Discovering the Harp of Zion
Gustav Karpeles’ German Jewish apologetics in nineteenth-century literary historyEzra Engelsberg Dr. Yaniv Hagbi
Thesis Middle Eastern Studies: Hebrew and Jewish Studies 07-18-2018
2 Content
General introduction 3
Chapter 1: Heine as a Jewish writer in Gustav Karpeles' apologetic history
The poet, the rabbi and antisemitism 6
Rehabilitating Heine 8
Heine as a Jewish poet and man 10
Heine as a German 13
Heine and Goethe 16
The Nibelungenlied and the Thora 17
Chapter 2: Nationalism and cultural transfer in literary history
Two historians, two literary traditions 19
Different appreciations of the literary canon 21
Modes of explanation 23
Language: exclusive and inclusive 27
Nationalism compared 29
Chapter 3: Gustav Karpeles and the Wissenschaft des Judentums
Changing landscapes in Judaism 31
The Wissenschaft des Judentums 33
Reforming the practice of Judaism 34
The Wissenschaft, romanticism and nationalism 37
Knowledge as apologetics 38
Towards modern German Judaism 40
Conclusion: of rivers and the sea 42
Literature 44
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General introduction Bei den Wassern Babels saßen Wir und Weinten, unsre Harfen Wehnten an den Trauerweiden-
Kennst du noch das alte Lied?1
When Heinrich Heine was gravely ill and confined to his Parisian bed he wrote these words in the Romanzero. Recalling the lamentation of Psalm 137 the poet asks us if we remember the song of old. The somber Romanzero deals with personal distress, but Babylon here may just as well refer to the Jewish exile en gros. After all, Heine had chosen life abroad on his own accord. In this collection of poems he turns his attention to the age-old tradition of Jewish literature. Marveling at Judah Halevi, his grand precursor, the poet praises the power of the Jewish canon, Haggadah, Talmud and of course the Thora. Das alte Lied is thus more than only Psalm 137. Heine asks his readers if they still recall all those centuries of creativity, from biblical times up to Medieval Spain.
And sarcastic Heine would not be Heine had his question been a comfortable one. The nineteenth century well underway, Judaism had undergone significant changes since the poet’s birth. These can be expressed as twofold. The practice of Judaism had changed from within and Western society in which it was bedded had changed markedly. The Enlightenment had propagated reason and the centrality of man on earth, marginalizing traditional religion. Moreover, a new sense of equality ushered in new civic rights for Jews, threatening formerly natural cohesion within the Jewish community. Now that Jews were socially mobile, they need not stay within their traditional confines. Jewish religious observance was already somewhat shaky before the inception of the ‘Age of Reason,’ but now it seemed to plunge headfirst into crisis. Were the Jews to turn towards orthodoxy, or should they try to synthesize their heritage with the new current of modernity, finding a compromise? Heine himself belonged to the large group of German Jews who turned away from Judaism altogether, favoring baptism instead. Then again, this turning away was not so categorical, as the subject matter of the Romanzero shows. There were always ties with the tradition. These ties proved problematic in the light of greater societal shifts. With the rise of romantic nationalism, ones link with Blut und Boden became of paramount importance. Affiliation with a tradition that differed from this nationally bound one meant estrangement from society. Although Jews had lived in ghetto’s before, their otherness now took on new forms, supported by new theories of identity and nationhood. This is the tide Heine tried to turn by converting to Protestantism. Commitment to Jewish culture and religion was no longer obvious. This necessitated a thorough Jewish apologetics, lending the Jews a way to prove they could partake in the nationalist German project as good as their gentile compatriots. Thus, the verse above can be interpreted as a critical question. Have you payed due respect to your tradition? Indeed, tradition was now taking precedence over religion. All of the abovementioned factors contributed to the prevalence of culture over religion. The Wissenschaft des Judentums, originated to reform Judaism to the needs of the day, advocated this shift. Founding fathers such as Eduard Gans and Leopold Zunz foresaw a fluent Hegelian aufheben of Judaism, in which ‘the Jews can neither perish nor Judaism dissolve; but in the great movement of the whole it shall seem to have
1 H. Heine, Romanzero (Hamburg 1851) 223. ‘Hebrew Melodies,’ the section these verses come from, is almost a genre on itself. The most notable example of it is Byron’s book of songs of the same name first published in 1815. This book inspired the German violinist Joseph Joachim to compose his own ‘Hebrew Melodies’ four decades later.
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perished and yet live on as the current lives on in the ocean.’2 The literary historian Gustav Karpeles
would carry on the projects of the Wissenschaft, but he opposed integration into German society at the cost of religious observance.
His extensive work testifies to contemporaneous polemics in Jewish circles and to the strenuous relationship between Jews and German gentiles. Born in Moravia three years prior to the publication of the Romanzero, he was the very first to write a systematic history of Jewish literature. Trained as a rabbi, he combined the scientific interest of the Wissenschaft with religious devotion. As such, he became editor of the weekly Jüdische Presse that represented a conservative religious stance, but also of the literary journal Auf der Höhe. After that he went on to edit several journals in both fields. He co-founded the Berlin Verein für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, an initiative that was soon to be copied in other German communities.3 He edited an anthology of Hebrew poetry translated into
German4 and several overviews of Jewish literature.5 Karpeles’ special interest however was Heine.
He published works on the poet time and again.6 Karpeles remained somewhat of an eclectic writer
though, as can be illustrated by his writings on Napoleon III as translator of Goethe and his editing of the complete parliamentary speeches by Moltke the elder.7 These works attest to their author’s
devotion to German history and culture. Although much of his work focuses on German literature, his books on Jewish literature found an international reading public. Karpeles’ grand, two-volume Geschichte der Jüdischen Literatur, his magnum opus, was translated into French in 1901, and collected essays on Jewish history were published in English by the Jewish Publication Society of America in 1911, two years after his death.8 Karpeles’ historiography of Jewish literature was thus an
internationally known project. His activity in editorials and societies in Germany and the sheer size of his output make it safe to say his work was widely read at home as well.
In between religion, nationalism and apologetics, Karpeles’ historiography is a showcase for the issues German Jews faced in the dynamic latter half of the nineteenth century. It displays the different attitudes of Jews towards these aspects of life and the reaction of Christian Jews. This research follows three distinct veins in Karpeles’ oeuvre, all addressing subjects mentioned already in this introduction. They cover Karpeles and Heine, Jewish literary history in comparison to nationalist literary history and the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The structure of the thesis follows these three, setting next to each other three distinct parts. Much the same as in Karpeles’ Geschichte, each part is preceded by an introduction and followed by concluding remarks. These culminate in a conclusion that draws from all, presenting coherently once more Karpeles’ voice in the debates around loyalty towards religion, tradition and one’s country. It sheds light on the strategies minorities deploy in trying to grapple with their marginality. We follow the search for acceptance and see how this search
2 Quoted in: L. Wieseltier, ‘Etwas Über Die Judische Historik: Leopold Zunz and the Inception of Modern Jewish Historiography’ History and Theory, Vol. 20 no. 2 (1981) 135-149, 148.
3 M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik, ed., Encyclopedia Judaica Vol. 11 (Detroit 2007) 816.
4 G. Karpeles, ed., Die Zionsharfe: eine Anthologie der neuhebräischen Dichtung in deutschen Übertragungen (Leipzig 1889).
5 G. Karpeles, Ein Blick in die Jüdische Literatur (Prague 1895); G. Karpeles, Geschichte der Jüdischen
Literatur (Berlin 1886) 2 volumes.
6 G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und das Judenthum (Breslau 1868); G. Karpeles. Heinich Heine: biographische
Skizzen (Berlin 1869); G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und seine Zeitgenossen (Berlin 1888) G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine: aus seinem Leben und aus seiner Zeit (Leipzig 1899).
7 G. Karpeles, ‘Napoleon III als Goethe-Uebersetzer’, in: L. Geiger, ed., Goethe-Jahrbuch vol. 21 (1900) 292; H.K.B. von Moltke and G. Karpeles, ed., Graf Moltke als Redner: vollständige Sammlung der
parlamentarischen Reden Moltkes (Berlin 1889).
8 G. Karpeles, Histoire de la littérature juive d'après G. Karpeles; [avec une lettre de Zadoc Kahn] (Paris 1901); G. Karpeles, Jewish Literature, and other Essays (Philadelphia 1911).
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questions the meaning of tradition and assimilation. It seems to the author that in this day and age such an enquiry holds relevance not only for those interested in history. To everyone who is concerned with contemporary developments, too, this research should hold some meaning.
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The poet, the rabbi and antisemitism
In Heine’s Der Rabbi von Bacherach [sic], published in 1840, the revered rabbi of the Rhine village Bacharach is forced to flee from his hometown together with his wife Sara on the first night of Passover. During a Seder celebration in the home of the rabbi, strangers appear at the rabbi’s door. In accordance to Jewish tradition, he promptly invites them to join the family. However, the rabbi finds out just in time that the unknown guests are planning to kill their hosts. Suddenly, he sees that underneath the dinner table lies a dead baby. The poet Heinrich Heine tells how German Christians used to hide corpses of baby’s in Jewish houses, only to use these bodies later as a pretext for starting a pogrom. Heine turns the well-known idea that Jews used to kill Christian baby’s during their feasts around. He doesn’t deny the fanciful story of the dead youngsters, but uses the tale instead to illustrate the animosity of German Christians towards their Jewish fellow-countrymen. He has rabbi Abraham notice the child and recognize the evil scheme of his guests. Keeping his fear at bay, the rabbi manages to think of a way to leave before the antagonists notice that they have been detected. What follows is the flight of the rabbi and his wife across Germany, stopped short only because Heine never finished the would-be novel.9 The first parts were conceived as early as 1824, but it is no coincidence
that those parts of the text that actually were finished, were published only years later, in 1840.10 In
February of that year, the French consul in Damascus accused the Jews of that city of the ritual murder of a Capuchin priest, resulting in the pogrom that became known rather euphemistically as the ‘Damascus affair.’11 Heine took particular interest in the affair and published several articles on it in
the ‘Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung.’12 The similarity between these accusations and the corpse in
the rabbi’s house is of course evident. The news from Damascus prompted the poet to resuscitate the old story and counter the old prejudice.
In the context of contemporary turmoil Heine’s plans are obvious. Before the narrative of the rabbi starts, Heine makes it abundantly clear that the story is about the relationship between German Jews and Christians. It need not be explained that the poet took this relationship to be a very difficult one.13
This focus Heine shared for a significant part with one of his fervent admirers, Gustav Karpeles. The literary historian dedicated much of his efforts to research and writing about his great literary hero. In the course of several decades a number of works on Heine were written by Karpeles. He also contributed to Heine-knowledge by editing and publishing works of the poet.14 These efforts
combined make up the main part of Karpeles’ writings. Indeed, Karpeles may have been known
9 We may disregard Heine’s own story that the finished manuscript was lost in a fire in 1833. See: W. Vordtriede, ‘Anmerkungen’ in: H. Heine, Heinrich Heine: Dichterische Prosa/Dramatisches (München 1993) notes by Werner Vordtriede, 947.
10 G. F. Peters, ‘’’Jeder Reiche ist ein Judas Ischariot’’: Heinrich Heine and the Emancipation of the Jews’
Monatshefte, Vol. 104, No. 2 (2012) 209-231, 222.
11 E. Schreiber, ‘Tainted Sources: The Subversion of the Grimms' Ideology of the Folktale in Heinrich Heine's "Der Rabbi von Bacherach"’ The German Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 1 (2005) 23-44, 30.
12 H. Steinhauer, ‘Heine and Cecile Furtado: A Reconsideration’ MLN, Vol. 89, No. 3, German Issue (1974) 422-447, 430.
13 H. Heine, ‘Der Rabbi von Bacherach’ in: Dichterische Prosa/Dramatisches 513-552, 515-520.
14 In the first category we may mention: Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und das Judenthum; Karpeles, Biographische
Skizzen; Karpeles, Heinrich Heine und seine Zeitgenossen and Karpeles, Heinrich Heine: aus seinem Leben und aus seiner Zeit. As editor Karpeles oversaw the publishing of the following works: H. Heine, M. freiherr von
Heine-Geldern & G. Karpeles, Heine-reliquien: neue Briefe und Aufsätze Heinrich Heines, (Berlin 1911); H. Heine & G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heine's Autobiographie: nach seinem Werken, Briefen und Gesprächen (Berlin 1888) and G. Karpeles, Heinrich Heines sämtliche Werke: in zwölf Bänden/ mit einer Biographie von
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primarily as Heine-expert.15 This chapter will explain how different works on Heine fit in the greater
oeuvre of Karpeles’ literary history and in what way Heine’s story is used by Karpeles to make a usually tacit political and social argument.
15 New York Times, ‘Heinrich Heine’s ‘’Memoirs’’ : An English Version of the Interesting Compilation Made by Gustav Karpeles, April 16, 1911.
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Rehabilitating Heine
First of all, we must consider the question why Heine was so central a figure in Karpeles’ works, why he devoted so much effort to the poet. According to some modern theoreticians, the main function of literary history is appreciative, i.e. recording literary works that are worthwhile for posterity.16
Although Karpeles does express his love for Heine’s work, this barely enters his ongoing stream of publications. Those interested in Heine’s works will find next to nothing to aid their search for Heine’s literary output in Karpeles. In the foreword to his Biographische Skizzen, Karpeles confesses that the aim of the book is adding a positive view on Heine to the existing literature about the poet. He wants to ‘vanquish prejudices’ about the poet, because there is still a lot of negative attention for Heine. He apparently did not miss the mark. Two years after the original publication, a Dutch translation found its way to bookstores. The translator added his own preface, writing that the book ‘converted’ him in his understanding of Heine. He recognizes two distinct ways in which Heine is mistreated: either his genius is denied, or he is called morally despicable.17 The translator added his
own view, since the former of the two problems isn’t addressed by the book at all. As the title suggests, it is about the life of the author, not his works. Karpeles maintained this view steadfastly, as can be seen from the preface to Heine und seine Zeitgenossen, written nearly twenty years later. For the first time here, he comes close to explaining why he has devoted so much energy to Heine. Noting that his research on the poet has proliferated for over two decades, he finds one basic idea to be the thread of all the flowers of this research. The project has from the start been:
'den Beweis zu führen, dass Heine in seinen Beziehungen zu den hervorragendsten Zeitgenossen als ein besserer Charakter und als eine vornehmere Natur sich gezeigt hat, als man dies nach den Urtheilen, welche unsere Literaturgeschichten über ihn verbreitet haben, noch immer anzunehmen geneigt und wohl auch genöthigt ist.'18
The main aim has thus always been rehabilitating the poet, where it concerns him as a person. Karpeles is not concerned with the quality of Heine’s work, only with the quality of the human Heine. The positive focus is deemed necessary, because other literary historians have besmirched the memory of Heine. This explicitly subjective approach is fundamental to our understanding of Karpeles’ project, as we will see later on.19 The caustic vein in Karpeles’ writing is often apparent. In
the Biographische Skizzen he names a number of those ungrateful writers who have been wanting to monger lies about his subject. One of them is Max Heine, the author’s very own brother. Karpeles’ manner of fighting Max’s words is sometimes surprisingly acrimonious. The latter claimed his parents to be rich, Karpeles denies it vehemently. Would Heine ever have needed to lean on his financially successful uncle if his parents had been wealthy themselves, he asks rhetorically.20 Time and again
Heine positions himself diametrically opposite others who have written about Heine. The sudden bitterness in Karpeles’ pen, when attacking Heine’s opponents, testifies to his devotion to the poet. It stands out in stark contrast to the usually lighter and meandering way of Karpeles’ descriptions of Heine’s life. The German press is also to blame for the decline of Heine’s status. The aforementioned ‘Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung,’ once even Heine’s employer, wrote a dismissive necrology on the poet’s death. Karpeles knows his writing to be structured around binary oppositions. The very last part
16 H. Schlaffer, Die kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (München 2002) 153.
17 G. Karpeles, translated by H.M. Bruna, Heinrich Heine: Biografische Schetsen (Nijmegen 1871) preface without pages.
18 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen, preface without pages.
19 Y. Hagbi, ‘Modern Hebrew Histories of Literature and the Formation of the Canon: A Preliminary Study’
Zutot Vol. 6 (1) (2009) 111-119, 113.
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of Biographische Skizzen is dedicated to Heine-biographers. Here Karpeles returns to the beginning of the book, placing his project in the Heine-historiography. He categorizes two types of biographers, those who are positive next to those who are negative about Heine. Of the first category, only Adolf Strodtman, who appears as an inspiration for Karpeles, is mentioned. This biographer, who called Heine the ‘two-legged God,’ is reprimanded by Karpeles for being all too uncritical of his subject.21
This is a slightly odd poke at Strodtman indeed, considering the utter lack of any critical assessment of Heine by Karpeles himself. It is not without reason that the translator of the book supposes Karpeles’ evident love for Heine to have affected his ‘professionality.’22
21 Ibid., 99.
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Heine as a Jewish poet and man
Among other biographers mentioned in the last part of the book, we find Friedrich Steinmann. Karpeles dismisses his critique of Heine as ‘anti-Jewish polemics.’23 This is a rare instance where
Karpeles is vocal as to Heine’s religion being a reason for the German defamation of the poet. As the effort Karpeles put into exploring Heine’s religious life and identity abundantly proves, this was a major theme in his history. He identifies certain perceived ‘Jewish’ traits in Heine’s writing: philosophical enquiry, subjectivity, and the typical Jewish wit.24 In the first characteristic we see a
parallel with an apologetic point made by Karpeles in the essay A Glance at Jewish Literature, which takes its content from Karpeles’ heftier literary histories. There he states that ‘[t]he opinion is current that the Semitic race lacks the philosophical faculty,’ countering that opinion with the fact that the Jews were the first to bring Greek philosophy to Europe, before even the Arabs did.25 Karpeles sees
Heine, whose works were widely-read by Jews and non-Jews alike, as another proponent of the philosophical in Judaism. Heine was for Karpeles not just a great poet, but also because of his genius an important instrument in Karpeles’ apologetics. Karpeles wants to prove the qualities of Judaism to the world by showing Heine as an example. A further indication is immediately found when we continue reading the preceding paragraph about the Jewishness of Heine’s work. Elaborating on the ‘Jewish wit,’ Karpeles opines that ‘English humor, French sparkle, German irony, and Jewish wit’ are all woven together in Heine’s works. Karpeles then wonders why of all these national humors, only the Jewish one has been overlooked by critics. He sees a direct link between the Talmud and the Midrash up to Heine’s work, for already in these important Jewish foundational works do we find the Jewish wit.26 It is no coincidence that Karpeles uses this enumeration of nationally bound types of
wit.27 Heine’s genius is here presented as the cumulative result of different national affects from over
Europe, to which the Jewish one contributes equally. This paragraph is an almost exact copy of the recurring theme in Karpeles’ large literary history, that is to say, that of the Jewish river flowing into the grand ocean of world literature together with all other rivers of the world.28 It becomes clear that
Heine is important to Karpeles because he can serve as a case study for Karpeles’ overarching theory of Jewish assimilation and contribution to the (literature of) the world.
Heine’s Jewishness was however not an undisputed matter. First of all there was the case of his baptism. In 1825 the poet had chosen to renounce his Jewish ancestry and convert to Protestantism. Karpeles downplays the religious relevance of this episode in Heine’s life. He writes that the conversion was due only to practical matters. He wanted to enter into the service of the local government, which was strictly prohibited for Jews. Furthermore, he hoped to win over the acceptance of his enemies by joining their Christian ranks.29 They nonetheless would never really see
him as part of Christianity, he remained ‘the Jew’ forevermore.30 At the same time, Heine himself
never broke the ties to his ‘Stamm’ and, the new Christian names Christian Johann Heinrich notwithstanding, he kept signing with H. or even Harry Heine. According to the historian, this was an
23 Ibid., 102.
24 Karpeles, ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ in: Jewish Literature, and Other Essays (Philadelpia 1911) 340-368, 354.
25 Karpeles, ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ in: idem, 9-51, 23. Cf. Karpeles, Allgemeine Geschichte der
Literatur (Leipzig 1900) Vol. III, 76, where the Semitic ‘Mangel an abstrakten Denken’ is once again
mentioned. This was apparently an important issue for Karpeles. 26 ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ 355.
27 Remember that for Karpeles, Judaism was closely linked to the concept of nationhood. This is not uncommon, consider for instance the Sephardi tradition to refer to the Sephardi community as the ‘Nação.’
28 See for instance Geschichte der Jüdischen Literatur Vol. I 3; ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 51. 29 ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ 351; Biografische Schetsen 43.
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open reference to his Jewish heritage.31 Karpeles ardently wanted to prove Heine’s devotion to faith.
Karpeles was right to note that the baptism didn’t mean that Heine actually wanted to adopt Christianity. In a letter to his friend Moses Moser, dated roughly half a year after the conversion, Heine sighs that he regrets the choice, since the practical gains expected by the poet never materialized. Worse still, he was now accepted by neither Christians nor Jews.32 It has since then been
argued that another reason for Heine to convert may have been his involvement in anti-Catholic polemics, but Karpeles never makes notice of this motive.33
The conversion indeed did not indicate Heine’s devotion to the Church, but of course neither did it exemplify his love for Judaism. In fact, he wasn’t a very religious man, as Karpeles candidly admits.34
Like all ‘civilized people in those days’ Heine was attracted to atheism.35 Karpeles assures his reader
that even as an unreligious man, Heine always admired Judaism above all other religions. In his old age, confined to what he called his ‘matress-grave,’ the ailing artist felt remorse for his secular life and tried to return to faith. In the end, Heine showed himself as a religious Jew.36 In the final part of
Heine und seine Zeitgenossen Karpeles laments the ill fortunes of his hero, thinking about his deathbed. ‘Was war aber das Leben unseres Dichters? Nichts als ein Golgatha von Leiden und Kümmernissen, von Schmerzen...’37 It is noteworthy that Karpeles should choose for Christian
imagery here to convey the poet’s misery. He was interred at the Christian graveyard of Montmartre, close to the Jewish cemetery. Karpeles takes us with him to this site. From the humble slab saying ‘Henri Heine,’ one can look to the Jewish graves, where the celebrated composer Halévy is honored in marble. ‘Isn’t the author of Der Rabbi von Bacherach worth as much as the composer of La Juive?’ he asks. It is no coincidence that Karpeles chose precisely these two titles, related to Judaism, from the copious amounts of works left by the two prolific artists. Even though Heine was buried just outside the Jewish cemetery, Karpeles finds a way to turn this fact into an example of Heine’s Jewishness and tragic end.
As quoted above, Karpeles categorizes his hero as one of the ‘civilized people’ of the earlier 19th
century. He notices that a certain disregard for traditional religious life is part of a tendency toward a ‘modern’ worldview.38 For well-educated German Jews, this oftentimes meant being a part of the
Wissenschaft des Judentums. Karpeles, himself a devout man once on the path of becoming a rabbi, explains Heine’s predominantly secular lifestyle combined with his devotion to Jewish tradition as typical for Wissenschaft-Jews.39 He writes that the beginning of the Wissenschaft in 1819 boosted
Heine’s interest in Judaism.40 He applauds the way the Wissenschaft labors to make the (Christian)
world more familiar with Judaism by explaining it. He is proud of its exponents like Gans, whom he sees as an equal to Germans like Fichte.41 Karpeles’ whole project of writing literary history may be
31 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 12; Biografische Schetsen 44.
32 R.C. Holub, ‘Heine’s Conversion: Reflections from the ‘’Matratzengruft’’’ The Germanic Review: Literature,
Culture, Theory Vol. 74, No. 4 (1999) 283-292, 285.
33 See A. Joskowicz, ‘Heinrich Heine's Transparent Masks: Denominational Politics and the Poetics of Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Germany and France’ German Jewish Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2011) 69-90. By many liberals in the German states, the Catholic Church was associated with hierarchical and backward positions contrasting with their more modern ideas of good citizenship.
34 Biografische Schetsen 10. 35 Ibid., 42.
36 Ibid., 46-48.
37 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 341. 38 ‘Heinrich Heine and Judaism’ 340. 39 Biografische Schetsen 42-43. 40 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 12. 41 Ibid., 4.
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seen in the light of the Wissenschaft as an attempt of making gentiles familiar with his faith. A lot can be said about the Wissenschaft as a barometer of the nineteenth century and Karpeles’ outlook on it. Chapter three will deal with the historian, his time and the Wissenschaft in greater detail. A necrology published for the American Historical Society stresses the important role Karpeles’ writings played in reviving the pride for Jewish intellectual and religious life.42 Exactly this combination of religion and
intellectuality marks the Wissenschaft. On the other hand however, Karpeles condemns the way the modern and solely intellectual approach to Judaism may harm the very core of the religion. As can be seen in his reproach to Heinrich Schiff, Karpeles was a devout Jew. The same way he condemned Zionism as an expression of despair, he did not want to change the way the religious Jews lived in the diaspora.43 What he shared with the Wissenschaft was his aim at teaching the cultural merits of
Judaism, in his case more to gentiles than to other Jews. However, he was weary of the threats the purely cultural appraisal posited to the living religion. He must have shuddered at his contemporary Steinschneider’s proclaimed target of providing the remains of Judaism with a decent burial.44 This
tension makes Karpeles’ efforts of showing Heine at his deathbed as a man with not only respect for Judaism but also with religious conviction all the more understandable.
42 K. Kohler, ‘Gustav Karpeles’ Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society No. 19 (1910) 184-189, 185.
43 Kohler, ‘Gustav Karpeles’ 187.
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Heine as a German
In this sense, Heine is presented in Karpeles’ histories as an example of a Jewish author. However, contrary to the universalizing theme prominent in Karpeles’ large histories, Heine’s specific nationality plays a significant role in the Heine-works. A long list of Heine’s favorite courses at the university appears to serve as a witness to Heine’s German ties and inclinations. The list comprises of history of the German language by Schlegel, Germania by Tacitus, German constitutional law and ancient German history.45 This enumeration was published first already in 1869 in the original version
of the Biographische Skizzen, but later on Karpeles really tries to prove the German in Heine. Heinrich Heine und seine Zeitgenossen, dating from 1888, sets out immediately declaiming that Heine is the poet par excellence to whom the ‘Vaterland mit Stolz hinweisen kann.’46 It adds to the
previous chain of German intellectual flowers in Heine’s environment the names of Fichte, Schleiermacher and Gans.47 Even though several of the books on Heine were translated and published
abroad, in the United States and the Netherlands, the intended audience is the German one.
The stress of Heine’s ties to Germany must be understood in the political context of Karpeles’ times. The Heine-histories are interwoven with contemporary German politics. Karpeles lived in the years of the German unification, when Bismarck’s politics set out to consolidate the nascent nation. The Austro-Prussian war of 1866 resulted in territorial gains for Prussia and further marginalized Austria. It was a big step towards the unification of all the northern German states into the German Empire that followed the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. The defeat of the French and the very considerable size of the new empire fed nationalist feelings in Germany. The Germans had successfully claimed a role in the Mittellage of European politics, instead of being a conglomerate of smaller and more vulnerable states. Karpeles now tried to appeal to the new nationalist sentiments of his compatriots. In a sense, the question of Heine’s nationality couldn’t have been more relevant at this juncture of German history. This question was an uneasy one, since Heine had spent significant portions of his life as an expatriate. His last 25 years the poet lived and worked in Paris. This choice was particularly frowned upon during and in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war.48 Karpeles writes that the ease
and speed with which Heine embraced French culture made for bad publicity back in Germany, where his new life was interpreted as a rejection of the German national character, morality and motherland.49 We see here that the attacks on Heine’s character, noted by Karpeles in the preface to
Heine und Seine Zeitgenossen, are combined with refutations of his being a true German. As for example the literary history of the well-known author Heinrich Kurz shows, the Germans of the latter half of the nineteenth century were particularly preoccupied with proving the worth of their own culture, autonomous from the French, which had guided and informed German literary culture in the preceding centuries.50 The writings of Georg Gottfried Gervinus, called the father of literary history,
testify to the same tension between the cultural output of other European countries and Germany.51 In
the wake of the geopolitical resurgence of a strong Germany came a pride for the national culture, with the Germans finally shaking the sentiments of inferiority towards the French. In this change,
45 Biografische Schetsen 29. 46 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 1. 47 Ibid., 4.
48 Ibid., 343.
49 Biografische Schetsen 76-77.
50 H. Kurz, Leitfaden: Geschichte der deutschen Literatur 4th edition (Leipzig 1874) 13, 22, 149, 230. 51 G.G. Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung (Leipzig 1871, first edition 1853) Vol. I: 5-7; A. Geisenhanslüke, ‘Einleitung’ in: M. Rauch and A. Geisenhanslüke, ed., Texte zur Theorie und Didaktik der
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Heine’s perceived turn away from German soil and towards the cultural hegemon of yesteryear was difficult to accept.
For Karpeles however, it is clear that Heine surpassed these petty national rivalries. He writes that it was always Heine’s ambition to lessen the animosity between the two nations and to forge a link between the neighbors. Wistfully he sighs that even the burial of Heine did not turn out to be an event where both parties joined ranks.52 Why Heine should have wanted to pursue the ungrateful project of
bringing Germany and France closer to each other remains somewhat of a mystery. Karpeles time and again paints a portrait of Heine as a politically unengaged romantic man. His interests lay more with culture and romance. In fact, considering the political turmoil of Heine’s day, the absence of political aspects in the Heine-works is a striking omission.53 Yet against the background of this silence
Karpeles claims that becoming an intermediary between Germany and France was an important reason for Heine to settle in Paris.54 Nowhere do we learn why Heine was so keen on being the
‘Vermittler’ between the two, nor what he ever did to bring the two nations he loved so dearly closer to each other. He seems to have profited from his French surroundings mostly by meeting and befriending great artists such as George Sand and Berlioz.55 Many of Heine’s famous and successful
contemporaries, alluded to in the title of Heine und seine Zeitgenossen are in fact French. The encounters with Frenchmen overshadow the list of Germans Heine admired. Moreover, Karpeles tries to prove Heine’s devotion to the German culture by talking about his interests when he was still a college student in Berlin. It seems only logical that in these early years, the young poet was exposed mainly to German culture and did not know how to venture across the border. Later on, as a grown man, this is exactly what Heine did, as the main body of Heine und seine Zeitgenossen proves almost by accident. Karpeles was unable to neglect the strong foreign current in Heine’s life. He chose instead to write about it openly, but struggled to contextualize it so that the German audience would accept the fact that Germany was ultimately Heine’s greatest love. In the book’s conclusion Karpeles makes a heartfelt plea for the poet’s never relenting devotion to Germany, citing a heavy piece of a letter Heine wrote on the subject. Especially near the end of his life, Heine thought about far away Germany more lovingly than ever before.56 He was born a German, moved to Paris, but died as a
German, is Karpeles’ argument. In the Biographische Skizzen Karpeles emphasizes this ultimate return or allegiance by referring to Heine as ‘Germany’s lyrical poet’ in the sentence that concludes his life on the 17th of February 1856.57 And so the sudden and in the end unsubstantiated suggestion
that Heine’s parting with German soil was actually meant as a way of helping Germany and France becomes all the more understandable. Karpeles makes this point to counter the criticism of Heine not being a patriot. Much as the poet himself, who used the myth of Jewish cruelty to exemplify instead Christian cruelty against Jews, Karpeles inverts the criticism of Heine leaving Germany by claiming that this was in fact a very patriotic deed. Unfortunately, it is not possible to trace the reception of Karpeles’ work in enough detail to learn whether or not this argument was accepted by the contemporary audience. In any case, we have seen that he did not manage to make the point very convincingly. Besides, whatever sentiments in Heine’s day may have been, by the time Karpeles got to write on the subject of Heine’s migration, the German people weren’t all that inclined to become brethren with the French. Bismarck would later write that he had worked to turn public opinion
52 Biografische Schetsen 46, 96.
53 An example is the aforementioned liberal anti-Catholic reason behind Heine’s conversion, not mentioned by Karpeles. Another case is Heine’s previously noted involvement in publicizing the Damascus affair.
54 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 14. 55 Ibid., 114, 115.
56 Ibid., 344.
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against the French, apparently not without results. He said that a German war with France had always been necessary for ‘further national development’ and that France had always been opposed to German unification.58 For all his efforts, Karpeles must have known that his appeal to companionship
between the two nations was farfetched.
58 O. von Bismarck, translated by A.J. Butler, Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman: Being the Reflections and
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Heine and Goethe
To Karpeles, nothing combined Heine’s cultural and intellectual German heritage and his inclination towards a modern society as much as the poet’s admiration for Goethe. The latter’s ideal of Bildung was formative for the project of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, but most of all he was a source of artistic inspiration for Heine. It appears to have been very important to Karpeles to affirm the connection between the two poets. He writes that already as a child Heine read Goethe furtively, because his father would not let him.59 In Heine und seine Zeitgenossen a separate chapter is devoted
to the bond between the two men, making Goethe, nearly fifty years Heine’s senior, the least zeitgenossische subject in the book by far. Not only because of this does the chapter stand out. Whereas the book is composed of sets of anecdotes loosely connected, the chapter on Goethe has a clear structure and purpose. Only here does Karpeles open by asking questions: what was Heine’s relation to Goethe and was he Goethereif?60 This last term, coined by Berthold Auerbach, was used to denote those who considered themselves part of the veritable Goethe-cult that went through the German states in Heine’s day. Once again a considerable part of the chapter is devoted to polemics. Several authors questioned the truthfulness of Heine’s account of his visit to the old poet in Potsdam. Karpeles fights to prove them wrong by quoting parts of personal letters Heine containing accounts of the visit. He even cites a complete letter of Heine’s, in which he asks Goethe to be allowed the honor of meeting him, a rare example of the use of primary sources in the work. Karpeles went to considerable lengths to ensure that his readers would never again doubt that the two poets had known each other personally. He presents Heine as the natural heir to the awe-inspiring Goethe, ensuring Heine of a place in the cultural pantheon of Germany.61
In fact, Goethe rivalled the religious god. Terminology around him shows the extent to which culture had become another religion for German intellectuals. It was in this secularizing environment that Heine matured. He had been happy to learn from Hegel that not God in heaven, but man himself, on earth, was god.62 Karpeles signals the dynamic between fading religion and rising culture. He links
Heine’s atheism to Goethe’s role as Heine’s personal god.63 Heine often compared his great example
to Jupiter, placing the roots of German culture not in Christianity, but in the classical heritage, the same way Goethe had done.64 Karpeles in his turn adopted this mode of comparison by calling the
ailing and suffering Heine ‘another Prometheus.’65 Being a Titan, Prometheus was as close to a deity
man could come. This was as far as the deeply religious Karpeles could go in comparing man to God. The comparison appears to be a fairly direct one. Heine brought mankind his version of light, poetry, and was condemned to a tortuous illness. However, we may unearth another layer in the metaphor. Heine saw Moses as the ultimate artist for transforming ‘a feeble race of shepherds’ into a great, eternal and holy people, the ‘prototype of mankind.’66 In several myths Prometheus is credited with
the creation of mankind. Karpeles, who knew of Heine’s view on Moses, may have intended a further play on the parallel between the classical hero and the Jewish patriarch, situating Heine’s genius once again within the Jewish realm.
59 Biografische Schetsen 3.
60 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 40. 61 Ibid., 47, 53.
62 Ibid., 5.
63 Biografische Schetsen 10,11. 64 Heine und seine Zeitgenossen 46,47. 65 Biografische Schetsen 90.
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The Nibelungenlied and the Thora
The intertwining of classical or German culture with Jewish heritage is seminal for Karpeles’ history of Heine. As he proclaimed himself, the works he wrote about the poet during a period of several decades all follow the idea of proving that Heine was a better person then existing literature made him out to be. Karpeles is open about his aim of rehabilitating Heine, but he remains nearly silent on the reasons why others should have presented him negatively. In these reasons lies the structure of Karpeles’ rehabilitating argument. The sparse clues readers get are twofold. Firstly, Heine’s French orientation was seen as a rejection of German culture and nation, just at a time of heightened national German self-awareness and nation building. If Karpeles wanted his compatriots to appreciate the man Heine, he would have to convince them first of the poet’s constant devotion to their country.
The second wedge driven between Heine and Karpeles’ German audience was his religious background. As seen from Karpeles’ comment on Steinmann’s assessment of Heine, the historian noted that the poet’s Jewish heritage proved negative for his esteem. As with the move to Paris, his Jewishness made him an ‘other,’ to whom the Germans were not favorably inclined. Karpeles could get surprisingly vehement when fighting such defamations. After his death a journalist wrote that the more racial prejudices seemed to turn Germans away from Heine, the more Karpeles tried to counter the attacks.67 Karpeles’ argument here covers several domains. He tries to point to specifically Jewish
aspects of Heine’s work, resulting in the same argument he makes in his overarching literary history. Heine is a credit to the literary canon not just because he is a genius, but because his work is a repository of Jewish culture, from which all of humanity can profit and learn. In this sense Karpeles followed the project of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. He sought to integrate Judaism by teaching non-Jews about the merits of Judaism. This explains why he also took so much care proving that Heine, who even converted to Protestantism, was in the end a man of Jewish faith. He deployed the same luctor et emergo-like rhetoric as with the Parisian controversy. Yes, Heine moved there, but finally proved himself a true German nonetheless. And yes, he was baptized, but died with more Jewish fervor in him than ever before. This serves another purpose as well. Karpeles did not want Germans to accept Heine because he purportedly renounced his Jewish heritage, he wanted them to accept him even though he was even more Jewish than they may have thought. To Karpeles, Judaism was unalienable to the German culture. This is maybe exemplified by the way in which he presented Heine, with all his Jewish references and heritage going back to the Talmud, as the natural heir to Goethe, the Dichterfürst to whom all looked in awe.
Heine himself proposed this mixing of traditions masterfully in his Rabbi von Bacherach. The flight across Germany of the rabbi and his wife leads them to the borders of the Rhine. Their crossing of that ultimate German river evokes strong biblical images, not in the least part the crossing of the Red Sea. In an elaborated parallel, Heine has Abraham casting his last belongings, the Passover silverware, into the river to stop the ill-luck from following him. It is hard not to think of the Biblical Abraham’s sacrifice here, only this time the rabbi sacrifices to the very core of Germany, the Rhine. Unlike the Christians who persecute Abraham and Sara, the river proves a protecting friend, who not only transports them out of harm’s way, but even promises Sara its ‘goldigsten Schätze, vielleicht gar den…Niblungshort.’ Heine thus links Abraham’s sacrifice which went into the waters of the river to the mythical Nibelung treasure, which must come out. A text already reverberating with references like these conditions the reader to see more. Later on Heine uses the words ‘goldner Pracht’ to typify
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the beauty of the Jewish temple, in a way reminiscent of the middle part of his famous poem Die Loreley, which, once again, is about the Rhine. In Der Rabbi von Bacherach Heine makes it abundantly clear that the Bible and its Jews and the German people and their folklore go hand in hand. This is exactly what Karpeles strove to prove in his works on the poet.
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Two historians, two literary traditions
The Bible and the German people find their synthesis in Herder, yet another source of inspiration for Karpeles. ‘Die Bibel spricht die Sprache der Menschen,’ quotes Karpeles an anonymous talmudic sage.68 The words evoke Herder’s famous statement that ‘We must read the Bible in a human way, it
is a book written by man for man: the language is human etc.’69 The starting point of Jewish history
and the cornerstone of Gustav Karpeles’ work on Jewish literature is the Bible. Karpeles has little difficulty proving the lasting influence, power and quality of the Bible. As the ‘book of books’ it is admired not only by the Jewish people, but by all of humanity. Karpeles is confident that that is unlikely to change. It is not hard to understand why he considered the Bible the most important link in the chain of Jewish literature.70 It is the singular feat by which the world knows Judaism. Does
Karpeles’ work then show a tension or discomfort, since it reflects thousands of years of literary prowess, all indebted to, but never on par with that initial literary work? Karpeles quite happily admits that nothing in the subsequent literary corpus goes beyond the Bible. But this does not create a sense of gradual deterioration. Rather, it is a source of pride. Of course no matter of millennia can produce the likes of the Bible, which is, after all, the word of God himself. For the deeply religious Karpeles the Bible was hors concours. As such, it was not a giant casting an unsurpassable shadow over later generations of Jewish writers, but simply a source of continuing inspiration and the logical starting point for his own endeavor. Throughout his writings on literary history, Gustav Karpeles is exceedingly appreciative of the works he discusses.71 No matter how far apart in time and geography
his subjects, he never falters to highlight the admirable aspects of the text he is delving into. As noted briefly in the previous chapter, this appreciative vein may seem inconspicuous, but the following will prove it to be an important and deliberate aspect of Karpeles’ writing.
Appreciation of ones subject was in fact not a logical sine qua non for literary historians in Karpeles’ day. This is exemplified by the work of Heinrich Kurz, one of his contemporary colleagues. From the outset his often-read history of German literature spills over with dismissive remarks on the several topics and abundance of works that pass Kurz’s scrutiny. Was Karpeles simply more successful in finding works that he could admire? It is not likely. Literary historians do not simply list works from the tradition. Beyond making the public familiar with a certain body of literary works, literary historians tend to pursue a program of another kind. The juxtaposing of two historians who are altogether different from each other, yet also share common traits stems from a desire to unearth this programmatic vein. Remarkable similarities and differences between Karpeles’ Geschichte and Kurz’s Leitfaden warrant a comprehensive comparison between both. The methodology of this chapter differs from that of the rest of the thesis. This is why a short discussion of the methodology is in place. Karpeles’ famous contemporary Émile Durkheim already championed the comparative method in 1895. In The Rules of Sociological Method he likened the comparison to the natural scientist’s experiment as the useful method of showing differences and relations between objects of study.72 The following century saw a lot of criticism towards the comparative method, but this has
helped to strengthen it as a method of inquiry by constantly reworking or deleting its faulty aspects. In fact, the historian Stefan Berger noted that the comparative method has risen in popularity since the last two decades of the 20th century. To him, the merit of the method lies mainly in the fact that the
68 Geschichte Vol. I 18. This dictum appears at different places in the Talmud, cf. Kiddushin 17b; Yevamot 71a. 69 Cited in D. Weidner, ‘Secularization, Scripture, and the Theory of Reading: J.G. Herder and the Old
Testament’ New German Critique, No. 94 (2005) 169-193, 170. 70 Geschichte Vol. I, 14.
71 Geschichte Vol. I, xi-xii; Geschichte Vol. II, 829, 879, 880.
72 E. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method (London 1982 [1895]).
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historian, by comparing, may learn things about his or her subject that otherwise would have stayed invisible.73 By comparing, the historian creates a more intimate understanding of his or her subject.
The same holds true for the comparison of Karpeles with Kurz, as we shall see. Kurz’s work serves as a touchstone. His work represents a more common vein in German historiography than does that of Karpeles, as we shall come to discuss. At the same time, his writings share several features with Karpeles’ histories. This enables us to see more clearly in what respects Karpeles fits in with the tradition of his day and especially what makes his work stand out among that of his colleagues. Berger, himself an authority on national identities, is in the first place preoccupied with transnational comparisons. They single out what is unique to a specific national tradition of thought or custom. Berger notes that the biggest pitfalls for the comparative historian consist of problems relating to translation and interpretation.74 The historian must know both languages equally well and has to know
that in different languages and cultures expressions often mean different things. Geographical and temporal boundaries posit problems of a similar nature. In sum, the farther apart the two sides of the comparison, the more hazardous the comparison becomes. Berger’s objections to the comparative method may show exactly how good a comparison the one at hand is. Karpeles was German, Kurz was of German-French descent. Both Karpeles and Kurz wrote in German, and even if their lives coincided only partially, the publication dates of the discussed works are never too far apart.75
Combining results of research of both Karpeles and Kurz will thus make for a strong case.
Kurz’s work that will be discussed here, his Leitfaden,76 was first published in 1860 and continued to
be in print in another three revised editions until 1874. This last revised edition is the one used for this research.77 Karpeles’ works were also first published during the 1860’s. From then on, he continued to
write and disseminate his work until his death some forty years later. The backbone of his work was the grand Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur from 1886, a work that will take an equally important place here. Kurz was involved in the same historical enterprises as Karpeles. He wrote general works on German literature and edited several anthologies and handbooks.78 The many reprints of his most
important work, the Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, attest to the popularity of the work. It consists of three imposing volumes. This Geschichte follows the same encyclopedic interest as Karpeles’ Geschichte. Both delve into a literary tradition from its very beginnings up to the author’s own day. Because of its success, Kurz decided to publish a condensed and more concise book that followed the same lines of the original Geschichte. This Leitfaden (guide) was just as popular as its heftier precursor, seen that the book was printed four times in the first twelve years of its existence.
73 S. Berger, ‘Comparative History’ in: idem e.a. ed., Writing History. Theory and Practice (London 2003) 161-179, 164.
74 Berger, ‘Comparative History’ 166.
75 Heinrich Kurz was approximately a generation older than Karpeles. Kurz lived from 1805 to 1873, Karpeles was born in 1848 and died in 1909.
76 Since understanding Karpeles is the objective of this research, only a single work by Kurz will be discussed, as opposed to several by Karpeles. The Leitfaden, covering the same ground as for instance his Geschichte der
deutschen Literatur, will suffice for the purposes of the comparison.
77 Kurz, Leitfaden.
78 H. Kurz, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur mit ausgewählten Stücken aus den Werken der vorzüglichsten
Schriftsteller (Leipzig 1853) 3 volumes; Kurz, Die deutsche Literatur im Elsass (Berlin 1874); H. Kurz, Handbuch der poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen von Haller bis auf die neueste Zeit (Zürich 1840).
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Different appreciations of the literary canon
As noted above, the historian’s method of studying his source material is a major difference between both authors. Kurz appears as an acute reviewer of the works he discusses. He has several reasons for criticizing German literature. Kurz explains in his introductory notice that his work stands out because it doesn’t stop at giving biographical details concerning historical writers. To this common feature of the genre, also found in Karpeles,79 he adds short discussions and synopses of important works of
these writers.80 This is probably due to the fact that Kurz intended his work to be read by students of
the German language and literature. It is not only a history, but also a compendium.81 From there it
should be easy to come to an evaluation of the aesthetic value of the mentioned works. The more remarkable it is then, that both formal and aesthetic considerations play a marginal role at best. The evaluation of literary works is often lacking in thorough foundations, but looks more like the confession of a personal taste.82 About the lyrical poetry of the late Middle Ages he complains that it
is usually not objective, but soft and swooning.83 How this literature does not live up to formal rules is
not explained. One just has to agree or disagree with the author. Kurz does however explain what he means by ‘objective,’ be it some two hundred pages later on in the work. There he says that an objective author extracts his material only from his own life and surroundings.84 Elsewhere Kurz
claims that it was an important milestone for German authors when they developed a poetic sense of nature’s beauty.85 Goethe’s objectivity, as understood in this context, is one of the reasons why Kurz
holds him in high regard. Here again one might argue that the appreciation of this objectivity is a matter of personal taste, but the fact is that this discussion does not hold much weight for Kurz. The same is true for Karpeles.
The personal way Kurz depicts the aforementioned lyrical poetry finds a parallel in Karpeles’ method of talking about the aesthetic part of literature. The latter, however, is usually very positive about the works he finds in the corpus of his choice. He opens a chapter about biblical prophetic literature by depicting said literature. That is, he wants to convey his own enthusiasm for the books of the prophets by way of using flowery epithets. The prophets ‘flow free and uninhibited, with majestic force.’86 Just
as his colleague, Karpeles usually isn’t bothered with explaining formally what makes the discussed literature worthwhile or not. The adjectives reign as free and uninhibited as do the prophets. Karpeles does quote pieces of literature, sometimes in quite lengthy pieces that take up to nearly two whole pages. These quotes appear to serve no other purpose than to underscore the historian’s love for the work. ‘The book of Joel is a beautiful gem, here, see for yourself,’ he apparently wants to say.87 The
practice of citing shows at once that Karpeles has the luxury of space in his history whereas Kurz has
79 Karpeles, Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur Vol. I (Leipzig 1900) 100 and ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 26.
80 Leitfaden iii. 81 Ibid., iv.
82 In this sense Kurz shows himself to be part of a particularly long-lived branch of literary history. Throughout T.A. Birrell’s history of English literature, written roughly 100 years after Kurz, the subjective vein prevails. The academic relevance of Harold Bloom’s even more recent Western Canon could been called into question because of the same reason. T.A. Birrell, Geschiedenis van de Engelse Literatuur (translated from the English by C.E.M. Heijnen) (Utrecht 1961) and H. Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York 1994). 83 Leitfaden 19, 20. 84 Ibid., 259. 85 Ibid., 15. 86 Geschichte Vol. I, 100. 87 Ibid., 106-109.
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to be succinct.88 Less prosaically, though, it shows that Karpeles’ history is one of sharing a loved
interest, whereas that of Kurz is one that exists outside of the realm of appreciation. Karpeles sets out to show Jews how great their partly forgotten literature is and on the other hand to prove to gentiles that Jewish culture is not so foreign.
After reading Kurz, one is actually struck by Karpeles’ ever recurrent superlatives. In his capacity of herald of literary beauty, the author does not shun poetic imagery. He indulges in some literary fancies of his own. If we remain in the chapter on the prophets, we find that Isaiah and Amos were ‘zu höchster sittlicher Höhe entwickelt und in reifster künstlerischer Vollendung hergestellt.’89 Habakuk
represents ‘reinster Harmonie…glühenden Phantasie…reine Klarheit.’90 These enumerations could
hardly differ more from Kurz’s grudging pen. The prophets are of course part of the unsurpassed Bible, but subsequent genres evoke much the same praise. The Jewish-Hellenistic literature attests to a grand spiritual or academic Idea, Karpeles marvels.91 Still later, the Jews of Al-Andalus created yet
another apogee of the written word. Halevi, Gabirol and those around them receive plenty of praise from the historian.92 The sometimes excessive acclaim notwithstanding, Karpeles has to acknowledge
that in three thousand years of history, not every period has been equally fruitful in its literary output. In the development of the genres of Haggadah and Midrash, at one time flourishing, he signals a drop in productivity and quality alike.93 The reader does not learn what effected this decline, only that it
took place.
88 This may seem to be a bit of a pedestrian insight. In fact, Kurz advises those who find his work too much of a summary to turn to his heftier Literaturgeschichte. Kurz, Leitfaden iv.
89 Geschichte Vol. I, 110. 90 Ibid., 115.
91 Ibid., 137.
92 Ibid., 6,7; Karpeles, Allgemeine Geschichte Vol. I 95; ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 22. 93 Allgemeine Geschichte Vol. I (Leipzig 1900) 84.
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Modes of explanation
This lacuna, to the modern reader perhaps an oddity, in fact fits Karpeles’ tale. A close scrutiny of the historian’s ways of accounting for the different paths the literature of his choice has walked is extremely helpful in providing answers to what the historian’s program looked like. Again, striking differences as well as similarities between Karpeles and Kurz highlight the role historical explanation plays for both. The existence of literature by itself does not tell a story. Only by imbedding the life of literature in an explanatory frame do the authors effectively create that story. Both authors’ explanatory schemes are intertwined with the question of appreciation, as we shall see.
In Karpeles’ view, among all times that saw the creation of great Jewish literature, three periods stand out especially because of the quality of the literature that came forth from them. First and foremost, of course, the Biblical epoch. We have already seen why Karpeles holds the Bible in such high esteem, but he gives us more than that. In a misleadingly simple part of his Geschichte, he posits a correlation between the glory of the Jewish nation in Biblical times and the glory of its literature. In this, the only period where the Jews had their own ‘nationalen Grösse,’ they were able to create a literary corpus of beauty and importance. The parallel between the success of a nation and the success of its literature is again underscored by the remark that Biblical literature truly deserves the epithet ‘Nationalliteratur.’94
By connecting the greatness of the Biblical Jewish nation with its literature, Karpeles primes his reader to expect a similar symmetry for the second phase of tremendous literary creativity. He locates this phase in the Hellenistic times. This symmetry is obviously impossible, since this second phase is marked by Greek political dominance in the regions where Jews lived. To make this even clearer, Karpeles carefully paints a picture of a shattered and divided Jewish nation.95 How, then, were the
Jews able to produce valuable literature in this inhospitable climate? Karpeles shifts his attention from factionalism-torn Judea to Alexandria, where Greek culture soared high for a last beautiful time. As opposed to the ‘extremist’ Jews in Judea, the Chassidim and Essenes, who opposed everything alien to their hallowed traditions, the Jews in Egypt welcomed the blossoming culture around them.96 They
mingled with the Greeks and learned to speak and write their language. At the crossroads where Greek philosophy and Judaism met, the Egyptian Jews were stimulated to rethink what they knew. Contact with the Greek civilization stimulated the Jews to add to their existing corpus writings that addressed new questions. The mixing of these two contrasting worlds created something new and beautiful.97 The same argumentation is repeated, not coincidentally, in Karpeles’ analysis of the third
period of extraordinary literary prowess, that of the Golden Age of Spain. Under Moorish rule in the Middle Ages, Spain developed into a cultural center the likes of which Europe had not seen since antiquity. Here, too, Jews lived and partook in the prevalent cultural life. As a result, ‘the civilization of the dominant race…was reflected in that of the Jews.’98 Yehudah al-Harizi’s most important work
is a collection of Maqama’s, Karpeles says.99 He was successful by working with a literary form from
outside his own tradition. The message is clear: by embracing other cultures, you can develop yourself. Just as the Bible works as an inspiration for all of humanity, the fruit of the Moorish-Jewish venture is one that serves everybody. Schopenhauer may complain about it, but Gabirol is still his precursor, Karpeles maintains.100 Likewise, and less far-fetched, he sees Proudhon as a follower of
94 Geschichte Vol. I 27.
95 Ibid., 140-142.
96 With ‘Chassidim’ Karpeles most likely means the Pharisees. 97 Ibid., 145, 210.
98 ‘A Glance at Jewish Literature’ 22. 99 Die Zionsharfe 179.
100 Ibid., 27. Karpeles suggests that Gabirol was the first poet to express Weltschmertz [sic], his pessimism is probably why Karpeles likened Gabirol to Schopenhauer. Elsewhere Karpeles claims that Weltschmerz, a
