Volume XXXIII No. 9 September, 1978 INFORMATION ISSUED BY THE AssooATm OF xmn nffueas m SREAT nmm ''^f*n Larsen company of Catholics, Protestants, and Teu­ tonic atheists." So what, one is tempted to ask. But his essay on Freud is fortunately free from MASTERS AND VICTIMS such deviations. Jews and Germans Between Wilhelm and Weimar "It was not easy to be a Jew in imperial Austria", writes Gay, "especially a Jew with I knew Peter Gay from his book "Weimar question had no reality in isolation. It was aspirations. In Vienna, especially at the end Wture", published ten years ago—very good, part of, and clue to, that larger question, the of the century, antisemitism was more than onsidering that he must have been much too German question". the confused broodings of psychopaths; it •jOung to have experienced that period himself. pervaded and poisoned student organisations, " a footnote in his new work, "Freud, Jews The Problem of Assimilation university politics, social relationships, medical ,•"• Other Germans : Masters and Victims in This, I think, needed to be said, even if opinions. To be the destroyer of human illu­ P^^ernist Culture" (Oxford University Press, 50 or more years too late. No less valid are sions, as Freud was by intention and by ^oypp., £5-50) he says that his father ran a Gay's ideas about assimilation. For the Ger­ results, was to make oneself into a special lint- ^ agency for crystal and china in Berlin man Jews, he argues, it was not a theoretical target of the antisemite. 'Be assured,' Freud is tK ^^^^ ^^^ *""^ ^^^ period of his studies but a practical matter. "German Jews", he wrote in the summer of 1908 to his brilliant the 60 years between Wilhelm and Weimar, writes, "thought and acted like Germans. The disciple, Karl Abraham, 'if my name were jfoii the Gmenderjahre to Hitler. Peter Gay defence organisation they founded in 1893. Oberhuber, my innovations would have en­ p novv^ after a distinguished academic career, the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbiirger countered far less resistance. ..." Yet Freud j^roiessor of Histor>- at Yale University and jiidischen Glaubens, proclaims, with its ver>' persisted, both in doing psychoanalytic work „^ present book is a collection of long essays name, a sturdy confidence in the prospects of and in calling himself a Jew. There is, in this Jst published by the Leo Baeck Institute, assimilation : it was an organised body of loyalty, a kind of defiance. Freud was the "^ Times Literary Supplement, and in German citizens of the Jewish faith, brought opposite of religious; his view of religion as "^r places and periodicals. together by outside pressures, but made up un illusion akin to neurosis appUed to the , ^nybody interested in Central European of Jews proud of their citizenship and no faith of his fathers as much as to any other. 'Story from the last third of the nineteenth longer afraid to profess their religious He granted the existence of some mysterious adherence in public". bonds that tied him to Judaism, and he attri­ entury to the first third of the twentieth buted his objectivity and his willingness to be ntury will find these essays riveting and full They were encoiuraged, even before the in a minority at least partly to his Jewish ... lood for thought, to a large extent on the turn of the century, in their attitude to Ger­ origins. But there was another element in j.^f'^ble question", as he calls it: how could many's cultural life : "Indeed, Germany's Jews this equation.'My merit in the Jewish cause', J have happened ? He looks at it from the made themselves into guardians of the German he wrote in 1926, 'is confined to one single Wish point of view, but he also searches cultural tradition . they joined Gentile point: that I have never denied my Jewish­ ^. "^ ?lues in the general continuity — or dis- guardians in keeping watch and crying alarm". ness'. To deny it would have been senseless "tinuity—of German history and cultural Gay recalls Theodor Fontane's surprise when and, as he also said, undignified. The Jewish "*Ielopment. his old chosen companions, the Prussian aristo­ bond he felt was the recognition of a common to tk ^^ ^"'"^ *° define, in his introduction crats, forgot his 75th birthday in 1894—but fate in a hostUe world'". the essays, the nature of antisemitism, its his Jewish admirers did not. He wrote a little ant^'^ in the Wilhelminian era: "German poem about it, which was quite famous at the Yet in an interview he gave in tbe same 5j '^^niitism is a cluster of behaviours with a time : year the Moravia-bom, Viennese Jew Freud . 8le name. It ranges from social snobbery Was sollcn mir da noch die Itzenplitze! insisted : "My language is German. My ciUture, som '^'""S'^i^ine for systematic extermination : Jedem bin ich vvas gewesen, my attainments are German. I considered my­ ^^ of its carriers would merely stop short Alle haben sie mich gelesen. self German intellectually until I noticed the fjj^^lcoming a Jew to their families or their Alle kannten mich lange schon, growth of antisemitic prejudice in Germany and German Austria. Since that time, I prefer fro•ro; *' *^^^^ others would exclude all Jews Und das ist die Hauptsache . "Kommen Unn'* *^*^ human race. The identity of the Jew Sie, Cohn!" to call myself a Jew". to t'^ attack varied from place to place, time StUl, even Fontane had "reserves of Jew- Germany, says Gay, "has often rejected the Q time, purpose to purpose: in imperial hatred in him" and wrote, not long after that best that is in her". Ironically, her Jews had \, '^''^any, many antisemites concentrated their afTectionate poem, that he could not see any been "woven into the very texture of German Wliii*''^ on immigrant East European Jews, benign solution to the "Jewish question" in culture" in WUhelminian times; the country 'Hel ."^'^^'^ professed to see in every Jew, the German future: "It would have been "dyed its Jews through and through, and they Unn ^"^ the most completely assimilated, better if the attempt at assimilation had not wore its colours—black, white, red—without a^.*!^latable characteristics. Many found been made". Physical assimilation, he thought, apology, in fact with pride. It was not protec­ Qj 'Semitic arguments persuasive only in times might be possible, but "spiritual assimilation" tive colouring, but their own. Or so they h social dislocation or economic miserj'. never. This, says Gay, was an appalling docu­ thought'. This was, says Gay, German-Jewish Qj^.'*^al antisemites saw Jews as a bulwark of ment, and it was just as well for the peace self-perception in that era; one might caU it i^'^'talism; liberal antisemites saw them mired of mind of the German Jews that it remained rather self-deception, and the price to be paid sg tribal exclusiveness; conservative anti- unpublished for decades. was terrible, even among those who escaped tjg^\tes saw them as rootless people bereft of the Holocaust. Gay lists some of the suicides : cg^'tition. ... It follows that nineteenth- Freud, the German and Jew Kurt Tucholsky, Erast ToUer, Erast Weiss, 5 Pal German antisemitism, however un- To my mind. Gay derails his train of thought Walter Hasenclever, Walter Benjamin, Carl ;^j.?'table even at the time, however pregnant occasionally, and unnecessarily, by throwing Einstein, Stefan Zweig, Alfred Wolfenstein. rs frofri ^ terrifying future, was different in kind the obstacle of his favourite philosophical con­ But "were not the roots of the murderous ^ "1 the twentieth-century variety. Ger- cept in its way: "modernism". The modernist. disease that killed them well exposed half a CQ^y's Jews, then, had to navigate among he explains, hates everything modem, from century before "? iiicting, often Ijewildering social signals, machines to mass culture; and he divides, for Peter Gay calls his essays "first attempts at seiv ^^^^J') ^^^ sood reason to feel them- instance, Jewish writers of the 1920s according doing some of the work still required". The jg/^^s, or aspire to feel themselves, to be to this odd scheme : "Wassermann, who was a German cultural historian still has much to l.W» Jewish Germans. They indignantly rejected all good Jew, was not a modernist; Stemheim, do. "That so much should stUl remain undone", pj-Z^9^ 3 'Jewish question' as a survival of who was a modernist, was not a good Jew; and he concludes, "is perfectly understandable: ratof "iitive politics. In retrospect we know that Lasker-Schiiler, who was both modernist and German questions, it would appear, are not irs • they were right: the so-called Jewish Jew, made her mark in expressionism in the German questions alone". Page 2 AJR INFORMATION September 19''B NEWS FROM GERMANY TAX EXEMPTIONS FOR CERTAIN GERMAN PENSIONS BEER HALL FIGHT WITH NEO-NAZIS GERMANS EXPECT ISRAEL TO WIN AGAIN In our issue of October 1977 (page 9) we More than one hundred members of the In a public opinion poll, a representative National Socialist "Action Front" from the cross-section of the West German and West reported that West German Social Insurance whole of the Federal Republic attended the Berlin public was asked whether it believed benefits paid under Section 99 (replacing the first national Hitler Memorial Meeting in Lent- if "in the long run, Israel wUl maintain its former Section 100/101) of the "Angestellten- fohrden (Schleswig-Holstein) to unveU a Hit­ ground against the Arabs" or whether "the versicherungsgesetz" (AVG) or under Section ler Memorial Plaque. A simUar meeting in Arabs wUl one day be the winners." 40 per 1320 (replacing the former Sections 1321/ Hamburg had been banned. The neo-Nazis, cent declined to eomment, another 40 per 1322) of the "Reichsversicherungsordnung" dressed in black shirts, boots and helmets, cent thought that Israel could hold its ground (RVO) would be regarded as not liable to engaged in a battle with the small group of and 20 per cent said that the Arabs would income tax as from AprU 4, 1977 and this local policemen who were supposed to prevent win eventually.