"This furthermore I heard from my pious father, when, in 1734, he lay sick in Fürth, where there are many physicians. I went from Marktbreit to Fürth, and stayed with him for three weeks. When I was alone with him, he dictated his will to me, and then said in a low voice: 'This I will tell you that you may know what happened to our ancestor Saul Wahl: After the nobles had elected a king for Poland, and our ancestor had become great in the eyes of the Jews, he unfortunately grew haughty. He had a beautiful daughter, Händele, famed throughout Poland for her wit as well as her beauty. Many sought her in marriage, and among her suitors was a young Talmudist, the son of one of the most celebrated rabbis. (My father did not mention the name, either because he did not know, or because he did not wish to say it, or mayhap he had forgotten it.) The great rabbi himself came to Brzesc with his learned son to urge the suit. They both lodged with the chief elder of the congregation. But the pride of our ancestor was overweening. In his heart he considered himself the greatest, and his daughter the best, in the land, and he said that his daughter must marry one more exalted than this suitor. Thus he showed his scorn for a sage revered in Israel and for his son, and these two were sore offended at the discourtesy. The Jewish community had long been murmuring against our ancestor Saul Wahl, and it was resolved to make amends for his unkindness. One of the most respected men in the town gave his daughter to the young Talmudist for wife, and from that day our ancestor had enemies among his people, who constantly sought to do him harm. It happened at that time that the wife of the king whom the nobles had chosen died, and several Jews of Brzesc, in favor with the powerful of the land, in order to administer punishment to Saul Wahl, went about among the nobles praising his daughter for her exceeding beauty and cleverness, and calling her the worthiest to wear the queenly crown. One of the princes being kindly disposed to Saul Wahl betrayed their evil plot, and it was frustrated.'"[72]
Rabbi Pinchas' ingenuous narrative, charming in its simple directness, closes wistfully: "He who has not seen that whole generation, Saul Wahl amid his sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons, has failed to see the union of the Law with mundane glory, of wealth with honor and princely rectitude. May the Lord God bless us by permitting us to rejoice thus in our children and children's children!"
Other rabbis of that time have left us versions of the Saul Wahl legend. They report that he founded a Beth ha-Midrash (college for Jewish studies) and a little synagogue, leaving them, together with numerous bequests, to the community in which he had lived, with the condition that the presidency of the college be made hereditary in his family. Some add that they had seen in Brzesc a gold chain belonging to him, his coat of arms emblazoned with the lion of Judah, and a stone tablet on which an account of his meritorious deeds was graven. Chain, escutcheon, and stone have disappeared, and been forgotten, the legend alone survives.
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Now, what has history to say?
Unquestionably, an historical kernel lies hidden in the legend. Neither the Polish chronicles of those days nor Jewish works mention a Jewish king of Poland; but from certain occurrences, hints can be gleaned sufficient to enable us to establish the underlying truth. When Stephen Báthori died, Poland was hard pressed. On all sides arose pretenders to the throne. The most powerful aspirant was Archduke Maximilian of Austria, who depended on his gold and Poland's well-known sympathy for Austria to gain him the throne. Next came the Duke of Ferrara backed by a great army and the favor of the Czar, and then, headed by the crown-prince of Sweden, a crowd of less powerful claimants, so motley that a Polish nobleman justly exclaimed: "If you think any one will do to wear Poland's crown upon his pate, I'll set up my coachman as king!" Great Poland espoused the cause of Sweden, Little Poland supported Austria, and the Lithuanians furthered the wishes of the Czar. In reality, however, the election of the king was the occasion for bringing to a crisis the conflict between the two dominant families of Zamoiski and Zborowski.
The election was to take place on August 18, 1587. The electors, armed to the teeth, appeared on the place designated for the election, a fortified camp on the Vistula, on the other side of which stood the deputies of the claimants. Night was approaching, and the possibility of reconciling the parties seemed as remote as ever. Christopher Radziwill, the "castellan" of the realm, endeavoring to make peace between the factions, stealthily crept from camp to camp, but evening deepened into night, and still the famous election cry, "Zgoda!" (Agreed!), was not heard.
According to the legend, this is the night of Saul Wahl's brief royalty. It is said that he was an agent employed by Prince Radziwill, and when the electors could not be induced to come to an agreement, it occurred to the prince to propose Saul as a compromise-king. With shouts of "Long live King Saul!" the proposal was greeted by both factions, and this is the nucleus of the legend, which with remarkable tenacity has perpetuated itself down to our generation. For the historical truth of the episode we have three witnesses. The chief is Prince Nicholas Christopher of Radziwill, duke of Olyka and Nieswiesz, the son of the founder of this still flourishing line of princes. His father had left the Catholic church, and joined the Protestants, but he himself returned to Catholicism, and won fame by his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, described in both Polish and Latin in the work Peregrinatio Hierosolymitana. Besides, he offered 5000 ducats for the purchase of extant copies of the Protestant "Radziwill Bible," published by his father, intending to have them destroyed. On his return journey from the Holy Land he was attacked at Pescara by robbers, and at Ancona on a Palm Sunday, according to his own account, he found himself destitute of means. He applied to the papal governor, but his story met with incredulity. Then he appealed to a Jewish merchant, offering him, as a pawn, a gold box made of a piece of the holy cross obtained in Palestine, encircled with diamonds, and bearing on its top the Agnus dei. The Jew advanced one hundred crowns, which sufficed exactly to pay his lodging and attendants. Needy as before, he again turned to the Jew, who gave him another hundred crowns, this time without exacting a pledge, a glance at his papal passport having convinced him of the prince's identity.[73]
This is Radziwill's account in his itinerary. As far as it goes, it bears striking similarity to the narrative of Rabbi Pinchas of Anspach, and leads to the certain conclusion that the legend rests upon an historical substratum. A critic has justly remarked that the most vivid fancy could not, one hundred and thirty-one years after their occurrence, invent, in Anspach, the tale of a Polish magnate's adventures in Italy. Again, it is highly improbable that Saul Wahl's great-grandson read Prince Radziwill's Latin book, detailing his experiences to his contemporaries.
There are other witnesses to plead for the essential truth of our legend. The rabbis mentioned before have given accounts of Saul's position, of his power, and the splendor of his life. Negative signs, it is true, exist, arguing against the historical value of the legend. Polish history has not a word to say about the ephemeral king. In fact, there was no day fixed for the session of the electoral diet. Moreover, critics might adduce against the probability of its correctness the humble station of the Jews, and the low esteem in which the Radziwills were then held by the Polish nobility. But it is questionable whether these arguments are sufficiently convincing to strip the Saul Wahl legend of all semblance of truth. Polish historians are hardly fair in ignoring the story. Though it turn out to have been a wild prank, it has some historical justification. Such practical jokes are not unusual in Polish history. Readers of that history will recall the Respublika Babinska, that society of practical jokers which drew up royal charters, and issued patents of nobility. A Polish nobleman had founded the society in the sixteenth century, its membership being open only to those distinguished as wits. It perpetrated the oddest political jokes, appointing spendthrifts as overseers of estates, and the most quarrelsome as justices of the peace. With such proclivities, Polish factions, at loggerheads with each other, can easily be imagined uniting to crown a Jew, the most harmless available substitute for a real king.
Our last and strongest witness—one compelling the respectful attention of the severest court and the most incisive attorney general—is the Russian professor Berschadzky, the author of an invaluable work on the history of the Jews in Lithuania. He vouches, not indeed for the authenticity of the events related by Rabbi Pinchas, but for the reality of Saul Wahl himself. From out of the Russian archives he has been resurrected by Professor Berschadzky, the first to establish that Saul was a man of flesh and blood.[74] He reproduces documents of incontestable authority, which report that Stephen Báthori, in the year 1578, the third of his reign, awarded the salt monopoly for the whole of Poland to Saul Juditsch, that is, Saul the Jew. Later, upon the payment of a high security, the same Saul the Jew became farmer of the imposts. In 1580, his name, together with the names of the heads of the Jewish community of Brzesc, figures in a lawsuit instituted to establish the claim of the Jews upon the fourth part of all municipal revenues. He rests the claim on a statute of Grandduke Withold, and the verdict was favorable to his side. This was the time of the election of Báthori's successor, Sigismund III., and after his accession to the throne, Saul Juditsch again appears on the scene. On February 11, 1588, the king issued the following notice: "Some of our councillors have recommended to our attention the punctilious business management of Saul Juditsch, of the town of Brzesc, who, on many occasions during the reigns of our predecessors, served the crown by his wide experience in matters pertaining to duties, taxes, and divers revenues, and advanced the financial prosperity of the realm by his conscientious efforts." Saul was now entrusted, for a period of ten years, with the collection of taxes on bridges, flour, and brandies, paying 150,000 gold florins for the privilege. A year later he was honored with the title sluga królewski, "royal official," a high rank in the Poland of the day, as can be learned from the royal decree conferring it: "We, King of Poland, having convinced ourself of the rare zeal and distinguished ability of Saul Juditsch, do herewith grant him a place among our royal officials, and that he may be assured of our favor for him we exempt him and his lands for the rest of his life from subordination to the jurisdiction of any 'castellan,' or any municipal court, or of any court in our land, of whatever kind or rank it may be; so that if he be summoned before the court of any judge or district, in any matter whatsoever, be it great or small, criminal or civil, he is not obliged to appear and defend himself. His goods may not be distrained, his estates not used as security, and he himself can neither be arrested, nor kept a prisoner. His refusal to appear before a judge or to give bail shall in no wise be punishable; he is amenable to no law covering such cases. If a charge be brought against him, his accusers, be they our subjects or aliens, of any rank or calling whatsoever, must appeal to ourself, the king, and Saul Juditsch shall be in honor bound to appear before us and defend himself."
This royal patent was communicated to all the princes, lords, voivodes, marshals, "castellans," starosts, and lower officials, in town and country, and to the governors and courts of Poland. Saul Juditsch's name continues to appear in the state documents. In 1593, he pleads for the Jews of Brzesc, who desire to have their own jurisdiction. In consequence of his intercession, Sigismund III. forbids the voivodes (mayors) and their proxies to interfere in the quarrels of the Jews, of whatever kind they may be. The last mention of Saul Juditsch's name occurs in the records of 1596, when, in conjunction with his Christian townsmen, he pleads for the renewal of an old franchise, granted by Grandduke Withold, exempting imported goods from duty.
Saul Wahl probably lived to the age of eighty, dying in the year 1622. The research of the historian has established his existence beyond a peradventure. He has proved that there was an individual by the name of Saul Wahl, and that is a noteworthy fact in the history of Poland and in that of the Jews in the middle ages.
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After history, criticism has a word to say. A legend, as a rule, rests on analogy, on remarkable deeds, on notable events, on extraordinary historical phenomena. In the case of the legend under consideration, all these originating causes are combined. Since the time of Sigismund I., the position of the Jews in Lithuania and Poland had been favorable. It is regarded as their golden period in Poland. In general, Polish Jews had always been more favorably situated than their brethren in faith in other countries. At the very beginning of Polish history, a legend, similar to that attached to Saul Wahl's name, sprang up. After the death of Popiel, an assembly met at Kruszwica to fill the vacant throne. No agreement could be reached, and the resolution was adopted to hail as king the first person to enter the town the next morning. The guard stationed at the gate accordingly brought before the assembly the poor Jew Abraham, with the surname Powdermaker (Prochownik), which he had received from his business, the importing of powder. He was welcomed with loud rejoicing, and appointed king. But he refused the crown, and pressed to accept it, finally asked for a night's delay to consider the proposal. Two days and two nights passed, still the Jew did not come forth from his room. The Poles were very much excited, and a peasant, Piast by name, raising his voice, cried out: "No, no, this will not do! The land cannot be without a head, and as Abraham does not come out, I will bring him out." Swinging his axe, he rushed into the house, and led the trembling Jew before the crowd. With ready wit, Abraham said, "Poles, here you see the peasant Piast, he is the one to be your king. He is sensible, for he recognized that a land may not be without a king. Besides, he is courageous; he disregarded my command not to enter my house. Crown him, and you will have reason to be grateful to God and His servant Abraham!" So Piast was proclaimed king, and he became the ancestor of a great dynasty.
It is difficult to discover how much of truth is contained in this legend of the tenth century. That it in some remote way rests upon historical facts is attested by the existence of Polish coins bearing the inscriptions: "Abraham Dux" and "Zevach Abraham" ("Abraham the Prince" and "Abraham's Sacrifice"). Casimir the Great, whose liaison with the Jewess Esterka has been shown by modern historians to be a pure fabrication, confirmed the charter of liberties (privilegium libertatis) held by the Jews of Poland from early times, and under Sigismund I. they prospered, materially and intellectually, as never before. Learning flourished among them, especially the study of the Talmud being promoted by three great men, Solomon Shachna, Solomon Luria, and Moses Isserles.
Henry of Anjou, the first king elected by the Diet (1573), owed his election to Solomon Ashkenazi, a Jewish physician and diplomat, who ventured to remind the king of his services: "To me more than to any one else does your Majesty owe your election. Whatever was done here at the Porte, I did, although, I believe, M. d'Acqs takes all credit unto himself." This same diplomat, together with the Jewish prince Joseph Nasi of Naxos, was chiefly instrumental in bringing about the election of Stephen Báthori. Simon Günsburg, the head of the Jewish community of Posen, had a voice in the king's council, and Bona Sforza, the Italian princess on the Polish throne, was in the habit of consulting with clever Jews. The papal legate Commendoni speaks in a vexed tone, yet admiringly, of the brilliant position of Polish Jews, of their extensive cattle-breeding and agricultural interests, of their superiority to Christians as artisans, of their commercial enterprise, leading them as far as Dantzic in the north and Constantinople in the south, and of their possession of that sovereign means which overcomes ruler, starost, and legate alike.[75]
These are the circumstances to be borne in mind in examining the authenticity of the legend about the king of a night. As early as the beginning of his century, recent historians inform us, three Jews, Abraham, Michael, and Isaac Josefowicz, rose to high positions in Lithuania. Abraham was made chief rabbi of Lithuania, his residence being fixed at Ostrog; Isaac became starost of the cities of Smolensk and Minsk (1506), and four years later, he was invested with the governorship of Lithuania. He always kept up his connection with his brothers, protected his co-religionists, and appointed Michael chief elder of the Lithuanian Jews. On taking the oath of allegiance to Albert of Prussia, he was raised to the rank of a nobleman. A Jew of the sixteenth century a nobleman! Surely, this fact is sufficiently startling to serve as the background of a legend. We have every circumstance necessary: An analogous legend in the early history of Poland, the favored condition of the Jews, the well-attested reality of Saul Juditsch, and an extraordinary event, the ennobling of a Jew. Saul Wahl probably did not reign—not even for a single night—but he certainly was attached to the person of the king, and later, ignorant of grades of officials, the Jews were prone to magnify his position. Indeed, the abject misery of their condition in the seventeenth century seems better calculated to explain the legend than their prosperity in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. Bogdan Chmielnicki's campaign against the rebellious Cossacks wrought havoc among the Jews. From the southern part of the Ukraine to Lemberg, the road was strewn with the corpses of a hundred thousand Jews. The sad memory of a happy past is the fertile soil in which legends thrive. It is altogether likely that at this time of degradation the memory of Saul Wahl, redeemer and hero, was first celebrated, and the report of his coat of arms emblazoned with a lion clutching a scroll of the Law, and crowning an eagle, of his golden chain, of his privileges, and all his memorials, spread from house to house.
Parallel cases of legend-construction readily suggest themselves. In our own time, in the glare of nineteenth century civilization, legends originate in the same way. Here is a case in point: In 1875, the Anthropological Society of Western Prussia instituted a series of investigations, in the course of which the complexion and the color of the hair and eyes of the children at the public schools were to be noted, in order to determine the prevalence of certain racial traits. The most extravagant rumors circulated in the districts of Dantzic, Thorn, Kulm, all the way to Posen. Parents, seized by unreasoning terror, sent their children, in great numbers, to Russia. One rumor said that the king of Prussia had lost one thousand blonde children to the sultan over a game of cards; another, that the Russian government had sold sixty thousand pretty girls to an Arab prince, and to save them from the sad fate conjectured to be in store for them, all the pretty girls at Dubna were straightway married off.—Similarly, primitive man, to satisfy his intellectual cravings, explained the phenomena of the heavens, the earth, and the waters by legends and myths, the germs of polytheistic nature religions. In our case, the tissue of facts is different, the process the same.
But legends express the idealism of the masses; they are the highest manifestations of spiritual life. The thinker's flights beyond the confines of reality, the inventor's gift to join old materials in new combinations, the artist's creative impulse, the poet's inspiration, the seer's prophetic vision—every emanation from man's ideal nature clothes itself with sinews, flesh, and skin, and lives in a people's legends, the repositories of its art, poetry, science, and ethics.
Legends moreover are characteristic of a people's culture. As a child delights in iridescent soap-bubbles, so a nation revels in reminiscences. Though poetry lend words, painting her tints, architecture a rule, sculpture a chisel, music her tones, the legend itself is dead, and only a thorough understanding of national traits enables one to recognize its ethical bearings. From this point of view, the legend of the Polish king of a night is an important historical argument, testifying to the satisfactory condition of the Jews of Poland in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. The simile that compares nations, on the eve of a great revolution, to a seething crater, is true despite its triteness, and if to any nation, is applicable to the Poland of before and after that momentous session of the Diet. Egotism, greed, ambition, vindictiveness, and envy added fuel to fire, and hastened destruction. Jealousy had planted discord between two families, dividing the state into hostile, embittered factions. Morality was undermined, law trodden under foot, duty neglected, justice violated, the promptings of good sense disregarded. So it came about that the land was flooded by ruin as by a mighty stream, which, a tiny spring at first, gathers strength and volume from its tributaries, and overflowing its bounds, rushes over blooming meadows, fields, and pastures, drawing into its destructive depths the peasant's every joy and hope. That is the soil from which a legend like ours sprouts and grows.
This legend distinctly conveys an ethical lesson. The persecutions of the Jews, their ceaseless wanderings from town to town, from country to country, from continent to continent, have lasted two thousand years, and how many dropped by the wayside! Yet they never parted with the triple crown placed upon their heads by an ancient sage: the crown of royalty, the crown of the Law, and the crown of a good name. Learning and fair fame were indisputably theirs: therefore, the first, the royal crown, never seemed more resplendent than when worn in exile. The glory of a Jewish king of the exile seemed to herald the realization of the Messianic ideal. So it happens that many a family in Poland, England, and Germany, still cherishes the memory of Rabbi Saul the king, and that "Malkohs" everywhere still boast of royal ancestry. Rabbis, learned in the Law, were his descendants, and men of secular fame, Gabriel Riesser among them, proudly mention their connection, however distant, with Saul Wahl. The memory of his deeds perpetuates itself in respectable Jewish homes, where grandams, on quiet Sabbath afternoons, tell of them, as they show in confirmation the seal on coins to an awe-struck progeny.
Three crowns Israel bore upon his head. If the crown of royalty is legendary, then the more emphatically have the other two an historical and ethical value. The crown of royalty has slipped from us, but the crown of a good name and especially the crown of the Law are ours to keep and bequeath to our children and our children's children unto the latest generation.
On an October day in 1743, in the third year of the reign of Frederick the Great, a delicate lad of about fourteen begged admittance at the Rosenthal gate of Berlin, the only gate by which non-resident Jews were allowed to enter the capital. To the clerk's question about his business in the city, he briefly replied: "Study" (Lernen). The boy was Moses Mendelssohn, and he entered the city poor and friendless, knowing in all Berlin but one person, his former teacher Rabbi David Fränkel. About twenty years later, the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded him the first prize for his essay on the question: "Are metaphysical truths susceptible of mathematical demonstration?" After another period of twenty years, Mendelssohn was dead, and his memory was celebrated as that of a "sage like Socrates, the greatest philosophers of the day exclaiming, 'There is but one Mendelssohn!'"—
The Jewish Renaissance of a little more than a century ago presents the whole historic course of Judaism. Never had the condition of the Jews been more abject than at the time of Mendelssohn's appearance on the scene. It must be remembered that for Jews the middle ages lasted three hundred years after all other nations had begun to enjoy the blessings of the modern era. Veritable slaves, degenerate in language and habits, purchasing the right to live by a tax (Leibzoll), in many cities still wearing a yellow badge, timid, embittered, pale, eloquently silent, the Jews herded in their Ghetto with its single Jew-gate—they, the descendants of the Maccabees, the brethren in faith of proud Spanish grandees, of Andalusian poets and philosophers. The congregations were poor; immigrant Poles filled the offices of rabbis and teachers, and occupied themselves solely with the discussion of recondite problems. The evil nonsense of the Kabbalists was actively propagated by the Sabbatians, and on the other hand the mystical Chassidim were beginning to perform their witches' dance. The language commonly used was the Judendeutsch (the Jewish German jargon) which, stripped of its former literary dignity, was not much better than thieves' slang. Of such pitiful elements the life of the Jews was made up during the first half of the eighteenth century.
Suddenly there burst upon them the great, overwhelming Renaissance! It seemed as though Ezekiel's vision were about to be fulfilled:[76] "The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones... there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live ... and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone ... the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel."
Is this not a description of Israel's history in modern days? Old Judaism, seeing the marvels of the Renaissance, might well exclaim: "Who hath begotten me these?" and many a pious mind must have reverted to the ancient words of consolation: "I remember unto thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thy espousals, thy going after me in the wilderness, through a land that is not sown."
In the face of so radical a transformation, Herder, poet and thinker, reached the natural conclusion that "such occurrences, such a history with all its concomitant and dependent circumstances, in brief, such a nation cannot be a lying invention. Its development is the greatest poem of all times, and still unfinished, will probably continue until every possibility hidden in the soul life of humanity shall have obtained expression."[77]
An unparalleled revival had begun; and in Germany, in which it made itself felt as an effect of the French Revolution, it is coupled first and foremost with the name of Moses Mendelssohn.
Society as conceived in these modern days is based upon men's relations to their families, their disciples, and their friends. They are the three elements that determine a man's usefulness as a social factor. Our first interest, then, is to know Mendelssohn in his family.[78] Many years were destined to elapse, after his coming to Berlin, before he was to win a position of dignity. When, a single ducat in his pocket, he first reached Berlin, the reader remembers, he was a pale-faced, fragile boy. A contemporary of his relates: "In 1746 I came to Berlin, a penniless little chap of fourteen, and in the Jewish school I met Moses Mendelssohn. He grew fond of me, taught me reading and writing, and often shared his scanty meals with me. I tried to show my gratitude by doing him any small service in my power. Once he told me to fetch him a German book from some place or other. Returning with the book in hand, I was met by one of the trustees of the Jewish poor fund. He accosted me, not very gently, with, 'What have you there? I venture to say a German book!' Snatching it from me, and dragging me to the magistrate's, he gave orders to expel me from the city. Mendelssohn, learning my fate, did everything possible to bring about my return; but his efforts were of no avail." It is interesting to know that it was the grandfather of Herr von Bleichröder who had to submit to so relentless a fate.
German language and German writing Mendelssohn acquired by his unaided efforts. With the desultory assistance of a Dr. Kisch, a Jewish physician, he learnt Latin from a book picked up at a second-hand book stall. General culture was at that time an unknown quantity in the possibilities of Berlin Jewish life. The schoolmasters, who were not permitted to stay in the city more than three years, were for the most part Poles. One Pole, Israel Moses, a fine thinker and mathematician, banished from his native town, Samosz, on account of his devotion to secular studies, lived with Aaron Gumpertz, the only one of the famous family of court-Jews who had elected a better lot. From the latter, Mendelssohn imbibed a taste for the sciences, and to him he owed some direction in his studies; while in mathematics he was instructed by Israel Samosz, at the time when the latter, busily engaged with his great commentary on Yehuda Halevi's Al-Chazari, was living at the house of the Itzig family, on the Burgstrasse, on the very spot where the talented architect Hitzig, the grandson of Mendelssohn's contemporary, built the magnificent Exchange. To enable himself to buy books, Mendelssohn had to deny himself food. As soon as he had hoarded a few groschen, he stealthily slunk to a dealer in second-hand books. In this way he managed to possess himself of a Latin grammar and a wretched lexicon. Difficulties did not exist for him; they vanished before his industry and perseverance. In a short time he knew far more than Gumpertz himself, who has become famous through his entreaty to Magister Gottsched at Leipsic, whilom absolute monarch in German literature: "I would most respectfully supplicate that it may please your worshipful Highness to permit me to repair to Leipsic to pasture on the meadows of learning under your Excellency's protecting wing."
After seven years of struggle and privation, Moses Mendelssohn became tutor at the house of Isaac Bernhard, a silk manufacturer, and now began better times. In spite of faithful performance of duties, he found leisure to acquire a considerable stock of learning. He began to frequent social gatherings, his friend Dr. Gumpertz introducing him to people of culture, among others to some philosophers, members of the Berlin Academy. What smoothed the way for him more than his sterling character and his fine intellect was his good chess-playing. The Jews have always been celebrated as chess-players, and since the twelfth century a literature in Hebrew prose and verse has grown up about the game. Mendelssohn in this respect, too, was the heir of the peculiar gifts of his race.
In a little room two flights up in a house next to the Nicolai churchyard lived one of the acquaintances made by Mendelssohn through Dr. Gumpertz, a young newspaper writer—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Lessing was at once strongly attracted by the young man's keen, untrammelled mind. He foresaw that Mendelssohn would "become an honor to his nation, provided his fellow-believers permit him to reach his intellectual maturity. His honesty and his philosophic bent make me see in him a second Spinoza, equal to the first in all but his errors."[79] Through Lessing, Mendelssohn formed the acquaintance of Nicolai, and as they were close neighbors, their friendship developed into intimacy. Nicolai induced him to take up the study of Greek, and old Rector Damm taught him.
At this time (1755), the first coffee-house for the use of an association of about one hundred members, chiefly philosophers, mathematicians, physicians, and booksellers, was opened in Berlin. Mendelssohn, too, was admitted, making his true entrance into society, and forming many attachments. One evening it was proposed at the club that each of the members describe his own defects in verse; whereupon Mendelssohn, who stuttered and was slightly hunchbacked, wrote:
"Great you call Demosthenes,
Stutt'ring orator of Greece;
Hunchbacked Æsop you deem wise;—
In your circle, I surmise,
I am doubly wise and great.
What in each was separate
You in me united find,—
Hump and heavy tongue combined."
Meanwhile his worldly affairs prospered; he had become bookkeeper in Bernhard's business. His biographer Kayserling tells us that at this period he was in a fair way to develop into "a true bel esprit"; he took lessons on the piano, went to the theatre and to concerts, and wrote poems. During the winter he was at his desk at the office from eight in the morning until nine in the evening. In the summer of 1756, his work was lightened; after two in the afternoon he was his own master. The following year finds him comfortably established in a house of his own with a garden, in which he could be found every evening at six o'clock, Lessing and Nicolai often joining him. Besides, he had laid by a little sum, which enabled him to help his friends, especially Lessing, out of financial embarrassments. Business cares did, indeed, bear heavily upon him, and his complaints are truly touching: "Like a beast of burden laden down, I crawl through life, self-love unfortunately whispering into my ear that nature had perhaps mapped out a poet's career for me. But what can we do, my friends? Let us pity one another, and be content. So long as love for science is not stifled within us, we may hope on." Surely, his love for learning never diminished. On the contrary, his zeal for philosophic studies grew, and with it his reputation in the learned world of Berlin. The Jewish thinker finally attracted the notice of Frederick the Great, whose poems he had had the temerity to criticise adversely in the "Letters on Literature" (Litteraturbriefe). He says in that famous criticism:[80] "What a loss it has been for our mother-tongue that this prince has given more time and effort to the French language. We should otherwise possess a treasure which would arouse the envy of our neighbors." A certain Herr von Justi, who had also incurred the unfavorable notice of the Litteraturbriefe, used this review to revenge himself on Mendelssohn. He wrote to the Prussian state-councillor: "A miserable publication appears in Berlin, letters on recent literature, in which a Jew, criticising court-preacher Cramer, uses irreverent language in reference to Christianity, and in a bold review of Poésies diverses, fails to pay the proper respect to his Majesty's sacred person." Soon an interdict was issued against the Litteraturbriefe, and Mendelssohn was summoned to appear before the attorney general Von Uhden. Nicolai has given us an account of the interview between the high and mighty officer of the state and the poor Jewish philosopher:
Attorney General: "Look here! How can you venture to write against Christians?"
Mendelssohn: "When I bowl with Christians, I throw down all the pins whenever I can."
Attorney General: "Do you dare mock at me? Do you know to whom you are speaking?"
Mendelssohn: "Oh yes. I am in the presence of privy councillor and attorney general Von Uhden, a just man."
Attorney General: "I ask again: What right have you to write against a Christian, a court-preacher at that?"
Mendelssohn: "And I must repeat, truly without mockery, that when I play at nine-pins with a Christian, even though he be a court-preacher, I throw down all the pins, if I can. Bowling is a recreation for my body, writing for my mind. Writers do as well as they can."
In this strain the conversation continued for some time. Another version of the affair is that Mendelssohn was ordered to appear before the king at Sanssouci on a certain Saturday. When he presented himself at the gate of the palace, the officer in charge asked him how he happened to have been honored with an invitation to come to court. Mendelssohn said: "Oh, I am a juggler!" In point of fact, Frederick read the objectionable review some time later, Venino translating it into French for him. It was probably in consequence of this vexatious occurrence that Mendelssohn made application for the privilege to be considered a Schutzjude, that is, a Jew with rights of residence. The Marquis d'Argens who lived with the king at Potsdam in the capacity of his Majesty's philosopher-companion, earnestly supported his petition: "Un philosophe mauvais catholique supplie un philosophe mauvais protestant de donner le privilège à un philosophe mauvais juif. Il y a trop de philosophie dans tout ceci que la raison ne soit pas du côté de la demande." The privilege was accorded to Mendelssohn on November 26, 1763.
Being a Schutzjude, he could entertain the idea of marriage. Everybody is familiar with the pretty anecdote charmingly told by Berthold Auerbach. Mendelssohn's was a love-match. In April 1760, he undertook a trip to Hamburg, and there became affianced to a "blue-eyed maiden," Fromet Gugenheim. The story goes that the girl shrank back startled at Mendelssohn's proposal of marriage. She asked him: "Do you believe that matches are made in heaven?" "Most assuredly," answered Mendelssohn; "indeed, a singular thing happened in my own case. You know that, according to a Talmud legend, at the birth of a child, the announcement is made in heaven: So and so shall marry so and so. When I was born, my future wife's name was called out, and I was told that she would unfortunately be terribly humpbacked. 'Dear Lord,' said I, 'a deformed girl easily gets embittered and hardened. A girl ought to be beautiful. Dear Lord! Give me the hump, and let the girl be pretty, graceful, pleasing to the eye.'"
His engagement lasted a whole year. He was naturally desirous to improve his worldly position; but never did it occur to him to do so at the expense of his immaculate character. Veitel Ephraim and his associates, employed by Frederick the Great to debase the coin of Prussia, made him brilliant offers in the hope of gaining him as their partner. He could not be tempted, and entered into a binding engagement with Bernhard. His married life was happy, he was sincerely in love with his wife, and she became his faithful, devoted companion.
Six children were the offspring of their union: Abraham, Joseph, Nathan, Dorothea, Henriette, and Recha. In Moses Mendelssohn's house, the one in which these children grew up, the barriers between the learned world and Berlin general society first fell. It was the rallying place of all seeking enlightenment, of all doing battle in the cause of enlightenment. The rearing of his children was a source of great anxiety to Mendelssohn, whose means were limited. One day, shortly before his death, Mendelssohn, walking up and down before his house in Spandauer street, absorbed in meditation, was met by an acquaintance, who asked him: "My dear Mr. Mendelssohn, what is the matter with you? You look so troubled." "And so I am," he replied; "I am thinking what my children's fate will be, when I am gone."
Moses Mendelssohn was wholly a son of his age, which perhaps explains the charm of his personality. His faults as well as his fine traits must be accounted for by the peculiarities of his generation. From this point of view, we can understand his desire to have his daughters make a wealthy match. On the other hand, he could not have known, and if he had known, he could not have understood, that his daughters, touched by the breath of a later time, had advanced far beyond his position. The Jews of that day, particularly Jewish women, were seized by a mighty longing for knowledge and culture. They studied French, read Voltaire, and drew inspiration from the works of the English freethinkers. One of those women says: "We all would have been pleased to be heroines of romance; there was not one of us who did not rave over some hero or heroine of fiction." At the head of this band of enthusiasts stood Dorothea Mendelssohn, brilliant, captivating, and gifted with a vivid imagination. She was the leader, the animating spirit of her companions. To the reading-club organized by her efforts all the restless minds belonged. In the private theatricals at the houses of rich Jews, she filled the principal rôles; and the mornings after her social triumphs found her a most attentive listener to her father, who was in the habit of holding lectures for her and her brother Joseph, afterward published under the name Morgenstunden. And this was the girl whom her father wished to see married at sixteen. When a rich Vienna banker was proposed as a suitable match, he said, "Ah! a man like Eskeles would greatly please my pride!" Dorothea did marry Simon Veit, a banker, a worthy man, who in no way could satisfy the demands of her impetuous nature. Yet her father believed her to be a happy wife. In her thirtieth year she made the acquaintance, at the house of her friend Henriette Herz, of a young man, five years her junior, who was destined to change the course of her whole life. This was Friedrich von Schlegel, the chief of the romantic movement. Dorothea Veit, not beautiful, fascinated him by her brilliant wit. Under Schleiermacher's encouragement, the relation between the two quickly assumed a serious aspect. But it was not until long after her father's death that Dorothea abandoned her husband and children, and became Schlegel's life-companion, first his mistress, later his wife. As Gutzkow justly says, his novel "Lucinde" describes the relation in which Schlegel "permitted himself to be discovered. Love for Schlegel it was that consumed her, and led her to share with him a thousand follies—Catholicism, Brahmin theosophy, absolutism, and the Christian asceticism of which she was a devotee at the time of her death." Neither distress, nor misery, nor care, nor sorrow could alienate her affections. Finally, she became a bigoted Catholic, and in Vienna, their last residence, the daughter of Moses Mendelssohn was seen, a lighted taper in her hand, one of a Catholic procession wending its way to St. Stephen's Cathedral.
The other daughter had a similar career. Henriette Mendelssohn filled a position as governess first in Vienna, then in Paris. In the latter city, her home was the meeting-place of the most brilliant men and women. She, too, denied her father and her faith. Recha, the youngest daughter, was the unhappy wife of a merchant of Strelitz. Later on she supported herself by keeping a boarding-school at Altona. Nathan, the youngest son, was a mechanician; Abraham, the second, the father of the famous composer, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, established with the oldest, Joseph, a still flourishing banking-business. Abraham's children and grandchildren all became converts to Christianity, but Moses and Fromet died before their defection from the old faith. Fromet lived to see the development of the passion for music which became hereditary in the family. It is said that when, at the time of the popularity of Schulz's "Athalia," one of the choruses, with the refrain tout l'univers, was much sung by her children, the old lady cried out irritably, "Wie mies ist mir vor tout l'univers" ("How sick I am of 'all the world!'").[81]
To say apologetically that the circumstances of the times produced such feeling and action may be a partial defense of these women, but it is not the truth. Henriette Mendelssohn's will is a characteristic document. The introduction runs thus: "In these the last words I address to my dear relatives, I express my gratitude for all their help and affection, and also that they in no wise hindered me in the practice of my religion. I have only myself to blame if the Lord God did not deem me worthy to be the instrument for the conversion of all my brothers and sisters to the Catholic Church, the only one endowed with saving grace. May the Lord Jesus Christ grant my prayer, and bless them all with the light of His countenance. Amen!" Such were the sentiments of Moses Mendelssohn's daughters!
The sons inclined towards Protestantism. Abraham is reported to have said that at first he was known as the son of his father, and later as the father of his son. His wife was Leah Salomon, the sister of Salomon Bartholdy, afterwards councillor of legation. His surname was really only Salomon; Bartholdy he had assumed from the former owner of a garden in Köpenikerstrasse on the Spree which he had bought. To him chiefly the formal acceptance of Christianity by Abraham's family was due. When Abraham hesitated about having his children baptized, Bartholdy wrote: "You say that you owe it to your father's memory (not to abandon Judaism). Do you think that you are committing a wrong in giving your children a religion which you and they consider the better? In fact, you would be paying a tribute to your father's efforts in behalf of true enlightenment, and he would have acted for your children as you have acted for them, perhaps for himself as I am acting for myself." This certainly is the climax of frivolity! So it happened that one of Mendelssohn's grandsons, Philip Veit, became a renowned Catholic church painter, and another, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, one of the most celebrated of Protestant composers.
After his family, we are interested in the philosopher's disciples. They are men of a type not better, but different. What in his children sprang from impulsiveness and conviction, was due to levity and imitativeness in his followers. Mendelssohn's co-workers and successors formed the school of Biurists, that is, expounders. In his commentary on the Pentateuch he was helped by Solomon Dubno, Herz Homberg, and Hartwig Wessely. Solomon Dubno, the tutor of Mendelssohn's children, was a learned Pole, devoted heart and soul to the work on the Pentateuch. His literary vanity having been wounded, he secretly left Mendelssohn's house, and could not be induced to renew his interest in the undertaking. Herz Homberg, an Austrian, took his place as tutor. When the children were grown, he went to Vienna, and there was made imperial councillor, charged with the superintendence of the Jewish schools of Galicia. It is a mistake to suppose that he used efforts to further the study of the Talmud among Jews. From letters recently published, written by and about him, it becomes evident that he was a common informer. Mendelssohn, of course, was not aware of his true character. The noblest of all was Naphtali Hartwig Wessely, a poet, a pure man, a sincere lover of mankind.
The other prominent members of Mendelssohn's circle were: Isaac Euchel, the "restorer of Hebrew prose," as he has been called, whose chief purpose was the reform of the Jewish order of service and Jewish pedagogic methods; Solomon Maimon, a wild fellow, who in his autobiography tells his own misdeeds, by many of which Mendelssohn was caused annoyance; Lazarus ben David, a modern Diogenes, the apostle of Kantism; and, above all, David Friedländer, an enthusiastic herald of the new era, a zealous champion of modern culture, a pure, serious character with high ethical ideals, whose aims, inspired though they were by most exalted intentions, far overstepped the bounds set to him as a Jew and the disciple of Mendelssohn. Kant's philosophy found many ardent adherents among the Jews at that time. Beside the old there was growing up a new generation which, having no obstructions placed in its path after Mendelssohn's death, aggressively asserted its principles.
The first Jew after Mendelssohn to occupy a position of prominence in the social world of Berlin was his pupil Marcus Herz, with the title professor and aulic councillor, "praised as a physician, esteemed as a philosopher, and extolled as a prodigy in the natural sciences. His lectures on physics, delivered in his own house, were attended by members of the highest aristocracy, even by royal personages."
In circles like his, the equalization of the Jews with the other citizens was animatedly discussed, by partisans and opponents. In the theatre-going public, a respectable minority, having once seen "Nathan the Wise" enacted, protested against the appearance upon the stage of the trade-Jew, speaking the sing-song, drawling German vulgarly supposed to be peculiar to all Jews (Mauscheln). As early as 1771, Marcus Herz had entered a vigorous protest against mauscheln, and at the first performance of "The Merchant of Venice" on August 16, 1788, the famous actor Fleck declaimed a prologue, composed by Ramler, in which he disavowed any intention to "sow hatred against the Jews, the brethren in faith of wise Mendelssohn," and asserted the sole purpose of the drama to be the combating of folly and vice wherever they appear.
Marcus Herz's wife was Henriette Herz, and in 1790, when Alexander and Wilhelm Humboldt first came to her house, the real history of the Berlin salon begins. The Humboldts' acquaintance with the Herz family dates from the visit of state councillor Kunth, the tutor of the Humboldt brothers, to Marcus Herz to advise with him about setting up a lightning-rod, an extraordinary novelty at the time, on the castle at Tegel. Shortly afterward, Kunth introduced his two pupils to Herz and his wife. So the Berlin salon owed its origin to a lightning-rod; indeed, it may itself be called an electrical conductor for all the spiritual forces, recently brought into play, and still struggling to manifest their undeveloped strength. Up to that time there had been nothing like society in the city of intelligence. Of course there was no dearth of scholars and clever, brilliant people, but insuperable obstacles seemed to prevent their social contact with one another. Outside of Moses Mendelssohn's house, until the end of the eighties the only rendezvous of wits, scholars, and literary men, the preference was for magnificent banquets and noisy carousals, each rank entertaining its own members. In the middle class, the burghers, the social instinct had not awakened at all. Alexander Humboldt significantly dated his first letter to Henriette Herz from Schloss Langeweile. In the course of time the desire for spiritual sympathy led to the formation of reading clubs and conversazioni. These were the elements that finally produced Berlin society.
The prototype of the German salon naturally was the salon of the rococo period. Strangely enough, Berlin Jews, disciples, friends, and descendants of Moses Mendelssohn, were the transplanters of the foreign product to German soil. Untrammelled as they were in this respect by traditions, they hearkened eagerly to the new dispensation issuing from Weimar, and they were in no way hampered in the choice of their hero-guides to Olympus. Berlin irony, French sparkle, and Jewish wit moulded the social forms which thereafter were to be characteristic of society at the capital, and called forth pretty much all that was charming in the society and pleasing in the light literature of the Berlin of the day.
To judge Henriette Herz justly we must beware alike of the extravagance of her biographer and the malice of her friend Varnhagen von Ense; the former extols her cleverness to the skies, the other degrades her to the level of the commonplace. The two seem equally unreliable. She was neither extremely witty nor extremely cultured. She had a singularly clear mind, and possessed the rare faculty of spreading about her an atmosphere of ease and cheer—good substitutes for wit and intellectuality. Upon her beauty and amiability rested the popularity of her salon, which succeeded in uniting all the social factors of that period.
The nucleus of her social gatherings consisted of the representatives of the old literary traditions, Nicolai, Ramler, Engel, and Moritz, and they curiously enough attracted the theologians Spalding, Teller, Zöllner, and later Schleiermacher, whose intimacy with his hostess is a matter of history. Music was represented by Reichardt and Wesseli; art, by Schadow; and the nobility by Bernstorff, Dotina, Brinkmann, Friedrich von Gentz, and the Humboldts. Her drawing-room was the hearth of the romantic movement, and as may be imagined, her example was followed for better and for worse by her friends and sisters in faith, so that by the end of the century, Berlin could boast a number of salons, meeting-places of the nobility, literary men, and cultured Jews, for the friendly exchange of spiritual and intellectual experiences. Henriette Herz's salon became important not only for society in Berlin, but also for German literature, three great literary movements being sheltered in it: the classical, the romantic, and, through Ludwig Börne, that of "Young Germany." Judaism alone was left unrepresented. In fact, she and all her cultured Jewish friends hastened to free themselves of their troublesome Jewish affiliations, or, at least, concealed them as best they could. Years afterwards, Börne spent his ridicule upon the Jewesses of the Berlin salons, with their enormous racial noses and their great gold crosses at their throats, pressing into Trinity church to hear Schleiermacher preach. But justice compels us to say that these women did not know Judaism, or knew it only in its slave's garb. Had they had a conception of its high ethical standard, of the wealth of its poetic and philosophic thoughts, being women of rare mental gifts and broad liberality, they certainly would not have abandoned Judaism. But the Judaism of their Berlin, as represented by its religious teachers and the leaders of the Jewish community, most of them, according to Mendelssohn's own account, immigrant Poles, could not appeal to women of keen, intellectual sympathies, and tastes conforming to the ideals of the new era.
As for Mendelssohn's friends who flocked to his hospitable home—their names are household words in the history of German literature. Nicolai and Lessing must be mentioned before all others, but no one came to Berlin without seeking Moses Mendelssohn—Goethe, Herder, Wieland, Hennings, Abt, Campe, Moritz, Jerusalem. Joachim Campe has left an account of his visit at Mendelssohn's house, which is probably a just picture of its attractions.[82] He says: "On a Friday afternoon, my wife and myself, together with some of the distinguished representatives of Berlin scholarship, visited Mendelssohn. We were chatting over our coffee, when Mendelssohn, about an hour before sundown, rose from his seat with the words: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I must leave you to receive the Sabbath. I shall be with you again presently; meantime my wife will enjoy your company doubly.' All eyes followed our amiable philosopher-host with reverent admiration as he withdrew to an adjoining room to recite the customary prayers. At the end of half an hour he returned, his face radiant, and seating himself, he said to his wife: 'Now I am again at my post, and shall try for once to do the honors in your place. Our friends will certainly excuse you, while you fulfil your religious duties.' Mendelssohn's wife excused herself, joined her family, consecrated the Sabbath by lighting the Sabbath lamp, and returned to us. We stayed on for some hours." Is it possible to conceive of a more touching picture?
When Duchess Dorothea of Kurland, and her sister Elise von der Recke were living at Friedrichsfelde near Berlin in 1785, they invited Mendelssohn, whom they were eager to know, to visit them. When dinner was announced, Mendelssohn was not to be found. The companion of the two ladies writes in her journal:[83] "He had quietly slipped away to the inn at which he had ordered a frugal meal. From a motive entirely worthy I am sure, this philosopher never permits himself to be invited to a meal at a Christian's house. Not to be deprived of Mendelssohn's society too long, the duchess rose from the table as soon as possible." Mendelssohn returned, stayed a long time, and, on bidding adieu to the duchess, he said: "To-day, I have had a chat with mind."
This was Berlin society at Mendelssohn's time, and its toleration and humanity are the more to be valued as the majority of Jews by no means emulated Mendelssohn's enlightened example. All their energies were absorbed in the effort of compliance with the charter of Frederick the Great, which imposed many vexatious restrictions. On marrying, they were still compelled to buy the inferior porcelain made by the royal manufactory. The whole of the Jewish community continued to be held responsible for a theft committed by one of its members. Jews were not yet permitted to become manufacturers. Bankrupt Jews, without investigation of each case, were considered cheats. Their use of land and waterways was hampered by many petty obstructions. In every field an insurmountable barrier rose between them and their Christian fellow-citizens. Mendelssohn's great task was the moral and spiritual regeneration of his brethren in faith. In all disputes his word was final. He hoped to bring about reforms by influencing his people's inner life. Schools were founded, and every means used to further culture and education, but he met with much determined opposition among his fellow-believers. Of Ephraim, the debaser of the coin, we have spoken; also of the king's manner towards Jews. Here is another instance of his brusqueness: Abraham Posner begged for permission to shave his beard. Frederick wrote on the margin of his petition: "Der Jude Posner soll mich und seinen Bart ungeschoren lassen."
Lawsuits of Jews against French and German traders made a great stir in those days. It was only after much annoyance that a naturalization patent was obtained by the family of Daniel Itzig, the father-in-law of David Friedländer, founder of the Jews' Free School in Berlin. In other cases, no amount of effort could secure the patent, the king saying: "Whatever concerns your trade is well and good. But I cannot permit you to settle tribes of Jews in Berlin, and turn it into a young Jerusalem."—
This is a picture of Jewish society in Berlin one hundred years ago. It united the most diverse currents and tendencies, emanating from romanticism, classicism, reform, orthodoxy, love of trade, and efforts for spiritual regeneration. In all this queer tangle, Moses Mendelssohn alone stands untainted, his form enveloped in pure, white light.
We are assembled for the solemn duty of paying a tribute to the memory of him whose name graces our lodge. A twofold interest attaches us to Leopold Zunz, appealing, as he does, to our local pride, and, beyond and above that, to our Jewish feelings. Leopold Zunz was part of the Berlin of the past, every trace of which is vanishing with startling rapidity. Men, houses, streets are disappearing, and soon naught but a memory will remain of old Berlin, not, to be sure, a City Beautiful, yet filled for him that knew it with charming associations. A precious remnant of this dear old Berlin was buried forever, when, on one misty day of the spring of 1886, we consigned to their last resting place the mortal remains of Leopold Zunz. Memorial addresses are apt to abound in such expressions as "immortal," "imperishable," and in flowery tributes. This one shall not indulge in them, although to no one could they more fittingly be applied than to Leopold Zunz, a pioneer in the labyrinth of science, and the architect of many a stately palace adorning the path but lately discovered by himself. Surely, such an one deserves the cordial recognition and enduring gratitude of posterity.
Despite the fact that Zunz was born at Detmold (August 10, 1794), he was an integral part of old Berlin—a Berlin citizen, not by birth, but by vocation, so to speak. His being was intertwined with its life by a thousand tendrils of intellectual sympathy. The city, in turn, or, to be topographically precise, the district between Mauerstrasse and Rosenstrasse knew and loved him as one of its public characters. Time was when his witticisms leapt from mouth to mouth in the circuit between the Varnhagen salon and the synagogue in the Heidereutergasse, everywhere finding appreciative listeners. An observer stationed Unter den Linden daily for more than thirty years might have seen a peculiar couple stride briskly towards the Thiergarten in the early afternoon. The loungers at Spargnapani's café regularly interrupted their endless newspaper reading to crane their necks and say to one another, "There go Dr. Zunz and his wife."
In his obituary notice of the poet Mosenthal, Franz Dingelstedt roguishly says: "He was of poor, albeit Jewish parentage." The same applies to Zunz, only the saying would be truer, if not so witty, in this form: "He was of Jewish, hence of poor, parentage." Among German Jews throughout the middle ages and up to the first half of this century, poverty was the rule, a comfortable competency a rare exception, wealth an unheard of condition. But Jewish poverty was relieved of sordidness by a precious gift of the old rabbis, who said: "Have a tender care of the children of the poor; from them goeth forth the Law"; an admonition and a prediction destined to be illustrated in the case of Zunz. Very early he lost his mother, and the year 1805 finds him bereft of both parents, under the shelter and in the loving care of an institution founded by a pious Jew in Wolfenbüttel. Here he was taught the best within the reach of German Jews of the day, the alpha and omega of whose knowledge and teaching were comprised in the Talmud. The Wolfenbüttel school may be called progressive, inasmuch as a teacher, watchmaker by trade and novel-writer by vocation, was engaged to give instruction four times a week in the three R's. We may be sure that those four lessons were not given with unvarying regularity.
In his scholastic home, Leopold Zunz met Isaac Marcus Jost, a waif like himself, later the first Jewish historian, to whom we owe interesting details of Zunz's early life. In his memoirs[85] he tells the following: "Zunz had been entered as a pupil before I arrived. Even in those early days there were evidences of the acumen of the future critic. He was dominated by the spirit of contradiction. On the sly we studied grammar, his cleverness helping me over many a stumbling-block. He was very witty, and wrote a lengthy Hebrew satire on our tyrants, from which we derived not a little amusement as each part was finished. Unfortunately, the misdemeanor was detected, and the corpus delicti consigned to the flames, but the sobriquet chotsuf (impudent fellow) clung to the writer."
It is only just to admit that in this Beth ha-Midrash Zunz laid the foundation of the profound, comprehensive scholarship on Talmudic subjects, the groundwork of his future achievements as a critic. The circumstance that both these embryo historians had to draw their first information about history from the Jewish German paraphrase of "Yosippon," an historical compilation, is counterbalanced by careful instruction in Rabbinical literature, whose labyrinthine ways soon became paths of light to them.
A new day broke, and in its sunlight the condition of affairs changed. In 1808 the Beth ha-Midrash was suddenly transformed into the "Samsonschool," still in useful operation. It became a primary school, conducted on approved pedagogic principles, and Zunz and Jost were among the first registered under the new, as they had been under the old, administration. Though the one was thirteen, and the other fourteen years old, they had to begin with the very rudiments of reading and writing. Campe's juvenile books were the first they read. A year later finds them engaged in secretly studying Greek, Latin, and mathematics during the long winter evenings, by the light of bits of candles made by themselves of drippings from the great wax tapers in the synagogue. After another six months, Zunz was admitted to the first class of the Wolfenbüttel, and Jost to that of the Brunswick, gymnasium. It characterizes the men to say that Zunz was the first, and Jost the third, Jew in Germany to enter a gymnasium. Now progress was rapid. The classes of the gymnasium were passed through with astounding ease, and in 1811, with a minimum of luggage, but a very considerable mental equipment, Zunz arrived in Berlin, never to leave it except for short periods. He entered upon a course in philology at the newly founded university, and after three years of study, he was in the unenviable position to be able to tell himself that he had attained to—nothing.
For, to what could a cultured Jew attain in those days, unless he became a lawyer or a physician? The Hardenberg edict had opened academical careers to Jews, but when Zunz finished his studies, that provision was completely forgotten. So he became a preacher. A rich Jew, Jacob Herz Beer, the father of two highly gifted sons, Giacomo and Michael Beer, had established a private synagogue in his house, and here officiated Edward Kley, C. Günsburg, J. L. Auerbach, and, from 1820 to 1822, Leopold Zunz. It is not known why he resigned his position, but to infer that he had been forced to embrace the vocation of a preacher by the stress of circumstances is unjust. At that juncture he probably would have chosen it, if he had been offered the rectorship of the Berlin university; for, he was animated by somewhat of the spirit that urged the prophets of old to proclaim and fulfil their mission in the midst of storms and in despite of threatening dangers.
Zunz's sermons delivered from 1820 to 1822 in the first German reform temple are truly instinct with the prophetic spirit. The breath of a mighty enthusiasm rises from the yellowed pages. Every word testifies that they were indited by a writer of puissant individuality, disengaged from the shackles of conventional homiletics, and boldly striking out on untrodden paths. In the Jewish Berlin of the day, a rationalistic, half-cultured generation, swaying irresolutely between Mendelssohn and Schleiermacher, these new notes awoke sympathetic echoes. But scarcely had the music of his voice become familiar, when it was hushed. In 1823, a royal cabinet order prohibited the holding of the Jewish service in German, as well as every other innovation in the ritual, and so German sermons ceased in the synagogue. Zunz, who had spoken like Moses, now held his peace like Aaron, in modesty and humility, yielding to the inevitable without rancor or repining, always loyal to the exalted ideal which inspired him under the most depressing circumstances. He dedicated his sermons, delivered at a time of religious enthusiasm, to "youth at the crossroads," whom he had in mind throughout, in the hope that they might "be found worthy to lead back to the Lord hearts, which, through deception or by reason of stubbornness, have fallen away from Him."
The rescue of the young was his ideal. At the very beginning of his career he recognized that the old were beyond redemption, and that, if response and confidence were to be won from the young, the expounding of the new Judaism was work, not for the pulpit, but for the professor's chair. "Devotional exercises and balmy lotions for the soul" could not heal their wounds. It was imperative to bring their latent strength into play. Knowing this to be his pedagogic principle, we shall not go far wrong, if we suppose that in the organization of the "Society for Jewish Culture and Science" the initial step was taken by Leopold Zunz. In 1819 when the mobs of Würzburg, Hamburg, and Frankfort-on-the-Main revived the "Hep, hep!" cry, three young men, Edward Gans, Moses Moser, and Leopold Zunz conceived the idea of a society with the purpose of bringing Jews into harmony with their age and environment, not by forcing upon them views of alien growth, but by a rational training of their inherited faculties. Whatever might serve to promote intelligence and culture was to be nurtured: schools, seminaries, academies, were to be erected, literary aspirations fostered, and all public-spirited enterprises aided; on the other hand, the rising generation was to be induced to devote itself to arts, trades, agriculture, and the applied sciences; finally, the strong inclination to commerce on the part of Jews was to be curbed, and the tone and conditions of Jewish society radically changed—lofty goals for the attainment of which most limited means were at the disposal of the projectors. The first fruits of the society were the "Scientific Institute," and the "Journal for the Science of Judaism," published in the spring of 1822, under the editorship of Zunz. Only three numbers appeared, and they met with so small a sale that the cost of printing was not realized. Means were inadequate, the plans magnificent, the times above all not ripe for such ideals. The "Scientific Institute" crumbled away, too, and in 1823, the society was breathing its last. Zunz poured out the bitterness of his disappointment in a letter written in the summer of 1824 to his Hamburg friend Immanuel Wohlwill: