History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

Thus every man's hand was against them; no defender of any weight or influence appeared for them, whose word, if it could not silence, might at least curb the opposition. The aged Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter) did not raise his voice for them, although he had a predilection for the Jews; nor Varnhagen von Ense, although Rachel was his wife, and was included in the general obloquy. Only one writer overcame his prejudice, and defied public opinion in order to take up cudgels on behalf of the universally despised and downtrodden Jews. This was the comedy writer Julius von Voss, whose voice certainly had no great weight, and whose disordered affairs roused the suspicion that Jewish liberality encouraged his venturesomeness. Voss himself in his comedies and novels had exposed the Jews to ridicule, but from regret and remorse, he confessed, he desired to protect the Jews against the "Hep, hep" insults. His words were little regarded, and even were derided. Still less impression was created by the anonymous writings of various freemasons in favor of the Jews, but their goodwill should be recognized. The converted Jews conducted themselves at this juncture in a shameful manner. Not one of them, except Börne, came forward, in behalf of their former brethren, with that just indignation which violence against the defenseless ought to inspire. Rachel von Varnhagen, it is true, wrote to her brother, Ludwig Robert, who had been a witness of the "Hep, hep" storm, in the following manner: —

"I am intensely moved, as I have never yet been, on account of the Jews. They are to be preserved, but only for torture, for contumely, for insult, for brutal outrage. The hypocritical newborn love for the Christian religion (God forgive me for my sin!), for the Middle Ages with their art, poetry, and hideousness, incites the people to the only abomination to which, mindful of all past experiences, it can still be incited. It is not the action of the people, who are taught to cry "Hep, hep." The professors Fries and Rühs, and others, such as Arnim, Brentano, 'our connections,' and yet greater persons are filled with prejudices."

She thought that the Christian priests ought to step forward to check the outrages of the people. "Aye, the priests." But neither Rachel, nor her brother Robert, nor her husband Varnhagen, who elaborated their periods for every childish folly, and had a voice in public opinion, raised it against violence, and against the rule of oppression.

The Jews had, it is true, their own literary exponents to protect them. In Germany alone there were nearly forty Jewish writers who could address the German public. They possessed two Jewish organs, and the daily journals occasionally opened their pages to them. They advanced boldly to the battle-field to ward off the universal accusations against their race. Even the aged David Friedländer raised his voice, wrung his hands over the enemies of the Jews and their persecutions in Germany in the nineteenth century, and could not conceive – he who considered official Christianity and the State as ideal – how these gods could wallow in so much filth. He addressed himself to the Countess Von der Recke, and reminded her of the time when eminent Christians conversed pleasantly with Jews, and both received instruction from each other. This sounded like a forgotten fairy tale from ancient days. But the Jewish combatants only threw light missiles, and could scarcely prick the thick hide of prejudice. For this purpose sharp and heavy harpoons were necessary. At this point the Guide of all history, who had not abandoned the Jews, awakened for them two avenging angels, who with fiery scourges lashed the perverseness of the Germans. These avenging spirits, who brought the Germans more blessings even than their guardian angels, were Ludwig Börne and Heinrich Heine.

CHAPTER XIV.

BÖRNE AND HEINE

Börne and Heine – Börne's Youth – His Attitude to Judaism – His Love of Liberty – His Defense of the Jews – Heine: his Position with Regard to Judaism – The Rabbi of Bacharach – Heine's Thoughts upon Judaism – Influence of Börne and Heine.

1819–183 °C. E

Why should not Börne and Heine have a page in Jewish history? Not only did Jewish blood flow in their veins, but they were imbued with true Jewish spirit.

The lightning darts which they flashed across Germany, now in the colors of the rainbow, again in glaring sheets, were charged with the electricity of Jewish Talmudism. Both Börne and Heine renounced Judaism, but only like combatants who, appropriating the enemy's uniform and colors, can all the more easily strike and annihilate him. Both expressed, with a clearness which left nothing to be desired, how much they cared for the religion of the cross, which they professed. There is, therefore, not the slightest reason why Christianity should count Börne and Heine as members of its flock on account of the idle ceremony through which they passed in church. One of them, in spite of his changing moods, at heart remained truer to Judaism than the Friedländers who constituted themselves its representatives. These two gifted individuals, the pride of Germany, are still greater ornaments to Judaism. To these two Jews, the Germans owe their pure taste, their feeling for truth, and their impulse for liberty – to these two Jews persecuted through life by the abominable "Hep, hep." The mists of the Middle Ages, with which the Germans artificially surrounded themselves in order to obscure the truth, were dispersed by the flashes of wit of Börne and Heine, and light in its purity was restored. They grafted wit and life on German literature, and banished that clumsiness and awkwardness which had aroused the ridicule of the neighboring nations.

In their childish spite against the Jews, the Teutomaniacs, the Rühses and Hundts, asserted that Judaism could not produce a man of forcible character, or gifted with a true sense of art. History at once gave them the lie, and put them to shame. Judaism furnished forth a vigorous apostle of liberty, with language recalling that of the prophets and the Roman Catos, who confounded all the ideas of the Germans concerning law; and it supplied a poet, with artistic sense characterized by a mixture of pathos and cutting irony, who abolished all their hard and fast rules of art. The rich, varied blossoms of the Börne-Heine mind sprang from Jewish soil, and were only watered by European culture. Hence the close connection between them in spite of their dissimilarity and mutual antipathy. Not only was their wit Jewish, but also their love of truth, their aversion to vain display, their hatred of veiling and palliating wrongs, their contempt for official pomp, for obscuring clouds of incense, for ringing of bells, ambrosial organ tones covering slavery, perversion of justice, and oppression. The democratic, freedom-loving spirit, noticeable in Börne more than in Heine, and the analytical, Spinoza-like mode of reasoning, more characteristic of Heine than of Börne, are Jewish to the core. Had they been born Christians, and brought up in the atmosphere of red-tapeism, neither of them would have developed as rescuing powers, which with laughing mien helped to banish deeply-rooted perversions and absurdities. The slaves became deliverers, and saved their enemies from the double yoke of political and social inferiority. The Teutomaniacs almost deserve thanks for having tormented the Jews with their reactionary measures. They roused, if not Heine, certainly Börne, who was inclined to idle speculation, and furnished him with the dart that wounded the enemy.

Ludwig Börne, or Löb Baruch (born in Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1786; died in Paris, 1837), saw the light in the same year when it was extinguished for Mendelssohn, as though history wished to compensate the bereaved Jews for the loss of the sage of Berlin. Börne resembled Mendelssohn in some respects: in his timid, bashful, somewhat awkward bearing, in his self-control, his strength of character, and his strict adherence to an adopted system of morality. Both became the objects of admiration by accident, in spite of themselves. Both drew up for themselves æsthetic rules of conduct without having been trained to do so.

Börne despised the Jews of his time, and spoke of them as if he were their arch-enemy. Jewish antiquity, misrepresented to him in his youth, and still more dimmed by his Berlin and Halle friends, he looked upon as a caricature. The ancient Jews from the day of Abraham until the time of "wealthy Solomon" appeared to him "as if they had wished to parody history." He did not suspect how much his inward self, the truthfulness of his nature, owed to Judaism. The filth of Lucinde, consecrated by Schleiermacher, so disgusted Börne at the age of sixteen, that even a stealthy perusal of the book possessed no charm. The sobriety with which Judaism had endowed him showed Börne the right way of balancing his ideal nature, and avoiding too harsh a discord with the real world. At an early age he became acquainted with a goddess to whom he was devoted in extravagant love, and to whom he remained faithful until his dying breath. "The true nature of virtue may be expressed in a few words. What is virtue? Virtue is bliss. And bliss? It is liberty. We cannot further inquire, what is liberty, for liberty is in accord with reason, in accord with God, and in accord with the unconditional – it explains itself." So thought Börne, and so he wrote in his diary at the age of eighteen; and this idea governed his inner being as long as he lived, and was the motive power of all his actions. Virtue is liberty, and liberty is virtue; they necessitate and produce bliss. Yet Börne limited his love of liberty; he guarded himself from overstepping that narrow boundary at which the pursuit of an ideal turns to madness.

May not his Jewish blood, or at any rate, the sad pages of Jewish history, explain his worship of liberty, which influenced his body and mind? How hard and degrading the absence of liberty was could be felt only by a Jew, in comparison with whom an Indian or a Russian bondsman was a free man. Frankfort, the birth-place of Börne, with its disgraceful laws concerning the residence of Jews, effectually taught him love of liberty. When, only a boy, he was prohibited from walking on the footpath, and had to keep to the dusty road for vehicles, when every ragged Christian beggar, or drunkard, was allowed to call to him, "Mach Mores, Jud!" the thought may have struck him that the absence of liberty was damnation and the presence of liberty salvation. "I, a slave from my birth, love liberty more than you; yea, because I was trained in servitude, I understand liberty better than you!" he often said. His much admired style, his perfect, captivating manner, his profound epigrams, recall the gnomic wisdom of Bible and Talmud. In short, Börne owes his favorable points to Judaism. But he neither was grateful for his gifts, nor did he acknowledge their origin, which he estimated no more than did his Berlin friends. On one occasion, indeed, he said:

"I should not deserve to enjoy the light of the sun, were I, on account of mockery upon which I have always looked with contempt, ungrateful for God's great favor, in having made me at once a German and a Jew: for I know how to value the undeserved fortune of being at the same time a German and a Jew, to be able to strive after all the virtues of the Germans without participating in their faults."

He added, addressing the Germans: —

"I pray you, do not despise my Jews. If only you were as they are, you were better. You have deprived the Jews of air, they have thus been preserved from rottenness; you have strewn the salt of hatred into their hearts, their hearts have thus been kept fresh. You have imprisoned them for the whole long winter in a cellar, and stopped up the cellar door with dung; but you, exposed to the frost, were half frozen to death. When spring arrives, we shall see who will blossom first, Jew or Christian."

Börne did not, however, himself believe in the endurance of the Jews, and he gave utterance to those words only because he was vexed, or in order to vex the Germans. He said at the same time, ironically: "You know how my heart beats for the Jews."

Since the time when his mind began to mature, he beheld in the Jews only money-makers, as on the Exchange at Frankfort, or deriders of religion ashamed of their race, as in the salon of Henrietta Herz; moreover, his education had made Judaism seem so despicable that he did not judge it worthy of consideration. Thus Börne never understood what was most sacred to the Jews, and he was unable to fathom the depths of his own mind, and discriminate between what he owed to the general state of culture and what to Judaism.

His healthy spirit, however, and love for the oppressed guarded him from the unprincipled conduct of Rachel, of those who frequented the salons at Berlin, and of many others who turned their backs contemptuously upon the Jews. Even as a youth Börne hated the idea that the word "Jew" might be insultingly cast at him.

"And when they come and tell you that you are a Jew," he wrote in his diary, "how they bandy about the Jewish jargon, so that one must almost die of laughter.

"Oh! when I think of that, my mind is tossed as by a storm, my soul would fain burst from its dwelling-place, and seek the body of a lion, that it might meet the villain with jaw and claw."

His anticipations proved correct, he was not spared the insult, and his lion's claw was shown. While a student, he procured from the police of Frankfort a passport, in which the spiteful police-clerk had inserted the words: "Jew of Frankfort."

"My blood stood still, but I could neither say nor do anything, for my father was present. I then swore in my heart: only wait, the time will come when I shall write a passport for you, a passport for all of you."

For a moment it seemed as if Börne would forget his oath. The Jews of Frankfort had bought equality for half a million of money, and Börne, who had studied law and shown himself a young man of promise, was one of the first to receive a position in the Frankfort police department. But if Börne was inclined to forget that he was a Jew, and remembered only that he was a German, the people of Frankfort did not forget it, and imprudently and brutally reminded him of his secret oath. He was the first victim of the reaction; he was expelled from office, as soon as the Jews of Frankfort were driven back into the Ghetto. The insolent manner in which they were cheated out of trebly pledged freedom revolted Börne's feeling for liberty, and he sharpened his first arrows in defense of the members of his own race. They were directed against the narrow-minded citizens of Frankfort, who in the nineteenth century had restored the laws of 1616 concerning the residence of the Jews, "that romance of malice," as Börne called them. The feelings which agitated him during the years of ever-increasing reaction against the Jews he put into the mouth of a Jewish officer in a novel:

"You stole from me the pleasures of childhood, you arrant knaves! You threw salt into the sweet cup of my youth, you placed malicious slander and hateful derision in my road in manhood; arrest me you could not, but fatigued, vexed, without joyfulness, I reached my goal… That I cannot even revenge myself, that I should not have the power to forgive, nor the weakness to chastise! They are out of my reach in their fox-hole!.. You ask me why I shun my fatherland. I have none; I have never left my home. My home is in dungeons; where there is persecution I breathe the atmosphere of my childhood. The moon is as near to me as is Germany."

Instead of revenging himself for the wounds inflicted upon him and the members of his race by German Jew-hatred, Börne undertook the difficult task of extinguishing this hatred. In the "Waage," his organ, he erected ideal standards, by which he measured the narrow, petty circumstances of the Germans, and their short-sightedness.

Before Louis Baruch undertook his campaign against German faults and prejudices, or rather before he undertook the education of the Germans, he renounced Judaism, was baptized in Offenbach, and assumed the name Karl Ludwig Börne (June 5, 1818). How little he cared for the Christian faith we may judge from his remark that he "repented the money spent on baptism." He did not wish the effect of his missiles to be lessened by the prejudice which might arise from the fact of their being discharged by a Jew. It is, however, difficult to excuse a man of Börne's character for deserting, without any such struggle as Heine's with himself, the colors of the weak and oppressed, who should have been ennobled in his eyes by the very pain of degradation; deserting for a cause, moreover, in which he did not believe. Germany soon discovered that she had gained an author of Lessing's caliber. Börne's wit was felt the more keenly, because at every turn one could perceive the correctness of the picture and observe the genuineness and integrity of the painter. A glance revealed that he wrote with "the blood of his heart and the sap of his nerves," hence his words made the impression of weighty deeds.

He could not behold in silence the folly and cruelty of the "Hep, hep" year, and he wrote "for the Jews." "I should have said for right and liberty; but if these terms were understood, nothing need be said." He pointed his finger at fools, and threw light on the faces of villains. "A sort of fatal necessity," he said, "was connected in past times with Jew-massacres. They seem to have arisen from an indistinct, inexplicable feeling inspired by Judaism, which, like a scoffing and threatening spirit, like the ghost of a murdered mother, accompanied Christianity from its cradle." Börne analyzed German Jew-hatred into its constituents, and showed the absurdity of each. On another occasion (1820) he told them the stern truth:

"I pardon the German nation for its Jew-hatred, for it is a nation of children, and for this reason, just like an infant, needs a go-cart to enable it some day to stand firm, so that by means of the barriers to liberty it may learn to do without barriers. The German nation would collapse a hundred times a day if it were without prejudices. But individual adults I cannot pardon for their Jew-hatred."

Dr. Ludwig Holst, a newly-fledged Jew-hater, who had developed his cult into a philosophical system, and who, as Börne says, sounded "a metaphysical Hep, hep," was attacked by him with scoffs and sneers.

"Hatred of Jews is one of the Pontine bogs which poison the beautiful land of our liberty. We see the hopeful friends of the fatherland with pale faces wandering about hopelessly. German minds dwell on Alpine heights, but German hearts pant in damp marshes. Holst wishes to kill the Jews, and if they resist, he turns round to his circle of onlookers, and says: 'Now you see that I am right in taxing the Jews with unparalleled insolence; they will not suffer their heads to be struck off ever so little, and they sulk.' … You hate the Jews, not because they have earned hatred, but because they earn money… What you call human rights, which, it must be conceded you grant Jews, are only animal rights. The right of seeking food, of devouring it, of sleeping, and of multiplying, are enjoyed also by the beasts of the field – until they are slain, and to the Jews you grant no more… Men of Frankfort, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen, answer me. You complain that Jews are all usurers, yet you prevent the mental development of those who abandon usury! I will not be turned away; I demand a reply. Men of Frankfort, tell me: Why should the practice of medicine be restricted to four Jews, and that of the law be allowed to none?.. In the same way in which you in your free city now storm against the Jews, did you not twenty years ago storm against Catholics?.. Do you doubt the arrival of the day which will command you to look upon Jews as your equals? But you wish to be forced! The German is deaf. You will not obey voluntarily; fate will have to take hold of you and drag you hither and thither. Shame upon you!" Börne remarks in conclusion: "I love neither Jew as Jew, nor Christian as Christian; I love them because they are human beings, and born to be free. Liberty shall be the soul of my pen, until it becomes blunted, or my hand is lamed."

But Börne wished the Jews to forget as a bad dream their history of a thousand years, and to become Germans. He did not possess the far-sightedness of Heine.

Heinrich Heine (born in Düsseldorf, 1799, died in Paris, 1854) in his innermost self was infinitely more of a Jew than Börne; indeed, he possessed to a great extent all the favorable and unfavorable characteristics of Jews. Who can paint this "wicked favorite of the Graces and Muses" (as he was called), this scoffing romancer and lyrical philosopher, with his chameleon-like nature? Börne's mind resembled transparent spring-water, which trickles over pebbles, and foams only when attacked by winds. Heine's mind, on the other hand, resembled a whirlpool, upon whose surface the sunbeams play in prismatic colors, but which drags approaching vessels into its roaring depths, and dashes them to pieces unless they are of the strongest build. For Heine was as deep a thinker as he was an artistic poet, as unrelenting a critic as he was an amiable scoffer, as full of original thoughts as he was of verses. Heine had not to search for Truth; Truth flew to Heine. She, like the Muse, revealed herself to him, jesting and playing with him as her favorite. Behind his banter there often was more earnest conviction than in the litany of a morose moralist. Heine longed for ideals which his mind could revere, and because he did not find them he scoffed at the false gods who allowed themselves to be worshiped. He has certainly given profound solutions to problems of history. He never sacrificed substance to form, when the former was of greater value than the latter. It is true that he often changed his opinions, but he did not play with his convictions. His religious views changed also; but he did not change his mind. He never wrote or acted against such convictions as he entertained at the time. If for a time he was slave to the false philosophical theory which makes a god of man, he afterwards acknowledged his error, and derided it thoroughly. Heine was certainly no pattern of virtue, neither was he so great a sinner as his sharp pen and tongue might lead one to suppose. He never lost his profound, noble nature, nor his sense of the sublime; neither did he roll in the mud of sensuality, as he would have his readers believe. He painted himself blacker than he was. He had his share of that acute sensitiveness which is the lot of poets, actors, and preachers, and this morbid state was in Heine's case connected with severe nervous suffering. In his sensitive condition he wrote things of which his sober judgment disapproved, but which he was ashamed to recall.

Heine had an advantage over Börne by reason of his sincere affection for his mother. Betty von Geldern came of a respected, it is said, an ennobled Jewish family. This educated mother, to whom he owed his bent of mind, was a religious woman, and brought up her children in the knowledge of the Jewish faith. The religious discord which had early alienated Börne from Judaism was unknown to Heine, and in his youth he strictly avoided the transgression of Jewish customs. He did not indeed learn so much Hebrew as Börne, but because he imbibed with love the little that he did learn, that little never left him, nor did he forget it later in life, whilst Börne wiped Hebrew entirely from his memory. Heine's love of Judaism, which, in spite of his mockery, was never quite dead, and especially his deep understanding of it, sprang from the fond memories of his youth, which remained with him like sweet, pleasing dreams. His soul was also filled with the charm of true Jewish family life, which gave him the proper standard by which to measure what men call virtue and happiness.

He had a warm though vague attachment to Judaism or the Jewish race, to its pathetic history and sacred books, and he was forcibly impressed by the antiquity of Judaism and its continuity of existence, defying time and myriads of obstacles. Now and again Heine felt proud of belonging to this ancient aristocracy. He felt what he wrote late in life:

"Now I perceive that the Greeks were only handsome youths, but the Jews have always been men, powerful, stubborn men, not only in days of yore, but even at present, in spite of eighteen centuries of persecution and misery. I have since learned to know them better, and to value them more highly, and if pride of descent were not always a foolish contradiction, I might feel proud of the fact that my progenitors were members of the noble house of Israel, that I am a descendant of those martyrs who have given a God and morality to the world, and who have fought and suffered on all the battle-fields of thought."