Modernity, Marginality, and Redemption: German and Jewish Identity at the Fin-De-Siècle

MODERNITY, MARGINALITY, AND REDEMPTION: GERMAN AND JEWISH IDENTITY AT THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE Richard V. Benson A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: Dr. Jonathan Hess (Advisor) Dr. Jonathan Boyarin Dr. William Collins Donahue Dr. Eric Downing Dr. Clayton Koelb © 2009 Richard V. Benson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Richard Benson Modernity, Marginality, and Redemption: German and Jewish Identity at the Fin-de-Siècle (Under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Hess) Modernity, Marginality, and Redemption: German and Jewish Identity at the Fin-de-Siècle explores the literary, cultural, and historical process of negotiating German-Jewish identity following the radical restructuring of German-Jewish society during the nineteenth century. Modernity, Marginality, and Redemption considers the dynamic cultural roles that writers such as Karl Emil Franzos, Martin Buber, Jakob Wassermann, Theodor Herzl, and others assigned to the image of East European Jewry and of ghetto life, to Chassidic mysticism, and to messianic historical figures. I show that the works of these authors enact a self-conscious reinvention of Jewish tradition, which weds Enlightenment ideals with aspects of Jewish tradition that the Enlightenment had marginalized, while also engaging in dialogue with the most pressing discourses of fin-de-siècle European culture, in order to proffer Jewish identities that are neither strictly national nor simply religious. As I demonstrate, these texts establish Jewish identity as a central coordinate in debates about nationalism, the limits of language, phenomenology, social progress, and cultural degeneration. In my reading of these texts, I seek to uncover the social and cultural spaces where Enlightenment progress and fin- de-siècle decadence intersect—where the ideals of the Enlightenment collide with their dark counterimages—and give way to a fertile ground for negotiating not only Jewish identity, but modern subjectivity more generally. Ultimately, Modernity, Marginality, and Redemption iii underscores the significance of the transformation of German-Jewish identity for our more general understanding of broader crises of identity in German and Austrian culture during the fin-de-siècle. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the help and support of numerous friends and colleagues. My research was funded through a generous dissertation fellowship from the Stiftung Dialogik, which allowed me to concentrate exclusively on the dissertation during the crucial final stages of writing. I am especially grateful to Dr. Willi Goetschel at the University of Toronto for finding merit in this project and enabling me to receive this prestigious fellowship. I would like to thank my fellow graduate students at UNC and Duke for their critical feedback at various stages in the writing process. The engagement of my committee members was likewise essential for the completion of this project, and I’m grateful for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on multiple drafts and presentations related to the dissertation. Dr. Jonathan Hess has been unbelievably patient and generous in his support of this project from the very beginning, and as an advisor he has exceeded all expectations. I want to also thank Dr. Ivana Vuletić, whose comments on my comprehensive exams and dissertation prospectus helped greatly improve this project. Finally, I could not have completed this dissertation without the support of my family and friends. Whitney, thanks for talking me through my half-formed ideas, and for mastering the art of sleeping with your eyes open whenever these ideas were incomprehensible. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Between Marginality and Authenticity: German and Jewish Identity at the Fin-de-Siècle.........................................................................................1 I. Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and the Inauguration of German-Jewish Modernity....1 II. The Invention of German-Jewish Tradition............................................................9 III. Modernity, Marginality, and Redemption in Fin-de-Siècle German Literature ....18 Chapter One: Enlightenment in the Twilight: Bildung in Halb-Asien...................................25 I. “Denn strafen wollen wir Sie nicht”.........................................................................25 II. “Wer wird den alten Vater so kränken?”: Reconstituting the Internalized Ghetto.......................................................................................................37 III. Redeeming Bildung—Bildung as Redemption ......................................................53 IV. Conclusion .............................................................................................................72 Chapter Two: “Die Unzulänglichkeit aller Mitteilung”: Martin Buber, Mysticism, and the Politics of Cultural Memory in German-Jewish Modernity............................75 I. Martin Buber, Chassidism, and the Problem of Authenticity...................................75 II. Jewish Mysticism, Modernity, and Individuation...................................................85 III. Mysticism, Chassidism, and the Invention of Tradition........................................100 IV. Chassidism and Crises of Experience, Language, and Subjectivity......................124 V. Conclusion ..............................................................................................................147 vi Chapter Three: Messianic Ground: History, Tradition, and Jewish Identity in Theodor Herzl and Jakob Wassermann ...................................................................153 I. Karl Kraus, Martin Buber, and the “Geschichtsanwälte des jüdischen Volkes”......153 II. Sabbatai Zvi, Sabbateanism, and European-Jewish Modernity ..............................167 III. The Final Frontier: Culture and Redemption in Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland.......172 IV. Paths of German Jewishness: Jakob Wassermann’s Die Juden von Zirndorf.......196 V. Conclusion ..............................................................................................................215 Conclusion: Diaspora Ethnography and the Invention of Tradition......................................222 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................229 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: “Ex Libris Martin Buber”.......................................................................................161 viii Introduction Between Marginality and Authenticity: German and Jewish Identity at the Fin-de- Siècle I. Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and the Inauguration of German-Jewish Modernity In a brief speech, written to commemorate the 1929 bicentennial of Moses Mendelssohn’s birth, the German-Jewish philosopher, theologian, translator, and educator Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) reflects on Mendelssohn’s centrality for German-speaking Jews throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the speech, Rosenzweig looks back to the German and Jewish Enlightenment movements of the eighteenth century, and identifies Mendelssohn (1729-1786) as the prototype of a still-contested mode of Jewishness in Central Europe: the German Jew. “Mendelssohn,” he writes, “der erste deutsche Jude in dem schweren, beide Worte verantwortenden Sinn, in dem wir Deutschjuden unser Deutschjudentum nehmen, hat uns nicht den Schutz vererben können, unter dem er selbst die neue Bindung vollzog.”1 According to Rosenzweig, Mendelssohn was a groundbreaking figure. He was the first German Jew who could exist as both German and Jew; he could inhabit two identities—or, more precisely, he represented the harmonious synthesis of these two modes of identification. But even as it recognizes Mendelssohn as the prototypical German Jew, Rosenzweig’s text also hints at a crisis lurking behind this synthesis. For Rosenzweig, 1 Franz Rosenzweig, “Vorspruch zu einer Mendelssohnfeier,” Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, ed. Reinhold Mayer and Annemarie Mayer (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979) 457. Mendelssohn walked a tightrope between two realms, and the text suggests that Mendelssohn’s act of bridging these realms—his reconciliation of European and Jewish identities—was tenuous at best. Nevertheless, for many of his Jewish and non-Jewish contemporaries, and for the generations of German-speaking Jews who followed him, the eighteenth-century philosopher represented an inaugural figure, who straddled the boundaries between traditional Judaism and modern innovations—and between Jewish and non-Jewish European cultures more broadly. Rosenzweig’s turn to Mendelssohn should thus come as no surprise. And yet, in looking back at Mendelssohn from his standpoint in Weimar era Germany, Rosenzweig projects a modern quality of German specificity onto Mendelssohn’s broad engagement with non-Jewish European culture. Even if he engaged with German culture and the German language, the idea of Germanness would not yet have been a concern for Mendelssohn and his peers. This projection and the epic (and nearly hyperbolic) dimensions with which Rosenzweig endows the image of Mendelssohn in his text call for a closer examination of the nature of Mendelssohn’s role in shaping European and Jewish culture. Mendelssohn was a leading figure not only in the

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