KAREL WASSERMANN (Prague, SSR) Some Observations on The

Home , Ernst Weiss, Ludwig Winder, Max Brod, Oskar Baum

KAREL WASSERMANN (Prague, �SSR)

Some Observations on the Prague Circle

Margarita Pazi. Fünf Autoren des Prager Kreises. "Würzburger Hochschul- schriften zur neuren Deutschen Literaturgeschichte, Bd. 3." Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1978. 315 pp. sFr. 55,-(paper).

The five authors considered in this work are Oskar Baum (1883-1941 ), Paul Kornfeld (1889-1942), Ernst Sommer (1889-1955), Ernst Weiss (1884- 1940), and Ludwig Winder (1889-1946)-all well known to those familiar with the literature of interwar German-Jewish Prague, and all connected, as their life and death dates show, by strong chronological affinities. In review- ing this book I will sidestep most of the literary text in order to concentrate on the key sixty pages headed by the phrase, "The Prague of the 'Prague Cir- " cle' (hereafter abbreviated as P.C.). This chapter is so intriguing that I am grateful for the opportunity to say something about this controversial theme. Mrs. Margarita Pazi has set for herself the task of revising (or completing) the memoirs of Max Brod, which were published in 1968 when he was eighty- four years old. What is evident, alas !, is her complete devotion to Brod, to his idiosyncrasies and feuds, and her indiscriminate reliance upon "widow's tales" (see her Acknowledgments) and her nostalgia for the German-Jewish cultural milieu of Prague. To discuss Austria-Hungary, "the kettle of nations," and particularly the "Prague" phenomenon in this context reminds one of Venice, the city of lagoons. The national, religious, social, and cultural factors are labyrinthine. The author seems adroit at posing questions, staging the scene, and demon- strating the controversiality of the protagonists. In her biography of Brod (Max Brod [Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1970] ) Mrs. Pazi says that the members of the P. C. were recruited from the Prague Jewish German-speaking intelligentsia (elsewhere she says it was the enlightened Jewish middle-class family). Let us take Franz Kafka's case: neither is true. Nowhere do we find even the slightest allusion to Kafka's father having been anything other than a domineering and ruthless businessman. Where one agrees with Mrs. Pazi is that the education of the families under discussion tended toward emancipation, with the benefit that becoming a fully accepted Prague German meant an advantage in the social and economic domains, not least in being able to enroll one's children in German schools of all grades, a prerequisite for the career. Obviously, in the course of events there resulted the progressive Czech national and social awakening. This was especially marked after 1880 with two 169

developments: the so-called Sudetenland opted, with the German Social De- mocrats (of course for different reasuns), for the slogan of I vs von Prag; and rising anti-semitism resulted in the Prague Jews being enclosed by the Czechs and by self-enclosure, ghettoization. In this context I cite Friedrich Jodi, "Ordinarius fiir Philosophie" in Prague in 1885: he said, "Only two things (in Prague] are obligatory-nu flirtation with the Slavs and no animosity toward Jews. Both are conditions for the ex- istence of local German society" (as quoted by Mrs. Pazi, p. 15). Mrs. Pazi rightly stresses the one common thing between Czech writers and German- Jewish writers: both were under the spell of the Prague "genius loci." The author, with unparalleled gusto and with Max Brod's help, once and forever intends to eradicate Pavel Eisner's quite acceptable three-dimensional-ghetto theory. In agreement with Dagmar Eisnerovi one should add: a religious ghetto without God, a national ghetto with German writers unattached to Deutschtum, a social ghetto of citizens without citizenship (in Weltfreunde, Prague, 1967). No, says Mrs. Pazi, the P. C. took root in the community. It was Prague which substituted for the lack of a sense for the nation. Brod's concession to Eisner's theory included the stipulation that it should be accepted only for the late nineteenth century, while Eisner insisted upon acceptance for the closing decades of the monarchy. If ever there was a period of peaceful coexistence between the Czech and German intellectuals, then it was on neutral ground so typical for literary Prague (and for Vienna as well), as in the Cafe Arco. Here Mrs. Pazi contradicts herself; she cites Brod (Der Prager Kreis [Stuttgart; W. Kohlhammer, 1 966] ), who wishes to demonstrate the process of assimilation with the family of Hermann Grab*-"so rich, they were even baptized ... but otherwise with regard to acquaintances and habits, nothing, or only slightly, changed" (pp. 202 ff.). It is no secret that since the Jews served as scapegoats, they had, or needed in this circumstance, their own scapegoats. There were many feuds over this issue; for example, both Brod and Mrs. Pazi denigrate Professor Emil Utitz ( 1 883- 1 956)for having taken out membership in the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1945. Yet behind these criticisms of Utitz (professor of philosophy at Halle university ) lies Utitz's attack on, and a resulting sharp dispute with, Brod in the "Circle of Philosophers" in Prague's Cafe Louvre. My suspicions seem to be validaied inier alia by Paul Leppiii (see his uZür Eii1fühíUi1g" in Wir [Prague], Heft 1 [April 1906] ), who cited the cliques, social nepotism, feuds, and the like as the reasons why many Prague intellectuals were going

*HeriiiannCrab (1 903-49),poct, critic, and composer, was une of many unattached literati with whom the Prager Kreis came in touch. After publishingDer Stadtpark and Rule auJ'der F7ucht,he emigrated fron) Czechoslovakiain February, 1939.