jakob wassermann, anti-semitism and german politics

Orhis Litterarum 53: 179-190, 1998 Printed in Denmark . All rights reserved

Copyright 0 Munksgaard 1998

ORBIS Zittemm ISSN 0105-7510

Jakob Wassermann, anti-Semitism and German Politics Rudo[f Koester, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.

Anti-Semitism pursued and preoccupied Wassermann from his childhood to the end of his life. When the author died, on New Year’s Day 1934, the Nazis had been in power for less than a year. But their racial politics had already inflicted incalculable damage upon his literary career.

Characterizations of anti-Semitism and the Jewish experience can, of course, be traced throughout Wassermann’s extensive novelistic ceuvre. However, it is in his (now) neglected essayistic writings that his abiding concern with this problem receives its most poignant and personal expression. This study surveys the novelist’s always moving, sometimes controversial, accounts of the Jewish dilemma from the early “Das Los der Juden” (1904) to Mein Weg als Deufscher und Jude (1921) and other (later) texts. In most of the essays the writer derives his conclusions from an interfusion of personal experience, events of past history and con- temporary politics. Over the years his pessimism increased, but his commitment to justice never flagged (“In memoriam Walther Rathenau,” “Rassenantagonismus,” “Der Jude in der Kunst,” “Selbstschau am Ende des sechsten Jahrzehnts.”) There is a final irony. During 1933 (the last year of Wassermann’s life) a bizarre concatenation of political circumstances managed to produce a rift between the (by then) world-renowned Jewish novelist and his Jewish publishing house, S. Fischer, whose founder and guiding light, Samuel Fischer, had been the author’s lifelong friend.

Jakob Wassermann, who lived from 1873 to 1934, observed in his autobiography: “Wer eine Geschichte des Antisemitismus schriebe, wurde zugleich ein wichtiges Stuck deutscher Kulturgeschichte geben.”’ It is common knowl- edge that Jews and Jewish problems figure prominently in Wassermann’s novels, from Die Juden von Zirndorf, his first artistic success (published in 1897), to Der Fall Maurizius, an artistic and commercial success, published in 1928 at the height of the novelist’s career. The pursuit of justice, which

180 Rudotolf Koester

became a major theme in his narrative prose, was kindled in no small degree by his personal experience and observation of anti-Semitism.2 But it is in the writer’s “direct” utterances on the subject, i.e. in his (now neglected) essayistic texts, that his concern for the plight of the Jews receives its most poignant and personal expression.

Wassermann’s autobiographical essays reveal that anti-Semitism pursued and preoccupied the author from his early years to the end of his life. Al- though full civil equality had been extended to all of German Jewry by 1871 (two years before the writer’s birth), hostility, especially among conservatives and nationalists, remained strong.’ In fact, by the late 1870s, when Wasser- mann was just reaching school age, a publication entitled Der Sieg des Juden- thums iiber das Germanenthum by the anti-Jewish pamphleteer Wilhelm Marr, the man who was perhaps most responsible for popularizing a new “scien- tific” racism in Central Europe and who was “credited” with coining the term anti-semiti~m,~ achieved the dubious distinction of “becoming the first anti- Semitic be~t-seller.”~ Thanks to Marr and other anti-Semites (such as the imperial court chaplain Adolf Stoecker and the influential nationalistic his- torian Heinrich von Treitschke), Germany became “the first country in the world to develop a modern political anti-Semitic movement.”6 The reper- cussions were perceptible even to a child. As a Jewish youngster, growing up in the drab industrial city of Fiirth, Wassermann encountered various forms of discrimination with nearly quotidian regularity. These experiences, although remembered vividly later on, left him surprisingly unfazed at the time. It was not until his late teens, when he entered military service, that he came to feel fully the pain and injustice of anti-Semitism, which pervaded most of Germany in the nineteenth century.

To appreciate the situation faced by young Wassermann in the German army, one must understand the prevailing perception of the Jewish population. In the early nineteenth century, when Germany was still a predom- inantly agricultural country, many German Jews were dealers in grain and livestock as well as moneylenders whose advances helped many a farmer through hard times. While the rural economy relied greatly on their services, they remained objects of suspicion and contempt. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when rapid industrialization swept Germany and frequently caused painful social dislocation, many small-town Germans, un- willing or unable to adapt, “discovered” anti-Semitism’ as an explanation and possible solution of their problems. The Jews were perceived as pro-

Jakob Wassermann, anti-Semitism and German Politics 181

moters and exploiters of social disintegration.8 Their motive - predictably - was assumed to be monetary gain.

The stereotypical view of the Jew as a person of congenitally acquisitive disposition was ubiquitous. That is what the eighteen-year-old Wassermann learned when he reported for duty at the Wiirzburg barracks in 1891. Having attended the Fiirth Realschule for six years, he had earned the privilege of joining up as an Einjdhriger. However, his standing was impaired from the outset by his impecunious family background. In his autobiography Wasser- mann later recalled: “Ich trat ... in die Armee als mittelloser Privilegierter ein, ungluckselige Mischung, wie ich bald spiiren sollte. Jude und arm, das erregte doppelte Geringschatzung, bei der Mannschaft wie bei den Offi- ~ i e ren . ”~

The discrimination he experienced went beyond condescension and dis- dain. When Wassermann recounted the details in Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (1921) some thirty years later, he clearly set out to contextualize, but also to polemicize. He wrote:

Obwohl ich meine ... ganze Kraft darein setzte, als Soldat meine Pflicht zu tun ..., gelang es mir nicht, die Anerkennung meiner Vorgesetzten zu erringen, ... weil Absicht dawider war. Ich merkte es an der verachtlichen Haltung der Offiziere, ... Beforderung iiber eine zugestandene Grenze hinaus kam nicht in Frage, alles, weil die biirgerliche Legitimation unter der Rubrik Glaubensbe- kenntnis die Bezeichnung Jude trug. Aber dies ist ja hinlanglich bekannt, nie- mand hat sich schlieplich mehr daruber gewundert ....

Auffallender, weitaus qualender war mir . . . das Verhalten der Mannschaften. Zum erstenmal begegnete ich jenem ... dumpfen, starren ... Hap, von dem der Name Antisemitismus fast nichts aussagt .... Dieser Hap hat Ziige des Aber- glaubens ebenso wie der freiwilligen Verblendung, der Damonenfurcht wie der pfaffischen Verstocktheit .... Gier und Neugier sind in ihm, Blutdurst ... und Niedrigkeit der Selbsteinschatzung. Er ist in solcher Verquickung ... ein beson- deres deutsches Phanomen. Es ist ein deutscher Hap.

Jeder redliche und sich achtende Jude mup, wenn ihn zuerst dieser Gifthauch anweht und er sich uber dessen Beschaffenheit klar zu werden versucht, in nach- haltige Bestiirzung geraten. Und so erging es auch mir. Kam hinzu, dap die katholische Bevolkerung Unterfrankens, reichlich durchsetzt mit einem uner- freulichen Schlag noch halb ghettohafter ... Juden, Kramer, Trodler, Viehhand- ler, ... einer dauernden Verhetzung preisgegeben war ... und das Andenken an ... Passahschlachtungsmarchen ... und gewinnbringende Judenverfolgungen noch lebendig im Sinne trug.’O

After completing his military service, Wassermann worked briefly as a clerk to an insurance agent in Freiburg. There he had another encounter with hard- core anti-Semitism. This time it cost him his job. Wassermann’s employer, a

182 Rudolf Koester

bigot, upon discovering that his clerk was Jewish, immediately contrived grounds for his dismissal. That was a severe blow. For weeks Wassermann roamed the Black Forest, homeless and unemployed, spending his nights in barns and log cabins. He owed his survival, in part, to local farmers whose children he entertained with stories and who, in return, would bring him food.

After Wassermann left Germany to take up residence in Vienna in 1898, his perspective on the Jewish experience broadened somewhat, mainly because of the cosmopolitan and culturally diverse atmosphere of the Austrian capital. There, too, bigotry abounded. After all, Vienna, under Mayor Karl Lueger (1897-1910), had the “first municipal government in the world con- trolled by a political party that officially espoused anti-Semitism.”’ ’ Never- theless, the Jewish population participated visibly and widely in city life and contributed significantly to its intellectual and artistic vibrancy. In fact, it was the unique social and ethnic mix, the interaction of the local “Kleinburg- er,” the Habsburg court and the Jews that gave Vienna, as Wassermann saw it, its special character at the turn of the century. His impressions were not always favourable, however. As a German Jew, Wassermann had little affinity, for example, for Polish and Galician Jews (whom he met for the first time in Vienna), although in his later years he developed some appreciation for their way of life.lZ Also, Zionism, which in its modern secular form originated in the Austrian capital, left Wassermann ambivalent, if not ~ 0 l d . l ~ In an era of rabid nationalism and the constant threat of internecine belligerence he saw no salvation in the creation of another nation-state in Palestine. Besides, the prime promulgator of modern Zionism, the Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl, whom Wassermann encountered socially on occasion, struck him as unimpressive, both as a writer and as a personality.

Wassermann’s first essay on anti-Semitism, entitled “Das Los der Juden,” was published in Die neue Rundschau in 1904. By that time his literary career was well launched. He had acquired - and befriended - a prominent German (Jewish) publisher, S. Fischer in Berlin, and in Vienna he had established close ties with writers such as Arthur Schnitzler, Richard Beer-Hofmann and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. These new friends, especially Schnitzler, were deeply impressed by Wassermann’s essay, which surveys the history of Jewish persecution in Europe and assesses - rather pessimistically ~ prevailing con- ditions and prospects. The writer’s dejected state of mind is reflected vividly in an analogy which he uses to illustrate the Jewish experience: “Es war ein-


ma1 ein Mann, der seinem Esel die Augen, den Schwanz und die Ohren aus- gerissen hatte und sich nun etwas darauf zugute tat, dap er ihm doch die vier Beine gelassen. Seit der Jude ins Abendland kam, spielt er die Rolle dieses Esels. Sein Jammergeschrei erregte Spott und Verwunderung. Was will der Esel? er hat ja seine vier Beine.”I4

In the years leading up to World War I Wassermann saw little cause to revise his pessimistic stance. In 1913 he published a lengthy review in the Frankfurter Zeitung of Aage Madelung’s Die Gezeichneten, a topical novel dealing with the misery and oppression of the Jews in czarist Russia. Particu- lar emphasis is placed on the political motivation behind the persecutions. Russia’s oligarchy, eager to divert attention from its own greed and govern- mental mismanagement, has cynically manipulated the discontented masses, providing them with a convenient scapegoat, the country’s Jewry, on whom to vent their anger.I5 In his review Wassermann raises the characteristic ques- tion: How can the rest of the world stand by idly in the face of such flagrant injustice?

His concern rose to its highest level, however, after World War I, when German anti-Semites amidst the political turmoil of a defeated nation widely preached and practiced scapegoatism, leading to new and shocking excesses. In 191 8 the German Kaiser had abdicated, and the country was compelled to create an entirely new system of government. In 1919 it found itself sub- jected to the harsh provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans, confused and demoralized, convinced themselves that the country’s capitu- lation of 1918 had been unnecessary and precipitated by traitors, mostly Jews.16 Thus the new political climate inevitably accelerated the growth of anti-Semitism in Germany.

Wassermann, who in 1919 had taken up permanent residence in the iso- lated rustic serenity of Altaussee in Styria, remained nevertheless keenly aware of German developments partly because of his frequent trips to Berlin, where he regularly consulted with his publisher and friend Samuel Fischer. Although the writer had now lived in Austria for most of his adult life, he still identified with Germany. He saw himself as a German - and a Jew, one as much as the other. This dual heritage weighed heavily on Wassermann’s mind during the post-war years. In 1921 he published Mein Weg als Deutsch- er und Jude, a remarkable tour de force, bringing together its author’s skills as essayist, autobiographer and pamphleteer. While seeking to come to terms with his own experiences as a Jew deeply rooted in German tradition, he also

184 Rudolf Koester

tried to assess the situation of German Jews in general, who were being made to feel unwelcome.

There is an attempt, mainly at the end of his book, to give the account a positive spin; but that effort is largely factitious. As a whole Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude is a treatise permeated by despair and a sense of forebod- ing. In a climate poisoned by prejudice all efforts to achieve popular under- standing and conciliation seemed foredoomed to Wassermann. Here is how he viewed the anti-Semitic atmosphere and the perception of the Jews in post- war Germany:

Bei der Erkenntnis der Aussichtslosigkeit ... wird die Bitterkeit in der Brust zum todlichen Krampf.

Es ist vergeblich, das Volk der Dichter und Denker im Namen seiner Dichter und Denker zu beschworen. Jedes Vorurteil, das man abgetan glaubt, bringt, wie Aas die Wiirmer, tausend neue zutage.

Es ist vergeblich, die rechte Wange hinzuhalten, wenn die linke geschlagen worden ist. Es ... riihrt sie nicht, ... sie schlagen auch die rechte.

Es ist vergeblich, in das tobsiichtige Geschrei Worte der Vernunft zu werfen. Sie sagen: was, er wagt es aufzumucken? Stopft ihm das Maul. ...

Es ist vergeblich, die Verborgenheit zu suchen. Sie sagen: der Feigling, er

Es ist vergeblich, unter sie zu gehen und ihnen die Hand zu bieten. Sie sagen: verkriecht sich, sein schlechtes Gewissen treibt ihn dazu.

was nimmt er sich heraus mit seiner jiidischen Aufdringlichkeit? ...

Es ist vergeblich, ihnen zu helfen, Sklavenketten von den Gliedern zu streifen. Sie sagen: er wird seinen Profit schon dabei gemacht haben. ...

Es ist vergeblich, fur sie zu leben und fur sie zu sterben. Sie sagen: Er ist ein Jude.I7

If today Wassermann's language sounds strident, if his statements seem like an indulgence in hyperbole, one must remember the extremity of the historical situation. Let me cite just one example symptomatic of the pernicious racism bedevilling German politics. In 1922, when the Jewish industrialist and states- man Walther Rathenau (who, incidentally, was a friend of Wassermann's) became foreign minister, gangs of reactionaries took to the streets chanting:

Knallt ab den Walther Rathenau, Die gottverdammte Judensau!"

Soon words turned into action. Rathenau was killed on June 24, 1922 by anti-Semitic nationalists. While the assassins died in a police shoot-out - one of them committed suicide - , their accomplices and supporters were mildly


dealt with by the government. Rathenau’s murder marked an early low point in twentieth-century German history.’’ The act, to be sure, was widely de- plored but also rationalized.20 Wassermann’s reaction to his friend’s assassination was characteristic and perceptive. “Als in unserm stillen Gebirg hier [d.h. in Altaussee] die Kunde der Mordtat, vor der Zeitung noch ... von Mund zu Mund lief, hatte ich sogleich eine eisige Lahmung in mir verspurt, ... nicht etwa, ... weil mir Rathenau naher gestanden ware, als er vielleicht hundert andern gestanden ist, ... sondern weil ich bei keinem Ereignis wie bei diesem die Empfindung hatte: das gilt dir ...”2’

Wassermann understood that by now attacks were being launched on two fronts. German anti-Semitism was not just a plebeian phenomenon, it was also attaining an odd kind of intellectual (i. e. pseudoscientific) respectability. In 1925 (in an open letter to the journal Die MovgenrGte) Wassermann wrote: “So heikel und eigentumlich meine Stellung zum Judentum auch ist, ... das eine steht fest, dap ich mich als ... solidarisch erklaren mup, solange die Schmach des gegenwartigen ... Antisemitismus dauert. Denn gleichviel, ob es der ... verhetzte Strapenpobel ist, der in seinem Namen demagogische Orgien feiert, oder aber ob Gebildete und Gelehrte ihm in der Gesinnung huldigen und diese Gesinnung mit einem . .. Tugendmantel .. . rassenphilosophischer Provenienz behangen: es ist und bleibt ... eine nationale Schande .... Es ist das uralte ... Sundenbocksystem, verbramt mit neuen, nicht immer guten Argumenten und ausgeartet zu einer Massenpsychose.”22 In a short piece written in the same year (1925) for another journal and published under the title “Rassenantagonismus,” Wassermann compared the intolerance sweeping Germany to the country’s witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies. “Das ... Sundenbocksystem ist zu seiner vollen Blute gediehen, und wenn man Zeuge ist, ... welcher Mittel sich die politische Propaganda bedient, mup man sich immer erst klarmachen, dap man wirklich im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert lebt und nicht etwa im sechzehnten oder siebzehnten ...”23 He obviously saw no solution to the problem in the short term; for he went on to write: “In zweihundert Jahren wird man darauf mit derselben schaudernden Verwunderung zuruckblicken, wie wir auf die Hexenprozes~e.”~~ Two hundred years is a long time to wait for justice.

It should be mentioned that Wassermann was never oblivious to the exist- ence of negative elements in the Jewish population. As a writer attuned to the subtleties of social and psychological realism he was too keen an observer of human nature for that. In an essay published in 1929 under the title “Die

186 Rudolf Koester

psychologische Situation des Judentums” he wrote: “Kriegs- und Nach- kriegsjahre haben vielerlei Unrat und Unflat an die Oberflache der Gewasser getrieben; unter anderem auch judisches ... Schieber- und Spekulantentum, sowie die Scharen ... lebensgieriger, beutegieriger ... auf das Land der euro- paischen Mitte losgelassener polnischer und russischer Juden. Es fallt mir nicht ein, mich blind dagegen zu stellen, was alle diese truben Elemente ... am offentlichen Geist gesundigt haben; aber die Juden in ihrer Totalitat ... dafur verantwortlich zu machen, das ist ... zu billig und zu einfa~h.”~’

Wassermann was aware that rational arguments meant little in an ir- rational, rancorous world. In 1932, when anti-Semites were calling for a general boycott of Jewish artists, the writer returned to his earlier witch-hunt analogy to describe the situation. In a newspaper essay entitled “Der Jude in der Kunst” he wrote: “Ein Blutmarchen hat das ... Herzvolk Europas behext; liebedienerische Wissenschaft schreibt die Gebrauchsanweisung und den neuen Malleus mulejicarum dazu, politische Leidenschaft schiirt das Scheiterhau- fenfeuer .... Was sol1 ich nun dawider unternehmen? Was kann ich anderes beginnen als mit offener Brust auf den Schauplatz treten und sagen: da bin ich, ... ich stelle mein Sein gegen euer Tun.”26

That is essentially the stance that Wassermann took in 1933 after the Nazis assumed power in Germany. His commitment to racial justice never flagged. However, it is highly ironic that during 1933, which was the last full year of Wassermann’s life - he died on January 1, 1934 -, a bizarre concatenation of circumstances, driven by German politics, managed to produce a rift between him and his Jewish publishing house (S. Fischer), whose founder and guiding light, Samuel Fischer, had been a lifelong friend.

In March 1933 Wassermann celebrated his sixtieth birthday. The occasion prompted Samuel Fischer to dedicate that month’s issue of Die neue Rund- schau to the author. It contained tributes from wellwishers (such as Heinrich Mann and Hermann Hesse) but also a contribution by Wassermann himself, entitled “Selbstschau am Ende des sechsten Jahrzehnts.” This essay reiterates the author’s passion for justice, which is attributed to his Jewish heritage. It also dwells on the European persecution of the Jews, singling out Germany specifically for censure. “ ... der Herd der Umtriebe, das Zentrum der Infekti- on, ist nach wie vor Deutschland. Das schmerzt. ... Es liepe mich nicht ruhen, auch wenn ich kein Jude ware; den Stachel wurde ich nicht los, ... das Gefuhl einer brandigen Wunde am Korper der Nation.”27 In Nazi Germany that passage provoked outrage and quick retaliation. In April 1933 the PreuPische


Akademie der Kunste (Sektion fur Dichtkunst), eager to toe the new politically correct line, expelled Wassermann as a member.

The noose tightened further in May 1933, when his books were blacklisted by the Borsenblatt fur den Deutschen BuchhandeLZ8 While this measure did not yet constitute an official ban, it nevertheless stigmatized Wassermann and instilled fear in the ranks of German publishers and book dealers. Publishing and marketing the writings of a blacklisted author became risky business, both politically and commercially. The S. Fischer Verlag tried to steer a cau- tious course in this sea of troubles.

Wassermann, who was in dire financial straits at this time (largely because of constant legal actions brought against him by his first wife), began - reluc- tantly - to look for publication opportunities outside Germany, even though he was still under contract to S. Fischer in Berlin. In September 1933 he published a lengthy speech, “Meine Landschaft, aupere und innere”, in the first issue of Die Sammlung, an expatriate monthly put out by Querido in Amsterdam. The journal and its collaborators came under immediate attack by a newly created Nazi office called the “Reichsstelle zur Forderung des deutschen Schrifttums.” The S. Fischer Verlag pressured several of its authors to distance themselves from Die Sammlung. Thomas Mann, Alfred Doblin and Rene Schickele complied openly.

Meanwhile Wassermann was completing a new novel (which turned out to be his last): Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz. The manuscript reached S. Fischer in Berlin in early November 1933.29 On November 25th Wassermann met in Vienna with the publisher’s son-in-law, Gottfried Bermann Fischer, to negotiate the terms of publication. The meeting ended inconclusively. The following day Wassermann had an attack of angina pectoris and was hospi- talized for over a week. In December he was informed by Bermann Fischer that a revised blacklist had just come out in Germany. Since it contained six of Wassermann’s books, including his most recent novels, the S. Fischer Ver- lag felt constrained to postpone publication of the new novel indefinitel~.~’ Thereupon Wassermann, devastated and in desperate need of income, turned over the manuscript to the Querido Verlag in Amsterdam. Two weeks later he was dead.

Wassermann had sensed the imminence of death for some time. As the atmosphere around him became more constrictive, he recorded in his diary: “Mir wird eiskalt, wenn ich an die nachste Zukunft denke, - denn an eine fernere zu denken hab ich wohl nicht mehr ~~Ot ig . ”~ ’ It is clear that anti-

188 Rudolf Koester

Semitism after its empowerment in Germany was strongly instrumental in hounding the author to an early grave. A few months before his death Was- sermann wrote to a friend: “ ... man windet sich durch Sturme ... durch, manchmal sieht’s schlimm aus, manchmal hofft man wieder, im Ganzen frei- lich lastet die Verzweiflung uber Deutschland berghoch auf meiner Brust. Die Frage ist: Uberlebt man’s?”32 Deprived of his German publisher and - progressively - of his German readership, Wassermann at sixty faced the loss of his livelihood. But it was more than that. Having dedicated his whole life to his craft, he was now losing his ruison d’etre. No doubt, his premature death cannot be blamed entirely on anti-Semitism and German politics. Some of the responsibility must be shared by his first wife and her unrelenting litigation, which for several years robbed Wassermann of all domestic peace. But that is a story all to itself.

NOTES

1. Jakob Wassermann, Mein Weg uls Deutscher und Jude, (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1921), p. 117.

2. See Jakob Wassermann, “Selbstschau am Ende des sechsten Jahrzehnts,” in: Die n e w Rundschau 44 (1933), esp. pp. 387-395. See also passim Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude.

3 . See Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler ’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), p. 56.

4. See Bruce E Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti- Semitism, (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 28-29.

5. Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933, (Cam- bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 260.

6. Pauley, p. 30. 7. For the various “strains” of anti-Semitism (e. g. Christian anti-Semitism, anti-

Christian anti-Semitism, political anti-Semitism, economic anti-Semitism, social anti-Semitism, racial anti-Semitism, eliminationist anti-Semitism) see Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914, trans]. by Noah Jonathan Jacobs, (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1975), pp. 223-289; F? G. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti- Semitism in Germuny and Austria, (New York, London, Sydney: John Wiley & Sons, 1964); H. I . Bach, The German Jew: A Synthesis of Judaism and Western Civilization, 1730-1930, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 122 ff.; Katz, pp. 260-272 and 318-327; Goldhagen, pp. 49 ff.. For the origins of racial anti-Semitism (particularly the influence of Count Joseph Arthur de Gobi- neau, Charles Darwin and Social Darwinism) see Pauley, pp. 27 ff.; Bach, pp.


8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

129-132 and Hermann Graml, Antisemitism in the Third Reich, transl. by Tim Kirk, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 63. See Gordon A. Craig, The Germans, (New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons, 1982), p. 137. Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude , p. 37. Ibid., pp. 38-39. Pauley, p. 26. Wassermann’s initial attitude was not uncommon at the time. “The westernized Jews usually regarded their eastern coreligionists with suspicion .... They saw the ‘Ostjuden’ as loud, coarse, dirty, immoral, and culturally backward. ... Well-established Viennese Jews even held them responsible for arousing anti-Semitism” (Pau- ley, pp. 66-67). See also Ruth Gay, The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait, (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 234. Other (later) Jewish writers (e. g. Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth) also had reser- vations about Zionism and Zionists. See Pauley, p. 222. Jakob Wassermann, “Das Los der Juden,” in: Die neue Rundschau, 15 (1904), 943. It is perhaps worth noting that the “Russian Empire ... became the first country in Europe to have officially sponsored pogroms” (Pauley, p. 24). It is also clear that the instigators of the Russian pogroms drew some inspiration from German anti-Semites. See Werner Jochmann, Gesellschaffskrise und Judenfeindschaft in Deutschlund 1870-1945, (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1988), pp. 5658. See Craig, p. 143. Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude, pp. 122-123. Cited in Pulzer, p. 307 and in Craig, p. 143. “The assassination of Rathenau, though neither the first political murder in the Republic nor the first act of violence against a Jew, was of especial importance, firstly because of the distinguished position of its victim, secondly because his only crime was to be a Jew” (Pulzer, p. 306). See Craig, p. 143. Jakob Wassermann, “In memoriam Walther Rathenau,” in: Die neue Rundxhuu, 33 (1922), 805. Jakob Wassermann, “Offener Brief an den Herausgeber einer Monatsschrift fur ‘Kulturelle Erneuerung’ (1925):’ in: Lebensdienst by Jakob Wassermann, (Leipzig: Grethlein & Co., 1928), pp. 157-158. Jakob Wassermann, “Rassenantagonismus: An eine amerikanische Zeitschrift,” in: Lebensdienst, p. 178. Ibid., p. 179. Jakob Wassermann, “Die psychologische Situation des Judentums,” in: Jakob Wassermann: Deutscher und Jude - Reden und Schriften 1904-1933, Dierk Rode- wald (Ed.), (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1984), p. 144. Jakob Wassermann, “Der Jude in der Kunst,” in: Jakob Wasserman: Deutscher und Jude - Reden und Schriften 1904-1933 , p. 158. Wassermann, “Selbstschau am Ende des sechsten Jahrzehnts,” 390-39 1. See Dierk Rodewald, “Nachwort,” in: Tagebuch aus dem Winkel by Jakob Wasser- mann, (Miinchen, Wien: Langen Muller, 1987), pp. 186-187. See Peter de Mendelssohn, S. Fischer und sein Verlag, (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1970), p. 1300. See Rodewald, “Nachwort,” pp. 195-196.

190 Rudolf Koester

3 1. Cited in Marta Karlweis, Jakob Wassermann: Bild, Kampf und Werk (Amsterdam:

32. Ibid., pp. 453454. Querido Verlag, 1935), p. 456.

Rudolf Koester. Born 1936. Ph. D. Harvard University, 1964. Professor of German, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Has published: Hermunn Heme (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1975), Joseph Roth (Berlin, Colloquium, 1982), Hermann Broch (Berlin, Colloquium, 1987), Jakob Wassermunn (Berlin, Morgenbuch, 1996) and articles in German Quar- terly, Revue des langues vivantes, Germanic Review and Monatshefte.

jakob wassermann, anti-semitism and german politics

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