Moses Hess

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Moses Hess. Painting by Gustav Adolf Koettgen , around 1846

Moses Hess (also Moses Heß , Moritz Heß and Maurice Hess ; born on January 21, 1812 in Bonn ; died on April 6, 1875 in Paris ) was a German-Jewish philosopher and writer . He belonged to the early socialists and was a thought leader of the Zionists . According to the Jewish calendar, birth and death dates are the 4th Shevat 5572 and the 1st Nisan 5635.

Life and work

Tomb of Moses Hess

Moses Hess was born in Bonn into an Orthodox Jewish family. His grandfather raised him traditionally. In order to be able to educate himself in general, Moses learned German and French as an autodidact. After studying philosophy at the University of Bonn , he founded one of the first socialist daily newspapers in Cologne . In 1845 he moved to Belgium , 1848 to Paris, in 1849 via Strasbourg (where he briefly housed German revolutionaries who had fled from the encircled Rastatt , including his Cologne friends Fritz and Mathilde Franziska Anneke ) to Switzerland . He later returned to Belgium and then to Paris, where he stayed - with interruptions - until his death. There he entered the Parisian Lodge Henri IV of the Grand Orient de France as a Freemason in 1858 . In 1861 he returned to Germany and was chairman of the General German Workers' Association . In 1863 he moved to Paris again, where he died in 1875. As requested, he was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Deutz . The tombstone can still be seen there today, but his bones were transferred to Jerusalem in 1961. His biographers were primarily historians and representatives of Zionism such as Theodor Zlocisti , Edmund Silberner and Shlomo Na'aman .

socialism

With his works, Hess was one of the early socialists in Germany. His sacred history of humanity. The first decidedly socialist program of demands that appeared in Germany was written by a disciple of Spinoza in 1837 . It contained u. a. the demand for the abolition of class differences, equal rights for men and women, “free love” as the basis of marriage, as well as child-rearing, health care and welfare as state tasks. With the disappearance of poverty and shortage, violence and crime would disappear from society and the future rational society would develop appropriate forms of political rule. In 1869 Hess went as a delegate to the fourth congress of the First International in Basel, which took place from September 6th to 12th. There he acted alongside Wilhelm Liebknecht and Samuel Spier , with whom he had been in correspondence for years, as Secrétaire de langue allemande .

The understanding of socialization he developed played a central role in the later theory formation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . His activities for the Rheinische Zeitung , the Deutsche-Brusser-Zeitung and the occasional joint work on Die deutsche Ideologie connected him with Marx . Hess supposedly introduced both Marx and Engels to socialism and communism . Whether Hess actually exerted a decisive influence on Marx in particular is, however, controversial. In his early writings, for example in the Holy History , Hess was the main representative of speculative socialism, a variant of utopian socialism , which was philosophically based on Ludwig Feuerbach's theory of alienation. Accordingly, the development of mankind takes place in different stages and amounts to a socialism, the elements of which are still unconnected in French revolutionary theory, English social practice and German idealistic philosophy. Later, however, he rejected the idealistic philosophy of history in favor of a scientifically, even scientistically oriented materialism . Before that, he had worked with and parallel to Marx and Engels to scientifically justify socialist theories on the basis of psychology and economics.

Zionism

Socialism and Zionism were rooted for Hess in the desire for salvation from social conditions that he regarded as oppressive and anti-Semitic . Under the influence of the nationality conflicts around the middle of the century, he moved from a universalist worldview back to particularism , which for many Zionists of his time meant a return to Judaism. They discovered Judaism as a separate nationality and not as a religion. His Jewish national consciousness was so strong that in 1862 he wrote Rome and Jerusalem , in which he wrote a general awakening of the oppressed, to alienate his Jewish contemporaries interested in assimilation into German society ( Berthold Auerbach, for example) and socialist comrades- in-arms Völker - Rome stood for the recently successful Italian national movement  - prophesied, in which the Jewish nation should also awaken again and rebuild its state. The subtitle of this book, written in letter form, is The Last Nationality Question , and the preface reads: ... with the rebirth of Italy, the resurrection of Judea begins ... In Rome and Jerusalem Hess demanded a Garibaldi for Judaism. In it he wrote u. a .: “Everyone is, like it or not, connected in solidarity with their entire nation. We all have to endure the ol malchut shamajim (the yoke of the kingdom of God). (...) If the world events that are being prepared in the Orient then allow a practical beginning for the restoration of the Jewish state, this beginning will probably consist initially in the establishment of Jewish colonies in the land of the fathers. "

The Orthodox Judaism saw Hess as the best suitable means in the Diaspora to preserve the Jewish nation since it with his dietary laws and other dos and don'ts tradiere less religious content as memories of the national past. It was to remain untouched until a new Jewish state was founded, which is why he rejected Reform Judaism , which in the 19th century saw itself only as a denomination and no longer as a nation. After that a new Sanhedrin (high councilor) should adapt the religious cult to the changed conditions of a new society.

Philosophy and science

Hess was a religious philosopher who admired Baruch de Spinoza . Therefore, he spoke out eclecticist in favor of grouping the ancient wisdom of the East, Zoroastrianism , the Vedas and Gospels around the Torah . This is a prototypical approach to a unified cosmic philosophy, as can be found today in the Bnai Noach movement . The Hegelian dialectic of historical world spirit following, Hess was of a kind of messianism content of faith that with the French Revolution, a new world age began.

In the 1850s, Hess turned intensively to scientific topics and published in popular scientific organs such as Die Natur . He was looking for universal laws that connected nature and society and how he saw the tendency of all elements to come into equilibrium. With other authors who had committed themselves to revolutionary changes in 1848, he shared the effort to further promote social progress by spreading scientific education and empirical-analytical knowledge.

Appreciation of his services to Zionism

The circumstances of the time were not favorable for the acceptance of his ideas. With a few exceptions, the Orthodox Jews rejected them in anticipation of the messianic age. The majority of Western European Jews strove for integration and acculturation, which was made easier by the fact that one state after the other completed the process of emancipation that had begun long before . Theodor Herzl , the real forefather of the Zionist movement in historiography, recognized while reading Rome and Jerusalem in 1901 that everything Zionism attempted had already been demanded by Moses Hess. When Herzl wrote his work The Jewish State , Rome and Jerusalem were unknown to him. It was only when he read the book years later on a trip that he realized that “since Spinoza, Judaism has produced no greater spirit than this forgotten, faded Moses Hess!” And that he would not have written his writing if Rome and Jerusalem had come before him would have been known. Wladimir Zeev Jabotinsky praised Hess in his work The Jewish Legion in World War I as one of the historical personalities to whom Zionism owes the Balfour Declaration : "We owe the Balfour Declaration to both Herzl and Rothschild , both Pinsker and Moses Hess" .

Honor

A figure by Moses Hess was included in the Cologne council tower figures . On October 9, 1961, his remains were transferred to Israel and buried in the cemetery of the first kibbutz in Kinneret on the Sea of ​​Galilee . His hometown Bonn decided in 2011 to rename a street in Moses-Hess-Ufer after there was already a Moses-Hess-Str. gave. In Israel in 1931 one of the moshavim that were laid out around the city to protect Tel Aviv was named after Moses Hess in Kfar Hess .

Works

Hess' most important works are:

  • The sacred history of mankind (1837) digitized
  • The European Triarchy (1841) digitized
  • Socialism and Communism (1842) digitized
  • The Philosophy of Action (1843)
  • About Money (1845)
  • Rome and Jerusalem (1862), a foundation of later Zionism. Leipzig: Eduard Mengler digitized version of the 1899 edition
  • Moses Hess Jewish Writings . Edited and introduced by Theodor Zlocisti. Leo Lamm, Berlin 1905 digitized

His posthumous manuscripts testify to a wide range of topics. In addition to philosophy, there are e.g. B. Literature, astronomy / cosmology, mathematics, physics, biology.

literature

in order of appearance

Web links

Commons : Moses Hess  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Moses Hess  - Sources and full texts

swell

  1. Edmund Silberner: Moses Hess. Story of his life. Brill, Leiden 1966, p. 1.
  2. ^ Helmut Hirsch: Freedom-loving Rhinelander. Econ, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1977, p. 172.
  3. " Here rests Moses - son of Chawer David, called Tebli - Hess (the memory of the righteous is a blessing), born in the city of Bonn, on Tuesday, 4th Shevat 5572, different in the city of Paris, on Tuesday, New moon day of the month of Nisan 5635, buried according to his last will in the cemetery in Deutz, near the graves of his family, on Thursday, 3rd Nisan 5635. May his soul be tied up in the covenant of life! “Quoted from ibid.
  4. a b Moses Hess: The uncomfortable. In: THE TIME. January 19, 2012 No. 04 (last accessed on January 22, 2012)
  5. Hans Michael Hensel: "Samuel Spier." - HM Hensel (ed.), J. Gatt-Rutter: Italo Svevo, Samuel Spiers pupil. Segnitz, Zenos Verlag 1996, 88.
  6. Cf. for example Theodor Zlocisti : Foreword to Moses Hess: Socialist essays 1841–1847 . Welt-Verlag, Berlin 1921, p. 5 or Johannes Hirschberger : History of Philosophy. 11th edition. Frankfurt am Main 1980, Vol. 2, p. 478. According to Hirschberger, neither Hess nor classical Marxism can be classified as Young Hegelianism .
  7. See Ernst Theodor Mohl: Moses Hess. In: Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1995, p. 390.
  8. See Ernst Theodor Mohl: Moses Hess. In: Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1995, p. 389.
  9. ^ So in Moses Hess: Dynamische Stofflehre. Paris 1877. See Ernst Theodor Mohl: Moses Hess. In: Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1995, p. 390.
  10. Moses Hess: About the monetary system. In: Rhenish yearbooks on social reform. Vol. 1, 1847. Hess was also a co-author of the German Ideology of Marx and Engels. In the estate, there were other manuscripts commenting on Marx's theory, showing that he shared its later materialism. Compare Ernst Theodor Mohl: Moses Hess. In: Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1995, pp. 389-391.
  11. quoted from Kurt Schubert : Jüdische Geschichte , CH Beck, 7th edition, 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-44918-5 , pp. 124 and 125
  12. ^ Andreas W. Daum: Science popularization in the 19th century. Civil culture, scientific education and the German public, 1848–1914 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-486-56551-5 , pp. 415-417, 492 .
  13. Bonner General-Anzeiger from 12./13. November 2011 ( Memento of the original from November 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 23. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.general-anzeiger-bonn.de
  14. Street photos with the spelling Hess and Heß ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.strassenfotos.de
  15. digitized version , visited on July 8, 2010.
  16. Ludwik Karol Królikowski (1799-1883?)
  17. Arthur Mandel: The Red Rabbi and the Sinner (Review of the Hess biography by Silberner from 1967): DIE ZEIT, October 13, 1967 No. 41