56 Friday, October 13, 1918
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
A Biographical Tribute to Dr. Max Nordau
(Continued from Page 1)
Max Nordau, like Herzl,
was a handsome man. A
long line of intellectual
forebears had shaped his
face into fine features. His
stature was rather short,
but his leonine head and
powerful shoulders made
him appear taller. His white
beard, shining grey eyes,
sonorous voice impressed
when he rose to speak.
Under the severity of his
morals, the cold logic of his
reasoning, the pitiless accu-
racy of his observation, beat
the warmest heart that dis-
pensed love to all creatures
and pardoned weaknesses.
He extended a helping
hand to all in need. His
intuitive, creative mind
reached the very depths
of the roots of nature. He
was at the same time a
scientist and an artist,
letting feeling guide his
actions together with sci-
entific accuracy. His
will-power drove him to
results, his courage never
failed. His was the life of a
fighter for progress. With
all, in everyday life, he
was completely unas-
suming and his conversa-
tion was as humorous as
brilliant.
Max Nordau, like Herzl,
was born in Pest, which was
not yet Budapest. His birth
took place on July 29, 1849.
He was a descendant of an
old Jewish Spanish family,
which traced its origin back
to Isaac Abrabanel, the 15th
Century scholar who was at
the same time finance
minister to the Catholic
Kings of Spain.
His father was Rabbi
Gabriel Sudfeld of Krotos-
chin in East Prussia, who
had been called to Pest as a
teacher of Hebrew and
German. His mother was
Sara Rosalin Nelkin and
came from Riga; she was his
father's second wife.
Rabbi Gabriel was a
scholar, a modest and poor
man, who became poorer
when the rise of Hungarian
nationalism banned the
German language and
adopted the Magyar tongue
as the expression of culture.
The family lived in a sur-
rounding of working people,
mostly Jewish, yet not in a
ghetto, which did not exist
in Hungary. Max was his
mother's only son (his
father had children by his
first marriage). Two years
after him came a daughter,
Charlotte.
From his early child-
hood, Max, whose He-
brew name was Simha
Meir, showed excep-
tional gifts and a highly
energetic
character
which he inherited from
his mother, who de-
fended her little ones like
a lioness. She once even
beat a schoolteacher with
an umbrella because he
had threatened to slap lit-
tle Max's face! However,
the boy was allowed to
pursue his studies, first in
a Jewish school, then as a
scholarship pupil in the
Catholic municipal gym-
nasium and finally in the
Protestant gymnasium.
He then studied medicine
and graduated as a doc-
tor.
From his early adoles-
cence, his parents' poverty
impelled him to start work-
ing in order to help them.
He felt himself responsible
for them. When he was only
15, a poem of his won a
literary contest. Soon after,
he started a career as a
Maxa Nordau: Her
Father's Biographer
(Continued from Page 1)
turer. Born in Paris, daugh-
ter of Max Nordau and
Anna Dons, she obtained
her BA degree and studied
painting in Paris with Jules
Adler and in Madrid with
Jose Maria Mezquita.
She takes part in the
Paris Salons, exhibits
with groups in Paris, the
French provinces and
various countries.
She took part in the deco-
ration of the Palestine
Pavilion at the Paris World
Fair in 1937 and had one-
man shows in Paris, New
York, London, Jerusalem,
Tel Aviv and other cities.
Her work can be seen in
museums in Paris, Tel Aviv
and other places in Israel, in
Ovar (Portugal) and also
the Jewish Mtiseum in
Budapest, and in private
collections in a number of
countries, including
America, Mexico, South Af-
rica, England and Israel.
She has received many
prizes and medals, the
latest being the Silver
Medal of the City of Paris
(1977) and the Gold Medal
of the Accademia Italia
(1978). She was also in-
structor for drawing at the
New York City College in
the adult education pro-
gram.
She has lectured in many
countries. During her two
stays in the U.S. the second
lasting five years, she lec-
tured several times in De-
troit.
Together with her
mother, she wrote a biog-
raphy of her father.
journalist. The Pester Lloyd England, even Iceland,
took him as a reporter upon which was celebrating the
recommendation of a friend. millenium of its union with
He was most successful Denmark. Then he traveled
until he described one to France, Italy and Spain,
morning an orgy which had feeling in the depth of his
supposedly taken place in soul his kinship with the
one of the big cafes of the land of his ancestors.
city. It created a sensation,
Meanwhile, his father
until the owner of the cafe had died in 1872, leaving
flew into a rage and ran into him with a profound sorrow
the newspaper's office, and a feeling of greater re-
swearing that never had sponsibility towards his
anything of the kind hap- mother and his sister. His
pened in his select place and half-brothers and sisters
threatening to pursue the were much older than he
reporter.
and were married and inde-
Max was of course called pendent.
to the office; when he was
When he came back
from his extensive jour-
asked where he had got such
neys, he decided to open
news, he answered in total
innocence: "But I have in-
a practice as a
gynecologist. But the
vented them, as usual! I
thought all reporters did the
surroundings, although
pleasant, were too pro-
same." The director was so
vincial for his legitimate
amused that he did not fire
him, but gave him another ambition. Of all the capi-
tals he had visited, the
department.
one that attracted him
He became dramatic cri-
tic for a magazine called
most was Paris. It was at
the time the center of cul-
"Intermission." He was 15.
His reviews were so ap- tural life and freedom of
preciated that one evening thought.
the director of the theater
He left Budapest, to
where the famous critic was
which he never returned,
attending a performance,
and with his mother and sis-
having heard about his
ter transferred his home to
presence, wanted to meet Paris.
him. He was there with his
Having already spent
sister and both children some time in the French
went to the director's office.
capital, he had written his
Hearing the name, the di- first book "From the True
rector came out and behold-
Hand of the Billions" and a
ing a slim boy and a young comedy "The Return from
girl, he asked them what Paris." Then came, in 1879,
they were doing there. Max a book describing his
felt offended and answered: travels: "From the Kremlin
"You have requested my to the Alhambra."
presence yourself! I am Max
He had decided to practice
Nordau." The director had
medicine in Paris and per-
such a spell of laughter that
he almost fell down. He haps to continue his activi-
later apologized and became ties as a journalist, without
thinking of literature. He
a great friend of the drama-
tic critic; but who would had of course to take again
have imagined that he was his degrees as a medical
doctor and started practic-
so young?
ing. He was soon much ap-
Meanwhile, Rabbi
Gabriel himself, who preciated as a gynecologist,
but later changed his inter-
sensed his son's future,
ests to psychiatry. But all he
gave him the advice to
had seen and lived through,
keep the name of Max
Nordau, which he himself all his revolt against the
sins of the world had to be
had found for him as
said.
more suitable for a
He wrote his first
writer's career as it was
philosophical book: "The
much easier to pro-
Conventional Lies of Our
nounce in all languages
Civilization," which ap-
than Sudfeld. The name
peared in 1883. Overnight,
was later legalized and
the author became famous.
becathe the real surname
On the one hand, he was
and not a nom de plume.
considered as a dangerous
When he-had finished his
revolutionary; on the other
medical studies, before set-
hand, for the majority of his
tling as a physician, Max
readers,he was a redeemer,
Nordau decided that he
who had at last expressed,
wanted to become ac-
and how eloquently! what
quainted with the world, As
they felt in their soul. The
a journalist, he was sent to
work was translated into all
Vienna to the World's Fair,
then to Russia, where Em- -languages, even Japanese;
and through the years it had
peror Franz Joseph paid a
72 editions.
visit to the Czar.
After that, he visited
Two years after the-
other countries: Germany,
"Conventional Lies" and
Denmark, where he met the
with some literary essays
great Andersen, Sweden,
in between, a second
book came out with great
expectations: "Para-
doxes," a critical essay on
art, literature, sociology,
written with a humorous
pen in a paradoxical
form.
His growing fame did not
prevent Max Nordau from
attending his patients and
continuing his journalistic
work.
Tribune of Zionism
Together with celebrity,
Max Nordau had acquired
an easier position. He
realized his youthful ambi-
tion of giving his .mother
and sister a better, more
comfortable life. But the
literary strife, the attacks
that went with the praise,
made him turn away for
some time from his sociolog-
ical and literary fights.
However, in 1888, he wrote
a novel: "The Malady of the
Century," which was pro-
Bjornstjerne Bjornson, the
Scandinavian writer. There
he met a tall, slender, beau-
tiful young Danish singer,
with marvelous grey eyes.
She was Anna Dons and she
had come to Paris to study
her art with the renowned
teacher Mathilde Marchesi.
Max Nordau was ex-
tremely interested in the
girl, but he understood that
his friend Kaufmann was
head over heels in love with
her and he did not ate
to interfere nor wa.
ready at the time to lose his
freedom.
Some time after,
Richard Kaufmann mar-
ried Anna, who had just
started an opera singer's
career. But children
came, she had to give up
her prima donna's voca-
tion (her sister Elizabeth
became a leading star in
the Opera of Copenha-
gen), but she continued
singing in concerts and
helping Mathilde Mar-
chesi with her pupils.
.
Max Nordau and
1889 Press Pass
claimed in Argentina as the
best novel of the year, and
two dramas.
He had meanwhile be-
come a great friend of Ce-
sare Lombroso, the Italian
psychiatrist who was prac-
tically the inventor of
criminology. He shared
most of his views, except
that Lombroso considered
genius as a degeneracy and
Nordau, on the contrary,
saw in it the highest sum-
mit of human mind in its
full sanity. He was so indig-
nant with the prevailing
literature, art, way of life,
snobbishness, decadent
manners, that he wrote his
most read, most admired
and most attacked book:
"Degeneration."
In it he was the first to
detect and point out
Nietzsche's madness,
Gobineau's dangerous
racialism,
Wagner's
pangermanism
and
warned mankind against
all forms of degeneracy,
the more perilous that
those he called "the
superior degenerates"
were more talented. Yet,
when Oscar Wilde was
jailed, he, together with
other personalities,
pleaded for his release.
The book, of course, pro-
voked venomous polemics,
one by Bernard Shaw. It in-
duced some enemies later to
take a vicious revenge dur-
ing the First World War.
After "Degeneration"
came a drama, a novel and a
few essays.
Meanwhile, when he was
in Paris at the Exposition of
1879, Max Nordau was
happy to meet again by
journalistic chance his
friend Richard Kaufmann,
whom he had known during
his voyage to Iceland. Soon,
Richard Kaufmann took
him to the home of
Max Nordau remained an
intimate friend of the
couple. Through the years,
four children were born.
Then, there was the tragedy
of Richard Kaufmann's ill-
ness and death, leaving his
young widow alone with her
family. Max Nordau was
greatly shocked by his
friend's passing. Yet Anna
had become free and he sud-
denly was aware that since
he had met her, he was un-
consciously in love with her,
kept away from his feelings
by his and her sense of duty.
Richard Kaufmann had
died in Denmark. When
Anna came back to Paris,
Max Nordau visited her —
and he knew that he could
no more live without her. In
due time, they married and
to the last were the most
loving and devoted couple.
They had a daughter Maxa,
who was brought up to-
gether with the step-
children.
Max Nordau had been
raised in a very traditional
Jewish home. His father, al-
though he had no congrega-
tion, was a rabbi and his
mother was pious. Yet after
Max delivered a brilliant
Hebrew speech for his Bar
Mitzva, he lost his faith.
His culture was so uni-
versal, his spirit so inti-
mately in contact with all
forms of intellectual 1. -
he was so much .-
terested in the fate or all
the people of the world,
that although the thought
of denying his Judaism
never entered his mind,
the woes of the Jews were
for him similar to those of
all suffering men. He felt
more akin to the Greek
and Roman civilizations
than to the Hebrew. Then
came a turn in his life.
* * *
(To be continued ...
Published in cooperation
with the Jewish National
Fund of America.)