Book Review: "The Pity Of It All: A Protrait of the German-Jewish Epoch", 1743-1933, by Amos Elon

Amos Elon’s ‘The Pity of It Al’ is a poignant and beautiful history of German Jews from 1743-1933. Why 1743? Because in 1740, Frederick of Prussia liberalized the state and allowed freedom of worship. The freedom did not extend to Jews who still had no political or civil rights, but it did make it easier for them to live in Prussia than in the other thirty-six states of what later came to be called Germany.

The book begins with the story of the first prominent modern German-Jewish intellectual, the fourteen-year-old, barefooted Moses Mendelssohn, who entered Berlin through a gate reserved for “Jews and cattle”. Mendelssohn was the first Jew to start an enduring tradition that was to both signal the high watermark of European Jewry and their eventual destruction. This was the almost vehement efforts of Jews to assimilate, to convert to Christianity, to adopt to German traditions and ways, to become bigger German patriots than most non-Jewish Germans while retaining their culture and identity. In fact the entire history of German Jewry is one of striking a tortuous balance between assimilating into the parent culture and preserving their religion and identity. Mendelssohn became the first great Jewish German scholar, translating Talmud into Hebrew and having an unsurpassed command of both German and Jewish philosophy, culture and history. While initially he grew up steeped only in German culture, a chance encountered with a Protestant theologian who exhorted him to convert. This encounter convinced Mendelssohn that he should be more proud of his Jewish roots, but at the same time seek to make himself part and parcel of German society. Mendelssohn’s lessons spread far and wide, not least to his grandson, the famous composer Felix Mendelssohn who used to go to Goethe’s house to play music for him.

Generally speaking, the history of German Jews tracks well with political upheavals. After Prussia became a relatively liberal state and, goaded by Mendelssohn, many Jews openly declared their Judaism while forging alliances with German intellectuals and princes, their condition improved relative to the past few centuries. A particularly notable example cited by Elon is the string of intellectual salons rivaling their counterparts in Paris that were started in the Berlin by Jewish women like Rachel Varnhagen which drew Goethe, the Humboldt brothers and other cream of German intellectual society. The flowering of German Jews as well-dot-do intellectuals and respectable members of the elite starkly contrasted with their centuries-old image in the rest of Europe as impoverished caftan-wearers, killers of Christ and perpetuators of the blood libel. Jews had been barred from almost all professions except medicine, and it was in Prussia that they could first enter other professions.

When Napoleon invaded Prussia, his revolutionary code of civil and political rights afforded the German Jews freedom that they had not known for centuries. The Edict of 1812 freed the Jews. They came out of the ghettoes, especially in places like Frankfurt, and the Jewish intelligentsia thrived. Perhaps foremost among them was the poet Heinrich Heine whose astute, poignant, tortured and incredibly prescient poetry, prose and writings were a kaleidoscope of the sentiments and condition of his fellow Jews. Heine reluctantly converted but was almost tortured by his torn identity. The Edict of 1812 met with a tide of rising German nationalism from the bottom, and Jews quickly started reverting back to their second-class status. Heine, along with Eduard Gans and Leopold Zunz who started one of the first scientific societies in Germany, had trouble finding academic jobs. The Hep! Hep! riots that started in Wurzburg and spread throughout Germany were emblematic of the backlash. Significantly, and again in potent portend, this was the first time that German intellectuals took part in the violent anti-Semtism; later when the Nazis took over, the legal basis of their murderous anti-Semtism was undergirded by intellectuals, and it was intellectuals who drew up the Final Solution in 1942 at the Wannsee conference. Jews in record numbers started to convert to escape discrimination.

For the next few decades, straddling this delicate and difficult balance between adopting two identities was to become a hallmark of the Jewish condition in Germany, although scores also converted without any compunction. Writing from Paris in 1834, Heine issued a warning:

“A drama will be enacted in Germany compared to which the French revolution will seem like a harmless idol. Christianity restrained the martial ardor of the Germans for a time but it did not destroy it; once the restraining talisman is shattered savagery will rise again. The mad fury of the berserk of which Nordic Gods sing and speak. The old stony gods will rise from the rubble and rub the thousand year old dust from their eyes. Thor with the giant hammer will come forth and smash the granite domes.”

Extraordinarily prescient words, especially considering the Nordic reference.

The next upheaval came with the European liberal revolution of 1848. As is well known, this revolution overthrew monarchies - temporarily - throughout Europe. For the first time, Germany’s Jews could agitate not just for civil but political rights. A record number of Jews were appointed to the Prussian parliament by Frederick William IV. Unfortunately even this revolution was not to last. Frederick William reneged on his promise, many Jews were either ejected from parliament or made impotent and another rising tide of nationalism engulfed Germany. The next few decades, while not as bad the ones before, sought to roll back the strides that had been made.

It’s in this context that the rise of Bismarck is fascinating. Bismarck dodges many stereotypes. He was the emblem of Prussian militarism and autocracy, the man who united Germany, but also the liberal who kickstarted the German welfare state, pioneering social security and health insurance. When he declared war on France in 1870, patriotic Jews not only took part in the war but funded it. “Bismarck’s Jews” procured the money, helped Bismarck draw up the terms of French capitulation and occupation at Sedan. Among these, Ludwig Bamberger and Abraham Bleichroder were the most prominent - Bleichroder even used stones from Versailles to build a large mansion in Germany. While praising these Jews for their contributions to the war effort, Bismarck stopped short of saying that they should be awarded full rights as citizens of Germany. Nevertheless, in 1871, Bismarck passed an edict that banned discrimination on the basis of religion in all civil and political functions. It seemed that the long-sought goal of complete emancipation was finally in sight for Germany’s Jews.

But even then, as patriotic Jews signed up for the Franco-Prussian War, a dissenting note was struck by another Jew. Leopold Sonnemann was the publisher of a leading Frankfurt newspaper. In editorial after editorial, he issued stark warnings both to Jews and gentiles of the rising militarism and rigid social order in Prussia that was taking over all of Germany. He warned Jews that ironically, their patriotism may cost them more than they bargained for. Sonnemann was another prescient Jew who saw what his community’s strenuous efforts to conform were costing them. Sonnemann’s predictions were confirmed almost right away when a recession hit Germany in 1873 that was among the worst of the previous hundred years. Immediately, as if on cue, anger turned toward the wealthy Jews who had apparently grown fat and rich during the war while their fellow citizens grew impoverished. In 1879, a prominent Protestant clergyman named Adolf Stocker started railing against the Jews, calling them a “poison in German blood”, echoing paranoia that was leveraged to devastating effect by another Adolf a half century later. The Kaiser and Bismarck both disapproved of Stocker’s virulent anti-Semitic diatribes, but thought that it perhaps might make the Jews more “modest”. To say that this was unfair retaliation against a patriotic group who had bankrolled and helped the war efforts significantly would be an understatement.

Even as Bismarck was propagating religious freedom in Germany, anti-Semitic continued to grow elsewhere. Interestingly, in France where Jews had a much better time after Napoleon, Arthur Gobineau published a book arguing for Nordic superiority. About the same time, the fascinating but deadly English-German Houston Chamberlain, son-in-law of Wagner, published the massive “Foundations of the Nineteenth Century” in 1899 that became a kind of Bible for the 20th century pan-German Völkisch movement that fused nationalism with racialism. Both Gobineau and Chamberlain were to serve as major ‘philosophers’ for Hitler and the Nazis. In France, the Dreyfus affair had already exposed how fragile the situation of French Jews was.

As sentiments against the Jews grew again, German Jews again became disillusioned with conversion and conformity. The Kabbalah movement and other mysticism-based theologies started to be propounded by the likes of Martin Buber. Rather than keep on bending over backward to please an ungrateful nation, some sought other means of reform and escape. Foremost among these was the centuries old dream of returning to the promised land. Theodor Herz picked up the mantle of Zionism and started trying to convince Jews to migrate to Palestine. Ironically, the main target of his pleas was the Kaiser. Herzl wanted the Kaiser to fund and officially approve Jewish migration to Palestine. Not only would that reduce the Jewish population in Germany and perhaps ease the pressure on gentiles, but in doing so, the Kaiser would be seen as a great benefactor and liberator. In retrospect Herzl’s efforts have a hint of pity among them, but at that time it made sense. The ironic fact is that very few German Jews signed on to Herzl’s efforts to emigrate because they felt at home in Germany. This paradox was to prove to be the German Jews’ most tragic quality. Where Herzl sought emigration, others like Freud and Marx (who had been baptized as a child) sought secular idols like psychoanalysis and communism. This would have been a fascinating theme in itself, and I wish Elon had explored it in more detail.

As the new century approached and another Great War loomed, the themes of 1870 would be repeated. The ‘Kaiserjuden’ or Kaiser’s Jews, most prominently Walter Rathenau, would bankroll and help Germany’s war with England and France. Many Jews again signed up or patriotic duty. Without Rathenau, who was in charge of logistics and supplies, German would likely have lost the war within a year or two. Yet once again, the strenuous efforts of these patriotic Jews were forgotten. A young Austrian corporal who had been blinded by gas took it upon himself to proselytize the “stab in the back” theory, the unfounded belief that it was the Jews who secretly orchestrated an underhanded deal that betrayed the army and cost Germany the war. The truth of course was the opposite, but it’s important to note that Hitler did not invent the myth of the Jewish betrayal. He only masterfully exploited it.

The tragic post-World War 1 history of Germany is well known. The short-lived republics of 1919 were followed by mayhem, chaos and assasinations. The Jews Kurt Eisner in Bavaria and Walter Rathenau were assasinated. By that time there was one discipline in which Jews had become preeminent - science. Fritz Heber had made a Faustian bargain when he developed poison gas for Germany. Einstein had put the finishing touches on his general theory of relativity by the end of the war and had already become the target of anti-Semitism. Others like Max Born and James Franck were to make revolutionary contributions to science in the turmoil of the 1920s.

Once the Great Depression hit Germany in 1929 the fate of Germany’s Jews was effectively sealed. When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, a group of leading Jewish intellectuals orchestrated a massive but, in retrospect, pitiful attempt to catalog the achievements of German Jews. The catalog included important contributions by artists, writers, scientists, philosophers, playwrights and politicians in an attempt to convince the Nazis of the foundational contributions that German Jews had made to the fatherland. But it all came to nothing. Intellectuals like Einstein soon dispersed. The first concentration camp at Dachau went up in 1936. By 1938 and Kristallnacht, it was all over. The book ends with Hannah Arendt, protege of Martin Heidegger who became a committed Nazi, fleeing Berlin in the opposite direction from which Moses Mendelssohn had entered the city two hundred years earlier. To no other nation had Jews made more enduring contributions and tried so hard to fit in. No other nation punished them so severely.