48 Friday, February 17, 1978
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Flirtations With Old Germany Eschewed
in Dr. Martin's Review of Freud and the Jew
Gratifying to him was to
receive messages of agree-
ment and support from! re-
fugees from Hitler (includ-
ing one survivor of Au-
schwitz). That he shows
that some Germans did not
need forgiveness does not
invalidate that other Ger-
mans had committed crimes
that could never be forgi-
ven.
Whatever side of the
broad spectrum of re-
sponses a reader may
take to the author's posi-
tion, the book serves an
important educational
purpose to the younger
generation of readers ex-
posed only to recent
hate-Germany literature.
This book serves to report
on the fantastic 19th Cen-
tury love affair that occur-
red between the German
Jews (or Jewish Germans)
and Germany. The Jews
flourished tremendously in
the culture of the German
Empire. Jews and Germans
were often compared as
being alike. The subsequent
loss of Jews by assimilation
was frightening to propo-
nents of the perpetuation of
the Jewish people. It
threatened to change the
triumph of 18th Century
European Enlightenment
into a Jewish tragedy in
19th Century Germany.
By DR. PETER MARTIN
"Freud, Jews and
Other Germans—Masters
and Victims in Modernistic
Culture," by Peter Gay, has
just been published by Ox-
ford University Press.
The author, Peter Gay, is
a distinguished, intellec-
tual and cultural historian
who currently teaches at
Yale University. In this
book, he has put together a
collection of assorted essays
which he had written previ-
ously for other purposes.
He uses the incredulous
title of "Freud, Jews and
Other Germans." He has
stretched his disparate
material to their limit to
make this connection. His
specialty is modern German
history of the 19th Century.
This is pre-Hitler and pre-
Holocaust German history.
His other credentials are
that he himself was a re-
fugee from Hitler who was
obsessed for years with
hatred and thoughts of re-
venge on Germany and --
Germans. But that is not
what this book is about.
Such feeling's are nowhere
in evidence in these essays.
This book is a later,
more discriminating at-
titude, wrested from his
experiences and friend-
ships with Germans.. His
present attitude is not of
DR. PETER MARTIN
forgiving or forgetting,
but of recognizing that
there were, and are, sev-
eral Germanies. He sees
the folly of believing that
the only good German
was a good German.
He also believes it to be a
folly to see every German as
a movie villain, of refusing
to buy German products or
value German culture. His
position might be described
as guardedly pro-West
Germany.
He contends that the old
controversial love, affair be-
tween Jews and Germans
was not at-wholly one-sided
pathetic affair. His previous
presentation of this position
has aroused passionate ra-
tional and irrational re-
sponses.
The Haskalim in Ger-
many were not able to
bridge effectively the gap
between traditional
Judaism and modernism,
nor to reconcile the conflict
between the preservation of
the specific Jewish values
and the acquisition of the
modern German culture.
What they did was to launch
the Jewish people on the
perilous. road to assimila-
tion which led'a sizable por-
tion of German Jewry to
conversion to Christianity.
Peter Gay does not ad-
dress himself to this prob-
lem in his emphasis on the
many Germanies and the
many different types of
Jews. There was constant
evidence of Jewish Ger-
mans siding with non-
Jewish Germans in their
virulent antagonism to
Eastern Jews (Polish, Rus-
sian, Lithuanian, etc.). It is
hard to believe these Ger-
man Jews' position which,
in ways, is reminiscent of
the resolution passed in
1975 in the UN General As-
sembly which equates
Zionism (or Judaism) with
racism.
In this we are back to
the subject of Jewiih
self-hate. It was common
in modern pre-Hitler
Germany.
For example, Hermann
,
Cart Voss' New Volume Reviews
the 'Living Religions of the World'
By GEOFFREY WIGODER
(Editor's note: The
reviewer is editor of the
Encyclopedia Judaica
and professor at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem.)
- Is- religion the great cop-
out? That is the 'q uestion
which every thinking man
must ask himself at some
stage. He may answer in the
affirmative and settle on
the humanist-atheist side of
the fence; or he may remain
agnostically• astride the
fence; or he may make the
leap of faith over to the
other side And land in a field
of enormous variety and
complexity.
It is this field of belief that
is explored in "Living Relig-
ions of the World: Our
Search for Meaning" (World
Publishing Co.) by Dr. Carl
Hermann Voss, scholar,
Protestant minister and
biographer of Stephen Wise.
The survey is pithy and
succinct, an excellent in-
troduction to the religions of
the world — Hinduism,
Jainism, Buddhism, Con-
fucianism, Taoism and
Shinto from the Far East;
Judaism, Christianity and I
Islam from the Middle East.
The living religions, with-
out exception, have all
emerged in Asia.
This is not on an arid
academic exercise. His
approach is that "We are
the heirs to the spiritual
treasures of every age
and every land." This
should be the slogan of
the very young Move-
ment of ecumenism,
which is not an attempt to
blur differences but to
acknowledge the truth in
all religious paths.
It was expressed by Gan-
dhi when he said, "Our
prayer for others ought
never to be 'God, give them
the light Thou hast given
me,' but 'God, give them the
light they need for their
highest development.' "
Voss contrasts the East-
ern and Western attitudes
to religion. Thus the Far
Eastern religions rely more
on intuition and emotion;
the Western attitude is
more rational and logical
even_within the same relig-
ion, conflicts are often bit-
- ter.
"Beware the man
whose God is in the
skies," wrote Shaw, and
this is . especially obvious
when we are faced with
the zealot, convinced of
his monopoly on revela-
tion, leading to intoler-
ance, inconsideration
and often accompanied
by a blindness to facts.
,
DR. CARL VOSS
within a historic context.
There are not only differ-
ences but strong affinities.
These seldom" appear in
creeds and ceremonies but
are evident in ethics. The
Golden Rule, in one form or
another, is basic to all
faiths. ,
However, for all this
stress on consideration for
others, religious rivalry has
been one of history's most
negative elements and,
Moreover, apparent iden-
tity is often -misleading: Is
Begin's Almighty really the
same as Sadat's Allah?
The growth in our time of
mutual understanding
among men of all faiths is
partly a result of one-
worldneSs in an era of mass
communications, but
largely because religion
everywhere is being pushed
into a corner.
From their unaccustomed
role as a minority (vis-a-vis
atheism, humanism, and
the godless religions of
Marxism and Maoism), men
of faith are groping towards
each other, especially in the
Western World. Longstand-
ing prejudices and en-
trenched establishments
stand in the way, but there
are the first signs of an
openness which promises to
be the trend of the future.
For this reason, Voss's book
can been seen as a har-
binger.
Levi was a great Jewish
symphony conductor who
asserted his pre-eminence
in Munich of the 1870s. He
was master in his chosen
sphere. But he was the
epitome of self-abasement
in his relation to Richard
Wagner the German genius
composer and vicious anti-
Semite. •
Levi's father, a rabbi,
could not understand his
Selbsthass—the
son's
frantic urge to escape the
burden of one's Jewishness
not merely by renouncing
but by denouncing.Judaism.
Observers had noted the
existence of a certain anti-
Jewish animus among Jews
as early as the 1870s. Freud
considered such self-hatred
as an exquisite Jewish
phenomenon..
I think that it is through
the history of Jewish self- .
hatred that the author's
position in this book is con-
tradicted. Though, 1) . he
states that there were Ger-
mans who acted like the
worst prejudiced carica-
tures of Jews and that there
were Jews who acted as the
most ideal ,German; 2) he
says that Germans were
sometimes the masters, but
also sometimes the victims,
and 3) that Jews were some-
times the victims, but also
were sometimes the mas-
ters, there is radical differ-
ence between Jews and
Germans which he does not
prove.
There was not the
German self-hatred of the
nature of Jewish self-
hatred. This Jewish
self-hatred allows for vic-
timization by . "masters"
such as Richard Wagner
who victimized the
pathetic Hermann Levi.
This is' just one small
example of the type of
cruelty which' when
exaggerated became of-
ficial government policy
in the Hitlerism final sol-
ution.
Verbal abuse moved on
the physical abuse.
Gay, while recognizing
such antecedent phenome-
non, insists that to say that
the Third Reich was
grounded in the German
.past is true enough but to
say that it was the inescap-
able .result of the past, the
only fruit that the German
tree would grow, is false.
Gay believes that 19th
Century anti-Semitism,
however unpalatable even
at the time, however pre-
gnant with a terrifying fu-
ture, was different in kind
from the 20th Century Hi-
tler variety. To me, he does
not prove his case.
There is another glar-
ing instance in which he
fails to prove his case—
the essay on Freud. He at-
tempts to place Freud in
the German ambiance by
playing down both
Freud's Jewish connec-
tions and Viennese con-
nections.
Although Freud dis-
counted religion as being
only the opiate of the people,
his life-long experiences
with anti-Semitism and his
support by the Bnai Brith
organization when all other
groups opposed him, tied
him closely to his innate
Jewishness. He also was one
of the first members of the
Board of Governors of the
Hebrew University and
wanted the first chair in
psychoanalysis to be e
lished at the Hebrew
versity. This was tea%
complithed . in August,
1977.
Freud's Jewish connec-
tions were indispensable to
his well being and they were
not Germanic in origin.
Freud was unconsciously
identified with his ancestor
Joseph, the original 'Jewish
interpreter of dreams.
Also, Gay's minimization
of Freud's Viennese iden-
tification is unconvincing.
Although Freud abused and
cursed Vienna, made fun of
the Viennese
Gemulichkeit, he never
went away from Vienna
until forced to leave by Nazi
DR. SIGMUND FREUD
occupation.-He was bound to
Vienna by a kind of hate-
love.
In the last 20 years of
his life, Freud wanted to,
go to New York, to Lon-
don, to Harvard and re-
ceived "many honorable
offers which were most
attractive finan tally.
Yet, he always r( used.
Also, when he thoi lilt of
vacations, it was the
warm sunny culture-
steeped Italy that excited
him, not the culture of
Germany.
To base-a thesis on Freud
as a German Jew or a
Jewish German is indeed to
place the thesis on
grounds.
Although beautifully
written, this collection of
essays is too loosely con-
structed to be convincing. It
leaves a confusing impres-
sion through its contradic-
tory presentations of his-
tory.
Perhaps that is what a
presentation of history
must be, a show of how con-
tradictory and confusing
are the ways of mankind.
The past is unbelievably
cruel and the future ,unpre-
dictable as to whether it will
bring development of the
best in mankind or regres-
sion to the worst in human
naturp.