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 
 
 s l ' 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 Jew r ess 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 
 
 A 000 076 372 2