In the Hanse Town of Bremen, which until then had known only traveling Jews, who paid toll on entering the town, Jews took up residence under French protection, not indeed in great numbers, but too many for the bigotry of the patricians. Here, too, they were allowed equal rights with other citizens. Even the Duke of Mecklenburg, Frederick Franz, granted the equalization of the Jews (February 22, 1812), and allowed marriages between Jews and Christians, a greater concession than those made by any other code. Prussia also could no longer resist the tide in favor of the Jews. In Prussia they had displayed much greater love for their native land, and brought more sacrifices during the times of trouble than many of the corrupt nobility, who had ingratiated themselves with their victorious enemies. But a long time elapsed before King Frederick William III could overcome his aristocratic and religious repugnance to them. He only abolished the insulting cognomen of "protection Jews," declaring them not only admissible to the citizenship of towns, but under compulsion to perform its duties. They were forced to take the oath as citizens of towns and to share in the burdens of the cities in which they lived. But they were not to be recognized as state citizens, their position being the reverse of that of the Jews in Baden. The prospect of equalization as state citizens was continually held out to them, but the promise remained unfulfilled for several years. When Hardenberg again assumed control of the disturbed affairs of the state, and insisted upon the repeal of decayed laws and the removal of rotten conditions, he favored the removal of the civil disabilities of the Jews, so that by their help new strength should be infused into the mutilated, bleeding, impoverished territory,—help which it could ill spare in its wretched state of deep depression. David Friedländer and his friends, Berlin capitalists, used their utmost efforts to bring about the state equalization so long promised. The king again and again delayed the ratification of the law submitted to him by the chancellor. At length—moved, it is said, by the interest taken by the Berlin Jews in commemorating the death of the much-suffering, lamented Queen Louise,—Frederick William gave his assent (March 11, 1812) to the equalization of all Jews at that time settled in Prussia. They were to be admitted to posts in schools and colleges; but the king withheld the privilege of admission to state offices. With the privileges, they were to assume the duties, especially as soldiers. Their religious affairs were to be regulated afterwards: "When the plan for their religious organization is drawn up, such Jews as enjoy public confidence both on account of their knowledge and probity will be consulted."
Three German princes alone withstood the spirit of the age: those of Bavaria, Austria, and Saxony. The first, Maximilian Joseph, appointed king of Bavaria by Napoleon, promulgated an edict (June 10, 1813), which appeared to concede equality to Jews, at least to those who possessed the right of settlement. But it was equality with many limitations. In cities to which no Jew had hitherto been admitted, their settlement was to depend upon the royal pleasure, and even in those places where they had dwelt for a long time their numbers were not to be increased, but rather diminished. In Austria, Leopold II and Francis I, the successors of Emperor Joseph, who had somewhat loosened the chains of the Jews, left the favorable intentions of their predecessor unexecuted, and imposed new humiliations. In addition to the unendurable burden of taxes in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Galicia,—taxes upon candles, upon wine, and meat—a collection-tax was imposed in Vienna, which was a toll upon every Jew who entered the capital. Spies closely watched the Jew who stayed in Vienna for a short time unprovided with a passport, and treated him like a criminal. Marriages among Jews were still restricted, and could be contracted only by the eldest son of the family, or by one able to pay heavy bribes. Although Austria was so often overrun by the soldiers of liberty, yet, impenetrable as the wall of China, it resisted every innovation. In the newly-created kingdom of Saxony all the restrictions imposed in the time of the Electoral princes and the Lutheran Church were maintained in their fullest rigor. Saxony was rightly called the Protestant Spain of the Jews. Indeed they were not suffered to dwell in the country at all; only a few privileged Jews were admitted to the two towns of Dresden and Leipsic, but under the express condition that they could be expelled at any time. They were not allowed to have a synagogue, but only to meet for prayer in small rooms, on condition that they made no noise. In Leipsic and Dresden every privileged Jew was compelled to pay annually seventy thalers for himself, besides other sums for his wife, children, and servants. The Jews were rigidly constrained in their choice of trades and occupations, and were placed under strict supervision while traveling. When all other German districts had abolished the poll-tax, Saxony still retained it. The example of the two neighboring countries—Westphalia and Prussia—had no influence upon this district, which at that time was rendered doubly selfish by trade jealousy and religious prejudice. The reactionary movement found plenty of fuel in Germany.
The Jews in the Wars for Freedom—The Congress of Vienna—Hardenberg and Metternich—Rühs' Christian Germanism—Jew-hatred in Germany and Rome—German Act of Federation—Ewald's Defense of Judaism—Jew-hatred in Prussia—Lewis Way—Congress at Aix—Hep, hep Persecution—Hartwig Hundt—Julius von Voss—Jewish Avengers.
1813–1818 C. E.
Like the Persian monarch Xerxes, Napoleon, hitherto invincible, and grown haughty and brutal through his successes, summoned the nations and princes to a universal war, and they followed him as submissively as slaves follow their master. Proudly he led forth Europe, subdued by him, against Asiatic Russia. Within the memory of man such an immense expedition had not been known. But, if ever, the words of the text were fulfilled in this gigantic contest: "An horse is a vain thing for safety, neither shall he deliver any by his great strength"; if ever, Divine justice manifested itself in him who had trampled upon right and liberty. Napoleon was defeated, not by the power of his enemy, but by a Higher Hand which struck him with blindness—a blindness which permitted the glow of the flames at Moscow and the ice of a Russian winter to work his ruin. When God and fortune had forsaken him, the princes who had promised him service and allegiance fell away from him, and turned the points of their swords against him, and the people, which, relying upon his own warlike talents, he had so greatly despised, rose up against him. But the nations likewise were stricken with blindness; whilst breaking asunder one sort of bonds, they forged new ones for themselves. The two years (May, 1812-April, 1814) form an instructive chapter in history, from the moment when Napoleon led an army of more than half a million men against Russia, until the day when, abandoned by all, he was compelled to flee, in order to escape the threats and insults of the embittered French people. It was a sanguinary, horrifying drama.
No one could have suspected that the greater would drag down the less in its ruin, that by the downfall of Napoleon, the Jews whom he had liberated, though reluctantly, would be hurled into their former slavery. Jewish youths belonging to wealthy families had emulated their Christian friends in courage, and rushed to battle to help in slaying the giant. Large numbers of Jews, especially in Prussia, animated by burning love of country, had joined the volunteers, had rejoiced to be accepted in the ranks, and wipe away with their blood on the battlefield the stain of cowardice, so often imputed to them by the opponents to their emancipation. Jewish young men paid for the freedom accorded them on paper with their lives. Jewish physicians and surgeons sacrificed themselves in the camps and hospitals in their devoted attendance on the wounded and the plague-stricken. Jewish women and girls spared no efforts to bring help and comfort to the wounded. Again, as in the days of national independence, sons of the same race and religion were opposed to each other—German Jews engaged in deadly combat with French, Italian, and Dutch Jews, and recognized each other only in the last hour, in time to embrace as brothers. Those unfit to bear arms had shown their attachment to Germany and their worthiness of emancipation by sacrifices in other ways. Nevertheless, the seemingly forgotten Jew-hatred was rekindled in the hearts of the Germans, extended ever further, and robbed the Jews of the reward which the hard-won victories had promised to bring even to them.
With the fall of the hero began the rule of petty, intriguing, reckless speculators, who bartered both men and lands. They misled the princes who earnestly desired to restore long banished freedom, and ensnared them with lying artifices. In France these intriguers, the Talleyrands, reinstated the throne of the Bourbons. In Germany Metternich and Gentz turned the struggles for freedom into mockery. Only the more far-sighted knew that Europe, owing to the closer connection between the rulers, would be reduced to a more degrading state of slavery, because sloth and pettiness were the order of the day.
The Jews felt the first effects of the reaction now commencing in Germany. It arose in Frankfort, the seat of unmitigated, mediæval anti-Semitism. As soon as the artillery of the retreating enemy had ceased within the precincts of this city, loud voices were heard encouraging each other to demand that boundaries be set at once to the unheard-of presumption of the Jews. In Lübeck and Bremen, the citizens did not content themselves with depriving the Jews of their recently-acquired rights, but energetically strove to banish them altogether. The proposal was seriously made to drive all adherents of the Mosaic religion from the town. In Hanover, Hildesheim, Brunswick, and Hesse, they were at one blow divested of their rights of equality. These events naturally gave great anxiety to the Jews throughout Germany. If the privileges granted them by law, as in Frankfort, could be abolished, what security had they for the continuance of their equality? What a contrast this reaction presented to that in France! Here, although the nobility, who hated freedom and were thirsting for revenge, and the Catholic clergy were in power at the court of Louis XVIII, and looked upon the terrible events since 1789 as if they had not happened, yet the rights of the Jews were not abridged.
The Jews, concerned about their freedom, honor, nay, their very existence, especially in the so-called free towns, looked hopefully forward to the Congress of Vienna, which was to readjust dismembered Europe. The monarchical and diplomatic members of the Congress, however, did not hasten to act the part of Providence assigned to them. They opened the meetings in November instead of in August, and from the bosom of this Congress, intended to establish eternal peace, a desolating war arose. The community of Frankfort had sent two deputies to Vienna, one of them Jacob Baruch, the father of Börne, chosen because he had patrons at the Viennese court. Baruch fulfilled his task in a disinterested manner worthy of his great son. Together with his less known colleague, he presented a memorial (October, 1814) to the Congress, wherein the arguments in favor of the claim of the Frankfort Jews were clearly set forth. They made the formal claim, that their equalization had been duly purchased for a large sum, and the patriotic claim, that they had taken part in the liberation of Germany. Their chief aim was to remove the suzerainty of the Senate over them.
The Jews of the three Hanse Towns sent a Christian lawyer as deputy, to guard their interests in Vienna, who of his own accord had drawn up an appeal for the equalization of the Jews. In combination with the deputies, certain influential personages worked quietly and unobtrusively. The banking-house of Rothschild by its circumspection and fortunate enterprises had made itself a power in the money world; and not even prying suspicion could find a trace of dishonesty in the accumulation of its riches, which might be used as a pretext by anti-Jewish opponents. The founder of the house, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was held in the highest esteem in Frankfort, and in consequence of the equalization had a seat in the Electoral College. Happily he died before the beginning of the reaction (September, 1812), but his five sons increased the wealth left by their father. Although they appear to have adhered to the principle, not to throw the power of their riches into the scale on behalf of their co-religionists and their faith, yet they could not be indifferent to the attempt made in Frankfort, their home, to reduce the Jews again to a state of serfdom. One of the brothers probably addressed words of remonstrance to the most influential German members of the Congress against diminishing the rights of his co-religionists.
The statesmen who controlled German affairs in the Congress showed themselves favorable to the Jews. Hardenberg and Metternich in a letter on the subject expressed their disapproval of the oppressions to which the Jews in the Hanse Towns were subjected (January, 1815), and advised the Senate—advice which amounted to a command—to treat them in a humane, just spirit. Hardenberg pointed out to the Hanse Towns the example of Prussia and the edict of March 11, 1812, and remarked, with some sarcasm, that they would succeed in depriving the Jewish houses of the prosperity to which they had attained, and that constant oppression would compel them to withdraw their capital. In the sketch of the constitution for Germany drawn up by the Prussian plenipotentiary, William von Humboldt, which was submitted to Metternich, and accepted as a basis for discussion, the Jews were promised equality, even though they were mentioned separately. "The three Christian religious sects enjoy equal rights in all German states, and the adherents of the Jewish faith, so long as they undertake all the duties of citizenship, are to enjoy corresponding rights." But the goodwill of the two chancellors, even though their sentiments had been shared by the monarchs whom they represented, did not suffice at that time. A new enemy rose up against the Jews, tougher and more dangerous than envy and bourgeois pride. This terrible enemy who now turned his arms against the Jews was the German visionary. The yoke so long imposed on the Germans by the French, the compulsion under which they had been to obliterate their most characteristic peculiarities, had rendered hateful to them, not alone everything French, but all that was foreign, that did not bear the stamp of pure German origin. Allowances should certainly be made for a nation which, arriving at a consciousness of its strength and solidarity, breaks its fetters, if it conceives an exaggerated notion of its importance. But it was unpardonable and childish that grown men should dream in broad daylight, representing their dreams as truth and trying to foist them upon others. Extravagant Teutomania was a dream of this kind, and resulted in the ruin of the Germans. For the first time the German nation had acted as a unit; hitherto it had been the tool of princes in Italian expeditions, Turkish wars, or civil strife. The Germans sought analogous cases in their own history by which to regulate their conduct, and found them only in the Middle Ages, in the time of the Empire and the omnipotence of the papacy, or in early Teutonic times when uncouth barbarism and childish simplicity prevailed. The romantic school, the Schlegels, Arnims, and Brentanos, had shown them this grewsome specter of the Middle Ages in so wonderful a light, that the Germans in their delusion considered it an ideal, the realization of which was a holy task. To the Middle Ages belonged Christianity, credulity, unthinking clericalism, which became the dearest possessions of the Germans, because they were diametrically opposed to the unbelief of the French and the revolutionary epoch. From that time the hollow phrase, Christian-German (or Teutsch), arose, and speedily became a catchword.
But only the devoted followers of Catholicism, with the papacy as supreme authority, could be pious in the sense of the Middle Ages. Honest romanticists, such as Görres, Frederick Schlegel, Adam Müller, etc., logically went over to the Roman Church, and helped to re-establish the empire of the Jesuits and the Inquisition. As for the German Protestants, "God had poured out upon them the spirit of confusion and they tottered like drunken men." Instead of directing their attention to Vienna, where the Congress, amidst dancing and revelry, was running its quarry, the German people, to earth, the romanticists built castles in the air, and at once announced that certain people would be denied admission.
Christian Teutomania was the armed specter which for many decades robbed the German Jews of rest, honor, and joy in life. Because this race, strongly marked by descent and tradition, was distinguished from the Germans by external marks, by features, carriage, and vivacity, although akin in language, feeling, and temperament, they were repelled as foreigners, as a force breeding disturbance and discomfort, and had the spirit of the times permitted they would have been expelled from German territory. But to find a reason for this blind hate, the enemies of the Jews had recourse to old contemptible publications, and extracted rubbish from sources where others had found the rich intellectual treasures of the Jews, and drew such a portrait of them as to arouse terror both in themselves and others.
The first to clothe vague prejudice in words and heap abuse upon the Jews was not a knavish writer, but an academical professor named Friedrich Rühs, whom the newly-founded Berlin University had appointed to the chair of history. He wished to investigate the decline of Germany, and hit upon the Jews, as though they had been the authors of Germany's disgrace during its occupation by foreign powers. Rühs discussed the "Claims of the Jews to German Citizenship," developed the unwholesome theory of a Christian state, and thence derived his justification, if not actually to expel the Jews from Germany, yet to humble them and thwart their growth. He drew up a complete programme for their treatment, which was afterwards conscientiously carried out.
Above all things he wanted the Jews to live merely on sufferance, and on no account to claim equal rights of citizenship. They were once more to pay protection-money, a Jew-tax, and limits were to be set to their increase. The cities which had hitherto not tolerated them were to be supported in this course, and naturally Jews were not to be admitted to any office, nor even permitted to defend their country. Rühs, moreover, insisted that the Jews should again wear a badge, not a repulsive yellow patch, but a "national cockade"; at any rate some mark of distinction, "that the German who could not recognize his Hebrew enemy by face, gait, or speech, might do so by the doubtful badge of honor." Above all things, Rühs exhorted the German states and the German people to promote the conversion of the Jews to Christianity; that was most important. It was generally asserted, even in Christian quarters, that only bad and abandoned men exchanged Judaism for Christianity; but that was prejudice.
Rühs' pamphlet excited great interest. Worthy and learned men declared their agreement with him. The learned German world at the time of Lessing, Abt, Kant, and Herder, the apostolic messenger of universal humanity, now talked the language of the Church Fathers, and stirred up hate and persecution. Schleiermacher and Fichte brought the representatives of German intellect so low that they actually competed with the ultra-Catholics in hatred of the Jews. Pius VII, who in consequence of the Restoration once more reigned in the Papal States, and reintroduced the Inquisition, in order to drive out godlessness by means of the auto-da-fé, ordained that the Jews should forfeit the freedom enjoyed under French rule. The Jews of Rome had to forsake their beautiful houses in all parts of the city and return to the dirty, unhealthy Ghetto; the Middle Ages had returned to the Papal States. The Jews, as in the seventeenth century, had to attend sermons for their own conversion on pain of punishment. Meantime history had enacted one of those surprising interludes, which was to prove the instability of the reactionary Restoration. Napoleon had contrived to land on French ground despite English sea-guardianship. The props of the Bourbon throne—the nobility, the clergy, and intriguers, who had ostentatiously displayed their power,—collapsed before a single shot had been fired, and Napoleon entered Paris in triumph. The empire of the hundred days was established. The whole of Europe armed itself against one man, and the fortune of war decided in favor of the allies on the Dutch battlefields at Waterloo. In the Prussian army, which next to the English had been most instrumental in turning the tide of victory, there were many Jewish soldiers, among them several militia officers.
What reward did the German Jews receive for their sincere devotion to their country? When the Congress, alarmed by Napoleon's sudden reappearance, ceased to dally and began to hold regular sittings, the Act of Federation for the German states, which despite their union were to be autonomous, was brought up for consideration, and a paragraph in it devoted to the Jews. Citizenship was to be assured them, and in countries where obstacles to this reform existed, they were to be removed as far as possible. But this paragraph was accepted only by Prussia and Austria; all the other members of the league, especially those from the free towns, voted against it. To arrive at an agreement, a colorless compromise was proposed: "The Congress of the allies will consider how the civil improvement of those professing the Jewish faith in Germany is to be effected in the most harmonious manner, and how in particular the enjoyment of civil rights and participation in civil duties may be secured to them. The rights already conceded them in the several federated states will be continued."
The first portion was harmless, and could be accepted by all, since it remained open to every state to prevent its favorable interpretation. The latter portion, however, was apt to put the Free Towns into a delicate position. There the Jews through French influence were actually in possession of civil equality. Accordingly, the deputy for Frankfort (the syndic Danz) emphatically protested, and was supported by the Saxon deputies. To shame German narrow-mindedness, the Danish government, as if it had anticipated that the hatred of Jews in Germany would spread, ordered Bernstorff, its representative for Holstein, to declare that the adherents of the Jewish faith, if they fulfilled the duties of citizenship, might there expect a constitutional provision ensuring them against persecution, oppression, arbitrariness or uncertainty of legislation in respect of the rights conceded to them. The deputy for Bremen, Senator Schmidt, was cleverer; he did not protest, but defeated the suspicious resolution by a master-stroke. Remarking that the privileges of the Jews conferred by the French in North Germany (the 32d military division) could not be binding on the Germans, he stated that they need only change the word in into by, and everything would be right. Nobody at first took notice of this apparently insignificant change. Metternich and Hardenberg, who hitherto either from inclination or in pursuance of promises had appeared to favor the Jews, passed over this point in an incomprehensible manner. Thus the paragraph referring to the Jewish question in its final form read: "The rights already conceded the professors of the Jewish faith by the several federated states will be continued." Of the federated states, however, only Prussia and Mecklenburg, and perhaps also Baden, had conceded citizenship to the Jews. The enactment of the French authorities was thus made null and void, and Germany was saved. What did it matter to the delighted nation that this verbal change would cost so many tears?
The humiliation of the Jews soon showed itself in practical life. Lübeck, protected by the unfair interpretation of a paragraph, ordered more than forty Jewish families to leave the town (September, 1815). Bremen did the same with its Jews. Frankfort could not eject its Jewish inhabitants, but their lives were embittered; they were shut out from civil assemblies, Jewish functionaries were deposed, they were excluded from many trades and industries, marriage permits asked by Jewish couples were refused with the heartlessness of the Middle Ages, they were forbidden to live in certain parts of the town, and were treated as though they were still servi cameræ. But as the Senate knew that Prussia and Austria regarded it as a point of honor to preserve intact the civil rights of the Jews of Frankfort, and that the Federal Diet, at the instance of both great powers, might easily determine the controversy in favor of the Jews, it applied to three German juridical faculties, those of Berlin, Marburg, and Giessen, to have the question decided as one of law.
This struggle between the Frankfort Senate and the Jews, protracted during nine years (1815–24), and occasioning many vexations, will ever remain a stain on the time, a monument of German narrow-mindedness. The Jews, relying on the assurance of the two German powers, believed that their civil rights were guarded as by a triple wall.
But just this manifest truth, the Teutomaniacs and sophists, suddenly developed into bigots, sought to obscure and cry down. From all parts of Germany there resounded simultaneously outcries against the Jews, urging the nation, or the German federation, to enslave the Jews or destroy them. Journals and pamphlets raged against them, as if Germany or Christendom could be saved only by the destruction of the Jews.
The most violent attack was that of a physician and professor of natural science at Heidelberg, J. F. Fries, "Danger to the Welfare and Character of the Germans through the Jews" (summer, 1816), in which he asserted that the Jews ought to be expelled the country, that the tribe must be exterminated root and branch, as among all secret and political societies they were most dangerous to the state. "Ask man after man, and see, whether every peasant and every burgher do not hate and curse the Jews as national pests and bread robbers." The Jews, he said, had contrived to get more than half the entire capital of Frankfort into their hands. "Let them go on for forty years, and the sons of the first Christian houses will seek service among the Jews in the meanest capacities." It is remarkable that in the face of such passionate incitement, wild outbreaks against the Jews did not occur at that time, especially as Fries' pamphlet was read in all taverns and public-houses.
Was no Christian voice raised against this injustice? For the honor of the Germans it must be mentioned that some men had the courage to contend against crass prejudice and blind hatred. A highly respected and learned councilor in Ratisbon, August Krämer, wrote a defense, "The Jews and their Just Claims on the Christian States; a Contribution to the Mitigation of the Cruel Prejudices against the Jewish Nation." Councilor Schmidt, in Hildburghausen, on the one hand, pictured the abominable scenes which Christian fanaticism had in the past enacted against Jews, and, on the other hand, showed the superiority of culture possessed by the latter over the Christians in Spain. But their most thorough-going advocate was Johann Ludwig Ewald, a reformed clergyman of Carlsruhe, of high position, and seventy years old. Rühs' and Fries' malignant statements about the Jews incensed him so deeply, that he denied himself a season's recreation in Baden, and employed the time in giving the lie to their impudent assertions in a pamphlet (1816). Ewald vindicated the downtrodden sons of Israel in the name of Christianity, whose representative he was. Every groundless complaint against them he dissolved into nothing. From England and France, too, admonitions reached the Germans not to expose their own pettiness by their insane hatred of the Jews. An English paper thought that the town of Lübeck, as well as all the free towns, ought to be deprived of their independence (of which they had made so infamous a use) by the German federation, on account of the ignorant intolerance displayed against the Jews. A French writer, M. Bail, vindicated the unhappy people in glowing language, and covered their German enemies with shame.
"The Jewish nation to a higher degree than any other possesses the ancient, sanctified character which excites astonishment. I never meet a rabbi adorned with a white beard without thinking of the venerable patriarchs. Nothing is more elevating about the Israelites than their solemn life, which makes them the most devoted and honorable people on earth. In their midst is to be found the illustration of all domestic virtues, of loving care for the needy, and profound reverence for parents. Happy, a thousand times happy, are the nations among whom the basis of morality has been preserved."
But if truth and justice had spoken with angels' tongues, the Germans of those days would have remained deaf to their voices. They were so deeply imbued with hatred of the Jews that they were irrational.
An organ of the Austrian government directed a sort of threat against the encroachments of the people of Lübeck upon the rights of the Jews.
"How can the future Federal Diet discuss the improvement of the condition of the Jews, if individual states anticipate it by the most cruel and arbitrary resolutions? This conduct exhibits want of respect as much towards the ensuing Federal Diet as towards the foremost courts of Germany, whose principles in regard to this matter have been often and loudly enough expressed."
What was done by Austria itself, which displayed such righteous indignation against Lübeck on behalf of the Jews? Francis I and his ruler Metternich completely forgot the benevolent intentions of Joseph II, and kept in mind only the hateful laws of Maria Theresa against the Jews. They did not indeed expel the Jews, as in Lübeck and Bremen, but they were relegated to Ghettos within Austria, beyond which they were not allowed to pass. Tyrol, the secluded mountain province, was closed to them as to Protestants. In Bohemia the mountain cities and villages were forbidden them, and in Moravia, in the great cities of Brünn and Olmütz, they were allowed to stay only over-night or for a short time. Everywhere there were Jew-streets; the restrictions imposed on the Jews of Austria had become proverbial, whilst in Galicia they met with greater oppression than in the Middle Ages. Even the benevolent regulations of Joseph II, in regard to compulsory school attendance and practical religious instruction, were carried out not so much to spread culture among the Jews as to torment and injure them. Emperor Francis ennobled a few Jews, but the others were humiliated; they were obliged to render military service, but the bravest were rarely admitted even to the lowest rungs of the military ladder.
Austria, to be sure, had made the Jews no promises, and had awakened no hope of freedom. But Prussia, where they had already enjoyed full citizenship, conjured up a hobgoblin worthy of the Middle Ages, and wounded their honor the more deeply. Frederick William III, who had confirmed the equality of the Prussian Jews by law, annulled it, or rather left it unexecuted, a dead letter. Unconsciously he succumbed to the theory of the Christian state set up by the Teutomaniacs and sophists, who insisted that no place of honor be conceded the Jews. The promised equalization of the Jews in the newly-acquired or reconquered provinces was continually delayed. In the latter they remained subject to the restrictions of a former time, and Prussia's legislation regarding the Jews was a curious petrifaction. There were twenty-one fundamental laws for their treatment, and they were divided into French, old Prussian, Saxon, and Polish Jews, naturally to their disadvantage.
The specific aim of Prussia was to make Jews despicable in society. Whereas formerly the government had been at pains to avoid in official correspondence the words Jew, Jewish, as having an offensive connotation, they were now insisted upon.
The Judæophobist spirit in Prussia showed itself in a case which challenges comparison with France. The unjust Napoleonic law which had suspended the equality of the Jews of the German departments for ten years in respect of free migration and commerce was to fall into abeyance after the end of the respite (March 17, 1818), unless it was prolonged. The government of Louis XVIII, although besieged by clerical and political reactionaries, did not for a moment make an attempt to preserve the limitation. In the Chamber, which occupied itself with this point (February and March, 1818), only one hostile voice (Lathier) was raised against the Jews in Alsace. This opponent of the Jews alleged that the whole country would soon be in the hands of the Jews, if a check was not put to their greed. Not even the Right, which was clerically disposed, uttered a word against the Jews in general and for the restriction of their liberties. The phantom of a Christian state was quite unknown to the French. The Chamber rejected Lathier's proposal, and thus the Jews of Alsace were restored to their former equality. A similar law had been passed against the Jews of the district on the left bank of the Rhine, which was added to Prussia, or the Rhine province and Westphalia. The Prussian government, on taking this former French territory, had permitted the continuance of restrictive legislation, and a cabinet order of March 3d, 1818, renewed it for an indefinite period.
About this time a distinguished Englishman, with the Old and New Testaments in his hand, advocated the equality and freedom of the Jews throughout Europe with extraordinary zeal. Lewis Way, a disciple of the Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts of the English War of Independence, accepted the prophecies of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, and was convinced that the Jewish nation would be resurrected, and be restored in glory to the land of their fathers. Only when they had recovered their independence would they be converted to the doctrines of Jesus. It was therefore a matter of conscience with him to promote the welfare of the Jews. He made a journey to Poland to ascertain the number and condition of the Jews in that country. Way now elaborated a remarkable memorial in which he dwelt on the high significance of the Jews in the past, and also in the future. With this memorial he betook himself to Aix, where the king of Prussia and the emperors of Russia and Austria with their ministers and diplomatists were met in Congress (end of September, 1818). He sought to make a favorable impression on Emperor Alexander, whose mystical temperament was known to him. As soon as the Czar showed himself in favor of the equalization of the Jews, it could not be doubted that Frederick William III and Emperor Francis would also be well disposed towards it.
Way started with the supposition that the Jews were a royal nation, and had not ceased to be so even in exile, in the misfortunes of their tragical career. This people possessed the key to the history of the whole globe. The same divine grace which had guided them in former times rested on them in banishment and exile. The promises which the prophets had foretold for the Israelite race would not fail to be accomplished; they would once more be gathered together in the land of their fathers. All the nations of the earth which have received salvation through them, were bound by gratitude to show the Jews the greatest honors and boundless beneficence, so as to wipe out the guilt incurred against this divinely-gifted race by the cruel persecutions inflicted on them. The present moment was highly favorable to their complete liberation. In some countries fanatical, narrow-minded clamorers had raised their voices against the emancipation of the Jews, but they no more represented public opinion than the furious outcries of a few American planters against the suppression of slavery. If Way was an enthusiast, when he tried to prove the necessity of emancipation in a mystical manner from prophetic and apocalyptic verses, he was still true enough to the practical instincts of the English race to be able to prove to their majesties what profit the emancipated Jews would bring the state. He conceded that much about the Jews must be altered, but their national peculiarity was holy property, which must not be touched. It was the invisible tie which bound the past of the Jews with their future, the past of mankind with its future; the fulfillment of prophecy depended on Israel.
This mystical, yet sensible memorial was handed by Way to the Emperor of Russia, on whom it must have made an impression, for he delivered it to his plenipotentiaries, Nesselrode and Capo D'Istrias, charging them to bring it and the emancipation of the Jews under the notice of the Congress. Out of respect for Alexander, who at that time pulled the strings of European politics, the plenipotentiaries were obliged to give attention to the matter, if only in appearance. The protocol said (November 21, 1818) that, though they could not in every respect accept the point of view of the writer of the memorial, they must render justice to the tendency and laudable aim of his conclusions. The plenipotentiaries of Austria and Prussia (Metternich, Hardenberg, and Bernstorff) declared themselves ready to give any information with regard to the question in both monarchies, which might aid in solving a problem important to the statesman and the philanthropist; but this was no more than a courtly phrase. Another voice addressed enthusiastic words in favor of the German and Polish Jews to the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. Michael Berr, like his father, untiringly active in the elevation of his co-religionists, poured forth the stream of his oratory in their cause.
"In Charlemagne's favorite city the monarchs will finally decide concerning the political existence of my co-religionists in Germany. The honor of Germany, the honor of the age and that of monarchs, loudly demand the reinstatement of the Jews in their civil and political rights. With justice are they exercised about laws, which still exist here and there to the disadvantage of the Jews."
The Italian Jews also combined to send a petition to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle concerning the abolition of their grievances and the cessation of persecution. They lost nothing by failure to carry out their design. The time had passed when princes and statesmen, sages and citizens, interested themselves in "the improvement of the condition of the Israelites," as the phrase ran.
The ill-feeling against the Jews in Germany continued to grow without ground or provocation. Jewish preachers celebrated the battle of Leipsic (October 18, 1818) in the synagogue with great enthusiasm, but to the Teutomaniacs this was no proof of their patriotic love. The hatred against Jews assumed so violent a character that a writer, one not badly disposed, saw reason to foretell the outbreak of popular attacks on life and property.
Germany was at that time intensely excited by the murder of Kotzebue, in Mannheim, by a half-mad Christian student, Karl Sand (March, 1819), and by the harsh regulations of the government against demagogic and Germanizing movements, which it had formerly fostered. The Germanizers panted for a sacrifice, and, as they could not attack the statesmen, such as the Metternichs, Gentzes, and Kamptzes, the helpless Jews were marked as victims. A series of brutal outbreaks occurred during several months. With the cry of "Hep, hep!" against the Jews, the Middle Ages revived again like a jeering ghost, and persecution was galvanized into life by the student and commercial classes.
The city of Würzburg commenced the attack. A new professor was inducted into office (August 2) amidst the rejoicings of the students, who were joined by a large number of people. Suddenly an old professor, Brendel, was noticed, who had shortly before written in favor of the Jews, for which it was alleged that he had received a box of ducats. On seeing him, there resounded from the mouths of the students the insane cry, "Hep, hep!" together with the outcry "Jude, verreck," i. e., "Jew, die like a beast." The former expression, then used for the first time, meant in student's slang, "Jerusalem is destroyed" (Hierosolyma est perdita). Brendel was pursued, and had to flee for safety. Perfect fury took possession of the people of Würzburg, who broke into the shops of the Jews, throwing the goods into the streets, and when they defended themselves with stones, the bitterness increased to frenzy. A regular battle ensued, many wounds were received, and several persons killed. About forty citizens took part in the affray. The military had to be called out, or the Jews would have been massacred. The next day the burghers appealed to the civic authorities to order the dismissal of the Jews from Würzburg, and to this they had to submit. Overcome with grief, about four hundred Jews of all ages left the town, and encamped for several days in the villages or under tents, looking forward to a terrible future. The persecution of the Jews in Würzburg was repeated in Bamberg, and in almost every town of Franconia. Wherever a Jew showed himself, he was assailed with the insulting cry of "Hep, hep!" and ill-treated.
This persecution of the Jews in Franconia was a hint to the Frankforters how to humble their hated fellow-citizens, who had dared bring an action against the Senate, and were protected by the Federal Diet. Thus a riot was re-enacted here (9th and 10th August), which began with the cry, "Hep, hep!" and with the breaking of windows in Jewish houses; then the mob advanced to brutality, and drove away all Jews from the promenades with insults and outrage. Artisans, workmen, shop assistants, secretly encouraged by their employers, as in the time of Vincent Fettmilch, two centuries before, made violent attacks on Jewish houses. The house of the Rothschilds in particular was selected for attack, their wealth and political importance being a thorn in the side of Christian patricians. In Paris at this time, all the ambassadors and diplomatic representatives appeared at a ball given by James Rothschild, and in Germany the Rothschilds were still treated as peddlers. Several wealthy Jews left Frankfort after this outrage. The storm, which became frenzy in Frankfort, the seat of the Diet, was not an indifferent matter to the ambassadors. The moneys of the Diet were placed in Rothschild's coffers for security. The president, Count von Buol Schauenstein, summoned a conference of members, and it was resolved to call out the federal troops, as the city militia could not be trusted. The persecution of the Jews in Frankfort aroused great attention throughout Europe, but the excitement against them continued, in spite of the arrival of the troops. Several Jews consequently sold their houses, and even the Rothschilds put no trust in the lull, and had serious thoughts of leaving Frankfort; they would have had to emigrate to France or England, as they were not safe anywhere in Germany.
This massacre of the Jews spread like wildfire in Germany, as if the people had everywhere waited for a sign to break out. In Darmstadt and Bayreuth the riots were repeated (August 12). The few Jews in Meiningen were expelled. In Carlsruhe, one morning, a placard was found posted on the synagogue and the houses of prominent Jews—"Death and destruction to the Jews!"
In Düsseldorf black marks and threatening placards were found on the doors of several Jewish houses. In the territory of Baden, where Sand had sealed the Teutomaniac folly with a murder, and the excitement still lasted, the bitterness against the Jews was so great that not one could appear in the streets without being maltreated. In Heidelberg a tumult arose (beginning of September) in consequence of a vulgar scene, which curiously illustrates German chivalry. A citizen had outraged a Jewish maiden, and had been arrested by the police. Nearly the whole populace immediately rushed to rescue the hero and destroy the Jewish houses. Cries of "Hep, hep!" resounded in the streets; axes, crowbars, tools of all sorts were collected as if to carry a place by storm. The city guard, which ought to have dispersed the assaulting party, refused their services. The city governor, Pfizer, instead of standing by the persecuted, assisted their assailants. Blood would have been spilled, had not the Heidelberg students, humanized, perhaps, by contact with France, defended the unprotected people at their own risk, under the leadership of two professors, Daub and Thibaut. When at length the armed force appeared, and patrols swept through the whole province of Baden, and every small town and village was made responsible for the attacks of certain of their number upon the Jews, the outbreaks against the Jews gradually subsided, but the hatred against them was only intensified.
"From Germany the spark of Jew-hatred flew even into the capital of the Danish state," which a few years before had extended citizenship to the Jews, and had refused to revoke it. In Copenhagen the mob rose up (September), and commenced by throwing stones at the Jews, and ended with acts of violence. The government proclaimed martial law. The citizens, in the few cities where Jews lived, stood by them, and the preachers preached tolerance and love to them from the pulpit. In Germany the ministers of religion did not utter a single protest during these outrageous scenes. That no feature of the persecution of the Jews of the Middle Ages might be wanting, a synagogue was stormed in a small Bavarian place, and the scrolls of the Law rudely torn to pieces. Even where actual violence could not be resorted to, the insulting cry of "Hep, hep!" was hurled at the Jews in small and large towns, to the amusement of the spectators. The police or military force which appeared against the rioters and disturbers secretly took part against the Jews, and the governments which protected them did so more from fear, because they suspected a demagogical movement behind the outbreaks against the Jews. Reference was afterwards made to these outrages, as illustrating the feeling, or rather ill-feeling towards the Jews, to withhold equal rights from them.
The zenith of Teutomaniac Jew hatred was reached by the inflammatory pamphlet which appeared at this time of excitement, "The Mirror of the Jews" (November, 1819). Hartwig Hundt, a man of adventurous life, boldly advocated the slaughter of the Jews. He made most laudable propositions, which, he flattered himself, would satisfy the "Hep, hep" people.
"Although I for my part hold the killing of Jews neither a sin nor a crime, but only a police offence, I would nevertheless never counsel that they be condemned and punished unheard, as seems to be the fashion now."
What then? His proposals were:—
"Let the children of Israel be sold to the English, who could employ them in their Indian plantations instead of the blacks. That they may not increase, the men should be emasculated, and their wives and daughters be lodged in houses of shame. The best plan would be to purge the land entirely of this vermin, either by exterminating them, or as Pharaoh and the people of Meiningen, Würzburg, and Frankfort did, by driving them from the country."
The "Hep, hep" storm and Hundt's murderous lessons were the poisonous fruit of the seeds which Fichte and Schleiermacher had sown, and which had shot up quickly and abundantly.
Hundt's inflammatory book, in which every word is an abomination, was as ravenously swallowed by the German reading public, as his bad novels. Only at the request of Jews it was forbidden and confiscated by the censorship, which had become omnipotent through the Carlsbad regulations. In Portugal, at about the same time, a motion was brought forward in the Cortes to re-admit the banished Jews and atone for the crime perpetrated against them, whilst in Germany authors and statesmen justified this crime, and wished it to be repeated in the nineteenth century. Hundt did not stand alone in his advocacy of the extirpation of the Jews. Who cares to enumerate all the virulent, hostile writings against the Jews of the years of the "Hep, hep" storm? Conversation on questions of the day, however remote from the subject of the Jews, always ended in abuse of them. If an author glorified Sand and his murder of Kotzebue, and praised his Christian religious spirit, he did not fail to add that "Christian hate would call down a day of judgment upon the Jews, the accomplices of financiers who worked the ruin of the state, even though no writer had ever printed a syllable to the disadvantage of the Jews."
Thus every man's hand was against them; no defender of any weight or influence appeared for them, whose word, if it could not silence, might at least curb the opposition. The aged Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter) did not raise his voice for them, although he had a predilection for the Jews; nor Varnhagen von Ense, although Rachel was his wife, and was included in the general obloquy. Only one writer overcame his prejudice, and defied public opinion in order to take up cudgels on behalf of the universally despised and downtrodden Jews. This was the comedy writer Julius von Voss, whose voice certainly had no great weight, and whose disordered affairs roused the suspicion that Jewish liberality encouraged his venturesomeness. Voss himself in his comedies and novels had exposed the Jews to ridicule, but from regret and remorse, he confessed, he desired to protect the Jews against the "Hep, hep" insults. His words were little regarded, and even were derided. Still less impression was created by the anonymous writings of various freemasons in favor of the Jews, but their goodwill should be recognized. The converted Jews conducted themselves at this juncture in a shameful manner. Not one of them, except Börne, came forward, in behalf of their former brethren, with that just indignation which violence against the defenseless ought to inspire. Rachel von Varnhagen, it is true, wrote to her brother, Ludwig Robert, who had been a witness of the "Hep, hep" storm, in the following manner:—
"I am intensely moved, as I have never yet been, on account of the Jews. They are to be preserved, but only for torture, for contumely, for insult, for brutal outrage. The hypocritical newborn love for the Christian religion (God forgive me for my sin!), for the Middle Ages with their art, poetry, and hideousness, incites the people to the only abomination to which, mindful of all past experiences, it can still be incited. It is not the action of the people, who are taught to cry "Hep, hep." The professors Fries and Rühs, and others, such as Arnim, Brentano, 'our connections,' and yet greater persons are filled with prejudices."
She thought that the Christian priests ought to step forward to check the outrages of the people. "Aye, the priests." But neither Rachel, nor her brother Robert, nor her husband Varnhagen, who elaborated their periods for every childish folly, and had a voice in public opinion, raised it against violence, and against the rule of oppression.
The Jews had, it is true, their own literary exponents to protect them. In Germany alone there were nearly forty Jewish writers who could address the German public. They possessed two Jewish organs, and the daily journals occasionally opened their pages to them. They advanced boldly to the battle-field to ward off the universal accusations against their race. Even the aged David Friedländer raised his voice, wrung his hands over the enemies of the Jews and their persecutions in Germany in the nineteenth century, and could not conceive—he who considered official Christianity and the State as ideal—how these gods could wallow in so much filth. He addressed himself to the Countess Von der Recke, and reminded her of the time when eminent Christians conversed pleasantly with Jews, and both received instruction from each other. This sounded like a forgotten fairy tale from ancient days. But the Jewish combatants only threw light missiles, and could scarcely prick the thick hide of prejudice. For this purpose sharp and heavy harpoons were necessary. At this point the Guide of all history, who had not abandoned the Jews, awakened for them two avenging angels, who with fiery scourges lashed the perverseness of the Germans. These avenging spirits, who brought the Germans more blessings even than their guardian angels, were Ludwig Börne and Heinrich Heine.
Börne and Heine—Börne's Youth—His Attitude to Judaism—His Love of Liberty—His Defense of the Jews—Heine: his Position with Regard to Judaism—The Rabbi of Bacharach—Heine's Thoughts upon Judaism—Influence of Börne and Heine.
1819–1830 C. E.
Why should not Börne and Heine have a page in Jewish history? Not only did Jewish blood flow in their veins, but they were imbued with true Jewish spirit.
The lightning darts which they flashed across Germany, now in the colors of the rainbow, again in glaring sheets, were charged with the electricity of Jewish Talmudism. Both Börne and Heine renounced Judaism, but only like combatants who, appropriating the enemy's uniform and colors, can all the more easily strike and annihilate him. Both expressed, with a clearness which left nothing to be desired, how much they cared for the religion of the cross, which they professed. There is, therefore, not the slightest reason why Christianity should count Börne and Heine as members of its flock on account of the idle ceremony through which they passed in church. One of them, in spite of his changing moods, at heart remained truer to Judaism than the Friedländers who constituted themselves its representatives. These two gifted individuals, the pride of Germany, are still greater ornaments to Judaism. To these two Jews, the Germans owe their pure taste, their feeling for truth, and their impulse for liberty—to these two Jews persecuted through life by the abominable "Hep, hep." The mists of the Middle Ages, with which the Germans artificially surrounded themselves in order to obscure the truth, were dispersed by the flashes of wit of Börne and Heine, and light in its purity was restored. They grafted wit and life on German literature, and banished that clumsiness and awkwardness which had aroused the ridicule of the neighboring nations.
In their childish spite against the Jews, the Teutomaniacs, the Rühses and Hundts, asserted that Judaism could not produce a man of forcible character, or gifted with a true sense of art. History at once gave them the lie, and put them to shame. Judaism furnished forth a vigorous apostle of liberty, with language recalling that of the prophets and the Roman Catos, who confounded all the ideas of the Germans concerning law; and it supplied a poet, with artistic sense characterized by a mixture of pathos and cutting irony, who abolished all their hard and fast rules of art. The rich, varied blossoms of the Börne-Heine mind sprang from Jewish soil, and were only watered by European culture. Hence the close connection between them in spite of their dissimilarity and mutual antipathy. Not only was their wit Jewish, but also their love of truth, their aversion to vain display, their hatred of veiling and palliating wrongs, their contempt for official pomp, for obscuring clouds of incense, for ringing of bells, ambrosial organ tones covering slavery, perversion of justice, and oppression. The democratic, freedom-loving spirit, noticeable in Börne more than in Heine, and the analytical, Spinoza-like mode of reasoning, more characteristic of Heine than of Börne, are Jewish to the core. Had they been born Christians, and brought up in the atmosphere of red-tapeism, neither of them would have developed as rescuing powers, which with laughing mien helped to banish deeply-rooted perversions and absurdities. The slaves became deliverers, and saved their enemies from the double yoke of political and social inferiority. The Teutomaniacs almost deserve thanks for having tormented the Jews with their reactionary measures. They roused, if not Heine, certainly Börne, who was inclined to idle speculation, and furnished him with the dart that wounded the enemy.
Ludwig Börne, or Löb Baruch (born in Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1786; died in Paris, 1837), saw the light in the same year when it was extinguished for Mendelssohn, as though history wished to compensate the bereaved Jews for the loss of the sage of Berlin. Börne resembled Mendelssohn in some respects: in his timid, bashful, somewhat awkward bearing, in his self-control, his strength of character, and his strict adherence to an adopted system of morality. Both became the objects of admiration by accident, in spite of themselves. Both drew up for themselves æsthetic rules of conduct without having been trained to do so.
Börne despised the Jews of his time, and spoke of them as if he were their arch-enemy. Jewish antiquity, misrepresented to him in his youth, and still more dimmed by his Berlin and Halle friends, he looked upon as a caricature. The ancient Jews from the day of Abraham until the time of "wealthy Solomon" appeared to him "as if they had wished to parody history." He did not suspect how much his inward self, the truthfulness of his nature, owed to Judaism. The filth of Lucinde, consecrated by Schleiermacher, so disgusted Börne at the age of sixteen, that even a stealthy perusal of the book possessed no charm. The sobriety with which Judaism had endowed him showed Börne the right way of balancing his ideal nature, and avoiding too harsh a discord with the real world. At an early age he became acquainted with a goddess to whom he was devoted in extravagant love, and to whom he remained faithful until his dying breath. "The true nature of virtue may be expressed in a few words. What is virtue? Virtue is bliss. And bliss? It is liberty. We cannot further inquire, what is liberty, for liberty is in accord with reason, in accord with God, and in accord with the unconditional—it explains itself." So thought Börne, and so he wrote in his diary at the age of eighteen; and this idea governed his inner being as long as he lived, and was the motive power of all his actions. Virtue is liberty, and liberty is virtue; they necessitate and produce bliss. Yet Börne limited his love of liberty; he guarded himself from overstepping that narrow boundary at which the pursuit of an ideal turns to madness.
May not his Jewish blood, or at any rate, the sad pages of Jewish history, explain his worship of liberty, which influenced his body and mind? How hard and degrading the absence of liberty was could be felt only by a Jew, in comparison with whom an Indian or a Russian bondsman was a free man. Frankfort, the birth-place of Börne, with its disgraceful laws concerning the residence of Jews, effectually taught him love of liberty. When, only a boy, he was prohibited from walking on the footpath, and had to keep to the dusty road for vehicles, when every ragged Christian beggar, or drunkard, was allowed to call to him, "Mach Mores, Jud!" the thought may have struck him that the absence of liberty was damnation and the presence of liberty salvation. "I, a slave from my birth, love liberty more than you; yea, because I was trained in servitude, I understand liberty better than you!" he often said. His much admired style, his perfect, captivating manner, his profound epigrams, recall the gnomic wisdom of Bible and Talmud. In short, Börne owes his favorable points to Judaism. But he neither was grateful for his gifts, nor did he acknowledge their origin, which he estimated no more than did his Berlin friends. On one occasion, indeed, he said:
"I should not deserve to enjoy the light of the sun, were I, on account of mockery upon which I have always looked with contempt, ungrateful for God's great favor, in having made me at once a German and a Jew: for I know how to value the undeserved fortune of being at the same time a German and a Jew, to be able to strive after all the virtues of the Germans without participating in their faults."
He added, addressing the Germans:—
"I pray you, do not despise my Jews. If only you were as they are, you were better. You have deprived the Jews of air, they have thus been preserved from rottenness; you have strewn the salt of hatred into their hearts, their hearts have thus been kept fresh. You have imprisoned them for the whole long winter in a cellar, and stopped up the cellar door with dung; but you, exposed to the frost, were half frozen to death. When spring arrives, we shall see who will blossom first, Jew or Christian."
Börne did not, however, himself believe in the endurance of the Jews, and he gave utterance to those words only because he was vexed, or in order to vex the Germans. He said at the same time, ironically: "You know how my heart beats for the Jews."
Since the time when his mind began to mature, he beheld in the Jews only money-makers, as on the Exchange at Frankfort, or deriders of religion ashamed of their race, as in the salon of Henrietta Herz; moreover, his education had made Judaism seem so despicable that he did not judge it worthy of consideration. Thus Börne never understood what was most sacred to the Jews, and he was unable to fathom the depths of his own mind, and discriminate between what he owed to the general state of culture and what to Judaism.
His healthy spirit, however, and love for the oppressed guarded him from the unprincipled conduct of Rachel, of those who frequented the salons at Berlin, and of many others who turned their backs contemptuously upon the Jews. Even as a youth Börne hated the idea that the word "Jew" might be insultingly cast at him.
"And when they come and tell you that you are a Jew," he wrote in his diary, "how they bandy about the Jewish jargon, so that one must almost die of laughter.
"Oh! when I think of that, my mind is tossed as by a storm, my soul would fain burst from its dwelling-place, and seek the body of a lion, that it might meet the villain with jaw and claw."
His anticipations proved correct, he was not spared the insult, and his lion's claw was shown. While a student, he procured from the police of Frankfort a passport, in which the spiteful police-clerk had inserted the words: "Jew of Frankfort."
"My blood stood still, but I could neither say nor do anything, for my father was present. I then swore in my heart: only wait, the time will come when I shall write a passport for you, a passport for all of you."
For a moment it seemed as if Börne would forget his oath. The Jews of Frankfort had bought equality for half a million of money, and Börne, who had studied law and shown himself a young man of promise, was one of the first to receive a position in the Frankfort police department. But if Börne was inclined to forget that he was a Jew, and remembered only that he was a German, the people of Frankfort did not forget it, and imprudently and brutally reminded him of his secret oath. He was the first victim of the reaction; he was expelled from office, as soon as the Jews of Frankfort were driven back into the Ghetto. The insolent manner in which they were cheated out of trebly pledged freedom revolted Börne's feeling for liberty, and he sharpened his first arrows in defense of the members of his own race. They were directed against the narrow-minded citizens of Frankfort, who in the nineteenth century had restored the laws of 1616 concerning the residence of the Jews, "that romance of malice," as Börne called them. The feelings which agitated him during the years of ever-increasing reaction against the Jews he put into the mouth of a Jewish officer in a novel:
"You stole from me the pleasures of childhood, you arrant knaves! You threw salt into the sweet cup of my youth, you placed malicious slander and hateful derision in my road in manhood; arrest me you could not, but fatigued, vexed, without joyfulness, I reached my goal.... That I cannot even revenge myself, that I should not have the power to forgive, nor the weakness to chastise! They are out of my reach in their fox-hole!... You ask me why I shun my fatherland. I have none; I have never left my home. My home is in dungeons; where there is persecution I breathe the atmosphere of my childhood. The moon is as near to me as is Germany."
Instead of revenging himself for the wounds inflicted upon him and the members of his race by German Jew-hatred, Börne undertook the difficult task of extinguishing this hatred. In the "Waage," his organ, he erected ideal standards, by which he measured the narrow, petty circumstances of the Germans, and their short-sightedness.
Before Louis Baruch undertook his campaign against German faults and prejudices, or rather before he undertook the education of the Germans, he renounced Judaism, was baptized in Offenbach, and assumed the name Karl Ludwig Börne (June 5, 1818). How little he cared for the Christian faith we may judge from his remark that he "repented the money spent on baptism." He did not wish the effect of his missiles to be lessened by the prejudice which might arise from the fact of their being discharged by a Jew. It is, however, difficult to excuse a man of Börne's character for deserting, without any such struggle as Heine's with himself, the colors of the weak and oppressed, who should have been ennobled in his eyes by the very pain of degradation; deserting for a cause, moreover, in which he did not believe. Germany soon discovered that she had gained an author of Lessing's caliber. Börne's wit was felt the more keenly, because at every turn one could perceive the correctness of the picture and observe the genuineness and integrity of the painter. A glance revealed that he wrote with "the blood of his heart and the sap of his nerves," hence his words made the impression of weighty deeds.
He could not behold in silence the folly and cruelty of the "Hep, hep" year, and he wrote "for the Jews." "I should have said for right and liberty; but if these terms were understood, nothing need be said." He pointed his finger at fools, and threw light on the faces of villains. "A sort of fatal necessity," he said, "was connected in past times with Jew-massacres. They seem to have arisen from an indistinct, inexplicable feeling inspired by Judaism, which, like a scoffing and threatening spirit, like the ghost of a murdered mother, accompanied Christianity from its cradle." Börne analyzed German Jew-hatred into its constituents, and showed the absurdity of each. On another occasion (1820) he told them the stern truth:
"I pardon the German nation for its Jew-hatred, for it is a nation of children, and for this reason, just like an infant, needs a go-cart to enable it some day to stand firm, so that by means of the barriers to liberty it may learn to do without barriers. The German nation would collapse a hundred times a day if it were without prejudices. But individual adults I cannot pardon for their Jew-hatred."
Dr. Ludwig Holst, a newly-fledged Jew-hater, who had developed his cult into a philosophical system, and who, as Börne says, sounded "a metaphysical Hep, hep," was attacked by him with scoffs and sneers.
"Hatred of Jews is one of the Pontine bogs which poison the beautiful land of our liberty. We see the hopeful friends of the fatherland with pale faces wandering about hopelessly. German minds dwell on Alpine heights, but German hearts pant in damp marshes. Holst wishes to kill the Jews, and if they resist, he turns round to his circle of onlookers, and says: 'Now you see that I am right in taxing the Jews with unparalleled insolence; they will not suffer their heads to be struck off ever so little, and they sulk.' ... You hate the Jews, not because they have earned hatred, but because they earn money.... What you call human rights, which, it must be conceded you grant Jews, are only animal rights. The right of seeking food, of devouring it, of sleeping, and of multiplying, are enjoyed also by the beasts of the field—until they are slain, and to the Jews you grant no more.... Men of Frankfort, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen, answer me. You complain that Jews are all usurers, yet you prevent the mental development of those who abandon usury! I will not be turned away; I demand a reply. Men of Frankfort, tell me: Why should the practice of medicine be restricted to four Jews, and that of the law be allowed to none?... In the same way in which you in your free city now storm against the Jews, did you not twenty years ago storm against Catholics?... Do you doubt the arrival of the day which will command you to look upon Jews as your equals? But you wish to be forced! The German is deaf. You will not obey voluntarily; fate will have to take hold of you and drag you hither and thither. Shame upon you!" Börne remarks in conclusion: "I love neither Jew as Jew, nor Christian as Christian; I love them because they are human beings, and born to be free. Liberty shall be the soul of my pen, until it becomes blunted, or my hand is lamed."
But Börne wished the Jews to forget as a bad dream their history of a thousand years, and to become Germans. He did not possess the far-sightedness of Heine.
Heinrich Heine (born in Düsseldorf, 1799, died in Paris, 1854) in his innermost self was infinitely more of a Jew than Börne; indeed, he possessed to a great extent all the favorable and unfavorable characteristics of Jews. Who can paint this "wicked favorite of the Graces and Muses" (as he was called), this scoffing romancer and lyrical philosopher, with his chameleon-like nature? Börne's mind resembled transparent spring-water, which trickles over pebbles, and foams only when attacked by winds. Heine's mind, on the other hand, resembled a whirlpool, upon whose surface the sunbeams play in prismatic colors, but which drags approaching vessels into its roaring depths, and dashes them to pieces unless they are of the strongest build. For Heine was as deep a thinker as he was an artistic poet, as unrelenting a critic as he was an amiable scoffer, as full of original thoughts as he was of verses. Heine had not to search for Truth; Truth flew to Heine. She, like the Muse, revealed herself to him, jesting and playing with him as her favorite. Behind his banter there often was more earnest conviction than in the litany of a morose moralist. Heine longed for ideals which his mind could revere, and because he did not find them he scoffed at the false gods who allowed themselves to be worshiped. He has certainly given profound solutions to problems of history. He never sacrificed substance to form, when the former was of greater value than the latter. It is true that he often changed his opinions, but he did not play with his convictions. His religious views changed also; but he did not change his mind. He never wrote or acted against such convictions as he entertained at the time. If for a time he was slave to the false philosophical theory which makes a god of man, he afterwards acknowledged his error, and derided it thoroughly. Heine was certainly no pattern of virtue, neither was he so great a sinner as his sharp pen and tongue might lead one to suppose. He never lost his profound, noble nature, nor his sense of the sublime; neither did he roll in the mud of sensuality, as he would have his readers believe. He painted himself blacker than he was. He had his share of that acute sensitiveness which is the lot of poets, actors, and preachers, and this morbid state was in Heine's case connected with severe nervous suffering. In his sensitive condition he wrote things of which his sober judgment disapproved, but which he was ashamed to recall.