On the Jewish question

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On the Jewish question is an essay by Thomas Mann , which was written in 1921 at Efraim Frisch's suggestion , but was not published during the author's lifetime. Like other early and middle treatises on this subject, the text shows a fundamentally philosemitic tendency, although there are reservations and clichés that betray an ambivalent attitude towards Judaism and that are still the subject of research.

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At the beginning of the article, which begins with a letter salutation, the author announces that he wants to limit himself to personal matters, since a lot of “clever” and “deeply pressing” has been said about the subject and the personal is anyway the “refuge of those” who “ Inexhaustibility of things “would vividly feel. The biographical facts of his life that he wanted to adhere to are "Jew-friendly".

For example, he subconsciously preferred dealing with Jewish classmates, which he portrayed in a way that would later be of interest for research. He describes Ephraim Carlebach , his schoolmate from the Katharineum in Lübeck , as a quick, “if not very clean” “rabbi's son”, “whose big, clever, black eyes” would have pleased him. The name itself is filled with the "desert poetry of that hour from which its peculiarity was excluded [...] more distinctive and colorful [...] than Hans and Jürgen". Another friend named Franz Fehér appears as a “type, pronounced to the point of ugliness, with a flat nose and mustache shadow that darkens early on”, whose “strangely dragging dialect” appears to the author to be more interesting than the usual Waterkantish .

With the “funny” son of a butcher , who with his little smile lines was “philanthropic and without nuisance”, Thomas Mann countered the “type of the thoroughly cheerful Jew”. This amusement is presumably more common as a basic constitution among Jews than among “original Europeans”, based on an enviable ability to enjoy life, which they may “compensate for some persistent external disadvantage”.

Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer described Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's relationship to Judaism positively: the educated are mostly more courteous and adored him and his work more deeply than others. "Her quick comprehension, her penetrating mind" and "peculiar joke" predestined her to a better audience than the sometimes slow and "difficult to understand real and original Germans".

This is precisely Thomas Mann's experience, and where is the important artist and writer who does not share it with him? It is undeniable that intellectual products that only “genuine and original Germans” like, but are despised by Jews, “are culturally not really considered”. The Jewish public would not only support their relatives. At this point Thomas Mann sets himself apart from Adolf Bartels , a völkisch anti-Semite who had claimed that a Jew could not become a German poet, while a “German who goes with the Jews loses his best”. The thesis that Heinrich and Thomas Mann were Jews, however, he had dropped. The “völkisch Bartels” is subject to a foolish error, because “higher Germanness” only comes into consideration that also pleases Jews.

On the other hand, Mann admits, there had been serious conflicts between himself and "the Jewish ... nature ... and must have come about". They have made each other "bad blood", a statement that refers to Alfred Kerr and Theodor Lessing . "The most malicious stylizations" and the "poisonous-wittiest negations" of his existence came from there. On the other hand, Jews would also have discovered, relocated and supported it. So it was Samuel Lublinski who promised the Buddenbrooks , who had initially been viewed critically and wait-and-see, that the book would grow over time and be read by generations. Thomas Mann travels the world, almost without exception, Jews, who receive and accommodate him.

In his earliest position on National Socialism , he speaks of "swastika nonsense", which, as a crude, popular expression of a cultural reaction, is contrary to its nature. There is “no trace of justice” in the anti-Semitic goings-on. Rejecting early anti-Semitic conspiracy theories , Thomas Mann considers it impossible to date the “origin of world misery” and to say “where the impasse began”. The scapegoat story is old and deep, so Germans should actually understand it. If one carries the sin of the world, it shows little pride to "want to send someone else into another desert".

Emergence

In August 1921 the "Neue Merkur" had published a booklet with articles on "the Jewish question". Efraim Frisch , the editor of the paper, had spoken on July 27, 1921 during a tea conversation with Thomas Mann “about the Jewish problem”. He later asked him to write a contribution for another issue, as Thomas Mann noted in a diary note from September 18, 1921. The author wrote his essay from September 21st to the beginning of October 1921, corrected it and read it aloud at home on October 17th. According to Thomas Mann, his wife reacted with “objection, resentment and excitement” to the “reading of the Jewish article”. There was a "back and forth" between Frisch and the author as to whether the article should be deleted or destroyed until he decided on the latter.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Mann: On the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 466
  2. ↑ Thomas Mann: On the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 466
  3. ↑ Thomas Mann: On the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 469
  4. ↑ Quoted from: Thomas Mann: On the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 46
  5. ↑ Quoted from: Thomas Mann, Essays, Volume 2, For a New Germany, Commentary on the Jewish Question , Fischer, Frankfurt, 1996 p. 329
  6. ↑ Thomas Mann: On the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 471
  7. ↑ Thomas Mann: On the Jewish question. In: Thomas Mann: Collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume 13, supplements, Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 475
  8. ↑ Thomas Mann: Diaries 1918–1921. Edited by Peter de Mendelssohn, Fischer, Frankfurt 1979, p. 546
  9. ↑ Thomas Mann: Diaries 1918–1921. Edited by Peter de Mendelssohn, Fischer, Frankfurt 1979, p. 551