The solution to the Jewish question

Portrait of Thomas Mann, 1905

The solution to the Jewish question is the now misleading title of a short essay by Thomas Mann , which appeared on September 14, 1907 in the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten and later as one of one hundred articles in The solution of the Jewish question. A survey. has been published.

The author responded to a circular from Julius Moses on the so-called Jewish question , the "solution" of which he saw, albeit modified, in a cultural assimilation in the sense of a "Europeanization of Judaism".

Despite the declared philosemitism , the text shows an ambivalent relationship to Judaism and - for example in the drastic depiction of the “ghetto Jews” - cannot do without certain anti-Jewish stereotypes that were widespread at the time and that are still the subject of research.

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Adolf Bartels (before 1897)

With an ironic twist, Thomas Mann contradicts the “captivating” thesis of the “great Germanic poet and literary historian” Adolf Bartels , a folk anti-Semite , that he is a Jew, and refers to his “Romance blood mixture”. As a philosemite, he regards the “exodus” of the Jews called for by Zionists as the greatest misfortune because of its cultural significance for Europe .

For the novelist, the “Jewish question” is a psychologically attractive problem: “Recognizable everywhere as a stranger, the pathos of the exception in the heart”, the Jew embodies an “extraordinary form of existence” that has been preserved within bourgeois life and “in a sublime or disreputable sense of the common norm ”. The contrary properties and contrasts of the “Jewish nature”, such as “free spirit and revolutionary tendencies”, “snobbery and longing”, “cynicism and sentimentality”, are the results of its “extraordinaryness”, including not least its superiority in the “competition”. As a minority you have an advantage here.

The “Jewish question” cannot be solved quickly, neither through assimilation or Zionism nor through other “magic words”, but only change and at some point perhaps no longer exist. Support for Jewish affairs goes hand in hand with cultural progress.

In response to one of the suggestions in the circular, Thomas Mann speaks out in favor of assimilation, but in the sense of the “Europeanization of Judaism”, which goes hand in hand with its upgrading or is directed against the impoverishment of the “Jewish type”, as it is in show the ghettos .

It is a mistake to try to derive a lack of adaptation from the two-thousand-year-old diaspora . There is no "need for the Jew to always keep a fat hump, crooked legs and red, muddling hands, to display a painfully impudent being and, on the whole, to grant a strange, smeared aspect". On the contrary, there are already today “young people who have developed [themselves] in English sport” and under favorable conditions, “without denying their way”, and who are well-behaved and elegant in a way that “every Germanic girl or youth thinks a 'mixed marriage' must appear quite tolerable ”.

background

Julius Moses wrote a circular to numerous public figures and raised questions about the cultural assimilation, further development and national independence of the Jews in connection with the Zionist movement. At the end of his circular he asked about the "nature of the Jewish question", about differences in other countries and the possible "solution".

In addition to Rainer Maria Rilke and Maxim Gorki , the ethnic anti-Semite Adolf Bartels was among the recipients. In his book The German Poetry of the Present , he claimed, among other things, that the "Mann brothers" were Jews.

Meaning and reception

In the various research approaches and literary studies , a tension is repeatedly emphasized: on the one hand, Thomas Mann, especially in his early and middle work, rejects clichés with reference to his philosemitism, on the other hand he repeats them.

For Stefan Breuer , the essay again shows a peculiar split: Although Thomas Mann politically turned away from the anti-Semitism of the magazine Das Twanzigste Jahrhundert , for which his brother Heinrich in particular had authored aggressive articles, negative stereotypes persisted in the literary field a number of Jewish figures from the prose work can be recognized. It is noticeable that the text contains, in addition to the declared philosemitism, drastic denunciating representations of the “ghetto Jew” and thus reveals an ambivalence between the explanation and anti-Jewish stereotypes. Since there is no ideological charge, one cannot speak of anti-Semitism.

Heinrich Detering similarly states a contradiction between the positive assessment of the cultural significance of Judaism and an imperceptible slide into "hostile and rebellious". Thomas Mann wrote of the "degenerate and most impoverished race in the ghetto" with natural casualness and thus assumed that the ghetto would still be "deep in the soul" of the Jews today. With the patronizing qualification that “the Jew” does not have to keep “crooked legs and red clapping hands”, the philosopher Thomas Mann had just repeated the stereotypes that he had decidedly rejected beforehand.

Looking at the clichés used by Mann in his “fatal play”, Klaus Harpprecht points out that the author was probably familiar with anti-Semitic publications. The questionability can already be seen from the fact that the essay was not allowed to appear in any other of his text collections during the author's lifetime. On the other hand, the perspective from which Thomas Mann thought like “a son of his time” should not be forgotten, even though “enlightened spirits” had already rejected anti-Semitic resentments as being cultured.

For more on Thomas Mann's relationship to Judaism, see: Thomas Mann and Judaism .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Mann: The solution to the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 459.
2. ↑ Thomas Mann: The solution to the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 460.
3. ↑ Thomas Mann: The solution to the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 466.
4. ↑ Thomas Mann: The solution to the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 462.
5. ↑ Stefan Breuer : The "Twentieth Century" and the Mann Brothers. In: Thomas Mann and Judaism (= Thomas Mann Studies, Volume 30). Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 2004, p. 95.
6. ^ Heinrich Detering : Jews, women, writers. In: Thomas Mann and Judaism (= Thomas Mann Studies, Volume 30). Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 2004, p. 17.
7. ↑ Klaus Harpprecht : Thomas Mann, A Biography. Chapter 22, Rowohlt, 1995, p. 277.