4
`Mass Psychologist' Bernays Tells Life Story, Describes
Background, Experiences With Weizmann and Golda Meir
Edward L. Bernays remains the
chief factor in the public relations
field. In fact, he has earned the
distinction of having set that ac-
tivity into motion. It was thanks
to him that the publicity field be-
came an accepted calling.
His memoirs as a public rela-
tions counsel — "Biography of An
Idea"—published by Simon and
Schuster, is a revealing document.
It is an addendum to major events
in our time. It describes how in-
dustries were publicized, how the
theater became the subject of pub-
lic relations propaganda, how im-
portant causes were publicized
with great skill.
It is also an ekpose of those
who, seek to chisel- for space.
As a guide for advertisers and
publicity people this biography
— it is an autobiography -
serves a great purpose.
It is a story with interesting
sidelines en the Jewishness of the
author. Bernays, nephew of Sig-
mund Freud, the father of the
school of psychoanalysis, deals in
some length with the activities,
the life, the relationship with
Freud and his family.
Bernays celebrated his first
birthday on his parents' voyage
from Vienna to New. York. His
two older sisters remained in Vien-
na with uncle Sigmund Freud and
grandparents the Jakob Freuds.
His two younger sisters were born
in New York. These facts are given
on the very first page, the first
chapter, "Childhood in Century's
Turn," in which Bernays relates:
"My father had lived in Vienna
for slightly over a decade. The
Bernays family of Hamburg had
been distinguished in Jewish cul-
ture, its roots in –Spain. My great-
grandfather Isaac Bernays, chief
rabbi (Hakaam) of Hamburg (Ber-
nays must have meant Khakham)
in the early 19th Century, introduc-
ed the German vernacular into
religious services. He was related
to Heinrich Heine, the poet. Two
of his sons became well-known
teachers, Michael and Jacob Ber-
nays—the former a professor of
literature at the University of Mu-
nich. • He embraced Christianity
and became an adviser to the
King of Bavaria, Ludwig ...In
Vienna my father met Anna Freud,
fell in love with her and married
her in 1883. Three years later his.
younger sister Martha married
Anna's brother Sigmund, a young
physician just establishing him-
self."
Because of the interest we
naturally have in Bernays' Jew-
ish reactions and affiliations, it
is additionally important to note
that he speaks of his father's
individualism as being "evident
in his changing religious affilia-
tion. He went to a Unitarian
Church, then to Felix Adler's
Ethical Culture Society and from
there to Stephen Wise's Free
Synagogue where he became
vice president.
Bernays explains about his
father: "When he felt that Wise
had grown too dictatorial, he sev-
ered his association. He made his
own synthesis of Unitarianism, an
ethical religion that acknowledges
the greatness, though not the div-
inity, of the Jewish teacher, Jesus;
and the Ethical Society, an out-
growth of the Hebraic tradition;
and Stephen Wise, a liberal Jewish
thinker." This evaluation possibly
reflects Edward Bernays' own
views on religion, because his
Jewish interests are so limited.
His story is immensely interest-
ing from the public relations point
of view, his association with Enrico
Caruso, his sponsorship of many
noteworthy Broadway productions
—starting with "Daddy Long Legs"
—and his numerous other ventures
will inspire those whO now labor
in the profession he has created.
His correspondence with Uncle
Sigmund Freud forms a most in-
teresting chapter.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
40—Friday, January 7, 1966
Describing his experiences in
public relations for Proctor and
Gamble, he states that in the many
visits he paid to the plant he
saw no Negroes employed in the
the offices and but one Jew at
headquarters. "H owe v e r," he
writes, "the company had adverti-
sing firms headed by Jews, and
the brokerage firm favored by the
company, Westheimer, was Jew-
ish." Then he tells how the
treasurer of the firm, H. G. French,
became concerned about the situa-
tion in Germany and talked to
him "about the worst of Hitler's
anti-Semitic purges then taking
place."
"Mr. Bernays," French said
sincerely, fixing me with his
big innocent eyes, "I must ask
you to do something about these
Hitler attacks on the Jews in
Germany."
Bernays agreed something should
be done, and he comments that
he wonders what powers French
thought he possessed.
There also is a reference to the
American Tobacco Company; to
the charge of anti-Semitism level-
ed against it, the refutation, the
statement by the American Jewish
Congress clearing the firm.
Bernays played a role in the
celebratiOn of Light's Golden Jub-
ilee—the share he had in the
events in honor of Thomas Edison,
the meetings at the Ford plant
with Henry Ford, E d i s o n, Will
Rogers are related.
He also recalls his experiences
with Dr. Morris Fishbein of the
AMA in debates 25 years ago
over socialized medical care.
He describes many personal-
ities with whom he had .deal-
ings, and among them are Sid-
ney Hillman, the theatrical law-
yer Fanny Holtzman, Chaim
Weizmann, Golda Meir.
Dr. Weizmann often visited
Bernays, according to this account.
Bernays describes the first pres-
ident of Israel as a vigorous man
who amazed him with his self-
assurance. His reference to Weiz-
mann states:
"Weizmann was quite sure (this
was about 1920) that he would be-
came head of state that didn't
even exist. On one of his visits he
said to Doris (Mrs. Bernays), 'I
will make your husband first
secretary of foreign affairs of our
country if he will help us.' Doris
reported this offer to me. I ex-
pressed my appreciation to him
at our next meeting and told him
I did not believe in a religious
state.
'But it will give status to Jews
throughout the world,' he insisted,
`just as a free Ireland has given
the Irish status.'
"I did not argue the point, and
the nonexistent President of a non-
existent country accepted my firm
refusal gracefully, passing over the
issue to describe his unrelenting
activities in pursuit of his objec-
tives.
"I spend my evenings in Browns-
ville in Brooklyn, where there is
a large Jewish population,' he told
us. 'I make talks at meetings that
are arranged for me, and there
is hardly a night I don't bring
home $6,000 for the cause, con-
tributed in coins and dollar bills.' "
Bernays may or may not pardon
this reviewer, but he is hesitant
to accept this fact. This reviewer
on many occasions—in the late
1920s, not as early as Bernays'
records—even on this score he is
not too correct—accompanied Dr.
Weizmann to many meetings. They
weren't all in Brownsville, many
were in New York_ hotels. Weiz-
mann was seldom too pleased with
the results; he did not speak so
openly about a Jewish State —
only about a Commonwealth or a
Homeland or a National Home.
But Bernays is entitled to a bit of
imagination.
More to the point is the brief
story about _William O'Dwyer,
one-time mayor of New York,
who at his advice condemned
anti-Semites and the Christian
Front, but later went easy on
them, not to antagonize voters.
There are other brief references
to anti-Semitism, to Coughlin,
to Nazism, but Bernays didn't
play much of a role in combat-
ting the evils he protested
against.
Most interesting of all is his
sketch of Golda Meir to which
he devotes nearly four pages. The
description, the advice he offered,
make it worthwhile to quote him
in full on this score. He wrote:
Fira Benenson, the well-known dress
designer, asked us to have dinner
with her sister, Flora Solomon, who
was in the United States on a short
visit in 1957 from London. Thirty
years earlier we had known their
spectacular father well, a refugee in
New York from the Bolsheviks. He
owned gold mines in the Urals, and on
his first walk up Broadway he had
bought the huge City Investing Com-
pany building, because of his faith in
the United States, and renamed it
the Benenson Building.
In those years Doris and I had often
entertained Chaim Weizmann, then
a Prime Minister without a country,
who was touring the United States
to raise money to further the Zionist
cause. I had turned down a provision-
al offer to be Foreign Minister of a
cauntry, Israel, not yet in existence.
I greatly respected Weizmann, but I
was • not in sympathy with his goals.
After the dinner Mrs. Solomon took
me aside and asked whether I would
be willing to leave the dinner party
for an hour to accompany her to the
Savoy-Plaza Hotel, a few blocks away,
to meet the Foreign Minister of
Israel, Mrs. Golda Meir.
When we entered her suite, Mrs.
Meir was conferring with her minis-
ter, Ruben Shiloah. She was plain
and heavy-set, with broad, undisting-
uished features, her black hair part-
ed in the middle; she was dressed
so unnoticeably that I have no memory
of what she wore. Her manner was
calm and settled, and she looked
more like a pioneer from our West-
ern plains than a Foreign Minister
of Israel. Her English conversation
was logical and precise in a quiet
way. She told me she had been a
teacher in Milwaukee. Everything
she said appeared to me to be the
result of planned deliberations and
thought. She told me of the difficult
situation Israel was facing in the Gulf
of Aqaba and the Gaza Strip. Secre-
tary of State Dulles was always cord-
ial to her, she said, when she visited
him to talk about the dangers to Is-
rael, but he always acted like- a lawyer
and was a dead wall- when she tried
to get support for Israel from him.
He referred her to the United Nations.
As to support from the United Na-
tions, her repeated effort to get the
world organization to send a commis-
sion to evaluate the present dangers
to , Israel had been thwarted. At the
drop of a• hat, she said, the UN sent
commissions to Kashmir and wanted
to send one to Hungary, but for some
reason she never got anywhere.
She told me a horrendous story.
Despite the presence of UN troops in
the Gaza Strip, ten Israelis had re-
cently been killed in raids from Arab
territory. The UN troops had no au-
thority to shoot or even to search for
guns and could do nothing. They were
like policemen who permit crimes on
their beats, she said. She told me she
had talked to Lester Pearson, Cana-
dian delegate at the UN, about all
this. Pearson had listened attentive-
ly' and had said nothing. She ap-
preciated how difficult it was to ex-
pect foreign troops in Israel to do
more than to remain stationary.
Israel had made a great mistake,
she felt, in not letting the American
people know about the recent crisis
the Arab raids presented to the coun-
try. The security of her _country
against Nasser was vital, she asserted,
and Israel would maintain its position
of military defense unless Egypt
guaranteed she would not attack.
She told me that rumors damaging
to Israel were afloat, that the Rus-
sians might aid Egypt in a war against
Israel and that this might start a
world war. Other nations were alarmed
that Israel might become the cause
of such a conflagration. She added
she could not be optimistic about Is-
rael over the next years and believed
the situation would continue to be
disturbed — Russia was always lurk-
ing in the background as a potential
danger.
She commented further: Krishna
Menon, the Indian delegate to the UN,
was a menace. A newspaperman had
quoted Menon as saying that the
trouble with Hugh Gaitskell of Eng-
land, was that he had a Polish-Jewish
wife, and then Mrs. Meir added as
an afterthought, as if to give weight
to her story, "The newspaperman was
not Jewish and had a Jewish wife."
Mrs. Meir was upset that the United
States should attempt to pass Israeli
matters on to the United Nations. The
United States had done the same thing
to France when the Algerian crisis
came up. Then when the UN voted
on the matter, the UN voted the way
the United States wanted them to and
the Arab-Russian opposition folded up.
When Mrs. Solomon mentioned that
Weizmann had offered me the port-
folio of Foreign Minister for Israel,
Mrs. Meir said quickly, "Why not take
it now, Mr. Bernays, and I will go
back to my old cabinet post, which
was Labor." But I had no desire for
the post.
After these preliminaries were out
of the way Mrs. Meir discussed the
purpose of the call — to help her
with the talk she was shortly to make
before the United Nations General As-
sembly and to help her marshal the
arguments against Arab aggression. I
made an engagement to meet her on
Saturday afternoon to discuss the
situation. This I did out of friend-
ship to Flora Solomon, whom Doris
and I both admired.
I felt it would be proper if I talked
to a responsible official in the State
Department, since I wanted to be sure
I was acting in the national interest. I
have always followed that procedure
in dealing with foreign countries. I
called up Compton Berry, Deputy As-
sistant Secretary of State for the Near
East, at the suggestion of a Mr. Hulick
in Fred Wisner's office at the CIA.
Were there any objections from the
viewpoint of the national interest to
my working with Israel? He said, talk-
ing officially, no, there were not. The
United States was friendly with Is-
rael — there was no reason whatso-
ever why I should not work for them
from the viewpoint of the national
interest. This was 'his official state-
ment, he said. Then I asked him what
he personally felt or thought about
the matter. 'Personally," he said, "on
a human basis, I want to draw to
your attention that certain com-
mercial clients might take exception to
your working with Israel."
"You mean the oil companies,”
said, "with interests in the Middle
East?" And I added, "I determine my
actions by conscience and loyalty to
the U.S. and not by economic con-
sideration."
He said that in the circumstances
that was okay, but he did want to
point out to me that personally he
felt that he should tell me what he
knew.
I thanked him for his frankness.
Next day, Saturday, I conferred again
with Mrs. Meir. She excused herself
for a half hour to write a statement
about the Arab-Israeli situation for
the Sunday Herald Tribune. I was
surprised at her ignorance as to how
a statement intended for public con-
sumption should , be written so as
to gain her objective when mass
communication played such a vital
role in national and international af-
fairs. Intellectually I am sure she
recognized that her country's destiny
was dependent on the understanding
of the people of the United States
and other peoples, but she had no
capacity to deal with the mass mind.
Nor did she have any knowledge of
the techniques of distribution; she
was preparing - a statement for one
newspaper, when she might have been
writing one for the press services
which covered the United States and
the world.
I
Nor was she a working psychologist.
Her statement was didactic and dif-
ficult to understand. The sentences
were long and her English poor. A
people's life might depend on the
public reaction to what she wrote.
I came to a definite conclusion: there
is no room for amateurs among
diplomats in our mass-communications
world.
We now got' to the subject of our
meeting — presentation of Israel's
case before the UN the next day.
urged her to abjure any wailing-wall '
techniques or emotional appeals to
sympathy and to present her case by
stressing a common denominator of
interest between herself and her
audience, emphasizing common goals
that would be served by UN action
rather than Israeli goals.
She listened intently and thanked
me. When a nonpaying client asks
for advice I have found that since
it has not been paid for it is usually
not acted on, because it is not con-
sidered valuable. But to my surprise,
from the papers the day after her
speech, I found that Golda Meir had
acted on my advice; she had pre-
sented her case just as I outlined it.
Her statement received a good recep-
tion from audience and press and
advanced her cause.
I
Bernays takes pride in his chil-
dren—in the ability of his daugh-
ter, Doris, who married Richard
Held; in the -husband of his daugh-
ter, Anne,—Justin Kaplan—an ed-
itor and anthologist whose bi-
ography of Mark Twain soon will
be published by Simon and Schus-
ster.
John T. Flynn, in an article
about Bernays in Atlantic Monthly-
in 1932, called him the "Mass
Psychologist." It's an excellent
description. Bernays' "Biography
of an Idea" proves this to be'- cor-
rect.
Edited by DR. SHLOMO KO-
DESH for Tarbuth Foundation
for Advancement of Hebrew
Culture and American Jewish
Press Assn.
LIVING HEBREW
LESSON 20
THIS WORLD AND THE
NEXT ONE
David: Shalom, Shmuel, I've heard
news in the Tzarkaniyah
(general store). Ziva
received a scholarship from
the government and she's
leaving for New York to
perfect herself in the dance.
litrt
-r –
much of "the pleasures of
this world" in the. village.
Shmuel: Listen, we're all different
from what we once were
(before). New times —
new tunes.
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Shmuel: Talent is talent, it doesn't
ask for pedigree!
David: You say "talent," and
what about principles?
We - once had principles:
The building of the land,
the pioneering spirit.
iyro
2. n 1 Tf. pill 71 fit
Shmusk Unbelievable! What luck!
Zehava and Moshe can be
proud of their daughter.
David: Some pride! A daughter of
a pioneer—a dancer. Too
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David: You've made good
progress. You already
speak the language of your
grandchild.
Shmuel: My grandchild? You are
mistaken. I thought about
my grandfather who said:
On the day that every Jew
will be concerned about
"the world to come" for
himself and "the pleasures
of this world" for his
friend — then the
Messiah will come .. .
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YOUR DICTIONARY FOR TODAY
to be proud
talent
principle
to progress
Tzarkaniyah
(general store)
scholarship
to specialize
(to perfect)
••■■•••■
•••••1•4
s wzs:
IDIOMS:
Unbelievable!
"the pleasures of this world"
01,t_ r;
"the world to come"
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PROVERB:
New times — new tunes.
.nite,Tr;
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