Saul Ascher

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Saul Ascher (born February 6, 1767 in Berlin ; died December 8, 1822 there ) was a German writer , translator and bookseller .

Life

Born as Saul ben Anschel Jaffe, he was the first child of Deiche Aaron (born 1749 in Frankfurt (Oder) ) and the bank broker Anschel Jaffe (born 1745 in Berlin).

Little is known about his training. High school studies in Landsberg an der Warthe in 1785 seem tolerably secure. On June 6, 1789 in Hanover, Ascher married Rahel Spanier (born 1763 in Bielefeld ), the daughter of Nathan Spanier , who was the head of the Ravensberg Judaism . The daughter Wilhelmine was born on October 6, 1795 as the only child.

Ascher was arrested in Berlin on April 6, 1810, and released on April 25 under political pressure. On October 6th, he was awarded his doctoral degree in absentia at the Friedrichs-Universität Halle , while State Chancellor Hardenberg had the proceedings in Berlin put down.

In 1812, the year his father died, Ascher received the citizenship letter . Ascher joined the reform-oriented Society of Friends before 1816 .

In the book burning at the Wartburg Festival on October 18, 1817, Ascher's work Die Germanomanie was also burned.

Sick in October 1822, he died on December 8th of the same year of "exhaustion".

activity

Ascher had an extensive circle of friends. From the end of 1789 he was close friends with the Swiss Heinrich Zschokke , later with Salomon Maimon , Johann Friedrich Cotta and Marx's teacher Eduard Gans . Heinrich Heine visited him in 1822, the year he died . As a Jew , theorist and writer , Ascher was strongly hostile throughout his life . However, he never spared his enemies either. After his wife's death in 1815, he was said to be a nerd. In 1818, Leopold Zunz remarked that Ascher was "an enemy of all enthusiasm, against the Germans, his moral character is not valued".

Saul Ascher was extremely productive literarily. Three areas of activity are to be separated: author, translator, editor / publisher. The full scope of his work has so far only been insufficiently explored.

Ascher was active as a publisher very early on. He had several publishers under different names one after the other and in parallel. His own writings also often appeared anonymously or under various pseudonyms .

Ascher was an employee and correspondent of various magazines, such as the Berlinische monthly , the Berlin archive of time and its taste , the Eunomia , the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung Halle , the Morgenblatt for educated stands by Cotta, the Miscellen for the latest world studies by Zschokke and the Journal de l'Empire . As a journalist, on the one hand, he delivered texts that corresponded to his rank as a thinker, but on the other hand purely daily products.

Ascher had founded at least two magazines himself and distributed them with some success. In 1810, a politically very difficult time for Ascher, he brought out the Welt- und Zeitgeist , which appeared in six issues up to 1811 and in which various authors, including Ascher himself, wrote. In 1818 and 1819 he published and wrote Der Falke alone , a rather theoretical and critical organ, of which six issues also appeared.

Teaching

In his first publication, Comments on the Improvement of the Jews in Bourgeoisie , Ascher emphasized that alleged special Jewish character traits were not due to a predisposition but to centuries of persecution and discrimination. Regarding “the fate of the Jewish nation” he remarks: “Oppression creates faint-heartedness of mind, contempt suppresses every germ of morality and education; Pursuing every germ of morality. No nation is more persecuted and despised than the Jewish one. "

Unlike other Jewish authors, who welcomed the reforms accompanying the Edict of Tolerance of Emperor Joseph II , including the general duty to serve in the army, Ascher turned against military service to be performed by Jews.

Due to the factual division of the Jewish nation into rich and poor, the wealthy would buy themselves out and the sole burden would be shifted onto the poor. Only if the Jews were given complete equality in advance would they also result in general approval for the state.

In 1792, Leviathan, or about religion in consideration of Judaism , appeared, a criticism of religion in which Ascher differentiated between revealed and aspired rational religion and an externalized "machine-like" ritual law.

In his pamphlet Eisenmenger the Second , published in 1794, Ascher polemicized against anti-Semitic remarks by Fichte , to which he attached the name of Johann Andreas Eisenmenger , the well-known enemy of Jews at the time , the author of the pamphlet Discovered Judaism . With Fichte, who had called for Jewish heads to be cut off and others put on, a new phase of hostility towards Jews was to be recorded, which instead of religious arguments were now bringing up political arguments against the Jews. Ascher pleaded for the emancipation of the Jews and pointed to the denomination-bridging elements of the “truths veiled” in the respective “revelations”.

In 1799, his work, Ideas on the Natural History of Political Revolutions, was banned by the censors on the grounds of "highly criminal intent aimed at overthrowing the previous state constitution". The description of the human path to a higher and more worthy community was published under another title in 1801. Ascher saw his revolutionary and progressive ideal first realized in the Prussian state, then in Napoleon's political system . Without a certain nationalism and intolerance, the empire laid the foundations for a more harmonious world order.

In 1809 Ascher translated The Negroes by Henri Grégoire , a champion for the emancipation of the Jews, a work for all "who defend the cause of the unhappy blacks and mulattos ...".

In 1811 Ascher described the circumstances of the arrest of the anti-reform politicians Finckenstein and Marwitz , on which the press was instructed “that this article comes from a completely untrained Jewish instructor named Saul Ascher, who was handed over to the city prison a year ago ... and how shows, is just released from it too early ”.

In the same year Ascher described the Berlin romantic-nationalist Christian-German table society , which in its association statute basically excluded membership of Jews or people of Jewish origin. With regard to anti-Semitic publications by Clemens Brentano, he expressed the fear that after the condemnation of the Philistines and Jews, “Indians, Mohammedans, Chinese and unbelieving barbarians will now come”.

Germanomania

Germanomania. Sketch for a time painting

With the defeat of Napoleon, the anti-French and anti-Semitic folk ideology with the spokesmen Ernst Moritz Arndt and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn gained influence. Saul Ascher intervened in the journalistic dispute in 1815 with his work Germanomanie :

“One must seek to inspire the crowd in order to win them over to a view or a teaching; In order to keep the fire of enthusiasm fuel must be collected, and in the heap of Jews our Germanomaniac wanted to put the first bundle of Reiser to spread the flame of fanaticism. "

Germany, Ascher continued, was not weakened because of harmful influences from abroad, but because it withdrew from the impetus of the French Revolution from the beginning. He saw the idea of ​​an emerging united humanity realized in the Holy Alliance . He commented on the demand of the anti-Semitic historian Friedrich Rühs to exclude Jews from participating in the war because of a lack of honor: “Germany's armies were defeated in the fight against France before the Jews took part, but they remained ... victorious when the Jews ... stood in line with them ”.

The student and Jahn follower Hans Ferdinand Maßmann organized the reaction of the attacked “Germanomaniac”, as Saul Ascher himself called it, at the Wartburg Festival on October 18, 1817 in the form of a book burning . The Germanomania was burned together with other writings and symbols in front of some of the remaining students, citizens and the “Eisenacher Landsturm” on the Wartenberg near Eisenach. Most of the visitors to the “Peace Fires”, which had been held in connection with the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Nations near Leipzig , left the Wartenberg even before the act of the book burning due to the bad weather. "Woe to the Jews, if you hold on to their Judaism and want to mock our Volksthum and Deutschthum", it says in a note on Germanomania in Maßmann's work Brief and truthful description of the big boys' festival at the Wartburg near Eisenach on the 18th and 19th of the Victory Moon 1817 . Hans Ferdinand Maßmann then made derogatory carvings, which appeared in Lorenz Oken's magazine Isis (No. 195) next to the burnt titles.

Ascher summarized his view of the events of the book burning in 1818 in the publication Die Wartburgsfeier , in which he showed the fraternity members a reversal of the Lutheran intention as an irrational aberration. He expressly called for police measures to suppress German nationalist ideas. Saul Ascher also called for a state censorship decree in the Frankfurt Bundestag in 1818.

His work Der deutsche Geistesaristokratismus , written in 1819, can be understood as a summary of his thoughts . Based on the ideal of the French Revolution , Germany would have the role of completing it. Germany offers the prerequisites for a dissolving nationalism in favor of a gradually advancing cosmopolitanism that unites people .

Aftermath

In terms of history, Ascher clearly lagged behind other contemporary representatives of emancipation. Heinrich Heine reports about him in his Harz journey . Ironically, he describes Ascher as a “doctor of reason” and after his death lets him appear as a ghost who tries to prove the non-existence of ghosts with the help of Kant's teachings in the “witching hour”. At the same time, however, Heine also explains that Ascher shaped his development. The Germanist Reinhold Steig deals in his book Heinrich von Kleist's Berlin Fights (Stuttgart 1901) one-sided and distorting with Ascher and his arguments with Kleist .

Walter Grab was the first to present Ascher in detail in an essay in 1977, based on a dissertation by Fritz Pinkuss from 1928. In 1989 and 1990, Peter Hacks also tried to classify and acknowledge Ascher politically in two writings that were summarized under the title Ascher gegen Jahn . Ascher plays an important role as a counter figure to Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in the context of recent research on the relationship between romanticism and anti-Semitism.

In his two-part essay Der Falke , most recently published in his collection Eine Welt in Scherben (2008), André Thiele presented the preparatory work for a comprehensive biography of Ascher and a bibliography of the primary titles, which is around 50 percent more extensive than the titles known up to then .

In 2010 a one-volume selection from Ascher's work was published by Böhlau Verlag, Bonn, and a year later the first volume of a comprehensive edition of works by Verlag André Thiele (Mainz).

Works

Fonts

  • Leviathan or about religion in consideration of Judaism (1792).
  • Eisenmenger the Second (1794).
  • Philosophical sketches on the natural history of the origin, progress and decay of social constitutions (1801).
  • Oriental paintings (1802).
  • Ideas on the Natural History of Political Revolutions (1802).
  • Cabinet of Berlin Karaktere (1808).
  • Napoleon or on the Progress of Government (1808).
  • Rousseau and his son (1809).
  • Historical-Romantic Groups (1809).
  • Novels, stories and fairy tales (2 volumes, published 1810).
  • Bagatelles from the field of poetry, criticism and mood (2 vols., Published 1810–1811).
  • The dethroning of Alfonso, King of Portugal (1811).
  • The Germanomania (1815). (Online version of the first chapter on Gutenberg.de) [1]
  • Idea of ​​freedom of the press and an order of censorship (1818).
  • The Wartburg celebration (1818).
  • View of the Future Fate of Christianity (1819).

Translations

  • Henri Grégoire: The Negroes. A contribution to civic and human studies. 1809.
  • Auguste Lambert : Praxède or the French Werther . 1809.
  • Charles Ganilh : Studies on the Systems of Political Economy. 1811, anonymous.
  • Auguste Lambert: crushes of love. 1816.
  • Bernard Mandeville : Fable of the Bees. 1818, annotated.

Post mortem expenses

  1. Theoretical Writings, 1. Pamphlets. 2011, ISBN 978-3-940884-27-5 .
  2. Theoretical writings, 2. Religious philosophical writings. 2015, ISBN 3940884626 .

literature

in order of appearance

  • Fritz Pinkuss : Saul Ascher. A theorist of the emancipation of the Jews from the generation after Moses Mendelssohn. In: Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany. NF Vol. 6, Issue 1, Philo-Verlag, Berlin 1936, pp. 28-32 (online) .
  • Walter Grab : Saul Ascher. A Jewish-German late enlightenment man between revolution and restoration. In: Walter Grab: A people must conquer their own freedom. On the history of the German Jacobins. Frankfurt 1984, pp. 461-494.
  • Peter Hacks : Ascher versus Jahn. A struggle for freedom. Structure, Berlin 1991.
  • Christoph Schulte : The Jewish Enlightenment. Philosophy, religion, history. C. H. Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-48880-3 .
  • Marco Puschner: Anti-Semitism in the context of political romanticism. Constructions of the "German" and the "Jewish" in Arnim, Brentano and Saul Ascher. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2008 (Conditio Judaica, 72).
  • André Thiele : The falcon. In: André Thiele: A world in pieces. Mainz 2008, ISBN 978-3-940884-06-0 , pp. 39-64.
  • Renate Best: The writer Saul Ascher. In the field of tension between internal Jewish reforms and early nationalism in Germany. In: Ascher: Selected Works. Böhlau, Cologne 2010, pp. 7–57.
  • William Hiscott: Germanomania. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 2: Co-Ha. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02502-9 , pp. 431-434.
  • Bernd Fischer: Another view. Saul Ascher's political writings. Böhlau, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-20263-9 .
  • William Hiscott: Saul Ascher. Berlin scouts. A representation of the history of philosophy . Edited by Christoph Schulte and Marie Ch. Behrendt, 2017, ISBN 978-3-86525-552-5 . (Review on January 6, 2018 by Irmela von der Lühe on Literaturkritik.de)
  • Bernd Fischer: Saul Ascher. In: Michael Fahlbusch , Ingo Haar , Alexander Pinwinkler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. Actors, networks, research programs . With the collaboration of David Hamann, Vol. 1, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-042989-3 , pp. 44-49.
  • Karl Erich Grözinger , Saul Ascher: The religious studies approach , in: KE Grözinger, Jüdisches Denken. Theology-Philosophy-Mysticism , Vol. 3: From the criticism of religion in the Renaissance to Orthodoxy and reform in the 19th century . Frankfurt, New York 2009, pp. 417-443.

Web links

Wikisource: Saul Ascher  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Philistine
  2. ^ Germanomania in the Gutenberg-DE project
  3. ↑ Contains: Eisenmenger the Second ; Napoleon ; Germanomania ; Idea of ​​freedom of the press and an order of censorship ; The Wartburg Celebration ; Intellectual aristocracy ; Europe's political and ethical condition .
  4. ↑ Spring 2015. Contains: Comments on the improvement of the Jews in civil society, prompted by the question: Should the Jew become a soldier? ; Leviathan or About Religion in Consideration of Judaism ; Scolia or fragments of philosophy and criticism ; Ideas about the natural history of political revolutions ; View of the future fate of Christianity .
  5. ↑ https://literaturkritik.de/grosser-juedischer-aufklaerer-berlin-william-hiscotts-erste-umfassende-studie-ueber-saul-ascher,24059.html
personal data
SURNAME Ascher, Saul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1767
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1822
Place of death Berlin