5TACK
ANMtlX
(REPRINTED FROM THE "JEWISH EXPONENT")
THE
JEW IN GERMAN
LITERATURE
AN ESSAY
BY ALBERT M. FRIEDENBERG
Author of " Zionist Studies," etc.
PHILADELPHIA
1907
NOTE
This is a revision and ampli-
fication of my earlier studies :
" Two Mediaeval Jewish Poets,"
and "The Jews as German
Men of Letters," — published in
'Jlie Jewish Exponent in 1905.
-A. M. F.
THE JEW IN GERMAN
By AIiBERT
I.
It is the purpose of the present essay
to show what the Jews, regardless of
their fidelity to or their desertion from
the faith of their fathers, have done
for German culture, what are the value
and the extent of their contributions
to German literature, what new ideas
the Jews introduced by reason of their
racial peculiarities into German life,
and, finally, to how great a degree they
were influenced by the spirit of their
times.
Apart from the main purpose, but
subsidiary to it, in the course of these
remarks it will be necessary to con-
sider the figure of the Jew in the
works of some of the German poets,
dramatists and novelists.
This study, in a measure, will reveal
the Jewish literary attitude toward
life. The Jewish men of letters lived
primarily in the traditions of their glo-
rious past, and sought to harmonize th«
spirit of Judaea with that of Greece.
Their success in authorship depended
upon the union in their writings of
these divergent forces. The Jewish
element was more or less subtilely rep-
resented in their traditions and ancient
history, and the lineal descendants of
the old Hellenic strain were theGerman
language and culture, which were plas-
tic media to make their personalities
dominant in German life and thought.
Heine, in his book on Ludwig Boerne,
has commented upon this connection
between Judaea and Hellas, and Mat-
thew Arnold, following Heine, has dis-
cussed the subject in some detail.
II.
When Titus destroyed the Temple at
Jerusalem and with this stroke institut-
ed the Diaspora, the Jew lost his fath-
erland and became a wandering stran-
ger.
Up to the year 1000 of the present
era few Jews dwelt in Germany, al-
though as early as the year 400 some
had settled at Cologne. Most Jews—
and the Graeco-Ronian rhetor, Caecil-
ius, of Calacte, may be mentioned as
one of their men of letters — lived in
the south of Europe. And even when
the German Jews had grown strong in
numbers. many year's had to pass before
their rabbis and the leaders of thought
and learning among them grasped Ger-
man notions and ideas — had. in a word,
become thoroughly acclimated — and
could take tip sensibly their share of
the burden of German culture.
No Jews, it may safely be said, took
part in the development of the Old High
German literature, and the period end-
ing in the massacres of 1096, when the
Jews under the bishops of the Rhine-
land lived tolerably free from persecu-
tion, was one of preparation. Shortly
thereafter, however, two representa-
tives of the German Jews helped, in a
small degree, to enrich Middle High
German literature with some of its best
poetry.
It seems strange, indeed, to find their
work in the body of the writings of the
German Minnesingers, for the spirit of
the Semite finds its expression in
gloomy moodiness. and in the direct ap-
peal to the mind. Of the sweetness and
the pain of love, of summer and its
pleasures, of winter and its terrors, of
all, in short, of which the Minnesinger
sang, the Jewish poet did not breathe
one word.
Of the poetry of Suesskind, the Jew
of Trimberg, some two hundred lines
are extant. They are preserved in the
famous Ruediger of Manesse MS.,
which now reposes in Heidelberg,
where the poet is pictured standing be-
fore the lord of the land, a Jew's cap
on his head, in the act of recitation.
He had learned the poet's art from the
greatest of the Minnesingers — Walther.
of the Vogelweide.
The Minnesingers were, as a rule, tol-
erant and humane. Wolfram, of Esch-
enbach, based his "Parzival" on the
idea of the brotherhood of man, and
Walther himself declared that Jews.
Christians and Mohammedans were
children of the one God.
Suesskind lived in the early part of
the thirteenth century. Whether he
was a physician of means (judaeus
Suzkint is mentioned in a deed dated
1218, which runs to the Lepers' Hos-
pital at Wurzburg), or a poor, wander-
ing bard, the father of a family, or a
bachelor, may be left in the realm of
conjecture.
The year 1221 was the turning point
of his life. Hitherto he had probably
moved from court to court, performing
feats of minstrelsy. Now, the laws
against the Jews, promulgated by the
fourth Lateran Council of the Church
(1215) were strictly enforced, and Suess-
kind, as a German Jew, was compelled
to live apart, wear the conical cap and
forsake poetry.
In his verse Suesskind emphasized
the vanity of human wishes, and spoke
of death and immortality. Rich and
poor ought to love, not hate, each other,
and the crown of a man's life resides
in a loving spouse. The best electuary
for a life of virtue was made of five
pigments or elements— fidelity, gener-
osity, strength, discipline and above all
209774
moderation in desires. He writes, too,
of the glory of God:
"Almighty God! That shinest with the SUP
That slumb'rest not when day grows into
night!
Thou source of all. of tranquil peace and 1oy!
Thou King of Glory and Majestic Light!
Thou all-good Father! Golden rays of day
And starry hosts Thy praise to sing unite.
Creator of heav'n and earth. Eternal One,
That watchest ev'ry creature from Thv
height!"
More than a century after the death
(1220) of Wolfram, of Eschenbach, two
German poets, Clans Wisse and Philipp
Colin, a goldsmith, of Strassburg, de-
termined to add a German translation
of "Percheval," the French version of
the legend of the "Knight of the Grail"
to Wolfram's "Parzival." In this work,
completed in 1336, they had the assist-
ance of Samson Pine, an Alsatian Jew.
The name Pine is derived from Peine,
a city near Brunswick. Samson was
perfectly familiar with the languages,
manners and thought of both France
and Germany, and actively assisted the
ipoets in their work. In their MS. he
is mentioned by his name, and spoken
of as a Jew. The completed poem is
immoderately long, Wolfram's portion
taking up only one-half.*
III.
Curiously enough, from the times of
Suesskind and Samson Pine to the mid-
dle of the eighteenth century, no Jew
wrote in the language of contempora-
neous literary Germany.
Johannes Pauli (1455-1530), it is true,
published "Jest and Earnest." a collec-
tion of short moral fables, in the early
New High German language, in 1522,
but he, although a Jew by birth, was
converted to Christianity as a youth
and became a Franciscan monk. Pauli's
book, in which the Jews are pictured
as observant Sabbatarians and vile
desecrators of the host, became exceed-
ingly popular and passed rapidly
through thirty editions. But he is by
no means an important writer, his vio-
lent anti-Jewish bias rendering him an
unsafe leader.
During the period of which we are
writing the Jews lived in Germany,
but were almost insufferably persecuted
and oppressed and had no opportunity
to engage in literary labors. They were
continually harassed by both opposing
forces in the religious wars and the
struggles of the peasants. The cultured
Germans, as a rule, treated the Jews
as beneath their notice.
Thus, in a broadside published at
Munich early in the sixteenth century
we are told:
"Trust these not! Beware!
If you meet wolf on meadow,
• Jew who takes an oath.
Dealer with a conscience —
You'll be fooled by all."
The literature of these centuries is
strongly anti-Jewish in tendency. Rab-
*Prof. Ludwig Geiger is the author of .in
Interesting study. "The Jews and Qernuan
Literature." in Frankel's Monthly ("M. (! \V.
.T."). of P.rslnu (v. 1.. p. ::.">! if., p. 42fi ft".,
1006: note The Ann-ricMii Hebrew. December
7. It'Ofi. up. f>. 0. I'rnf fJeiger criticises the
recent "Suesskind-appreciations."
binical disputations, passion plays in
which the representative of the Church
made the prophets of the Old Testa-
ment witnesses for Jesus, caricatures,
farces with absurd Jewish characters,
and the terrible blood accusations were
used to discredit the Jews and fan the
flames of superstition, and anti-Jewish
rage. Sebastian Brant ridiculed them
in his "Ship of Fools," and D. Meiss-
ner, in his "Political Treasure Casket"
(1624), declared that the Jew cheats in-
variably.
Hmis Folz, the barber-surgeon of
Nuremberg, is rather an important fig-
ure in early modern German literature,
and in several of his Shrove Tuesday
plays there are Jewish characters.
Folz had a reminiscent knowledge of
Hebrew and his corrupt rendering of
"Adon Olam," which he calls " the
Jewish morning prayer," reads as fol-
lows.
"Adan holana ascher moloch pethorem.
Roll Jhezir niffra bohot nathasa be
Heflzo Kol asani rneloch schemouikrah."
In his "Play of the Emperor Constan-
tine," where the Jews are represented
by a number of persons in the cast, and
not merely by the archisynagogus, a di-
vine court sits in judgment. The Jew
declares his God alone is the true God.
since all who pronounce His name
must die. He proves the assertion by
means of an ox, whom the Christian,
however, restores to life by mentioning
the name of Jesus. And, as is quite
customary, the play ends with the bap-
tism of the Jew. In Judaeo-German
poetry Josel Witzenhauseii, who wrote
on King Arthur and the knights of the
Round Table, was of some importance.
Martin Luther, in producing his
translation of the Bible into German,
came strongly under the influence of
the spirit of the Old Testament, and,
indeed, through Nicholas de Lyra, of
Ilashi, the exegete. In his work, "The
Proof that Jesus Was a Born Jew"
(1523) Luther criticized the popes and
the priests for not treating the Jews as
men. Twenty years later he had
changed front completely, for in "Con-
cerning the Jews and Their Lies" (1543)
an observant Jew is said to be the bit-
terest, most vehement enemy of the
Christian.
This was the dark age in the history
of the Jews in Germany; their mere
numbers were not large, and they stood
entirely without the sphere of influence
of German culture. Still, in this period
the speech of the German Jew, so far
as grammar and diction were con-
cerned, was most closely akin to that
of the German Christian. Gerhart
Hnuptmann has preserved this fact for
us. In the original version of his
"Florian Geyer," a drama of the times
of the Schmalcaldian wars, the Jew
speaks the same language as every
other member of the German Peasants'
Union.
A few Ghettoes, where the majority
of the Jews lived, were already in ex-
In the Ghetto of Frankfort-
on-the-Main the inhabitants were sub-
jected to arbitrary imposts and taxes.
to say nothing of actual physical op-
pression. Gryphius, in his "Horribili-
cribrifax." and Grimmelshausen, who
like Hans Folx, knew something of
Jewish literature, in his "Simplicissi-
nius.'' while opposed to the Jews on
principle, pictured most vividly their
unfortunate condition. So, too, Folz
spoke of the wretched, universally de-
spised Jewish usurer in "The Account
of Ruprecht Kolperger."
From the Black Death (1350) to the
close of the Thirty Years' War (1648)
the Jews of Germany were immigrat-
ing into Poland, their haven of refuge,
lying east of the river Vistula. During
this period hundreds of Jews suffered
martyrdom as poisoners of the wells,
recalcitrant usurers, unconscionable
heretics and thieving rogues. In hordes
they left the country. The ravages of
the murderous Croats in the campaigns
of Tilly and Wallenstein and Gus,tavus
Adolphus, during the Thirty Years'
War. so reduced the Jewish populations
in the towns — in the open country no
Jew was permitted to dwell— that the
survivors were happy if they could
lice with their lives.
The Jews who up to the thirteenth
century had engaged in all branches of
commerce, were looked upon as their
natural enemies by the rough soldiery.
As has been said, they had become the
money lenders of the people. In the
sixteenth century the Jewish usurer
was already a well-known figure in
German literature. In the "Descrip-
tive Book of All Classes of the Nation"
(1568) he is thus made to describe him-
self:
"Indeed I am a Jew.
I pay but half of what Is borrowed.
And if the loans are not redeemed In time,
I get all there Is to be gotten.
Thus I punish the mob— the merry gluttons.
And my trade does not decrease,
For like me are many of my brethren."
The Jews were repressed by the
popes and the emperors; they were shut
up within narrow Ghettoes and could
engage only in changing money and
dealing in clothing. The few who re-
mained in Germany practised usury — a
fact to which they owed their uninter-
rupted existence in the land. But this
occupation doubled their unpopularity
with the people, for the mediaeval and
early modern view of usury made the
payment of any sum of money as in-
terest on a loan an illegal act.
When the Jews first entered Poland
they could speak only Middle or New
High German. They were bound by
the strongest ties of attachment to the
country from "which they had been
driven, and never wholly gave up the
use of the German language. They
had. even at this comparatively early
period, become thoroughly assimilated
with the Germans and intimately as-
sociated their own destinies with the
fortunes of the Teutons. In time, of
course, the German substratum of their
•sl 'h I'ixl to bear many a strange ac-
cretion, both of Hebrew and of Slavon-
ic, and finally its character was com-
pletely changed. No longer German
pure and undefiled. it had become Ju-
da co-German and was written with He-
brew letters. Its basis was the Middle
German dialect of Middle High Ger-
man.
While the majority of German Jews
lived in Poland, the dawn of the eight-
eenth century ushered in an era of
tranquility for Germany. The people
were worn out by long years of strife,
and peacefully submitted to the des-
potic rule of hundreds of petty prince-
lings. In Poland, on the other hand,
Chmielnicki and his Cossacks had in-
augurated a Ions series of terrifying
anti-Jewish persecutions. Accordingly,
many Jews returned to Germany, to
the land which they -had forsaken only
when all seemed lost there. The golden
age of toleration, existing at their first
entry— one thousand years before— had
passed away. They were still the
clothing dealers, the usurers, the inhab-
itants of the Ghettoes (at Breslau and
Frankfort-on-the-Main, for example),
now and again subjected to cruel perse-
cutions and enormous burdens of spe-
cial taxes, and continually repressed
by intolerable anti-Jewish statutes and
edicts.
IV.
At this time German literature, as
such, scarcely existed; writers slavish-
ly fashioned their works after French
models, and the stream of original in-
spiration had almost ceased to flow.
Hence the German Jews had. on their
return to Germany, no national culture
of a distinct type to reacquire. The
Luther of an earlier day, who changed
a shifting dialect into a national
tongue, was now succeeded by an Opitz,
whose services to the literature of Ger-
many were purely philological and who
purged the language of its enormous
quantities of foreign words. Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing was the greatest Ger-
man writer of the day, and the pioneer
of those who rendered justice to the
Jew as man and as German. "The
Jews," his early philo-Semltic play,
was the first of its kind in German lit-
erature.
Lessing's friend and contemporary,
and the intellectual, literary and relig-
ious leader of his people, was Moses
Mendelssohn. He was a man of ex-
alted ideals, and in "Nathan the Wise"
Lessing raised his life and his views
into the standard for all Jews.
Mendelssohn began to acquire fluen-
cy and grace, and with these came
fame, as a German writer when with
Nicola i at Leipzig (1757) he published
the "Library of the Fine Arts and the
Liberal Sciences." His style as a writ-
er was above criticism and although
this is not the place to discuss his work
as a philosopher and religious reformer,
his "Phaedon. or the Immortality of
the Soul," and "Jerusalem, or the
Power of Religion and Judaism," by
their literary excellence, put his co-
religionists, almost at one stroke, ID
complete touch with German culture.
For with them his influence was bound
less, and to the German men of letters
he represented the Jews as a whole.
So, when the poet Gleim wrote to the
Swiss writer, Johanu Peter Uz, that he
derived much instruction and pleasure
from reading Mendelssohn's essays,
and when Lessing mentioned Mendels-
sohn as his friend by way of contrast
to pastor Goeze, his arch enemy, it was
as if the Jews of Germany, from be-
ing hated and despised, had come to
take their due part in the intellectual
life of the nation.
Of the Jewish contemporaries of
Mendelssohn, two minor poets may be
mentioned. Issachar Falkensohu Behr,
a native of Courland, in Russia, wrote
"Poems by a Polish Jew" (1772), which
Goethe reviewed in the Frankfort
Scientific Review for that year. Even
for a Jew, Behr had a remarkably
subjective temperament; he felt it
keenly that the Jews were scarcely
tolerated by the Germans, and that
they had no legal rights or social posi-
tion. Hence his poems express the
woe of a sensitive Jewish soul. Goethe
in his critical notice of the book spoke
favorably of Behr's rhyming powers.
but commented adversely on the use of
"Jew" in the title. It tended to em-
phasize a religious distinction between
this poet and his fellows which spirit-
ually did not exist.
Ephraim Moses Kuh's "Epigrams,''
of slight worth as poetry, were pre-
served with their author for posterity
in Berthold Auerbach's "Poet and Mer-
chant" (1840), a tale of Jewish life in
the time of Moses Mendelssohn, which
shows us the gulf separating Judaism
from Chritianity.
V.
Moses Mendelssohn, while both a
German and a Jew, never failed to
keep his Jewish obligations. He lived
and died as a Jew. But his descend-
ants, even his own children after his
death, forsook the faith of their fath-
ers.
At the commencement of the nine-
teenth century many "enlightened"
Jewesses had literary aspirations. Dor-
othea, the daughter of Mendelssohn,
married Friedrich Schlegel, the writer,
and Rahel Levin, wife of Varnhagen
von Ense, founded a "salon," the meet-
ing place of those who sought fame
in art or literature. Their literary pro-
ductions were of very slight value, and
consisted of subjective poems, impres-
sionistic novels, morbid romances
where no attempt at the delineation or
the psychological analysis of charac-
ters was made, and incoherent auto-
biographies where Goethe's "Truth and
Fiction" and "Werther" were followed.
Though these women of letters were
a force for evil in Judaism, yet they
profoundly influenced the young Ger-
man Jewish writers. Henriette Herz
encouraged Ludwig Boerne to discuss
the political, sociological and economic
problems of the Jews of his native
Frankt'ort-on-the-Main in a series of
brilliant essays. Heine's "Rabbi of
Bacharach" was the immediate out-
come of his activity as a director of the
Society for the Science of Judaism in
Berlin, when he was the devoted dis-
ciple of Rahel Levin. Her influence,
moreover, stimulated him to write his
closet play, "Almansor." Sessa's "Our
Trade" is an anti-Jewish dramatic
piece of the day. The customs of the
Jews and their assimilativeness are
held up to ridicule, and the names of
the characters in the play describe
Jewish foibles. Thus, Simon Ox is a
cattle dealer; Isidorus Oriental, a stu-
dent, and Loebl Pennygrabber, a col-
lector.
At the end of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century the intellectual ele-
ment among the German Jews had
come quite fully under the influence of
the notions first advanced by Mendels-
sohn's over-zealous followers. They
were primarily Germans, and Jews
only in a secondary sense. In the field
of letters, too, these ideas found wide
acceptance. Jewish writers aimed to
be Germans in their thought and rarely
wrote on topics of a Jewish nature.
Karl Spiudler's "The Jew" (1827), an
historical novel of the Council of Con-
stance, held in the first half of the fif-
teenth century, is one of a few excep-
tions which enforce the validity of this
rule. Of course, only a small number
of Jews wrote literary German, and
then, as in Heine's "Book of Songs."
gave no prominence to the Jews or
their religion in their books.
VI.
We find that nearly all that is Jew-
ish in the German literature of the
early nineteenth century is contained
in the writings and personalities of
Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Boerne.
They regarded German culture in much
the same spirit as the knight in the
days of chivalry looked upon his lady
love — the blessed vision hallowing and
protecting his adventurous soul— for
whom he died willingly. Heine and
Boerne had slight sympathy with the
German Jews, however, and their dis-
paraging criticism is reflected in the
anti-Jewish leanings of "Suess the
Jew," a tale by Wilhelm Hauff, and
in the works of other writers. Hauff's
prejudiced account of the Jews of Born-
heim, near Frankfort, whom he da-
scribed as avaricious, ignorant and
fond of display, is directly traceable to
Boerne's influence.
At first Heine and Boerne, the second
of whom excelled mostly in polemical
discussions, were looked upon with se-
vere displeasure by German writers,
and this because of their Jewish ori-
gin. Karl Gutzkow was the first Chris-
turn author to undertake their defense.
A student of their writings, the author
of "Uriel Acosta," the Jewish drama
of German literature, acquired habits
of toleration for them.
Yet around Heine and his works a
storm of controversy has continually
raged. Adolf Bartels convicts him to
his own satisfaction of every crime a
man of letters can commit; Wiesinger,
a recent critic, is fairer to his memory,
but finds Heine lacking the ideal in-
spiration of a Messianic leader like
Theodor Herzl. He regards Heine,
however, as the creator of the Ghetto
novel in German fiction.
Boerne did not possess Heine's pow-
ers of imagination, poetic description
and stinging satire. The wounds which
he inflicted have hence had time to heal
completely.
As a German author Heine was
neither philo-Jewish nor anti-Jewish in
his sentiments. He did not concern
himself with speculations on the future
of the Jews; he considered the Jewish
people to be simply a factor— an im-
portant one, it is true— in human de-
velopment. Georg Brandos says oi'
him: "In Germany he is looked on
and judged as the stinging nettle in the
garden of literature; he stings the his-
torians' fingers and they curse him."
Heine was profoundly influenced by
his mother. Although brought up in
an observing Jewish home, he did not
feel himself bound by any exacting cer-
emonial system, and looked with equal
interest and satisfaction on his Jewish
and his Christian environment. In
common with many German Jews, he
was an ardent admirer of Napoleon.
the great leveler of class distinctions;
his friends and teachers were all men
of a different faith from his own. He
achieved finally so great a degree of
objectivity that he declared proudly:
"I am a Jew; I am a Christian!"
Heine was extremely cynical. The
battle of his life was long-drawn and
severe, and for eight weary years he
was buried in a mattress-grave. He
was vacillating in his point of view,
and never accorded consistent treat-
ment to any subject which he touched
on often in his writings. From his
perverse love of contrariety for its own
sake he was one day a Jew, the next a
Hellene, now a German, and again an
enemy of the Fatherland. To Boerne
Judaism was one of many religions of
equal worth: the Jews were "that bit
of the Occident transplanted to the
Orient." In the end he became thor-
oughly identified with the German pa-
triotic cause.
VII.
The Ghetto novelists, who took, the
lead among German Jewish authors
toward the middle of the nineteenth
century, did not share Heine's and
Boerne's views of Judaism and the
Jews. They decided to be both Jews
and Germans, liberal in their political
notions, yet not favorably inclined to
Socialistic propaganda. Their views
and thoughts were, in short, those of
the average German of the time, al-
though their Jewish affiliations were
.strong and sincere. After the revo-
lutions of March, 1848, which opened
the door of religious, political, and,
for a time at least, social equality to
Jews in the countries of Europe, the
German Jews were able to take up
the active work of spreading German
culture and ideals, and wholly to do
away with the distinctions existing
between them and the Germans.
To achieve this, result in part the
Ghetto novels were written. Their
readers saw that much of the humor
and the pathos of life were pros-jut
in the isolated world of the Ghetto,
and that, after all, the dwellers in the
Jewish quarter of the towns and vil-
lages were like other men, possess-
ing the same virtues and evincing the
same faults as the Christians. Thus,
Leopold Kompert, Moritz Hartmann,
Ludwig August Frankl and the au-
thors of "Sippurim" wrote of the Bo-
hemian Ghetto, Salomon Kohn, B.
Auerbach, Em. Emil and Michael
Klapp of that of Prague; Hieronymus
Lorin, Eduard Kulke, Emauuel Bondi
and J. S. Tauber told the story of the
Jews of Moravia, and Karl Isidor
Beck and S. P. Rosner were the poets
of Hungarian Jewry. Karl Emil
Franzos, Nathan Samuely and Leopold
von Sacher-Masoch, a Christian, wrote
of "Half-Asia," the Ghettoes of Ga-
licia, while Leo Herzberg-Fraenkel
and the Gentile Eliza P. Orzeszko
described the Jews of Poland. J.
Herzberg and Aron David Bernstein
wrote some interesting tales (the lat-
ter's "Voegele the Maggid" is to be
particularly noted) of Posen, and
David Houigmann ("Berel Grenadier,"
a tale of the seven years' war of
Frederick the Great), and Ulrich
Frank (Ulla Wolff) of Silesia. Be-
sides Heine and Boerne, whose "Novel"
is a tale of the Jew's love of the
Christian maiden, only B. Hause, Sal-
omon Hermann Mosenthal and the
Christian authors. Annette von Droste-
Huelshoff ("The Jewish Beech," a tale
of the Westphaliau Ghetto), and Wil-
heliii Jensen ("The Jews of Cologne,"
an historical romance of the massa-
cres of 1096), wrote of the Jews of
modern Germany. But all of these
writers were Germans in their ideals
and outlook on life.
The first Ghetto novel in point of
time was Heinrich Heine's "The Rabbi
of Bacharach." Here we are present-
ed with an intimate, yet inimitable
picture of mediaeval German Jewish
life. The scenes at the ancient Pass-
over table are described so faithfully
that this portion of the book is ex-
tremely valuable for the study of the
religious customs of the Jews. Heine
pictured the constant oppression of the
Jews by the Christians, of whom they
stood in fear; their half-ludicrous, half-
pathetic terror of the savage soldiery
is carefully set forth.
The book consists of three chapters,
the first and second written in 1821
and 1825, the last in 1839. It is my.
belief that Heine consciously gave the
story this fragmentary character, for
he had. in the first place, said all that
he could .say on the subject, and sec-
ondly, as a novel the book lacked
dramatic action.
Berthold Auerbach. under the in-
fluence of Bitzius, first made the Ger-
man village tale a notably successful
form of literary, endeavor. His
"Black Forest Village Stories" (1843
and subsequently) combines poetry
Avith prosaic details of real life. Auer-
bach shows us the true conditions in
the peasant life of the South German
Black Forest. Here, and in "On the
Heights" he opposes to the unnatural
and artificial in both Church and
State the simple Christian life of the
quiet country side, so complete was
his assimilation with German culture
and patriotic ideals. At the outset of
his literary career Auerbach wrote a
review entitled "Judaism and the
Newest Literature." His novel "Spi-
noza," a romance woven about the
lire of the great Dutch Jew, although
valuable as a study in psychological
analysis, dealt too much with the
conflict between reason and super-
stition. The story contains a love-
episode, but Spinoza's long speeches,
in which he sets forth the principles
of his system of philosophy, are very
discursive and excessively unromantic.
Toward the close of his life, and until
the attacks of the anti-Semites put an
end to his remarkable literary pro-
ductivity, Auerbach worked on a Jew-
ish novel, to be called "Ben Ziou,"
which was to indicate the identity of
purpose and the common origin of
both the Jewish and the German cul-
ture. His self-imposed task still re-
mains to be done!
•aalomon Hermann Mosenthal's Ghet-
to novels are brief, but well written,
full of the quaint and charming de-
tails of South German Jewish life,
seventy-five years ago, and deftly
mingling humor and pathos. We shall
summarize in part the stories which
make up his "Tales of Jewish Family
Life," for they are typical products of
the pens of the Ghetto novelists. Yet,
Mosenthal had nothing of the bitter-
ness of Franzos; he did not offer so-
ciological studies to his readers like
Herzberg-Frat'iikel, or propound prob-
lems in Jewish education like Koin-
pert.
In "Aunt Guttraud" he tells the
story of a poor woman, one of the
silent martyrs of private life. Her
marriage to a besotted Alsatian Jew,
in the days of King Jerome Bonaparte,
I> roved disastrous. Not only iid her
husband make life a burden to her,
but he lost his business and her mon-
ey, and finally became the loader of a
gang of smugglers. On his capture
and sentence to the pillory his Jewish
fellow-townsmen feared that his dis-
grace would seriously endanger their
position in the little community on
the river Fulda.
When the husband was strapped in
the pillory, Aunt Guttraud, for the
title of the story is derived from the
name of the heroine, stood by his side,
deliberately exposing herself to the in-
sults of the mob. But it kept silence,
recognizing in her presence that the
despised Jews possessed more than
their share of the elementary domestic
virtues. The priest passing before her
doffed his hat to her — she represented
the supreme sufferer of his own faith.
Ever her husband's willing slave she
was true to him in the long years of
his imprisonment, and tenderly nursed
the incurable invalid when he return-
ed home to die. "Raaf's Mine" is the
sad story of the self-sacrificing Mine,
who grew old in caring for others'
children. The brilliant daughter of a
famous and learned rabbi (Raaf), she
never married, but became the mother
of all the orphans in the little Hessian
community. Mosenthal rose to his
highest flights of fancy and genius in
this touching study of an idealized
altruism.
Mosenthal embodied many of the
reminiscences of his own youth in the
tale ot the maiden who agreed to mar-
ry her aged suitor, simply because her
father willed it. And he was always
at particular pains to emphasize the
Jew's high sense of duty and filial
respect.
Hermann Schiff, in his stories of
North German Jewish life, and Rom-
peri gave us splendid pictures of tho
Jewish mother, the faithful house-wife
of the Ghetto. Wilhelm Herzberg's
"Jewisn Family Papers" was trans-
lated into English by the Rev. F. de
Sola Mcndes. and Hieronymus Lorm's
rather fanciful "Gabriel Solmar," the
story of the lad who gained his heart's
case only within Ghetto walls, mini-
mized the influence of the Christian
enlightenment. The rabbi novelists.
Markus Lehmann and Ludwig Philipp-
son, wrote on Jewish historical
themes, but none of their works rises
above patient, plodding mediocrity,
rhilippson's collection "Saron" and
his "Sepphoris and Rome." a tale of
the Christian emperors of Rome in the
fourth century of the present era, de-
serve individual mention.
Now and then quaint bits of humor
and Judaeo-German Expressions nr-i
found in the pages of the Ghetto novel.
Unintelligible to the Christian, they un-
lock a hidden door to old-world tradi-
tions, delightful reminiscences, and
comforting delights to the Jew. A run
David Bernstein, whose tales of I'oseii
point the same moral as Mosenthal's,
has preserved in "Mendel Gibbor" a
splendid example of the humorous pos-
sibilities of Talmud ic dialectics.
"We pious children of the K'hille,"
cried Reb Abbelo. his whole body
swaying all the time, "cannot break
stones on the highway! Why? — Be-
cause the Midrash tells us when Ja-
cob our ancestor .-journeyed from Beer-
seba to Haran, he struck Beth-el at
nightfall au/1 lay down to sleep on a
number of stones. But the stones be-
gan to quarrel for the honor of being
the resting-place" of his pious head.
So the Holy One, blessed be He,
formed all the little stones into a big
pillow, and this our ancestor used as
an altar the following morning. — Now.
if our pious children of the K'hille
would break stones on the highway,
and one of them grown weary lies
down to rest, a miracle like that which
befell our ancestor may occur: all of
the broken stones will re-unite and
the highway never get done."
Mosenthal. too. criticized th« re-
form movement in Judaism in this
comment on a new rabbi:
"It is surprising that so old a
K'hille as Frankfort listens to the new-
fangled Schmus: a loafer darsheuing
in High German. "Tis a Charbe and
Bushe for a Jewish K'hille.''
In the newest works of the Ghetto
novelists a phychological element has
been added. The dominant note of
ririeh Frank's "Simon Eichelkatz and
Other Tales'' may be discerned in the
sentence: "There is neither good nor
bad in us: the moral value of tlfings is
determined by our deeds." On the
one hand we have the unquestioning
faith of the old, orthodox Jew, on the
other the son's enthusiasm for Nietz-
sche's system and all that is liberal
and modern. Arthur Kalm's "Fading
Forms" strikes the same note. There
we have the same conflict between the
Talmud and the modern Jew. The
latter is not only indifferent to all re-
ligious appeal, but strongly material in
his inclinations, for he discovers that
in leaving his faith he may vastly im-
prove his social position.
In Kahn's tale. "Jachet the Peni-
tent," Jachet is the daughter of a pious
Jew who brought her up in accord-
ance with orthodox tradition. On a
visit to "emancipated" relatives in
Mayence. where the Talmud and its
laws are never mentioned, she suc-
cumbs to an attractive Austrian of-
ficer. Their marryige is out of the
question, and Jachet refuses baptism,
as this would imply an absolute break
with the past on her part. According-
ly she returns home, is repulsed by
her father, and spends the remainder
of her life as a penitent!^ visitor to
the dead. "His Wedding Song" pre-
sents similar features. The Jewish
cantor's son. a genius on the violin,
cannot marry the girl he loves because
he is a Jew of the Ghetto, and she a
Christian maiden of an ancient line.
He remains true to his faith — an in-
mate of an insane asylum.
The Ghetto novelists in one word
were creators. They excelled in de-
picting the gorgeous historic past of
their race. Thus, Salomon Kolm's "A
German Minister of State" is an ac-
curate, carefully-drawn, yet interest-
ing portrait of Joseph Suess Oppen-
heimer, the celebrated finance minis-
ter of the dukes of Wurternberg, su-
perior in every respect to Hauff's
treatment of the same subject. These
writers laid bare the misery and
tragedy of Ghetto life, and sought to
implant In Jewish minds the lesson
that the spirit of the law is infinitely
to be preferred above its letter. In
striking sentences they suggested to
the Jews the applicability of the Tal-
mudic phrase to modern conditions:
"Be Jews at heart, but in the world
take up your share of the general bur-
den of culture and human advance-
ment." When all the Ghettoes will
have passed away — and it is incum-
bent upon us to hope that the time for
this is not far distant — the writings of
these Ghetto novelists will be read
with renewed interest; they hold the
mirror up to a self-centered, half-bar-
barous world, one, however, peopled
with those who drank the cup of the
bitterness of life to its dregs, who were
for all that a race of men.*
VIII.
Heine is the greatest German lyric
poet after Goethe, and the first name
among the Jewish men' of letters in
Germany. Yet. few of his poems — ad-
mirably translated by the gifted Em-
ma Lazarus, an American Jewess —
have an absorbing Jewish interest, and
of these unquestionably the best are
the three called "Hebrew Melodies,"
in his "Rornancero."
These poems were written, it is safe
to say. to illustrate a notion that had
possessed itself of their author's mind
and longed for free expression: Heine
felt subconsciously that the Jews are
human beings, neither more nor less.
George Eliot, it need not surprise us.
had the same thought, and she has
said in a letter to a regular corres-
pondent: "If art does not enlarge
men's sympathies, it does nothing
morally. . . . The only effect I
ardently long to produce by my writ-
ings is that those who read them
should be better able to imagine and
to feel the pains and the joys of those
who differ from themselves in every-
*Tne following is a list of some English
translations of German Ghetto novels:
Auerbaeh. BerthoW :
"Poet and Merchant." Maemillan.
Franzos, Karl Ernil:
"For the Right." Harper. Contains a pre-
face by George Maedonald, LL.D.
"Judith Trachtenberg." Harper.
"The Jews of Barnow." Black wood. Out
of print.
Kompert. Leopold :
"Christian and Leah and Other Ghetto
Stories." Macuiillan.
"Scenes from the Ghetto." Remington.
Knlko. Kdunrd:
••Pitsche-Phtsche. or the Life Story of
Froimel." Bloeh.
Sacher-Masoch. Leopold von:
"Jewish Talcs." MoClurg.
thing but the broad fact of being strug-
gling, erring human creatures."
"Princess Sabbath," the first of
these poems, shows that throughout
the centuries, in spite of innumerable
persecutions, the Jews have remained
strong and firm in their ancestral
faith, for the "sweet Sabbath rest"
has ever turned "the Jewish dog" into
a prince among men. "Jehuda ben
Halevy" is a splendid appreciation of
Jehudah Halevi, the sweet singer of
Israel; in "Disputation" Heine has de-
scribed a theological debate between
the rabbis and the priests of the Mid-
dle Ages.
His early poem, "Belsazer," mirrors
the idea expressed in the Bible by the
verse, "And it came to pass at mid-
night." "Edom" and "With a Copy of
the 'Rabbi of Bacharach' " are the
fruits of his youthful studies in Jew-
ish history. Heine's references to
Moses Mendelssohn in "Germany,
a Winter's Tale" are bitingly satirical,
but this Bitterness is due to the poet's
intense hatred of the Fatherland and
of everything German during his
Parisian exile. He considered Men-
delssohn, who typified German Jewry,
an integral, indeed a necessary part
of German culture.
The lesser poets, Theodor Creizenach.
Karl Isidor Beck, Leopold Stein and
Ludwig Wihl were servile imitators of
Heine. Beck, indeed, aimed to follow
Boerne as a man of letters, and evinced
a love of democratic, even radical no-
tions. Ludwig August Frankl was
the author of weak poems, based in
part on Heine's "The North Sea," and
Moritz Hartman, author of the other-
wise highly original "Rhymed Chron-
icle of the Pastor Mauritius," and
Moriz Rappaport followed somewhat
closely the models of Heine.
In 1849 a fanciful Jewish poem in
eleven songs, "Assaf and Tirza," by J.
Schwarz, was published at Heidelberg.
Its verses are stilted and often com-
monplace, but the moral tone of the
piece resides in its broad applications
of the virtue of the fifth commandment
to Jewish life. Assaf and Tirza were
betrothed in Spain, just before the
expulsion of the Jews from that king-
dom. Condemned to denth by the
Inquisition, Assaf accepted Chris-
tianity, thus almost breaking the heart
of Tirza, his beloved. She refused to
join Assaf in his new faith, and with
her family emigrated to the Holy Land.
Assaf, too, the leader of a popular re-
volt, came to Palestine with his aged
father, returned to Judaism, and was
reunited with Tirza; the lovers found
each other at prayer before the tomb
of Rachel in Bethlehem. The poem
concludes with a vision of the mil-
lennium when Judaism shall triumph.
Some of the minor writers wrote
inspiring poems on Jewish themes.
They sought to bring about an up-
lifting of the Jews — spiritually, intel-
lectually, morally, to secure a full ap-
preciation of life's ideals, of German
and Jewish culture among them.
Thus, Beck, although in private he had
turned Protestant, appealed in his
poetry to the Jew's love of Zion — in
"New Palestine" he besought him to
return to the land of his ancient glory.
"Land of wonders! Land of dreams!
I greet thee; hear my song!
Thy mighty cedars stand.
The sea doth beat against thy shore.
But thy heroes are no more,
And thy prophets speak no grace;
E'en the last song of the harpists,
Faded, vanished, has flown away.
"Land! Thou holiest of all,
Thou, the lovely bride of heaven,
Thou art fallen in the dust
And thy people wail aloud.
Torn apart now are their garments,
Dust and ashes their sole crown;
And the earth is their hard pillow
As they weep — and still have faith.
"Will a saviour lead the Jews?
Will he break their bonds and chains?
There are millions who believe
That he was, and lived on earth.
Should he come now — let him sever
Heavy, odious gives of woe;
Should he come now — let him lead us,
Lead us to the Promised Land."
In "The Jewish Peddler" he told the
story of the base and humiliating re-
pression of the Jew of 1830. Ludwig
Wihl, whose poetry was strongly so-
cialistic in tendency, preached to Jews
the doctrine of the simple life. Theo-
dor Creizenach wrote "The Jewish Im-
migrants in America." and declared
that, when the Jewish State fell, the
task of the Jews in this world was ac-
complished; now they had no need
to preserve their separate, racial
identity, and should become Germans
for an purposes. Moseuthal in "De-
borah" spoke of the new home and
glorious future the Jews would surely
find in America. But, as is usually
the case with Jewish writers, many
of the poets were savage pessimists.
and beheld in the sad state of the Jew
only the impending dissolution of mod-
ern civilization: Joel Jacoby, before
his conversion to Catholicism and un-
der such an influence, wrote his morbid
"The Sorrows of a Jew," in which God
was looked upon as a paternalistic
ruler, who intervened directly to
guide his creatures.
In an epic poem, "Jerusalem" (1858),
Adolf Stern dealt with the fall of Ziou
in 70, a favorite subject with many a
Jewish poet and novelist. Mirra, the
Jewess, the heroine, was finally res-
cued from the victorious Roman legion-
aries by Philippus, the Christian, her
lover. In gratitude to him she adopt-
ed his religion. The story of Beru-
riah, the faithful spouse of Rabbi Meir.
and that of the wonder rabbi of
Prague are told in fascinating. y<-t
si ni] ile rhymes by Abraham M. Tend-
lau in his "Jewish Legends of Olden
Times" (1842, again in 1ST:1.). Ludwig
Philippson's poems are la]>ored, arti-
ficial and wholly lacking in spontane-
ity. "The Ego," a didactic poem, is in
reality a study in verse of Jewish
psychology, and thus something of a
literary curiosity.
Ludwig August Frankl's descriptive
verse was uniformly excellent, and his
historical poems by the accuracy of
their scenes compensated the reader
for their lack of original ideas.
"Rachel" and "Moses" are series of
short, beautiful, spiritualized pieces.
The best of all his poems is "The
Prirnator," an epic of the Jews of
Prague, which passed through five edi-
tions in 18G1 and 1862. The descrip-
tions which Frankl gives of the drunk-
en mob at the royal castle forcing th?
Primator, the leader of the Jews, In
accept baptism so that he may be
crowned King of Bohemia, of the
father who then accused his wayward
son of having offended against tne
Jewish law and how that father
was consumed by remorse for
his son's death are all excellent. In
the "Epilogue," where he predicts the
early approach of the millennium, when
all religious distinctions shall disap-
pear, Frankl is not so satisfactory.
At this place in our discussion the
German translators of the Spanish He-
brew poetry of the Middle Ages de-
serve to be briefly considered. While
these writers were scholars above all
else, their versions were notable alike
as poetry and as faithful and accurate
reproductions of the sense and spirit
of the originals. Abraham Geiger, S.
J. Kaempf, Seligmaun Heller, Abra-
ham M. Teudlau, Leopold Dukes.
Moritz Steinschneider, M. J. Letteris,
J. Loweuberg. A. Sulzbach, B. Loew-
enstein and Leopold Zunz kept the
names of Jehudah Halevi. Abraham
ibn Ezra, Kalir, Jehudah ben Salomo
al-Charisi and Salomon Gabirol alive in
men's minds and hearts. The genera-
tions of Jews who know no Hebrew
have come to cherish these poets of
gladsome days in Spain through the
efforts of these translators. To give
an example, Geiger has put Jehudah
Halevi's thoughts on beholding med-
iaeval Egypt into these words:
''Wondrous is this land to see,
With perfume its meadows laden,
But more fair than all to me
Is yon slender, gentle maiden.
All, Time's swift flight I fain would stay,
.F<>t netting that my locks are gray."
Jews, in recent times, have been
successful writers of German farces
and comedies which have, of course,
little or no Jewish interest. In plays
with scenes drawn from the historic
Jewish past, or founded on incidents
narrated in the Bible. Christian
dramatists have had a greater meas-
ure of good fortune. The times of
Herod and Hie destruction of the
Herodian Temple are subjects which
possess an abiding dramatic appeal,
yet what work by a Jewish writer
can oe named in the same catalogue,
even with Stephen Phillips' "Herod"?
The latter is weak in its. action, but
strong poetically, and Mr. Phillips
gives evidence of flights of superior
fancy in the development of a theme
which Jewish authors treat didactical-
ly.
To speak more generally, no Jewish
dramatist has yet arisen to take his
place with Lessing, Grillparzer and
Klopstock. Lessing's "Nathan the
Wise" and "The Jews" are classics in
the world's literature. Grillparzer, in
"The Jewess of Toledo," tells in high-
ly poetic language the story 'of King
Alfonso of Spain, a wise monarch and
just to the Jews of his land, whose
jealous queen consummates the mur-
der of Rachel, the beautiful Je\vc->.
whom Alfonso had seen and loved.
Klopstock in "The Death of Adam."
in "Solomon" and in "David" wrote
interesting poetry around the lives of
some of the heroes of the Bible.
Heine's "Almansor" and Michael
Beer's "The Pariah." the earliest
dramas of some importance written by
Jews, were plays for the closet, not
the stage. Their characters were too
strongly idealized, and there is a
flavor of unreality in speech and ac-
tion. Moreover, these dramatists did
not openly address themselves to the
solution of the Jewish problem of
their time, but simply attempted to
show how the Jews, disguised as
Moors or Pariahs for theatrical pur-
poses, were oppressed by the enemies
of their race, figuring, similarly con-
cealed, as Christians or Hindoos. The
scene of Heine's drama is set among
the Moors and Christians in fifteenth-
century Spain. Gadhi. the Pariah,
whom Beer makes the vehicle of Jew-
ish protest, speaks as follows:
" Could I but be a man
among men! — Ah!
I want so little here below, so very little!
Men lap their dogs, caress their steeds,
But shun our sight, as if Dame Nature
Had masked us in a mocking human
shape.
Make me your equal; see, am I not like
you?'
(With increasing fervor).
1, too, have a country, I will protect
it "
In the times when Karl Gutzkow
wrote "Uriel Acosta," Otto Ludwig
"The Maccabees," and Friedrich Heb-
bel "Judith" and "Herod and Mariaru-
ne," Mosenthal pleaded for toleration
of the Jew. His drama "Deborah,"
known favorably in England and
America as "Leah the Forsaken," was
written with the purpose of picturing
the treatment and condition of the
Jews in Continental Europe, and its
lesson is that the brotherhood of man
will never be established on earth if
Jew and Christian cannot dwell to-
gether in love and peace. The play
embodies a strikingly human appeal
in spite of Grillparzer's criticism that
the heroine should have been a real
gypsy vagabond rather than a Jewess.
Kossarski's "Titus" is a long drama
dealing with the destruction of the
second Temple. Ludwig Philippson
wrote a number of labored plays on
Jewish historical themes, none of
which has any particular merit. Per-
haps "Esterka," the tragedy of the
simple Jewess who became queen of
Poland in the days of King Casimir
the Great (1370), is the best of all.
Mention may be made here of the.
novel on this subject by Hugo Freund
which achieved a fair measure of
popularity.
The legend of the Wandering Jew
has been extensively utilized in Ger-
man literature by Goethe and Lenau
and other great writers. Julius Mo<-
en's "Ahasuerus" (1838), and Robert
Hamerling's "Ahasuerus in Rome''
(1866), are interesting epic poems in
this field. Of course, to some poets
Ahasuerus is typical of Christianity;
to others he represents the Logos, but
to Auerbach, in "Spinoza," Ahasuerus
is the incarnation of the widely-scat-
tered, persecuted Jewish people. All
of these theories are considered by
Heller in "Ahasuerus: an Heroic
Poem" (1868).
Finally, it may be said that the
Jewish dramatists — none of whom has
achieved great renown — lack true
creative genius. The characters in
their plays, while strongly moral, are
vague. We may agree with Karpeles
that Jewish writers for the stage pos-
sess marked subjectivity, which pro-
duces a singleness of purpose in the
pursuit of their dramatic ideals, and,
in a lower degree, cosmopolitanism.
But Heinrich Heine's criticism, as set
forth in the first book of "The Ro-
mantic School," applies to them with
singular force. There we read:
". . . . Every person in his
(Goethe's) romances and dramas is
treated by him, whenever and wher-
ever he occupies the stage, as if he
were the most important character.
This is the case, too, with Homer and
with Shakespeare. Indeed, in the
works of all great poets there are no
minor characters; every one is, in his
place, a person of consequence. Such
poets are absolute monarchs attribut-
ing no independent merit to any man,
but regarding him in accordance with
their own judgment. . . ."
X.
The modern hatred of the Jew,
known as anti-Semitism and first fully
developed in Germany, is an outgrowth
and manifestation of man's wari';iiv
with and final defeat by the powers
of darkness. The pessimistic outlook
on life engenders natural passions in
a man's breast: he compares his fate
with the more favored one of the
optimist and allows his mind to be
clouded to the demands of reason.
In the years succeeding 1848 the
German Jew sought to sink his racial
and religious identity in his national
patriotism, which found expression as
a rule in the fiercest chauvinism. Dur-
ing the wars of unification he fought
and bled in the armies of his Chris-
tian countrymen.
Jews, moreover, bore a leading part
in the struggles of German Protestants
with the forces of Ultramontanist
Rome and its instrument, the Jesuits.
Ludwig Fulda, in "The Talisman,"
praised Bismarck, the protagonist of
anti-Semitism, for this work and com-
pared the Jesuits with heathens.
Bismarck, in his war with the
Jesuits, relied at first on the support of
Liberal, i.e., Jewish statesmen like
Ludwig Bamberger and Eduard Lns-
ker. But their followers were fluctuat-
ing in number and enthusiasm, and
Bismarck finally saw himself forced to
accept the aid offered by the Conserva-
tive party and to adopt their program.
They had blind faith in the legend of
a common descent for all Germans,
and already began to dislike the Jews,
the men of another stock, as the
aristocracy of money, who aided
France in recovering from the effects
of the war of 1870-71 and exploited
the theoretically ingenuous, German
peasant. Accordingly, with the pub-
lication of the articles on the French
loan financed by German Jewish
bankers of Berlin — the so-called
Bleichroeder - Camphausen - Delbrueck
affair — the war of the anti-Semites
may be said to have begun.
The struggle was bitter. Since 1848
the Jews had fully fancied themselves
a part of the German nation, and their
participation in the movement of
German culture was absolutely un-
trammeled. The rise of anti-Semi-
tism involved for them a break with
their immediate past.
Hermann Sudermann has written a
play, "Brother Socrates of the Storm,"
which is an excellent analytical de-
scription of the period we have just
been considering. Unpleasant touches
exist here and there: Dr. Markuse,
the Jewish rabbi, a veteran of 1848,
at once a Jew and a German, eats
ham; and one of the characters tells
him that modern German society needs
the rabbi, for who else would supply
the never- failing Jewish jokes?
Dr. Markuse's ideals of a fraterniza-
tion netween Jew and Gentile are
shattered in a measure by the tales
his son Siegfried tells him of life at
the universities. There the modern
German Jew is securely confined with-
in the new Ghetto, the spiritual Ghetto,
by his Christian jailer, and from it
there is no escape for him. This is
not the narrow, squalid street, nor the
chains and the sentries of the old; it
1 !
• is in ihe scornful laugh, ihe ex-
cessively polite note, the unreturued
visit. These react on the Jewish tem-
perament in much the same way as
Dr. Theodor Herw has described in
his drama, "The New Ghetto." But
Sudermanii makes the father reply in
a cryptic passage embodying, in all
probability, the dramatist's solution of
The Jewish problem:
". . . . If it be true that the
German does not care to have us as
Germans, the Russian as Russians . .
— in short, that the world would be
well rid of us — we should become that
which they, the races of men, do not
wish us to become. We should pre-
serve for mankind its most precious
jewel — a jewel which it has unwit
tingly neglected — man. For this, our
mission, we must ever be ready.''
In the face of the anti-Semitic cam-
paign many Jews, pushed their German
chauvinism to doubtful extremes. Lud-
wig Jacobowski. the author of "Wer-
ther the Jew," declared that he wish-
ed to Be first a German and then a
Jew. Hieronynms Lorm. the pen-
name of the Moravian Heinrich Lan-
desmann, a tuneful poet, but exceed-
ingly pessimistic in his novels and
popular philosophy, made subjective
use of the main anti-Semitic argu-
ments in "The Wandering Craftsman."
In "Gorgonheads" Franz Held (Herz-
feld in reality) told the story of Cheru,
King of the ancient Cimbri, and his
Jewish wife. In consonance with Ger-
manic customs she was sacrificed on
her husband's funeral pyre. Recently,
too, Stefan Zweig in "Life's Wonder"
produced a fine psychological tale.
The Jewress who was the model for a
picture of the Madonna in fancy look-
ed upon Herself as one with the paint-
ed canvas. She met her death in the
defense of the artist's creation — and
by implication of that for which it
stood — from the fury of an iconoclastic
mob.
In the last ten years the reawaken-
ing of the Jewish consciousness, which
finds its practical expression in the
Zionist movement on the one hand,
and the love of the Jewish past, his-
torically and linguistically, on the oth-
er, has proved to be a powerful motor-
force in the modern German literature
of the Jews.
It is true that Leopold Freftind's
volume of poems, where expression is
given to the Zionist hope, was pub-
lished as long ago as 1882. But the
modern Zionist was not heard of in
the domain of poetry much before
1S!).~>. and Berthold Feiwel's anthology
did not appear before 1903. Muench
hausen's "Juda" and Goldberg's "Light
from the East." the latter of which
contains glowing descriptions of Ori-
ental life and scenes, saw the light of
print in 1901. to be followed two years
later by Theodor Zlocisti's mor-
bidly pessimistic volume, "Homeward
Bound." The poetry of these writers.
to whom Ziou is more than a mere
pious wish, is inspired by an intense
love of their race, its history and re-
ligion; the attitude toward life of these
poets is hopeful, in theory, and opposes
to the distinctly German cultural
forces a markedly Jewish ideal.
Thus, Leo Rafaels. a minor poet
sings:
"Through the land a breath is blowing
softly, cooling.
Striking slumb'ring hearts ancf waking
young and old.
Thy breath it is, thon ever young, thou
old and mighty God."
And Israel Auerbach writes:
" 'Know'st thou this people?' The Lord
said unto me — •
'From gloomy graves I'll raise them to
the light!
Withal their bones lie deeply buried,
I'll set them up, give them the breath of
life;
Withal their scatt'ring North, South,
West and East,
My call they'll heed in time!
No corner so remote I cannot strike
From them its binding, cruel chains;
From North and South, from the most
distant shore
['11 bear them home on eagles' wings,
To blessed Zion. —
My people — Israel!' saith the Lord."
In recent days, barring all imagina-
tive writing which finds its inspira-
tion in Zionism, dramas based on the
tragedy of anti-Semitism, or turgid his-
torical novels represent all that is pro-
duced by German Jewish men of let-
ters. Max Nordau's "Doctor Kohn"
and O. E. Lessing's "Rebekka," with
its scenes of New York life, are ex-
amples of this fact. Even the nov-
elists— Rosa Pomerauz, Pruchanski
and countless others — are obsessed by
fears for the future of the Jews. They
succumb, too, to the allurements of-
fered by the plots and the literary ma-
terial of Judaeo-German writers, and
accept Russo-Jewish habits of thought
and ideals. Accordingly, they content
themselves at times with the office of
the translator, and interpret Peretz,
Spektor, Frug and Gordon for German
readers. This work is useful and these
authors are men of vast talents, but
are we not justified in demanding orig-
inal, creative work from the present-
day possessors of literary and cultural
traditions running back one thousand
years?
In this place a brief reference may
be made to Paul Lindau's "Countess
Leah." This excellent acting play is
the work of a Christian, and describes
modern conditions in Germany with
unerring accuracy. It demonstrates
the hatred the upper classes in Ger-
man society bear toward the Jew, and
to what lengths they will travel — wit-
ness its theatrical court scene — in at-
tempting to deprive him of justice.
Scholz's. "The Jew of Constance," an
historical drama of the fifteenth cen-
12
tury, has for its central figure Nasson,
the baptized Jewish pantheist, who
dies to save his people. A word, too,
may be bestowed on Jewish humorists
like Cronbach, and writers of tales
for Jewish children like Fanny Neuda
and Rosa Friedlaender.
XI.
In the foregoing pages we have en-
deavored to present the figure of the
Jew in German literature in its prin-
cipal outlines. In German literature
the Jew is unique because in no other
division of the republic of letters has
he been so fruitful and so constant a
theme of discussion and exposition by
writers of every shade of opinion, ex-
hibiting in their works every degree
of literary merit. His figure is par-
ticularly interesting because in Ger-
man-speaking lands the Jew — even in
the earliest days — sought to bear his
share in the propagation of culture;
and he thoroughly assimilated German
thought and German ideas with re-
markable facility.
The last remark yields a striking
commentary on the position of the
Jews in Germany and conversely ex-
plains the attitude of the governing
powers toward them at every stage
of German political development. Dur-
ing the period of preparation, when
the Jews had not yet become imbued
with the German ideals, they lived in
peace. Repression followed the first
faint signs of a dawning culture among
them. For quite a long period the Jew
was but a name to the Germans and
only at the commencement of the nine-
teenth century did he seek to make a
place for himself among those of his
Christian neighbors who cherished the
literary pursuit. During the compara
tively short epoch of revolutionary en-
lightenment— when the principle of the
universal brotherhood of man was
baptized in the fire of the days of 1S4S
— the Jew was deemed the equal in
every respect of the Christian, and
Jewish writers attempted to prove that
the differences between the race re-
sided in the mere externals of wor-
ship. Anti-Semitism, the cause of so
much change in the political life of
the nineteenth century, produced re-
markable results in German literature.
It worked a change in the position of
the Jew in German literature, not only
from the point of view of Christian
men of letters, but also from that of
the Jews themselves. Finally, Zionism
appeared upon the stage of the history
of the world, and in its invitation to
return to Palestine presented Jews of
every shade of opinion with remark-
able literary themes from their storied
past.
New York, January, 1907.
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
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