Max Nordau

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Max Nordau
Signature of Max Nordau.jpg

Max Nordau (* July 29, 1849 as Maximilian Simon Südfeld in Pest , Austrian Empire ; † January 22, 1923 in Paris ) was a doctor (including Herzl's Parisian doctor), writer, politician and co-founder of the World Zionist Organization .

Life

Max Simon Südfeld was born in Pest in 1849 as the son of Rabbi Gabriel Südfeld. After a traditional Jewish education, he became a strict naturalist and evolutionist from the age of 18 . At this time, in 1867, he began his journalistic career and initially wrote for Pester Lloyd . Soon he worked for important newspapers, including the Vossische Zeitung in Berlin, the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna and La Nación in Buenos Aires .

In 1872 he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD. After the death of his father on April 11, 1873 he took the name "Nordau". Study trips took him to Berlin, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, England, France, Spain and Italy.

Grave of Max Nordau in Tel Aviv in the Trumpeldor cemetery, next to the grave of Meir Dizengoff

From May 1876 to November 1878 he lived with his mother in Paris, where he liked it so much that, after a brief return to Budapest, he finally moved to Paris in 1880, where he worked as a general practitioner (specializing in women's diseases) settled down and worked in literature alongside his widespread practice. In 1878 he had settled as a doctor in his hometown. In Paris he ordained only for the poor and free of charge. He also gave evening lectures on social issues in the German Social Democratic Reading Club in Paris; at the same time he was a correspondent for the most widely read newspapers in Berlin, Vienna, North and South America. It was thanks to his knowledge of the world's languages ​​that he was able to familiarize himself with world literature and to come into contact with poets and writers from different peoples.

On January 20, 1898, Nordau married the widowed Anna Kaufmann, a Protestant Danish woman, which put him in great need of justification, including against himself, because he refused mixed marriages at the time of the marriage, but the relationship required him from an earlier time. Two days after the marriage, Nordau wrote to Herzl: If I had met my wife today, I would have met her in the last year and a half, I would have manfully fought every incipient tendency in me and told myself that as a Jew I do not have the right to let my feelings rule freely. Herzl himself justified Nordau's behavior and defended him as a man of honor: By the way, in my eyes the wife of a Jew becomes a Jew eo ipso through marriage. Moses was married to a Midianite woman.

After the outbreak of the First World War, Nordau lived in Madrid and London. In 1920 he returned to Paris, where he died in 1923. His remains were transferred to Palestine in April 1925 and buried in Tel Aviv .

Max Nordau's daughter Maxa Nordau (1897–1991) was born in Paris and was a French landscape and portrait painter.

He was friends with Eugen von Jagow , who was the first reader of his work Entartung .

Zionist engagement

Nordau first met Theodor Herzl in 1892, was enthusiastic about the idea of Zionism and began to get involved in the Zionist movement. He became one of Herzl's highly respected colleagues and one of the early leaders of the Jewish national movement. He was the main author of the Basel program , which was read out and accepted at the first Zionist Congress , and from then on he took part in all Zionist Congresses as one of their leading designers.

In contrast to the “practical” Zionists, Nordau represented “political Zionism” just as vehemently as Herzl himself. Max Nordau's personality cannot be separated from the congresses of the early days. He was given the task of giving a comprehensive report at the beginning of the conference, showing the moments of decline and, from this, showing the necessity of political Zionism. He was an acclaimed speaker who caused storms of enthusiasm at the congresses. His lecture on the situation of Jews in the world at the second Basel Congress in particular had a profound effect.

Nordau coined the term muscle Jew as a polemical counter-term to the intellectually oriented "nervous Jew" or "Talmud Jew" . At the Second Zionist Congress (1898), he called for the physical fitness of Jews to be promoted through gymnastics . He understood this physical fitness as a contribution to the realization of the Zionist plan. The debate about this led to the founding of numerous Jewish sports clubs such as the Hakoah Vienna .

On December 19, 1903, a fanatical opponent carried out an assassination attempt on Nordau in Paris because of his support for the Uganda plan : The 27-year-old Russian student Chaim Selig Louban fired two shots at Nordau during the Hanukkah ball of the Zionist association Mebasseret Zion , but missed this. One consequence of this was that Herzl definitely decided to drop the Uganda plan to settle Jews, which he was not prepared to do before the attack.

At the 1911 Zionist Congress he issued a warning that if political conditions persist, six million Jews, i.e. H. the Jewish population of the Russian Empire and other Eastern European countries were sentenced to death. Nordau was also critical of Chaim Weizmann's mediating line and continued to represent the clear political line that Herzl had set.

After the outbreak of war, Nordau, who was an Austro-Hungarian citizen and correspondent for German newspapers, had to flee Paris and spent several years in Madrid . He was welcomed in Spain and made an intimate friend in Abraham Yahuda, professor of Semitic languages. He stayed in Spain throughout the war and wrote a lot about the world war. After the war he went to London , where the Zionist leadership had meanwhile been relocated, to meet with Weizmann and Jabotinsky , the meetings also took place, but actually the Zionist movement was already too far from Nordau - and Herzl's - original views removed and had become "practical".

He understood the Balfour Declaration and the reaction of the Zionist leadership to it not as a victory but as a bankruptcy and therefore wrote to Weizmann and Sokolow in April 1919 :

“The historic declaration of November 2, 1917, which we all welcomed with great joy, has since been stripped of all its important content and has remained only a rump. The right to emigrate to Palestine, to buy land offered there, to settle on it and to found a university ... means Chowewe Zionism and Haamism and the like. stands in direct contrast to both political Zionism, for which I stand, as well as to Herzl's ideas, which now, after 22 years, still inspire me ... Since the beginning of the war you have earned tremendous merit and given the Jewish name given great honors. I can only deeply regret that ... you limited yourself to fundraising instead of asking the nation to cooperate, and that you gave in on vital points, both to the British government and to the Jewish enemies of the national movement. "

- Quoted from Salomon Wininger : Max Nordau. In: Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. IV, Orient Printing House, Czernowitz 1930, p. 541.

Nordau was also a social Darwinist as well as an ardent advocate of European colonialism and European racial theories .

Nordau as a man of letters

His writings have been translated into numerous languages ​​and some of them sparked long-lasting controversy. The Conventional Lies of the Cultured Man (1883) appeared in fifteen languages, including Chinese and Japanese, and the publication of the book was banned in Austria and Russia . As a continuation appeared in 1885 Paradoxes der Conventional Lies, in which topics such as passion and prejudice, social pressure, the power of love and racial theories were discussed:

“However, I do not believe in the unity of the human race; I believe that the various main races represent subspecies of our genus and that their differences in anatomical formation and skin color are not mere adaptations and consequences of the transformation of an originally uniform type through local influences, but are explained by differences in origin; It seems to me that the relationship between a white man and a Negro, a Papuan and an Indian is no greater than between an African and an Indian elephant, a house bark and humpback ox. "

- Nordau : Paradoxes

This book has also been published and translated several times.

The writing Entartung (1892) provoked an even sharper controversy , in which Nordau adopted the concept of degeneration coined by Cesare Lombroso and applied it to the works of artists such as Nietzsche , Tolstoy , Richard Wagner , Emile Zola and Henrik Ibsen and to artistic and cultural ones Transmitted phenomena such as symbolism , spiritualism , egomania , mysticism , Parnassianism and diabolism . In this book, Nordau heralded a human catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. Numerous authors tried to refute the theses it put forward, including George Bernard Shaw .

In The Meaning of History (1909), Nordau describes the development of humans from parasitism through supernatural illusions to knowledge and human solidarity . The Biology of Ethics (1916) deals with the natural roots of ethics . His last work, Der Sinn der Gesittung (written in 1920), remained unfinished and was published in 1932 in a fragmentary Spanish version.

List of works (selection)

  • From the real billion-dollar land. Paris studies and pictures . 2 volumes. Leipzig 1878.
  • Soap bubbles . Pen drawings and stories. Philipp Reclam, Leipzig 1879. 92 p. (Reclams Universal Library, No. 1187)
  • From the Kremlin to the Alhambra . Cultural studies. 2 volumes. Schlicke, Leipzig 1880–1881.
  • Paris under the third republic, new pictures . Leipzig 1880 (4th edition 1890).
  • De la castration de la femme , 1882.
  • The conventional lies of civilized mankind , 1883 (71st edition 1927).
    • The conventional lies of civilized mankind . With illustrations. 62nd and 63rd thousand Elischer, Leipzig 1913, VIII, 350 pp.
  • Paradoxes , 1885 (29th edition 1927).
  • Selected Parisian letters . 2nd Edition. 1887.
  • The disease of the century , 1889 (2 vols .; 6th ed. 1902).
  • Emotional comedy . Novel. Wroclaw 1891.
  • Degeneration , 1892–1893 (2 vol.).
  • Soul analysis . Novellas. 1892.
    • Soul analysis . Novellas. 2nd Edition. Berlin 1903.
  • Degeneracy and Genius , 1894.
  • Drone battle . Novel, 2 volumes. Duncker, Berlin 1898. (under Max Simon Nordau)
    • La batalla de los zánganos . Trad. de M. Machado. Illustr. de J. Pedraza. La Novela ilustr., Madrid (around 1910). 272 p. (Spanish: battle of drones )
  • Zionism and its opponents . Lecture. Glitscher, Mülheim am Rhein, 1898.
  • Contemporary French, Essays on Literary History , 1901.
  • What does gymnastics mean for us Jews? In: Jüdische Turnzeitung , July 1902.
  • Morganatic , Berlin 1904.
  • By art and artists , 1905.
  • Maha Rog , Berlin 1905th
  • Emotional comedy . Novel. 4th thousand p. Schottlaender, Berlin - Breslau 1907, 262 p.
  • To the left : Roman. Illustrated by Stroff . Vol. 1, 2nd book publisher for the German House, Berlin & Leipzig 1908. (The books of the German House, No. 46/47)
  • The meaning of the story . 1st and 2nd thousand C. Duncker, Berlin 1909. 475 pp.
  • Max Nordau's Zionist Writings . Herg. by the Zionist Action Committee (on the occasion of Nordau's 60th birthday). Jüdischer Verlag, Cologne & Leipzig 1909, 3 sheets, 402, V p.
  • Judaism in the 19th and 20th centuries . Lecture given in Hamburg 1909. Jüdischer Verlag, Cologne & Leipzig 1910, 24 pp.
    • Judaism in the 19th and 20th centuries . Lecture given in Hamburg on December 29, 1909. 2nd edition. Jüdischer Verlag, Cologne & Leipzig 1910, 22 pp.
  • Fairy tale . Told his Maxa from her fourth to her seventh year. With 10 colored and four black full pictures as well as many text illustrations. by Hans Neumann . Hendel, Halle an der Saale 1910, 188 pp.
  • Zionism . Completely remodeled and continued to the present day. 2nd Edition. Vienna Zionist Association, Vienna 1913. 16 pp.
  • People and the human of today . Sketches and glosses. Association of Book Friends, Berlin 1915. 393 pp. (Association of Book Friends, No. 189)
  • The biology of ethics , 1916.
  • Rahab , 1922 (not published).
  • Memories (cycle of ten essays, published posthumously in Leipzig in 1928).

Stage works (selection)

  • The new journalists . Comedy in four acts by Ferdinand Groß and Max Nordau. O. Mutze, Leipzig 1880. 90 pp.
  • The war of the millions . Acting in five acts. B. Schlicke, Leipzig 1882, IV, 146 p. (Under pseudonym: Max Suedfeld)
    • The war of the millions . Acting in five acts. 2nd Edition. Elischer, Leipzig 1904. (under Max Simon Nordau)
  • The right to love . Play. Berlin 1892.
  • The ball . Acting in five acts. 2nd Edition. Hofmann, Berlin 1895.
  • Doctor Kohn . Civil tragedy from the present. 1898 (3rd edition 1902).

Honors

The Kiriyat-Nordau district of Netanya was named after him.

literature

  • Robert Harborough Sherard: Max Nordau. The author of 'Degeneration'. His own account of his busy and many-sided life. In: The Idler. Volume IX, February 1896, pp. 14-20.
  • Adolph Kohut : Famous Israelite Men and Women in Human Cultural History. Vol. II, Leipzig-Reudnitz 1901, p. 56 ff.
  • Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Max Nordau. Jewish publishing house, Berlin 1919.
  • Samuel Löb Zitron : Lexicon Zioni. Warsaw 1924, Col. 435 f.
  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. IV, Druckerei Orient, Czernowitz 1930, pp. 540–544.
  • Georg Herlitz (ed.): Jewish Lexicon . Vol. IV, 1, Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 1927, Sp. 519-521.
  • Anna Nordau, Maxa Nordau: Max Nordau. A biography. New York 1943.
  • Meir Ben-Horin: Max Nordau. New York 1957.
  • Meir Ben-Horin:  Nordau, Max (Simon Maximilian Suedfeld). In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 15, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865943-5 , pp. 297-299 (English).
  • Siegmund Kaznelson : Jews in German culture. 1962, passim.
  • Theodor Herzl, letters and diaries , ed. v. Bein, Greive , Schaerf, Schoeps. 7 vols., Frankfurt am Main etc. 1983–1996, passim.
  • Martha Keil:  Nordau, Max. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 339 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Julius Hans Schoeps (Ed.): New Lexicon of Judaism. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1992, ISBN 3-570-09877-X , p. 342.
  • Christoph Schulte : Psychopathology of the Fin de Siècle. The cultural critic, doctor and Zionist Max Nordau. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13611-3 .
  • Michael Stanislawski: Zionism and the Fin de siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky . UC Press, 2001.
  • Karola Agnes Franziska Dahmen: Searching for Traces. The medic, novelist, cultural critic and journalist Max Nordau in his role as art critic for the Neue Freie Presse. Frankfurt am Main 2006.
  • Petra Zudrell: The cultural critic and writer Max Nordau. Wuerzburg 2003.
  • Avi Mathis-Masury: Caught between Hora and Torah. Physicality among Orthodox Jews in Israel. Tübingen 2004 ( PDF; 9.2 MB )
  • Melanie A. Murphy: Max Nordau's Fin-de-Siècle Romance of Race. (= Studies in German Jewish History, 4) Peter Lang, Bern 2007 (on the fictional work).
  • Hedwig Ujvári: Decadence criticism from the "provincial town". Max Nordaus Pest journalism. Budapest 2007 ISBN 963-446-414-9
  • Hedvig Ujvári: Between bazaar and world politics: The Vienna World Exhibition of 1873 in features by Max Nordau in Pester Lloyd. Berlin 2011
  • Nordau, Max. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish authors . Volume 17: Meid – Phil. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin 2009 ISBN 978-3-598-22697-7 pp. 344-360
Fiction

Web links

Commons : Max Nordau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theodor Herzl, Letters and Diaries, Volume 4, Ffm / Bln. 1990, p. 714
  2. ^ From a confidential letter from Herzl dated May 26, 1898 to the Frankfurt merchant Jonas Wolpe, ibid. P. 481
  3. ↑ Werner Stegmaier, Daniel Krohabennik: Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus . Walter de Gruyter, 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-080977-0 , p. 151 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 2, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Werner Stegmaier, Daniel Krohabennik: Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus . Walter de Gruyter, 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-080977-0 , p. 152 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 2, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Nordau defended the Uganda plan - against its own inner voice - only out of a sense of duty and admiration towards Herzl, outwardly, however, Nordau, who had only described Uganda as a “night asylum”, appeared to be the main advocate of this project
  6. ↑ Hebrew עפרי אילני: האם התגשמה נבואתו של נורדאו על השמדת "הגזעים הנחותים"?. In: Haaretz , August 26, 2015.
  7. ↑ Illustration based on Meir Ben-Horin:  Nordau, Max (Simon Maximilian Suedfeld). In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 15, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865943-5 , pp. 297-299, here p. 297 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Nordau, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Südfeld, Simon Maximilian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian writer, doctor, Zionist politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH pest
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1923
Place of death Paris