wanted to adopt Christianity. In a letter to his friend Moses Moser, dated roughly half a year after the conversion, Heine sighs that he regrets the choice, since the practical gains expected by the poet never materialized. Worse still, he was now accepted by neither Christians nor Jews.32 It has since then been argued that another reason for Heine to convert may have been his involvement in anti-Catholic polemics, but Karpeles never makes notice of this motive.33

The conversion indeed did not indicate Heine’s devotion to the Church, but of course neither did it exemplify his love for Judaism. In fact, he wasn’t a very religious man, as Karpeles candidly admits.34 Like all ‘civilized people in those days’ Heine was attracted to atheism.35 Karpeles assures his reader that even as an unreligious man, Heine always admired Judaism above all other religions. In his old age, confined to what he called his ‘matress-grave,’ the ailing artist felt remorse for his secular life and tried to return to faith. In the end, Heine showed himself as a religious Jew.36 In the final part of Heine und seine Zeitgenossen Karpeles laments the ill fortunes of his hero, thinking about his deathbed. ‘Was war aber das Leben unseres Dichters? Nichts als ein Golgatha von Leiden und Kümmernissen, von Schmerzen...’37 It is noteworthy that Karpeles should choose for Christian imagery here to convey the poet’s misery. He was interred at the Christian graveyard of Montmartre, close to the Jewish cemetery. Karpeles takes us with him to this site. From the humble slab saying ‘Henri Heine,’ one can look to the Jewish graves, where the celebrated composer Halévy is honored in marble. ‘Isn’t the author of Der Rabbi von Bacherach worth as much as the composer of La Juive?’ he asks. It is no coincidence that Karpeles chose precisely these two titles, related to Judaism, from the copious amounts of works left by the two prolific artists. Even though Heine was buried just outside the Jewish cemetery, Karpeles finds a way to turn this fact into an example of Heine’s Jewishness and tragic end.

As quoted above, Karpeles categorizes his hero as one of the ‘civilized people’ of the earlier 19th century. He notices that a certain disregard for traditional religious life is part of a tendency toward a ‘modern’ worldview.38 For well-educated German Jews, this oftentimes meant being a part of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Karpeles, himself a devout man once on the path of becoming a rabbi, explains Heine’s predominantly secular lifestyle combined with his devotion to Jewish tradition as typical for Wissenschaft-Jews.39 He writes that the beginning of the Wissenschaft in 1819 boosted Heine’s interest in Judaism.40 He applauds the way the Wissenschaft labors to make the (Christian) world more familiar with Judaism by explaining it. He is proud of its exponents like Gans, whom he sees as an equal to Germans like Fichte.41 Karpeles’ whole project of writing literary history may be

31 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 12; Biografische Schetsen 44. 32 R.C. Holub, ‘Heine’s Conversion: Reflections from the ‘’Matratzengruft’’’ The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory Vol. 74, No. 4 (1999) 283-292, 285. 33 See A. Joskowicz, ‘Heinrich Heine's Transparent Masks: Denominational Politics and the Poetics of Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Germany and France’ German Jewish Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2011) 69- 90. By many liberals in the German states, the Catholic Church was associated with hierarchical and backward positions contrasting with their more modern ideas of good citizenship. 34 Biografische Schetsen 10. 35 Ibid., 42. 36 Ibid., 46-48. 37 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 341. 38 ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ 340. 39 Biografische Schetsen 42-43. 40 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 12. 41 Ibid., 4.

11 seen in the light of the Wissenschaft as an attempt of making gentiles familiar with his faith. A lot can be said about the Wissenschaft as a barometer of the nineteenth century and Karpeles’ outlook on it. Chapter three will deal with the historian, his time and the Wissenschaft in greater detail. A necrology published for the American Historical Society stresses the important role Karpeles’ writings played in reviving the pride for Jewish intellectual and religious life.42 Exactly this combination of religion and intellectuality marks the Wissenschaft. On the other hand however, Karpeles condemns the way the modern and solely intellectual approach to Judaism may harm the very core of the religion. As can be seen in his reproach to Heinrich Schiff, Karpeles was a devout Jew. The same way he condemned Zionism as an expression of despair, he did not want to change the way the religious Jews lived in the diaspora.43 What he shared with the Wissenschaft was his aim at teaching the cultural merits of Judaism, in his case more to gentiles than to other Jews. However, he was weary of the threats the purely cultural appraisal posited to the living religion. He must have shuddered at his contemporary Steinschneider’s proclaimed target of providing the remains of Judaism with a decent burial.44 This tension makes Karpeles’ efforts of showing Heine at his deathbed as a man with not only respect for Judaism but also with religious conviction all the more understandable.

42 K. Kohler, ‘Gustav Karpeles’ Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society No. 19 (1910) 184-189, 185. 43 Kohler, ‘Gustav Karpeles’ 187. 44 G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York 1971) 306.

12

Heine as a German

In this sense, Heine is presented in Karpeles’ histories as an example of a Jewish author. However, contrary to the universalizing theme prominent in Karpeles’ large histories, Heine’s specific nationality plays a significant role in the Heine-works. A long list of Heine’s favorite courses at the university appears to serve as a witness to Heine’s German ties and inclinations. The list comprises of history of the German language by Schlegel, Germania by Tacitus, German constitutional law and ancient German history.45 This enumeration was published first already in 1869 in the original version of the Biographische Skizzen, but later on Karpeles really tries to prove the German in Heine. Heinrich Heine und seine Zeitgenossen, dating from 1888, sets out immediately declaiming that Heine is the poet par excellence to whom the ‘Vaterland mit Stolz hinweisen kann.’46 It adds to the previous chain of German intellectual flowers in Heine’s environment the names of Fichte, Schleiermacher and Gans.47 Even though several of the books on Heine were translated and published abroad, in the United States and the Netherlands, the intended audience is the German one.

The stress of Heine’s ties to Germany must be understood in the political context of Karpeles’ times. The Heine-histories are interwoven with contemporary German politics. Karpeles lived in the years of the German unification, when Bismarck’s politics set out to consolidate the nascent nation. The Austro-Prussian war of 1866 resulted in territorial gains for Prussia and further marginalized Austria. It was a big step towards the unification of all the northern German states into the German Empire that followed the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. The defeat of the French and the very considerable size of the new empire fed nationalist feelings in Germany. The Germans had successfully claimed a role in the Mittellage of European politics, instead of being a conglomerate of smaller and more vulnerable states. Karpeles now tried to appeal to the new nationalist sentiments of his compatriots. In a sense, the question of Heine’s nationality couldn’t have been more relevant at this juncture of German history. This question was an uneasy one, since Heine had spent significant portions of his life as an expatriate. His last 25 years the poet lived and worked in Paris. This choice was particularly frowned upon during and in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war.48 Karpeles writes that the ease and speed with which Heine embraced French culture made for bad publicity back in Germany, where his new life was interpreted as a rejection of the German national character, morality and motherland.49 We see here that the attacks on Heine’s character, noted by Karpeles in the preface to Heine und Seine Zeitgenossen, are combined with refutations of his being a true German. As for example the literary history of the well-known author Heinrich Kurz shows, the Germans of the latter half of the nineteenth century were particularly preoccupied with proving the worth of their own culture, autonomous from the French, which had guided and informed German literary culture in the preceding centuries.50 The writings of Georg Gottfried Gervinus, called the father of literary history, testify to the same tension between the cultural output of other European countries and Germany.51 In the wake of the geopolitical resurgence of a strong Germany came a pride for the national culture, with the Germans finally shaking the sentiments of inferiority towards the French. In this change,

45 Biografische Schetsen 29. 46 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 1. 47 Ibid., 4. 48 Ibid., 343. 49 Biografische Schetsen 76-77. 50 H. Kurz, Leitfaden: Geschichte der deutschen Literatur 4th edition (Leipzig 1874) 13, 22, 149, 230. 51 G.G. Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung (Leipzig 1871, first edition 1853) Vol. I: 5-7; A. Geisenhanslüke, ‘Einleitung’ in: M. Rauch and A. Geisenhanslüke, ed., Texte zur Theorie und Didaktik der Literaturgeschichte (Stuttgart 2012) 9-24, 17.

13

Heine’s perceived turn away from German soil and towards the cultural hegemon of yesteryear was difficult to accept.

For Karpeles however, it is clear that Heine surpassed these petty national rivalries. He writes that it was always Heine’s ambition to lessen the animosity between the two nations and to forge a link between the neighbors. Wistfully he sighs that even the burial of Heine did not turn out to be an event where both parties joined ranks.52 Why Heine should have wanted to pursue the ungrateful project of bringing Germany and France closer to each other remains somewhat of a mystery. Karpeles time and again paints a portrait of Heine as a politically unengaged romantic man. His interests lay more with culture and romance. In fact, considering the political turmoil of Heine’s day, the absence of political aspects in the Heine-works is a striking omission.53 Yet against the background of this silence Karpeles claims that becoming an intermediary between Germany and France was an important reason for Heine to settle in Paris.54 Nowhere do we learn why Heine was so keen on being the ‘Vermittler’ between the two, nor what he ever did to bring the two nations he loved so dearly closer to each other. He seems to have profited from his French surroundings mostly by meeting and befriending great artists such as George Sand and Berlioz.55 Many of Heine’s famous and successful contemporaries, alluded to in the title of Heine und seine Zeitgenossen are in fact French. The encounters with Frenchmen overshadow the list of Germans Heine admired. Moreover, Karpeles tries to prove Heine’s devotion to the German culture by talking about his interests when he was still a college student in Berlin. It seems only logical that in these early years, the young poet was exposed mainly to German culture and did not know how to venture across the border. Later on, as a grown man, this is exactly what Heine did, as the main body of Heine und seine Zeitgenossen proves almost by accident. Karpeles was unable to neglect the strong foreign current in Heine’s life. He chose instead to write about it openly, but struggled to contextualize it so that the German audience would accept the fact that Germany was ultimately Heine’s greatest love. In the book’s conclusion Karpeles makes a heartfelt plea for the poet’s never relenting devotion to Germany, citing a heavy piece of a letter Heine wrote on the subject. Especially near the end of his life, Heine thought about far away Germany more lovingly than ever before.56 He was born a German, moved to Paris, but died as a German, is Karpeles’ argument. In the Biographische Skizzen Karpeles emphasizes this ultimate return or allegiance by referring to Heine as ‘Germany’s lyrical poet’ in the sentence that concludes his life on the 17th of February 1856.57 And so the sudden and in the end unsubstantiated suggestion that Heine’s parting with German soil was actually meant as a way of helping Germany and France becomes all the more understandable. Karpeles makes this point to counter the criticism of Heine not being a patriot. Much as the poet himself, who used the myth of Jewish cruelty to exemplify instead Christian cruelty against Jews, Karpeles inverts the criticism of Heine leaving Germany by claiming that this was in fact a very patriotic deed. Unfortunately, it is not possible to trace the reception of Karpeles’ work in enough detail to learn whether or not this argument was accepted by the contemporary audience. In any case, we have seen that he did not manage to make the point very convincingly. Besides, whatever sentiments in Heine’s day may have been, by the time Karpeles got to write on the subject of Heine’s migration, the German people weren’t all that inclined to become brethren with the French. Bismarck would later write that he had worked to turn public opinion

52 Biografische Schetsen 46, 96. 53 An example is the aforementioned liberal anti-Catholic reason behind Heine’s conversion, not mentioned by Karpeles. Another case is Heine’s previously noted involvement in publicizing the Damascus affair. 54 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 14. 55 Ibid., 114, 115. 56 Ibid., 344. 57 Biografische Schetsen 95.

14 against the French, apparently not without results. He said that a German war with France had always been necessary for ‘further national development’ and that France had always been opposed to German unification.58 For all his efforts, Karpeles must have known that his appeal to companionship between the two nations was farfetched.

58 O. von Bismarck, translated by A.J. Butler, Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman: Being the Reflections and Reminiscences of Otto, Prince of Bismarck (New York 1899) Vol. II: 57-62.

15

Heine and Goethe

To Karpeles, nothing combined Heine’s cultural and intellectual German heritage and his inclination towards a modern society as much as the poet’s admiration for Goethe. The latter’s ideal of Bildung was formative for the project of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, but most of all he was a source of artistic inspiration for Heine. It appears to have been very important to Karpeles to affirm the connection between the two poets. He writes that already as a child Heine read Goethe furtively, because his father would not let him.59 In Heine und seine Zeitgenossen a separate chapter is devoted to the bond between the two men, making Goethe, nearly fifty years Heine’s senior, the least zeitgenossische subject in the book by far. Not only because of this does the chapter stand out. Whereas the book is composed of sets of anecdotes loosely connected, the chapter on Goethe has a clear structure and purpose. Only here does Karpeles open by asking questions: what was Heine’s relation to Goethe and was he Goethereif?60 This last term, coined by Berthold Auerbach, was used to denote those who considered themselves part of the veritable Goethe-cult that went through the German states in Heine’s day. Once again a considerable part of the chapter is devoted to polemics. Several authors questioned the truthfulness of Heine’s account of his visit to the old poet in Potsdam. Karpeles fights to prove them wrong by quoting parts of personal letters Heine containing accounts of the visit. He even cites a complete letter of Heine’s, in which he asks Goethe to be allowed the honor of meeting him, a rare example of the use of primary sources in the work. Karpeles went to considerable lengths to ensure that his readers would never again doubt that the two poets had known each other personally. He presents Heine as the natural heir to the awe-inspiring Goethe, ensuring Heine of a place in the cultural pantheon of Germany.61

In fact, Goethe rivalled the religious god. Terminology around him shows the extent to which culture had become another religion for German intellectuals. It was in this secularizing environment that Heine matured. He had been happy to learn from Hegel that not God in heaven, but man himself, on earth, was god.62 Karpeles signals the dynamic between fading religion and rising culture. He links Heine’s atheism to Goethe’s role as Heine’s personal god.63 Heine often compared his great example to Jupiter, placing the roots of German culture not in Christianity, but in the classical heritage, the same way Goethe had done.64 Karpeles in his turn adopted this mode of comparison by calling the ailing and suffering Heine ‘another Prometheus.’65 Being a Titan, Prometheus was as close to a deity man could come. This was as far as the deeply religious Karpeles could go in comparing man to God. The comparison appears to be a fairly direct one. Heine brought mankind his version of light, poetry, and was condemned to a tortuous illness. However, we may unearth another layer in the metaphor. Heine saw Moses as the ultimate artist for transforming ‘a feeble race of shepherds’ into a great, eternal and holy people, the ‘prototype of mankind.’66 In several myths Prometheus is credited with the creation of mankind. Karpeles, who knew of Heine’s view on Moses, may have intended a further play on the parallel between the classical hero and the Jewish patriarch, situating Heine’s genius once again within the Jewish realm.

59 Biografische Schetsen 3. 60 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 40. 61 Ibid., 47, 53. 62 Ibid., 5. 63 Biografische Schetsen 10,11. 64 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 46,47. 65 Biografische Schetsen 90. 66 ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ 366.

16

The Nibelungenlied and the Thora

The intertwining of classical or German culture with Jewish heritage is seminal for Karpeles’ history of Heine. As he proclaimed himself, the works he wrote about the poet during a period of several decades all follow the idea of proving that Heine was a better person then existing literature made him out to be. Karpeles is open about his aim of rehabilitating Heine, but he remains nearly silent on the reasons why others should have presented him negatively. In these reasons lies the structure of Karpeles’ rehabilitating argument. The sparse clues readers get are twofold. Firstly, Heine’s French orientation was seen as a rejection of German culture and nation, just at a time of heightened national German self-awareness and nation building. If Karpeles wanted his compatriots to appreciate the man Heine, he would have to convince them first of the poet’s constant devotion to their country.

The second wedge driven between Heine and Karpeles’ German audience was his religious background. As seen from Karpeles’ comment on Steinmann’s assessment of Heine, the historian noted that the poet’s Jewish heritage proved negative for his esteem. As with the move to Paris, his Jewishness made him an ‘other,’ to whom the Germans were not favorably inclined. Karpeles could get surprisingly vehement when fighting such defamations. After his death a journalist wrote that the more racial prejudices seemed to turn Germans away from Heine, the more Karpeles tried to counter the attacks.67 Karpeles’ argument here covers several domains. He tries to point to specifically Jewish aspects of Heine’s work, resulting in the same argument he makes in his overarching literary history. Heine is a credit to the literary canon not just because he is a genius, but because his work is a repository of Jewish culture, from which all of humanity can profit and learn. In this sense Karpeles followed the project of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. He sought to integrate Judaism by teaching non-Jews about the merits of Judaism. This explains why he also took so much care proving that Heine, who even converted to Protestantism, was in the end a man of Jewish faith. He deployed the same luctor et emergo-like rhetoric as with the Parisian controversy. Yes, Heine moved there, but finally proved himself a true German nonetheless. And yes, he was baptized, but died with more Jewish fervor in him than ever before. This serves another purpose as well. Karpeles did not want Germans to accept Heine because he purportedly renounced his Jewish heritage, he wanted them to accept him even though he was even more Jewish than they may have thought. To Karpeles, Judaism was unalienable to the German culture. This is maybe exemplified by the way in which he presented Heine, with all his Jewish references and heritage going back to the Talmud, as the natural heir to Goethe, the Dichterfürst to whom all looked in awe.

Heine himself proposed this mixing of traditions masterfully in his Rabbi von Bacherach. The flight across Germany of the rabbi and his wife leads them to the borders of the Rhine. Their crossing of that ultimate German river evokes strong biblical images, not in the least part the crossing of the Red Sea. In an elaborated parallel, Heine has Abraham casting his last belongings, the Passover silverware, into the river to stop the ill-luck from following him. It is hard not to think of the Biblical Abraham’s sacrifice here, only this time the rabbi sacrifices to the very core of Germany, the Rhine. Unlike the Christians who persecute Abraham and Sara, the river proves a protecting friend, who not only transports them out of harm’s way, but even promises Sara its ‘goldigsten Schätze, vielleicht gar den…Niblungshort.’ Heine thus links Abraham’s sacrifice which went into the waters of the river to the mythical Nibelung treasure, which must come out. A text already reverberating with references like these conditions the reader to see more. Later on Heine uses the words ‘goldner Pracht’ to typify

67 Kohler, ‘Gustav Karpeles’ 186.

17 the beauty of the Jewish temple, in a way reminiscent of the middle part of his famous poem Die Loreley, which, once again, is about the Rhine. In Der Rabbi von Bacherach Heine makes it abundantly clear that the Bible and its Jews and the German people and their folklore go hand in hand. This is exactly what Karpeles strove to prove in his works on the poet.

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Two historians, two literary traditions

The Bible and the German people find their synthesis in Herder, yet another source of inspiration for Karpeles. ‘Die Bibel spricht die Sprache der Menschen,’ quotes Karpeles an anonymous talmudic sage.68 The words evoke Herder’s famous statement that ‘We must read the Bible in a human way, it is a book written by man for man: the language is human etc.’69 The starting point of Jewish history and the cornerstone of Gustav Karpeles’ work on Jewish literature is the Bible. Karpeles has little difficulty proving the lasting influence, power and quality of the Bible. As the ‘book of books’ it is admired not only by the Jewish people, but by all of humanity. Karpeles is confident that that is unlikely to change. It is not hard to understand why he considered the Bible the most important link in the chain of Jewish literature.70 It is the singular feat by which the world knows Judaism. Does Karpeles’ work then show a tension or discomfort, since it reflects thousands of years of literary prowess, all indebted to, but never on par with that initial literary work? Karpeles quite happily admits that nothing in the subsequent literary corpus goes beyond the Bible. But this does not create a sense of gradual deterioration. Rather, it is a source of pride. Of course no matter of millennia can produce the likes of the Bible, which is, after all, the word of God himself. For the deeply religious Karpeles the Bible was hors concours. As such, it was not a giant casting an unsurpassable shadow over later generations of Jewish writers, but simply a source of continuing inspiration and the logical starting point for his own endeavor. Throughout his writings on literary history, Gustav Karpeles is exceedingly appreciative of the works he discusses.71 No matter how far apart in time and geography his subjects, he never falters to highlight the admirable aspects of the text he is delving into. As noted briefly in the previous chapter, this appreciative vein may seem inconspicuous, but the following will prove it to be an important and deliberate aspect of Karpeles’ writing.

Appreciation of ones subject was in fact not a logical sine qua non for literary historians in Karpeles’ day. This is exemplified by the work of Heinrich Kurz, one of his contemporary colleagues. From the outset his often-read history of German literature spills over with dismissive remarks on the several topics and abundance of works that pass Kurz’s scrutiny. Was Karpeles simply more successful in finding works that he could admire? It is not likely. Literary historians do not simply list works from the tradition. Beyond making the public familiar with a certain body of literary works, literary historians tend to pursue a program of another kind. The juxtaposing of two historians who are altogether different from each other, yet also share common traits stems from a desire to unearth this programmatic vein. Remarkable similarities and differences between Karpeles’ Geschichte and Kurz’s Leitfaden warrant a comprehensive comparison between both. The methodology of this chapter differs from that of the rest of the thesis. This is why a short discussion of the methodology is in place. Karpeles’ famous contemporary Émile Durkheim already championed the comparative method in 1895. In The Rules of Sociological Method he likened the comparison to the natural scientist’s experiment as the useful method of showing differences and relations between objects of study.72 The following century saw a lot of criticism towards the comparative method, but this has helped to strengthen it as a method of inquiry by constantly reworking or deleting its faulty aspects. In fact, the historian Stefan Berger noted that the comparative method has risen in popularity since the last two decades of the 20th century. To him, the merit of the method lies mainly in the fact that the

68 Geschichte Vol. I 18. This dictum appears at different places in the Talmud, cf. Kiddushin 17b; Yevamot 71a. 69 Cited in D. Weidner, ‘Secularization, Scripture, and the Theory of Reading: J.G. Herder and the Old Testament’ New German Critique, No. 94 (2005) 169-193, 170. 70 Geschichte Vol. I, 14. 71 Geschichte Vol. I, xi-xii; Geschichte Vol. II, 829, 879, 880. 72 E. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method (London 1982 [1895]).

19 historian, by comparing, may learn things about his or her subject that otherwise would have stayed invisible.73 By comparing, the historian creates a more intimate understanding of his or her subject. The same holds true for the comparison of Karpeles with Kurz, as we shall see. Kurz’s work serves as a touchstone. His work represents a more common vein in German historiography than does that of Karpeles, as we shall come to discuss. At the same time, his writings share several features with Karpeles’ histories. This enables us to see more clearly in what respects Karpeles fits in with the tradition of his day and especially what makes his work stand out among that of his colleagues. Berger, himself an authority on national identities, is in the first place preoccupied with transnational comparisons. They single out what is unique to a specific national tradition of thought or custom. Berger notes that the biggest pitfalls for the comparative historian consist of problems relating to translation and interpretation.74 The historian must know both languages equally well and has to know that in different languages and cultures expressions often mean different things. Geographical and temporal boundaries posit problems of a similar nature. In sum, the farther apart the two sides of the comparison, the more hazardous the comparison becomes. Berger’s objections to the comparative method may show exactly how good a comparison the one at hand is. Karpeles was German, Kurz was of German-French descent. Both Karpeles and Kurz wrote in German, and even if their lives coincided only partially, the publication dates of the discussed works are never too far apart.75 Combining results of research of both Karpeles and Kurz will thus make for a strong case.

Kurz’s work that will be discussed here, his Leitfaden,76 was first published in 1860 and continued to be in print in another three revised editions until 1874. This last revised edition is the one used for this research.77 Karpeles’ works were also first published during the 1860’s. From then on, he continued to write and disseminate his work until his death some forty years later. The backbone of his work was the grand Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur from 1886, a work that will take an equally important place here. Kurz was involved in the same historical enterprises as Karpeles. He wrote general works on German literature and edited several anthologies and handbooks.78 The many reprints of his most important work, the Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, attest to the popularity of the work. It consists of three imposing volumes. This Geschichte follows the same encyclopedic interest as Karpeles’ Geschichte. Both delve into a literary tradition from its very beginnings up to the author’s own day. Because of its success, Kurz decided to publish a condensed and more concise book that followed the same lines of the original Geschichte. This Leitfaden (guide) was just as popular as its heftier precursor, seen that the book was printed four times in the first twelve years of its existence.

73 S. Berger, ‘Comparative History’ in: idem e.a. ed., Writing History. Theory and Practice (London 2003) 161- 179, 164. 74 Berger, ‘Comparative History’ 166. 75 Heinrich Kurz was approximately a generation older than Karpeles. Kurz lived from 1805 to 1873, Karpeles was born in 1848 and died in 1909. 76 Since understanding Karpeles is the objective of this research, only a single work by Kurz will be discussed, as opposed to several by Karpeles. The Leitfaden, covering the same ground as for instance his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, will suffice for the purposes of the comparison. 77 Kurz, Leitfaden. 78 H. Kurz, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur mit ausgewählten Stücken aus den Werken der vorzüglichsten Schriftsteller (Leipzig 1853) 3 volumes; Kurz, Die deutsche Literatur im Elsass (Berlin 1874); H. Kurz, Handbuch der poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen von Haller bis auf die neueste Zeit (Zürich 1840).

20

Different appreciations of the literary canon

As noted above, the historian’s method of studying his source material is a major difference between both authors. Kurz appears as an acute reviewer of the works he discusses. He has several reasons for criticizing German literature. Kurz explains in his introductory notice that his work stands out because it doesn’t stop at giving biographical details concerning historical writers. To this common feature of the genre, also found in Karpeles,79 he adds short discussions and synopses of important works of these writers.80 This is probably due to the fact that Kurz intended his work to be read by students of the German language and literature. It is not only a history, but also a compendium.81 From there it should be easy to come to an evaluation of the aesthetic value of the mentioned works. The more remarkable it is then, that both formal and aesthetic considerations play a marginal role at best. The evaluation of literary works is often lacking in thorough foundations, but looks more like the confession of a personal taste.82 About the lyrical poetry of the late Middle Ages he complains that it is usually not objective, but soft and swooning.83 How this literature does not live up to formal rules is not explained. One just has to agree or disagree with the author. Kurz does however explain what he means by ‘objective,’ be it some two hundred pages later on in the work. There he says that an objective author extracts his material only from his own life and surroundings.84 Elsewhere Kurz claims that it was an important milestone for German authors when they developed a poetic sense of nature’s beauty.85 Goethe’s objectivity, as understood in this context, is one of the reasons why Kurz holds him in high regard. Here again one might argue that the appreciation of this objectivity is a matter of personal taste, but the fact is that this discussion does not hold much weight for Kurz. The same is true for Karpeles.

The personal way Kurz depicts the aforementioned lyrical poetry finds a parallel in Karpeles’ method of talking about the aesthetic part of literature. The latter, however, is usually very positive about the works he finds in the corpus of his choice. He opens a chapter about biblical prophetic literature by depicting said literature. That is, he wants to convey his own enthusiasm for the books of the prophets by way of using flowery epithets. The prophets ‘flow free and uninhibited, with majestic force.’86 Just as his colleague, Karpeles usually isn’t bothered with explaining formally what makes the discussed literature worthwhile or not. The adjectives reign as free and uninhibited as do the prophets. Karpeles does quote pieces of literature, sometimes in quite lengthy pieces that take up to nearly two whole pages. These quotes appear to serve no other purpose than to underscore the historian’s love for the work. ‘The book of Joel is a beautiful gem, here, see for yourself,’ he apparently wants to say.87 The practice of citing shows at once that Karpeles has the luxury of space in his history whereas Kurz has

79 Karpeles, Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur Vol. I (Leipzig 1900) 100 and ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 26. 80 Leitfaden iii. 81 Ibid., iv. 82 In this sense Kurz shows himself to be part of a particularly long-lived branch of literary history. Throughout T.A. Birrell’s history of English literature, written roughly 100 years after Kurz, the subjective vein prevails. The academic relevance of Harold Bloom’s even more recent Western Canon could been called into question because of the same reason. T.A. Birrell, Geschiedenis van de Engelse Literatuur (translated from the English by C.E.M. Heijnen) (Utrecht 1961) and H. Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York 1994). 83 Leitfaden 19, 20. 84 Ibid., 259. 85 Ibid., 15. 86 Geschichte Vol. I, 100. 87 Ibid., 106-109.

21 to be succinct.88 Less prosaically, though, it shows that Karpeles’ history is one of sharing a loved interest, whereas that of Kurz is one that exists outside of the realm of appreciation. Karpeles sets out to show Jews how great their partly forgotten literature is and on the other hand to prove to gentiles that Jewish culture is not so foreign.

After reading Kurz, one is actually struck by Karpeles’ ever recurrent superlatives. In his capacity of herald of literary beauty, the author does not shun poetic imagery. He indulges in some literary fancies of his own. If we remain in the chapter on the prophets, we find that Isaiah and Amos were ‘zu höchster sittlicher Höhe entwickelt und in reifster künstlerischer Vollendung hergestellt.’89 Habakuk represents ‘reinster Harmonie…glühenden Phantasie…reine Klarheit.’90 These enumerations could hardly differ more from Kurz’s grudging pen. The prophets are of course part of the unsurpassed Bible, but subsequent genres evoke much the same praise. The Jewish-Hellenistic literature attests to a grand spiritual or academic Idea, Karpeles marvels.91 Still later, the Jews of Al-Andalus created yet another apogee of the written word. Halevi, Gabirol and those around them receive plenty of praise from the historian.92 The sometimes excessive acclaim notwithstanding, Karpeles has to acknowledge that in three thousand years of history, not every period has been equally fruitful in its literary output. In the development of the genres of Haggadah and Midrash, at one time flourishing, he signals a drop in productivity and quality alike.93 The reader does not learn what effected this decline, only that it took place.

88 This may seem to be a bit of a pedestrian insight. In fact, Kurz advises those who find his work too much of a summary to turn to his heftier Literaturgeschichte. Kurz, Leitfaden iv. 89 Geschichte Vol. I, 110. 90 Ibid., 115. 91 Ibid., 137. 92 Ibid., 6,7; Karpeles, Allgemeine Geschichte Vol. I 95; ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 22. 93 Allgemeine Geschichte Vol. I (Leipzig 1900) 84.

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Modes of explanation

This lacuna, to the modern reader perhaps an oddity, in fact fits Karpeles’ tale. A close scrutiny of the historian’s ways of accounting for the different paths the literature of his choice has walked is extremely helpful in providing answers to what the historian’s program looked like. Again, striking differences as well as similarities between Karpeles and Kurz highlight the role historical explanation plays for both. The existence of literature by itself does not tell a story. Only by imbedding the life of literature in an explanatory frame do the authors effectively create that story. Both authors’ explanatory schemes are intertwined with the question of appreciation, as we shall see.

In Karpeles’ view, among all times that saw the creation of great Jewish literature, three periods stand out especially because of the quality of the literature that came forth from them. First and foremost, of course, the Biblical epoch. We have already seen why Karpeles holds the Bible in such high esteem, but he gives us more than that. In a misleadingly simple part of his Geschichte, he posits a correlation between the glory of the Jewish nation in Biblical times and the glory of its literature. In this, the only period where the Jews had their own ‘nationalen Grösse,’ they were able to create a literary corpus of beauty and importance. The parallel between the success of a nation and the success of its literature is again underscored by the remark that Biblical literature truly deserves the epithet ‘Nationalliteratur.’94 By connecting the greatness of the Biblical Jewish nation with its literature, Karpeles primes his reader to expect a similar symmetry for the second phase of tremendous literary creativity. He locates this phase in the Hellenistic times. This symmetry is obviously impossible, since this second phase is marked by Greek political dominance in the regions where Jews lived. To make this even clearer, Karpeles carefully paints a picture of a shattered and divided Jewish nation.95 How, then, were the Jews able to produce valuable literature in this inhospitable climate? Karpeles shifts his attention from factionalism-torn Judea to Alexandria, where Greek culture soared high for a last beautiful time. As opposed to the ‘extremist’ Jews in Judea, the Chassidim and Essenes, who opposed everything alien to their hallowed traditions, the Jews in Egypt welcomed the blossoming culture around them.96 They mingled with the Greeks and learned to speak and write their language. At the crossroads where Greek philosophy and Judaism met, the Egyptian Jews were stimulated to rethink what they knew. Contact with the Greek civilization stimulated the Jews to add to their existing corpus writings that addressed new questions. The mixing of these two contrasting worlds created something new and beautiful.97 The same argumentation is repeated, not coincidentally, in Karpeles’ analysis of the third period of extraordinary literary prowess, that of the Golden Age of Spain. Under Moorish rule in the Middle Ages, Spain developed into a cultural center the likes of which Europe had not seen since antiquity. Here, too, Jews lived and partook in the prevalent cultural life. As a result, ‘the civilization of the dominant race…was reflected in that of the Jews.’98 Yehudah al-Harizi’s most important work is a collection of Maqama’s, Karpeles says.99 He was successful by working with a literary form from outside his own tradition. The message is clear: by embracing other cultures, you can develop yourself. Just as the Bible works as an inspiration for all of humanity, the fruit of the Moorish-Jewish venture is one that serves everybody. Schopenhauer may complain about it, but Gabirol is still his precursor, Karpeles maintains.100 Likewise, and less far-fetched, he sees Proudhon as a follower of

94 Geschichte Vol. I 27. 95 Ibid., 140-142. 96 With ‘Chassidim’ Karpeles most likely means the Pharisees. 97 Ibid., 145, 210. 98 ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 22. 99 Die Zionsharfe 179. 100 Ibid., 27. Karpeles suggests that Gabirol was the first poet to express Weltschmertz [sic], his pessimism is probably why Karpeles likened Gabirol to Schopenhauer. Elsewhere Karpeles claims that Weltschmerz, a

23

Yehudah ibn Tibbon. The latter already stated that property is theft in the 12th century, even though the French anarchist was to become famous with this dictum hundreds of years later.101

The only frame Karpeles introduces for explaining the positive development of Jewish literature is thus a political/national one. His presupposition is that cultural development grows out of strong ‘nations.’ To speak of nations when discussing the Golden Age of Spain or the Hellenistic rule over the eastern Mediterranean is an anachronism, but it holds much weight for Karpeles. He does not define what ‘nation’ means to him, but considering his remarks on the Biblical ‘nation’ we can assume that he meant something like a uniform people, united in an autonomous body politic. He pays attention mostly to the several instances of blossoming of Jewish literature. Where he does, it is closely linked to the Jews’ ability to adapt to the dominant culture. By extension, he implicitly ascribes as much of the success to the willingness of the dominant culture to tolerate the Jews and have contact with them. This is what the Greeks did and what the Muslim rulers of Spain did. Hence the 1492 expulsion resulted in the end of the rich epoch of the epigones.102 This all too well-known pivotal point in Jewish history is rare in Karpeles’ work, in that here he accounts for the waning of a literary tradition by describing changes in the environment of the Jews. As we have seen, the autumn of Midrash and Haggadah is only mentioned, not explained, for this phase in history does not fit comfortably within Karpeles’ overarching message. Of this, we will come to speak later. Knowing Karpeles’ appreciation of strong nations, it is compelling to think of him as a Zionist. In fact, the historian never wished a return to the promised land. His home was Germany. In chapter three we will consider this paradox in detail.

Karpeles uses explanation mainly to focus on the positive in his history. Kurz is on the whole less appreciative of his subject matter and his explanation likewise takes on another, very telling form. For him, too, politics are the driving force behind the creation of literature. He explicitly connects political growth to spiritual and intellectual growth.103 He makes this coupling the ultimate and only consequently recurring structuring frame for telling the story of German literature. This is already visible from the way in which he introduces each of the seven phases into which he divides the timeline. All are preceded by a paragraph called ‘Äußere und innere Verhältnisse Deutschlands, und ihr Einfluß auf Bildung und Literatur.’104 Politics are presented as the main driving force behind culture. What is poignant here is the fact that Kurz places the relation between foreign countries and Germany before developments within the borders of Germany. Just as with Karpeles, cultural transfer is the central explanatory mode that pervades Kurz’s narrative. However, Kurz’s vantage point differs dramatically from that of Karpeles. He does not follow a wandering people, covering different countries, but looks only at Germany. It is difficult for him to determine exactly what ‘Germany’ is. Of course, one wonders what borders one should accept when talking about a country that is in the middle of the process of unification. Indeed, the time between the first and fourth edition of the Leitfaden fully encompasses the process of Bismarck’s unification. For Kurz to speak of a ‘nation’ in the years before that is as much a misnomer as it is for Karpeles, when he posits a Hellenistic nation. Both project the contemporary form of the German state known to them onto the past. Kurz does so in trying to locate common German roots in the literary past. Germany’s struggle for autonomy, both political and cultural, Kurz knew well from the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein, the Austro-

feeling associated with Goethe’s Werther, is the ‘heirloom’ of the Jews. Karpeles, ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ in: Jewish Literature, and Other Essays 340-368, 357. 101 ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 39. 102 Allgemeine Geschichte 100. 103 Leitfaden 9. 104 Ibid., 68, 105, 135.

24

Prussian war and of course the Franco-Prussian war, all of which occurred in both authors’ lifetimes. Whatever regions his historically imagined nation may have consisted of appear as precursors of that nationalist project. Instances where true literary art is corrupted are explained as malevolent foreign influences on the ‘national’ character. The Leitfaden is replete with negative remarks towards the Francophile aristocracy that neglected the true spirit of Germany.105 The clergy is likewise guilty of leaning towards alien cultures.106 It becomes clear that for Kurz the internal relations in Germany are much a product of the external relations. He pits the elite, i.e. the clergy, aristocracy and, from the Middle Ages on, the academics against the common people, mainly because the former groups held a more cosmopolitan outlook whereas the latter remained true to its roots.107 This nationalist conception of the Volk as the true heir of the nation went on to live a sinister life. In the 1930’s Heidegger would demarcate what is ‘völkisch’ along racial lines, presenting ‘the people’ as the German essence.108 This notion automatically disqualified Jews as Germans. Rather, they belonged to the category of cosmopolitans, transient people without real commitment to German soil. They had no roots in German culture.

What these cultural roots consist of is not easily determined, because for a long time the Germans did not truly have a national literature. Much of Kurz’s dissatisfaction is due to the fact that his story is one of a national culture that for centuries was unable to galvanize its potential. Kurz describes the history of a literature that lingered generation after generation in a void, without coming into its own.109 According to Kurz, the Germans have a tendency to give up their national individuality in favor of a foreign influence.110 Too often the ruling classes did not take their responsibility in leading the way, quite the contrary. This brings Kurz to locating the origin of national literature in the stories about peasants and commoners, for here at least the material was German.111 Here, as well as in other places, Kurz seems to postulate a vaguely defined national character only against the backdrop of an antagonist or other.112 This unifying instrumentalizing of the ‘other,’ usually France, is echoed in Bismarck’s memoirs. As we have seen, he professed that he needed France as antagonist to ‘further [the] national development’ of nascent Germany.113 Kurz does not mobilize the Germans this way, but he does effectuate a sense of German-ness with his readers by constantly comparing his country to others. He sees literature as one of the arenas where German culture is pitted against foreign cultures in an ongoing contest.114

Only now does it become clear what literary appreciation is to Kurz. Literature, as well as its historiography, is a matter of national identity. As noted above, the historian did not occupy himself with questions of aesthetic appreciation. Instead, he saw the value of a work of literature in the measure of German character it conveyed. At one point he literally explains the fact that a lot of folktales from the Middle Ages are found wanting in quality by signaling the ‘foreign influence’ on

105 Leitfaden 15, 21, 81. 106 Ibid., 83. 107 Ibid., 105. For Gervinus, too, the reflection of the ‘Geist des Volkes’ in German literature was of paramount importance. Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung Vol. I: 5-7; Geisenhanslüke, ‘Einleitung’ in: Rauch and Geisenhanslüke, ed., Texte zur Theorie und Didaktik der Literaturgeschichte 9-24, 36. 108 E. Faye e.a., ‘Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work’ South Central Review Vol. 23 no. 1, Fascism, Nazism: Cultural Legacies of Reaction (2006) 55-66, 55,57. 109 Leitfaden 13. 110 Ibid., 7. 111 Ibid., 26. 112 See also ibid., 70. Here Kurz complains that humanism brought forth a renewed interest in Roman law, ‘dem heimischen entegengesetzt.’ 113 Bismarck, Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman Vol. II: 57-62. 114 Leitfaden 244.

25 them.115 Aesthetics are of secondary importance at best. The few points Kurz uses for measuring the quality of given works fit his intention of dividing between ‘heimisch’ and alien. For instance, he does argue that originality is an important feature of good literature, but this originality is immediately incorporated into a discussion of the true spirit or character of folk songs.116 We can safely assume that Kurz’s call for originality was also a call for the nurturing of German culture as opposed to the German adaption of foreign culture. This definition of originality closely resembles Kurz’s previously mentioned definition of objectivity. The objective author takes his inspiration from his surroundings, that is, the German author takes his cue from the German soil and doesn’t venture beyond the national boundaries. The Nibelungenlied, as a perfect blend of Frankish, Burgundian and Gothic styles, fits this standard. Not surprisingly, it stands out in the Leitfaden as one of the very few works with a positive assessment.117

115 Ibid., 27. 116 Ibid., 76. Note again the stress on true German ‘völkisch’ spirit, also found in Heidegger’s thought, a source for Nazi-propaganda. 117 Ibid., 29.

26

Language: exclusive and inclusive

If Kurz uses literature and its history as a vehicle to foment national and cultural unity, what is his stance on language? Language is one of those few constitutive elements in what Benedict Anderson famously coined the ‘imagined community.’118 It connects people who do not know each other personally by giving a sense of unity by sharing the same language. In literary history, so closely connected to the national project, the matter of language is complicated. Languages often do not adhere neatly to national borders, complicating the question of national identity.119 Kurz opposed the usage of languages other than German. In the first pages of his history, Kurz laments the demise of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. He explains that when their political power was broken, centrifugal forces divided the country. In the wake of this political chaos, different dialects began to reclaim their own space, especially in prose.120 In this way, diversification of language is linked to the division of Germany and labeled as unwanted only because of that reason. Kurz wrote his Leitfaden in part for students of the German language. This makes it all the more remarkable that he never mentions it as a reason for treating only works in the German language. Kurz’s scope is always very broad, encompassing prose, poetry, theater, religious and scientific works alike. To him, literature is the written repository of a people, ‘in denen sich die geistige Eigenthümlickeit und fortschreidende Entwickelung desselben offenbart [sic].’121 Seen that reporting from all these separate fields was his aim, it is all the more striking that Kurz deliberately chose to ignore for instance medieval historiography, since this corpus was written almost exclusively in Latin. We see that matters of linguistic unity are more important to Kurz than the completeness of his work. In the same paragraph, he strongly rejects the influence of Latin on the church and applauds the efforts of 13th-century monks to ‘liberate’ themselves from the Latin yoke.122 Not only did they assert the own German language, they now directed themselves at the people, who form the heart of the national culture. Recurring themes in the Leitfaden join forces. Here Kurz’s stress on the role of in the constructing of a German identity is linked to the usage of an own language. We already saw that Kurz’s aesthetics support his xenophobic take on foreign influence and the importance of, once again, an individual national culture, autonomous from developments across the borders. Kurz’s dismissal of un-German syntax in 17th-century prose is yet another layer on top of this amalgam.123 Nationalism, aesthetics and linguistics are intimately connected. Once again we see why the ‘French’ Heine was dismissed. He was a cosmopolitan, corrupting German culture with alien influences.

This stance towards a multilingual literature when compared to that of Karpeles is revealing. Kurz wants to guard the borders of literature by keeping to a strictly German corpus. Karpeles proclaims already on the first page of the Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur that he has taken his works from everywhere, ‘ohne Rücksicht auf Form und Sprache.’124 In considering what definition should denote the body of literature he is concerned with, he states that ‘Jewish literature’ is better than for instance ‘neo-Hebrew literature.’ A choice made precisely because the former makes no divide between language, time, form or subject (my italics).125 Karpeles not only allowed a multiform and

118 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London 1983). 119 See for instance: R. Wisse, The Modern Jewish Canon: a Journey Through Language and Culture (Chicago 2003) xiv; D. Miron, From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (Stanford 2010) 7. 120 Leitfaden 3. 121 Ibid., 4. 122 Ibid., 29. 123 Ibid., 164. 124 Geschichte 1. 125 ‘Jewish Literature’ 11.

27 multilingual literary universe, he advocated it. The very fact that the Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt, and later on, those living in Spain learned to converse in the language of the majority is given as explanation for the efflorescence of their literature. Over and over, Karpeles extolls the virtues of what is known nowadays as cultural transfer. This applies to greater periods and cultures, but also for individual proponents of Jewish literature. One of the obscure authors of yesteryear he singles out and dusts of in different works is Immanuel ben Salomon, known to his Italian surroundings as Manoello. To Karpeles, the most salient features of this poet are the fact that he reportedly was a good friend of Dante and an inspiration to Boccaccio.126 Manoello thus becomes proof of Karpeles’ world of literary, cultural and national junctures. In this particular case, may we assume that the example of Manoello was meant to make a particularly lasting impression on Karpeles’ readers, in the environment that inspired Burckhardt’s famous Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien?

126 Ibid., 35 and Allgemeine Geschichte 100.

28

Nationalism compared

In the genre of literary history it is often difficult to discern what specific ‘story’the historian is telling. What is it, more than merely an expansive chronicle of literature? Looking in between the given dry facts however enables the researcher to reconstruct the narrative that lies at the heart of such histories. The comparative method may help in this process of unearthing and reconstructing the programmatic take on literary history. The works of both Karpeles and Kurz are marked by such a program. Their disregard for matters of formal or aesthetic quality of literature is surprising to the modern reader, but can be traced directly back to said narrative. Karpeles is thoroughly concerned with presenting literature as the showcase of Jewish culture to the world. In this project, as we have seen, discussing the aesthetics of literature is no priority. For his literature Karpeles is enthusiastic, sometimes even in awe, but he does not try to explain quality. First and foremost, he wants to convey his love for Jewish works to his audience. He seems to be confident that his readers will understand or know in advance that Jewish literature is worth reading. The frequent use of generous quotes from the discussed literature underscores this idea. Karpeles keeps to the method of ‘show, don’t tell,’ because in his opinion this should suffice. In the introduction to his history of Jewish literature, he is oddly unspecific about his procedure of selecting source material. Of course his history is incomplete, there is simply too much to mention, he exclaims.127 With this explicit confession he leaves the reader to guess what, then, guided him in his selection. It is not too bold to maintain that Karpeles chose those works from the abundance of Jewish literature that best fitted this program of showing off the manifold merits of Jewish literature.

Kurz is possibly even less preoccupied with a thorough discussion of formal quality. With him however, this is not because he is so confident about the quality of German literature, but because he is exactly the opposite. He is constantly dismissive of German literature. This disapproval leads the way to understanding Kurz’s project. In his rejections, it becomes clear that quality on its own is less important to Kurz than the measure of authentic, autonomous German culture that speaks from the literature. A restless search for German identity pervades his Leitfaden. A search that is defined along the lines of a constant opposition towards foreign influences and a comparison between German and foreign output. His evocation of German unity, a sheer anachronism for most of ‘Germany’s’ history, is both a projection of his own times onto the past and a confirmation of that new German nation by tracing back its ancient roots. Indeed, all history is contemporary history, as Benedetto Croce famously said.128 This seems to be especially clear in nationalist historiography, that came to the fore in Croce’s day.129 For both Karpeles and Kurz, the aesthetic is ultimately subordinated to the political.

The utter rejection of cultural transfer is the blueprint of Kurz’s work.130 Karpeles’ history is indebted to the very same narrative-framing source, but he promotes cultural transfer every way he can. He too wants to create unity, but his vision is a universal one, not a national one. He sees literature as an ocean, to which rivers from every culture flow and contribute.131 Within this frame he praises those historical crossroads where these rivers met and positively influenced one another. The Jews, since

127 Geschichte Vol. I 14. 128 D.M. Smith, ‘Benedetto Croce: History and Politics’ Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1973) 41-61, 53. 129 T.N. Baker, ‘National History in the Age of Michelet, Macaulay, and Bancroft’ in: L. Kramer and S. Maza, ed., A Companion to Western Historical Thought (Oxford 2002) 185-204, 185,186. 130 This crude nationalist exclusivism found a more eloquent advocate in Heidegger, who would stipulate that ‘[A] boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.’ Quoted in H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London 1994) 1. 131 ‘Jewish Literature’ 51.

29 times immemorial travelling, are well suited to the task of conferring their knowledge and culture to new audiences and likewise learning from those audiences. His constant advocacy of this cosmopolitism is quite a feat, considering the nationalist environment Karpeles knew discouraged such open borders.132 This stance is of course exemplified by Kurz.

The political quest for openness notwithstanding, Karpeles was a product of his own times, marked by the momentous unification of Germany and the nationalistic fever that accompanied it. His explanations for literary maturity show the influence of nationalistic discourses on the historian. Even though he strives for an open world, he continuously locates the beginnings of a great literary achievement in a great nation, to begin with, the unique Jewish nation of the Biblical kings. Just as Kurz, who blames the national weakness of Germany for its bleak culture, Karpeles sees a blossoming nation as a necessity for cultural growth. He, however, does not seek a Jewish nation, but proposes that strong nations can gain from Jewish acculturated presence. The matter of language follows the programmatic form of both histories. Karpeles supports a hybrid lookout towards language, for the more contact one can make with other cultures, the better. Kurz is opposed to this principle, maintaining that national unity is just as much unity of language. In the course of this chapter, nationalism has entered the scene as a major influence on the position of German Jews in Karpeles’ day and on the practice of writing literary history. The following chapter will address this force at length.

Just as I have used comparative history to come closer to Karpeles and his world, Karpeles and Kurz used their own version of comparative history. The latter compared his nation to others in order to better define his own. The former implicitly compared several moments in history where Jewish literature was able to blossom, resulting in a heartfelt plea for acceptance and cultural transfer. As Stefan Berger noted, comparisons create homogenous groups, pit those against each other and thus strengthen the homogenous identity. It is almost as if he was familiar with Kurz’s work. On the other hand, cultural transfer, so closely tied to this notion of comparison, is about hybridity, the tearing down of such constructed entities as ‘nation’ and the undermining of homogenous identities.133 Here we recognize Karpeles’ method of writing history. ‘Cultural transfer research focuses on those groups most suited to the role of mediators [between cultures]- authors, publishers, journalists…exiles, migrants…academics…’ Berger writes.134 It is remarkable to see how much of these categories fit Karpeles. He was author and publisher, also in journalistic magazines, an academic and, in his own view, a permanent migrant and exile.135 Comparative history apparently either consolidates homogenous constructs or undermines them. Of what branch this research is a proponent, I leave to your discretion.

132 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 343. 133 ‘Comparative History’ 171. 134 Ibid., 170. 135 Geschichte Vol. I 9.

30

Changing landscapes in Judaism

The preceding chapters showed that Karpeles’ writings did not come into being just because of the author’s interest in the history of Jewish literature. We have seen the Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur and other works as products of a specific Jewish and nationalistic context. The growing nationalist conceptions of German identity had a profound influence on Karpeles, who, as a Jew, could never truly participate in the ‘German’ society. In fact, the nascence of literary history as a genre is strongly linked to the rise of nationalism. Literature became a means of creating a national identity and securing a homogenous group and culture. This explains why literary history was very much a ‘nationale Angelegheit’ in its nineteenth-century heyday.136 Heinrich Kurz endeavored to give the young nation ancient roots through literary history. Karpeles’ heightened sense of having to legitimize the Jewish presence in Germany stemmed from the same source. He even applied nationalistic concepts and language to his history, as explained earlier. The times Karpeles lived in necessitated his work, or so he must have felt. Because of this it was perhaps only logical to Karpeles that he was the first one to write a systematic history of Jewish literature.137

However, Karpeles’ work was also a response to changes and developments in Judaism itself. These changes had a lot to do with external factors. The end of the eighteenth century had witnessed a significant shift in the position of Jews in several western European societies. Karpeles was sensitive to this change. Most chapters of the Geschichte are introduced by a very superficial survey of the extra-literary world at most. The sixth one however, covering the most recent history, starts off with a summary of the political and social position of Jews since the time of Mendelssohn. This anomaly in the composition of the Geschichte underscores its author’s commitment to the social position of the Jews. Joseph II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire paved the way by issuing the Toleranzedikt in 1781. This law was to ensure Jews in the emperor’s realm the same civil rights as its Christian inhabitants. Two years later the Americans adopted freedom of conscience, followed in 1791 by complete egalité et fraternité for the Jews of France. The emancipation of the Jews spread further in the wake of Napoleonic conquests.138 The emancipation challenged the unity of Jewish communities. Jews were no longer obliged to live in designated neighborhoods. Those who could, now moved beyond the old borders of the Jewish quarter. Moreover, new economic possibilities opened up to Jews.139 In Worms, for instance, the traditionally financially middling Jews managed to become middle-class within two generations after the civil reforms.140 With traditional borders, spatially, spiritually and economically crumbling, assimilation was a more viable option than it had been to previous generations. Theodor Herzl later sharply addressed the problem engendered by this shift. Especially in a predominantly nationalistic Europe, the modern Jews had two options. Either they lost their individuality, or they had to give up their unity. Judaism, he said, was ‘in danger of being split

136 Geisenhanslüke, ‘Einleitung’ in: Rauch and Geisenhanslüke, ed., Texte zur Theorie und Didaktik der Literaturgeschichte 9-24, 10; M.S. Kramer, ‘Race, Literary History, and the “Jewish” Question’ Prooftexts, Vol. 21 no. 3 (2001) 287-349, 296. The connection between literary history and nation has never fully receded. As recent as 2013 the creation and preservation of a literary tradition as contribution to cultural identity was noted as one of only four aims of literary history. See: J. Borkowski and P.D. Heine, ‘Ziele der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung’ Journal of Literary Theory, Vol. 7 (2013) 31-63, 38. 137 Geschichte Vol. I v. 138 Geschichte Vol. II 1050, 1051. 139 Bear in mind that theoretical equality did not necessarily mean equality in practice. Heine’s troublesome and unsuccessful plan of entering civil service, already mentioned above, is a case in point. 140 N. Roemer, ‘Provincializing the Past: Worms and the Making of a German-Jewish Cultural Heritage’ Jewish Studies Quarterly Vol. 12 no. 1 (2005) 80-100, 81-82.

31 up into as many kinds of Judaism as there are countries of the Jewish dispersion.’141 This context brought about the interesting story about Shneur Zalman of Liadi. This Russian rabbi allegedly preferred poverty under the Czar over prosperity under Napoleon.142 The underlying reason is that prosperity endangered traditional life. The survival of Judaism was more important to the rabbi than anything else. The story combines at once both factors of economical and civil emancipation, while expressing the rabbi’s concern for the spiritual part of Judaism.

Besides the noted pull-factors the eighteenth century had also produced centrifugal forces, making assimilation all the more compelling. Karpeles explained this phenomenon in a series of lectures, given for the Berlin Verein für jüdische Geschichte in 1899 and 1900. The eighteenth century was the scene of a dawning Jewish transition from the old towards the new.143 The Jewish culture had dwindled and religious practice suffered from a widespread lack of knowledge of the faith. Only the ‘sun’ of the century had enabled the Jews to see and voice their dissatisfaction with this state of affairs, and subsequently to do something about it.144 The Jews stood at a crossroads: were they to react in Zalman’s fashion and opt for orthodoxy, or should they embrace reform? Another alternative, feared by both the rabbi and Herzl, was the renunciation of Judaism altogether. Indeed, the number of converts seems to have taken a flight in the last decades of the age of enlightenment and the first ones of the nineteenth century. Karpeles reports that in the 30 years after Moses Mendelssohn’s death half the Jews of Berlin converted to Christianity, including of course most of the children and grandchildren of the old ‘Stürmer und Dränger’ himself.145 In the aforementioned lectures the historian was more explicit in his description of this rupture than in his written works. In the former he blamed the irreconcilable and rigid stance of old-fashioned rabbi’s for the ‘appalling frequency of baptism among German Jews.’146 This criticism is proof of a lively debate in Jewish circles, a debate Karpeles did not avoid.

141 Quoted in Achad Ha’am, translated by L. Simon, Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism (London 1922) 43. .Jerusalem 1968) 182,183) נפוליאון ותקופתו: רשומות ועדויות עבריות של בני הדור ,,ךרובמ .ב 142 143 A. Wolf, ‘Dr. Karpeles on Nineteenth Century Judaism: Jews and Judaism in the Nineteenth Century by Gustav Karpeles’ The Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 19 no. 3 (1907) 590-592, 591. 144 Geschichte Vol. II 1049. 145 Ibid., 1102; Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 12. 146 Wolf, ‘Dr. Karpeles’ 591.

32

The Wissenschaft des Judentums

Many Jews rejected the in their eyes retrograde option of adhering strictly to the Law. Strict religious life enforced segregation.147 Now that society had begun to open up towards the Jews, turning away from it by staying in exclusively Jewish environs became less and less compelling. The Enlightenment and the emancipation in fact challenged the authority of rabbi’s.148 A new face of the Jewish community strove to reconcile modernity with Judaism. It wanted to make the practice of Judaism more attractive for Jews. To non-Jews, it wanted to show that Jewish faith and culture were resilient enough to overcome the old slumber and face the future. To accomplish this, the Wissenschaft des Judentums (hereafter: Wissenschaft) was founded. The Wissenschaft set out an own program to get a hold on societal changes within the Jewish community and beyond its borders. Its school was highly influential on Karpeles, even though his views retained certain its idiosyncrasies, which will be addressed further on.

The limited space of this thesis doesn’t allow for a thorough recapitulation of the Wissenschaft’s history or aims. Moreover, such a summary is not deemed necessary by the author. The main principles of the Wissenschaft are presumably known to the reader. A more fruitful approach for this research is telling the story of the Wissenschaft as seen by Karpeles, interspersed with other source material. In this way, we do not only refresh our knowledge of the Wissenschaft, but also learn about the sometimes strenuous relationship between that school and the literary historian. Throughout his career Karpeles was very much indebted to the philosophy of the Wissenschaft.149 The manner in which he cast its history shows us what place in Jewish history Karpeles gave to the Wissenschaft, how he positioned himself within its tradition and, finally, what sociopolitical program for Judaism Karpeles propounded.

147 One of the hypotheses for the reason of Kashrut is in fact that dietary laws made social contact with non-Jews complicated. 148 Kramer, ‘Race, Literary History, and the “Jewish” Question’ 287. 149 Besides from the innumerable implicit paraphrases, Karpeles pays open homage to the fathers of the Wissenschaft in several publications. See for instance: Die Zionsharfe xi; Geschichte Vol. I vi, Vol. II 1103.

33

Reforming the practice of Judaism

In the last chapter of the Geschichte a paragraph of considerable length is dedicated to the history of the Wissenschaft. The earlier noted description of the growing rights of Jews in Western Europe and the United states serves as a prelude to this paragraph. Here the reader is prepared for a shift in the narrative. Karpeles records the crisis in Judaism, stating that the Jews had become rudderless towards the end of the eighteenth century. The charges levelled against the rabbi’s mentioned above all come from Karpeles. He himself had studied at seminaries in Breslau and Vienna, thinking of becoming a rabbi.150 Perhaps the final decision of becoming a scholar instead was built upon his misgivings about the place of rabbi’s in the contemporaneous practice of Judaism. the leaders of Jewish communities had proved faulty, but so had the congregants themselves. Karpeles signals a fundamental lack of knowledge of the religious canon and practice at the beginning of the Neuzeit. He sees a correlation between this ill and the omnipresent ghetto’s and poverty, which have stricken the Jews into numbness.151 The threat to the survival of Judaism is thus linked to segregation and financial trouble. Karpeles hails modernity as a possible remedy for both, as discussed above. Karpeles’ solution for this state of affairs diametrically opposes that of rabbi Zalman. The latter, as we have seen, wanted to embrace the very two aspects of Jewish life Karpeles abhors. He fears modernity, whereas Karpeles sees the dialogue with post-Enlightenment society and thought as the way towards revitalization. The parallel with Karpeles’ argument on cultural transfer seen in the previous chapter is obvious. Now that society around the Jews is faring well, the time is ripe for the Jews to refashion themselves. The historian uses his books and lecterns as a forum to advocate this new way, thoroughly opposing orthodoxy. In the most recent history, he writes, the German Jews have successfully shown themselves to be in the vanguard of this changing attitude, because of their ability to assimilate.152 In their turn, they have contributed to the culture of their hosts.153 The argumentative circle is complete, encouraging both Jews and the majority around them to listen to each other.

Those branches of Judaism that are unsuitable for this dialogue do not have to expect Karpeles’ clemency. We have already seen that he used the anachronistic term ‘Chassidim’ to denote those Jews who in ancient times chose for seclusion from the world. Similarly, he dismisses the Chassidic movement in his own time together with the ‘strenggläubige Talmudpartei,’ because they refuse to take what is offered to them from outside the tradition.154 Karpeles’ definition of the Wissenschaft shows the stress on this point. The founders of the Wissenschaft, he writes, wanted to help ‘die Juden durch einen von innen heraus sich entwickelnden Bildungsgang mit dem Zeitalter und den Staaten, in denen sie leben, in Verbindung zu setzen.’155 Jews should be receptive to the times they live in and to the culture of the people around them. Karpeles himself exemplified this politics by advancing scientific knowledge and writing for Jews and non-Jews alike. For both audiences he emphasizes that a new kind of Jew is becoming more and more central to religion and culture, countering the backward Chassidim. Apart from Jewish learning, Bildung holds an important place for him. Time and again he emphasizes his affiliation with gebildete Jews.156 This broad education made the next step in Judaism possible, for the first preachers with Bildung early in the century were the ones who revived a religious feeling in their gebildete congregants. These congregants, previously ashamed of

150 Kohler, ‘Gustav Karpeles’ 185. 151 Geschichte Vol. II 1047. 152 ‘Dr. Karpeles on Nineteenth Century Judaism’ 591. 153 Geschichte Vol. II 1054-1057. 154 Ibid., 1108. 155 Ibid., 1103. 156 Geschichte Vol. I v; Biografische Schetsen 42.

34 their religion and coreligionists, now felt that Judaism was once again a source of pride.157 Public life and the opinion of non-Jews appears thus as an influence on religious life itself. Karpeles’ previously mentioned fight against the idea that Jews were incapable of forming abstract thoughts follows the same principle. He wants to show that Jews have come out of their ghetto’s and are turning into sophisticated and modern citizens. Now that the emancipation had given them the opportunity to perform like the non-Jews, they were obliged to prove they could. He holds that the source of the troubles was the fact that religious leaders had become unable to inspire true religious sentiments in their congregations.158 This made many Jews defect. In order to safeguard what is old, one must be able to embrace change, Karpeles argues.159 The charge, that in this case stays more implicit than in the lectures, is that the rabbi’s did not do this, to the detriment of Judaism. The Wissenschaft sought to fill the void in leadership, and its adherents had to prove that they were up to the task. After all, the hegemony and status of the rabbi’s had grown in the course of centuries. One of the strategies employed to this end was annexing the maxim of learning and recasting it in the forms of the Wissenschaft. Traditionally, scholarship had been part and parcel of Jewish religious life and as such it had fallen under rabbinical supervision. Scholarship, mainly in the form of the Talmud-Torah schools, was part of the religious vocation. The Wissenschaft however preached learning for the sake of learning alone, for contributing to human knowledge.160

This signaled a significant change in the attitude towards learning. The a-religious fundaments notwithstanding, Karpeles presented this new idea of learning as logical heir to scholarship in the traditional sense. He founded the Verband der Vereine für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur in 1893, a national platform where local associations centered around the secular study of Judaism could meet. He explicitly called these literary clubs surrogates for the traditional house of study.161 In the periodical published for the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums the same continuity between the old and the new is posited in an attempt to validate the Wissenschaft’s program. ‘Rabbi’s and community leaders’ are asked to support the effort of the Wissenschaft, if only because scholarship has always been central to Judaism.162 The Gesellschaft appeals to Jewish culture, not to Jewish religion. Culture was to be the new basis of Judaism. The aforementioned group was yet another association co-founded by Karpeles. The historian Nils Roemer also signals the ‘transformation of religious observance to cultural commemoration’ as exemplified above. In Karpeles’ time interest for historical Jewish cemeteries was rekindled. This resurgence came from a nationalist pride in cultural heritage, both German and Jewish, and a Wissenschaft-inspired antiquarian take on the remnants of the past. As one of the founding fathers Leopold Zunz exclaimed, his aim was to save Jewish history from the ‘ravages of time and persecution.’ That is, his priority was to secure and preserve Jewish heritage rather than keep the religion alive. Zunz went even further. Karpeles quotes him as admitting that he no longer found any solace in religion, but only in the Wissenschaft.163 Interestingly enough, the new respect for the cemeteries was not presented in this

157 Geschichte Vol. II 1103. 158 Ibid. 1102. 159 This remark echoes Börne’s famous words, ‘Nichts ist dauernd, als der Wechsel.’ Heine chose this dictum as the motto to his equally famous Die Harzreise. Like Goethe, Börne was one of the well-respected Germans Karpeles loved to use in proving Heine’s link with Germany. See for instance Heinrich Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 96-97. Karpeles here subtly shows the successful symbiosis of German and Jewish heritage. 160 Kramer, ‘Race, Literary History, and the “Jewish” Question’ 297. 161 Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 59, no. 47 (1895) 553. 162 ‘Erster Jahresbericht der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums,’ Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums Vol. 48 no. 1 (1904) 52-64, 64. 163 G. Karpeles, ‘Leopold Zunz’ in: Karpeles, Jewish Literature, and Other Essays 318-339, 326.

35 light. Instead, it was framed as the keeping up of the Jewish tradition of honoring the dead.164 It follows that the Wissenschaft felt it needed to dress up its quite revolutionary call for renewal, the shift from religion to culture. This was done by calling attention to the continuities between old and new, rather than the rupture.

164 Roemer, ‘Provincializing the Past’ 84.

36

The Wissenschaft, romanticism and nationalism

In this light Karpeles offers Abraham Portaleone as a trustworthy forerunner of the Wissenschaftler. His Shilte haGiborim, published in 1612, is a monument of ‘tüchtiger Forschungen.’ The work on Judaism in antiquity is based on no less than 98 sources, Karpeles states.165 To him, Portaleone’s scholarship proves that scientific research of Judaism is an older tradition. However he also notes that the dawn of the Wissenschaft was indeed a break with the past. The fact that this change did not evolve as ‘nature [does], slowly and solemnly, but suddenly,’ is cause for trouble, he writes.166 The historian here and elsewhere betrays the influence of the prevailing romantic nationalism on the described Wissenschaft-tactic of confirming continuity. As we have seen in the previous chapter, a long history with roots like that of a Germanic holy oak was a vital aspect of nationalism. The centrality of nature as a frame of reference, an ongoing metaphor, came from the romantic movement, where nature was the exact opposite of the enlightenment spirit. Nature embodied what was truly important as opposed to the eighteenth-century fallacy of the cerebral as the core of human existence. In Kurz, where academics are pitted against the people, the former create mere facades, whereas the latter represent what is ‘volksthümlich,’ what is real.167 Besides, the project of the Enlightenment had an international scope, whereas nature, like the people as mused on by Kurz, is firmly rooted in its soil. Like his nationalist colleagues, Karpeles uses an abundance of nature-metaphors in his writings, like the one cited above.168 Jewish literature is an ‘Ergänzung der allgemeinen Literatur’ but, with an own ‘Organismus,’ he tells us.169 Karpeles’ main explanatory frame, that of linking national vitality to cultural creativity, underscores the Romantic triptych nation-culture-nature.170 A nation, be it one with a territory or one without, should be able to pride itself with an organic history. Moreover, the nationalist tendency of linking the power of a nation to its cultural output suggested that the stateless Jews were unable to create literature. The Jewish nation was denied a place among the ‘real’ nations. In his essays collected for the American public, Karpeles gets into this polemic. Many eminent scholars believe that concerning Jewish literature, ‘there is no such thing as an organic history, a logical development,’ he writes.171 This claim he roundly refutes. There is definitively a development, and now a renaissance even. Karpeles understands the fact that many mistakenly believe Jewish literature to be without a natural course. Those who are in the wrong simply did not have the means to become acquainted with Jewish literature. The mapping out of a literary ‘Jewish Pompei’ had begun only 50 years before. Slowly, it is becoming clear just how rich the tradition is.172 Karpeles implies that if his opponents only knew more about Jewish literature, they would drop their protests. Scholarship has become apologetics. This unearthing of Jewish treasures from European libraries is obviously the work of the Wissenschaft, with Moritz Steinschneider as the indefatigable champion of archival research.

165 Geschichte Vol. II 879, 880. 166 Ibid. 1102. 167 Leitfaden 106. 168 See for instance: Leitfaden 16, 28, 160 . 169 Geschichte Vol. I 3. 170 ‘Race, Literary History, and the “Jewish” Question’ 295. 171 ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 10-11. The italics are my addition. 172 Ibid.

37

Knowledge as apologetics

In the words of Karpeles this antiquarianism takes on a distinctly apologetic character. The uncovering of unknown Jewish literary sources is not a mere pursuit of intellectual interest. It is here presented as a necessary tool in the fight against anti-Jewish prejudices. The academic proof of a valuable Jewish culture, objective and free of religious connotations, was to Karpeles a validation of the existence of Jews in Germany.173 Zunz’s already cited ‘ravages of time and persecution’ has of course a dark ring to it, but in the first place it points at a difficult past. Karpeles’ Wissenschaft- argumentation on the other hand points at a sharper and more acute problem, one that affects contemporary society itself. That is why Karpeles passionately writes that Jews still have a mission to fulfill.174 This mission is setting the record straight and rehabilitating the Jews in the diaspora.

The Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums, of which Karpeles was an active member, expressly set out to reach this goal. In the first published record of their activities the editors set a list of the fields of research they were delving into. After seven topics like Hebrew linguistics and history, ‘Apologetik’ tellingly occupied the last position.175 Likewise, the article concludes with the remark that lends purpose to the whole. What makes the Gesellschaft important is its aim for ‘gerechtere und bessere Würdigung des Judentums in den Augen der Welt.’176 It is salient that in both cases, the apologetic character of the research is mentioned at the very end. As the Dutch saying goes, ‘het venijn zit hem in de staart.’ Karpeles’ reason for translating and publishing Hebrew poetry follows the same thought. The anthology Die Zionsharfe appeared in the series Schriften des Vereins für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, an association closely linked to the ideals of the Wissenschaft. The preface oscillates between lachrymose and hopeful, characteristic of Karpeles. The lyrical voice of Zion has fallen silent, but the author hopes that his translations will effect a ‘friendly treatment and a righteous judgement’ for them. Whereas we saw that a good part of the Wissenschaft was devoted to reform within the Jewish community, here the intended audience is non-Jewish Germany. Not only does the translation make the poems literally accessible to Germans, Karpeles is happy to announce that they appear reproduced ‘in deutschem Geiste.’177 The translations are not just an appeal to the German tongue, but also to the German spirit of those who speak it. The editor voices his hope that the publication will contribute to a conversation between all nations of the world, to take place at the German hearth. In that way, the building of the temple of world-poetry, as conceived by Goethe, may finally begin. Karpeles writes not just for Jews, but for the ‘Pantheon der Weltpoesie.’178 This preface is a terrific showcase of the author’s views and visions. We immediately recognize his transnational outlook, exemplified by the metaphor of world literature as an ocean with many rivers flowing to it. The call for a collective poetry-repository for all the world resembles the Wissenschaft’s ideal of contributing to universal human knowledge. This reach beyond the national borders however blends with the centrality of Germany, that should serve as arbiter of some kind in this world-forum. Germany is still the primus inter pares. Did Karpeles want to coax staunch nationalists into giving in

173 The Wissenschaft sought an objective language to open the dialogue between Jews and non-Jews. A contemporary review of the Geschichte from a non-Jewish journal shows that this was a shared ideal. The reviewer was especially appreciative of the fact that Karpeles’ confessional and theological background do not speak in the Geschichte. See: H. Holtzmann, ‘Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur’ (review), Historische Zeitschrift Vol. 56 no. 3 (1886) 489-490, 489. 174 ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 6. 175 ‘Erster Jahresbericht der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums’ 57. 176 Ibid., 64. 177Die Zionsharfe v. 178 Ibid., v-vi.

38 to alien Hebrew poetry by flattering them? It is just as possible that his German pride was more authentic.

Note the remarkable phrase of building a temple of world poetry. The temple Karpeles wanted to build was not to be erected in the promised land, but occupied a virtual space in the world of letters. Later on he speaks of his hope that the youngest Jewish generation ‘im deutschen Vaterland’ will once again partake in the literary traditions of their forbears.179 Once again, Karpeles assures his readers that Jews have come to see Germany as their home. There is no need for a temple in Jerusalem, by extension for migration to Palestine, if only nations could work together towards a universal temple of the written word. Elsewhere he quotes the third principle of the Verein der Reform-Freunde, drawn up in 1842: ‘We do not expect or want a Messiah to lead us back to Palestine, our Fatherland is the one in which we were born or to which we belong by ‘bürgerliches Verhältniß [sic].’180 As the name of this society suggests, its main concern was the reform of the religious landscape. For instance, the Verein became known for its liberal stance on circumcision.181 In the diminished role of the promised land in favor of Germany religion and nationalism were intertwined. According to Siegfried Guggenheim, a lawyer from Offenbach am Main, his family even used to replace the Seder’s traditional ‘next year in Jerusalem’ with the words ‘next year in Offenbach am Main, our Heimat.’182 Indeed, the Wissenschaft tried to adapt Judaism to life in the diaspora, consigning to the promised land no more than a metaphorical significance. The Frankfurt laymen who wrote the principles above and Guggenheim all addressed a Jewish audience. Karpeles reiterates their words on Germany as fatherland for non-Jewish readers in the anthology. We can see why. The friends of reform could claim Deutschtum by Boden, calling the land they were born in their fatherland. However, being a part of the nation by Blut remained impossible. ‘Bürgerliches Verhältniß’ is a meagre substitute for blood, resulting from enlightenment philosophy on equality. This could never stand next to the emotional romantic rhetoric of brotherhood by blood. Karpeles’ non-Jewish compatriots needed convincing. Herder had already questioned Jewish patriotism. After the greatness of the biblical era, he taught, Judaism fell into ‘pharasaism [sic]…their patriotism a knavish devotion to a misunderstood old law.’183 Karpeles’ response to Herder is twofold. As shown in the previous chapter, he agreed with the philosopher in his recognition of the biblical time and his dismissal of the Pharisees. Their ‘extremism’ and sectarianism were far removed from Karpeles’ ideal of a world-conversation. On the other hand, he fought the old notion of Jewish patriotism. The idea that Jews could not be true German patriots because they were principally devoted to their religion persevered well into Karpeles’ day.

179 Ibid., vi. 180 Geschichte Vol. II 1057. 181 J. Bleich, ‘The Circumcision Controversy in Classical Reform in Historical Contex’ in: M.A. Shmidman, ed., Turim: Studies in Jewish History and Literature. Presented to Dr. Bernard Lander Vol. I (New York 2007) 1- 29, 5. 182 S. Guggenheim, ed., Offenbacher Haggadah (Offenbach am Main 1927) 79. 183 J.G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, quoted in: P.L. Rose, Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany: From Kant to Wagner (Princeton N.J. 1990) 98.

39

Towards modern German Judaism

In a way, then, Karpeles labored his long career as a salmon swimming upstream. His work, though on the surface about history, addressed current problems. These existed within Judaism itself and in the approach of the non-Jewish society towards Judaism. The historian sought to counter the dwindling religious observance that resulted from both the spiritual night and the chaos that followed the enlightenment’s break of day. Following the established program of the Wissenschaft des Judentums Karpeles embraced modernity as the means of recovering religious resilience. In doing so, he moved against the orthodox and warned against Chassidism. His reproach of the Zohar, that central work in the Kabbalist tradition, is revealing. He sneers that the Zohar defies all logic.184 Thus, Kabbalah is not in line with Karpeles’ notion of modern Judaism, that ought to listen to logic and use Bildung to find new momentum in religious observance. The Zohar cannot be reconciled with modern, proud Judaism. Karpeles also bemoans the fact that it is filled with doubtful embellishments on the tradition. This accusation shows his commitment to religion. In the old story four rabbi’s enter Pardes, a metaphor for the study of Kabbalah. One of them is said to have trampled the budding flowers. That is, he corrupted his students by teaching Kabbalah. Karpeles adheres to the school that sees Kabbalah as exactly that, an occult warping of the religion. Wissenschaft and religion are here almost indistinguishable. In fact, Karpeles’ religious fervor makes him stand out from more mainstream Wissenschaftler. To him, the Wissenschaft was not the effigy of Judaim it was to Steinschneider and Zunz. Reform is necessary, Karpeles argues, but the Wissenschaft tends to turn into ‘blassen Deismus.’185 In any case, the shift from theology to culture as the focal point of Judaism was to upset many observant Jews. The ambition of replacing the rabbi’s as the arbiters of the culture was another major revulsion. To ease the contrast Karpeles and others with him often presented the Wissenschaft as a natural heir to old religious traditions. Karpeles did not just look back. Contrarily, to the historian the Wissenschaft really was a way of revitalizing the religion and validating its continuing existence among the Germans. He did not wish to ‘preserve’ manifestations of tradition, he wanted to propel the tradition into the future. In his work, religion and science are thoroughly synthesized. Where other voices in the Wissenschaft were antiquarian, Karpeles promoted a resurgence of Jewish life. In the preface to Die Zionsharfe Karpeles pronounces his hopes for the future of a living and prosperous tradition. As he points out in his essays, Jewish literature has an organic current and is well under way towards a renaissance.

This is Karpeles’ answer to the question how to be Jewish after the emancipation. To him, the beauty lay in the fact that modern Judaism on a scientific base killed two birds with one stone. It could help change the tide that had made so many Jews defect from the religion and at the same time rehabilitate the religion and its observers in Germany. Scientific research into Judaism then also meant apologetics. Herzl’s answer to the question above is very different. He chose to give up the European project and start anew in the promised land. Karpeles never stopped advocating life in the diaspora, insisting on the compatibility of German and Jewish culture. He expressly defied the idea of Aliya. A faraway land occupied only by Jews perhaps reminded him of the secluded ghetto’s and shtetl’s he so strongly opposed. Instead of huddling together, the Jews were to face the world around them. Much of Karpeles’ writings follow this idea, informing both Jews and Christians of Judaism. To this end he presented the new ideal of the educated Jew in Wissenschaft-fashion as the pars pro toto of Judaism. This modern and assimilated yet religious Jew, he hoped, would be accepted by his non-Jewish fellow countrymen. By tearing down small cultural walls, Judaism could secure a lasting position for itself in

184 Geschichte Vol. II 689. 185 Ibid., 1054.

40 the diaspora. Karpeles’ reaction to nationalism was a hybrid nationalism of its own, combining German and Jewish heritage. Like his contemporaries, he claimed the German Boden as his own.

41

Conclusion: of rivers and the sea

Nineteenth-century literary histories tend to resemble chronicles. Usually chronologically structured, they present the reader with lists of written works. They comprise of enumerations of book titles, publication dates and notes on authors. Dry facts, brought neutrally? The average chronicler, on the payroll of a clerical or worldly official, somehow managed to weave a positive assessment of (usually) his employer into written history. Likewise, the historiography discussed above dealt with the world of the author as much as it did with bygone days. Gustav Karpeles did not write on commission. He himself decided what views were set forth in his writings. This freedom he did not waste, because he had a mission to fulfill.186 Thus, his different works all pursue the same specific program, a worldview. Oftentimes, this programmatic vein is kept underneath the surface. Whoever wants to detect the narrative behind the ‘dry’ history must read against the grain. There are of course instances where Karpeles helps us by being more explicit about his mission. His writings on Heine overtly follow a program of rehabilitation. The format of biography more easily lends itself to a subjective, personal take on history than does the encyclopedic format of general histories, such as the broad Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur. The preface to the latter displays an academic frame. The contrasting preface to Heine und seine Zeitgenossen, quoted on page 8 candidly announces rehabilitation as the main aim of twenty years of research. In the end, however, Karpeles’ passionate plea for the restoration of the poet’s honor is not confined to Heine alone. He metonymically serves as an example of all Jews, turning Karpeles’ plea for an individual into one for a whole religious group. Sources other than Karpeles’ literary historiography make this even clearer. As we saw, the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums set out to promote ‘gerechtere und bessere Würdigung des Judentums in den Augen der Welt.’ These words bear a remarkably close resemblance to those with which Karpeles explains the goal of Heine und seine Zeitgenossen. This shows that Karpeles’ continuing Heine-research was set in the expansive program of rehabilitating all of Judaism. Moreover, it proves that just as Heine is for Karpeles a means of representing a larger group, we can use the historian himself to represent a larger group. His project is an exponent of the Wissenschaft and reveals what at least a part of German Jewry in his time was occupied with. This thesis is a case study for late nineteenth-century German Jewish apologetics. For that is what lies at the heart of Karpeles’ project.

The need for apologetics is what drove Karpeles to write such an imposing corpus of literary history. In these works, he shows the manifold merits of Jewish literature and culture to Jews and gentiles alike by heralding the high quality of so many works and genres. Comparison with Heinrich Kurz’s otherwise quite similar work highlights Karpeles’ extraordinary appreciation of Jewish literature. Kurz uses his history to teach his readers to respect an isolated German culture and to shun foreign influences, marking the unsavory effect of especially French tradition on what is heimisch. Karpeles uses the same set of preconceived notions on the influence of politics and nation on culture. However, he fervently advocates open borders and cultural transfer. Because a great nation leads the way to great literature, Jews in the diaspora have to embrace the blossoming culture of the majority around them to spark their own creativity. Of course, he does not make Jews out to be cultural parasites. Gentiles have profited from Jewish culture and will continue doing so, if they are willing to open up to Jews, the historian holds.

His history thus addresses two distinct audiences: Jews and gentiles. Jews are urged to look beyond the limits of their own group. Following the reforms of the Wissenschaft, Karpeles warns against the dangers of orthodoxy. His views on religion and society here go hand in hand, for both realms

186 ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 6.

42 influence each other. A devoutly religious man, Karpeles is concerned with revitalizing religious observance. Unlike his mentor in the Wissenschaft, Leopold Zunz, Karpeles opposed the aufheben of Judaism into German society. Integration should not lead to the forsaking of religious Judaism. He followed the shift that had made culture supersede religion as the core of Judaism. His encyclopedic definition of Jewish literature, extending to everything even remotely Jewish, situates ‘Jewishness’ beyond the realm of religion in the realm of culture. However, this shift was to him a means of protecting religious observance, conform his views on intercultural dialogue. The observance of Judaism, he maintained, could overcome its ailing state by learning from German culture. This meant that Jews had to become modern and educated people. Intellectual zeal would rekindle religious zeal. Similarly, his attack on orthodoxy was not a theological one, but concerned the orthodox dismissal of extra-Jewish influences. As the social emancipation of the Jews had influenced religious practice, so religious practice could influence the social standing of Jews, Karpeles promulgated. Educated Jews had been ashamed of their religion, but could now once again rejoice in it. Thus Karpeles’ call for religious reform has everything to do with his call for social reappraisal of the Jews.

To this end he addresses gentiles. He boasts about Jewish literature to make Jews recapture their pride and to prove to gentiles the benefits of supporting Jewish life. This is why he so gratefully employs Heine in his rhetoric, Heine had Jewish blood, but was also a celebrated German author. In approaching his non-Jewish audience, Karpeles had to counter the prevalent Romantic-nationalist idea that Jews fundamentally could not belong to Germany. ‘Cosmopolitan’ was an abusive term, for it marked its victim as an unrooted, culture-less and basically unreliable person. Kurz’s disdain for everything alien to Germany indeed borders on fear. Explaining Heine’s move to Paris must have given Karpeles headaches. As noted, the historian’s conception of nationhood and culture was informed by German nationalism. He opposed Zionism not just because this kind of retreat from the world went against his ideal of dialogue. He simply was a German and felt that his place was there. To many Jews Germany was not only the fatherland, but truly the Heimat, as Guggenheim’s Haggadah showed. Heine’s conflating of Biblical and German folkloristic tropes in Der Rabbi von Bacherach is not an artistic device but a political point: Jews belong to Germany, the two cultures coalesce. Heine’s tale, with the Rhine protecting Abraham and Sara, presents the Jewish Deutschtum by Boden. The villagers who scheme to kill the rabbi and his wife represent the common German distrust towards Jews, exactly because they have different blood. As argued above, Blut made for un unbridgeable gap. The Jewish Friends of Reform could speak of their ‘Bürgerliches Verhältniß’ to Germany, but just like Heine, who went as far as conversion, they remained Jews.

In the introduction to Die Zionsharfe Karpeles addresses both his audiences. He professes that the poems in the anthology have been translated with non-Jewish readers in mind, hoping that this cross- cultural encounter will result in friendship. At the same time, he speaks of his hope that the publication will arouse young German Jews’ love for their tradition, opening the way towards a fruitful Jewish German future. Foregrounding the fatherland once more, he invites the whole world to partake in a universal conversation and begin with the building of a temple of world literature. As the Bible has done for centuries, Jewish poetry will here lead the way towards a new world. The lyre of Zion here becomes focal point of human culture, the force enabling all rivers to flow into the sea. Never before had Heine’s question been given so much relevance: ‘kennst du noch das alte Lied?’

43

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47