Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jewish Messianism by Anson Rabinbach 1 The New Jewish Sensibility In the years approaching the First World War, the self-confidence and security of German Jewry was challenged by a new Jewish sen- sibility that can be described as at once radical, secular and Messianic in both tone and content What this new Jewish ethos refused to accept was above all the optimism of the generation of German Jews nurtured on the concept of Bildung as the German Jewish mystique They were profoundly shaken by political anu-Semitism and the anu-hberal spit of the German upper classes, which for them called into question the pohtical and cultural assumpuons of the post-emancipation epoch Especially irksome was the behef that there was no contradiction be- tween Deutschtum and Judentum, that secularization and liberalism would permut the cultural integration of Jews into the national com- munuty.' For German Jews of that earlier generation the “Bildungsideal” of Kant, Goethe and Schiller assured them ofan indissoluble bond bet- ween Enlightenment, universal ethics, autonomous art and mon- otheism (stripped of any particulanist “Jewish” characteristics) The mussion of the Jews could be interpreted, as Leo Baeck did in his 1905 Essence of Judaism, as the exemplary embodiment of the religion of morality for all humamuty.? 1 Fordetailed studies of the decline of self-confidence among German Jews of the (fin-de-siddle see Uniel Tal, Chnstians and Jews in Germany Religion, Politics and Ideology i the Second Reich, 1870-1914, trans Noah Jonathan Jacobs (Ithaca and London, 1975), Jehuda Reinharz, Fatherland or Promused Land The Dilemma of the German Jew, 1893-1914 (Ann Arbor, 1975), and Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870- 1914 (New York and London, 1972) 2 Leo Baeck, The Essence of Judaism (New York, 1961), On Baeck’s rationalism see Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (New York, 1978), p. 46 The rationalism of Wilhelminian Jewish intellectuals 1s epitomized by Hermann Cohen, Die Religron der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Ko1n, 1959 1929 ediuon), and his essays, especially “Deutschtum und Judentum,” Hermann Cohen's yiudische Schnf- 78Anson Rabinbach 79 The unproblematic interpretation of Judaism as “the religion of Reason,” in Hermann Cohen’s sense was equally charactensuc of 19th-century Jewish Socialist intellectuals hke Rosa Luxemburg, whose universalism permitted no special pleading for Jewish suffer- ing, and Eduard Bernstein, who took Marx and Kantas the gospel ofa self-assured Socialist future * Not only the intellectual elite, but other less well known wniers on “the Jewish Question” echoed this confi- dent appraisal The words of the German-Jewish Socialist Ludwig Quessel, a pro-Zionist, in the Sozialistasche Monatshefte of June 1914 provide a shocking summation With the beginning of the 20th cen- tury organized political anu-Semiusm in Germany has gradually died out, and I do not believe that it can be brought back to life 4 Even politcal Zionism was not :mmune from this late Wilhelminian Jewish atutude, which only in retrospect appears to us as a fatal blindness Zion too, we must remember, was only a distant political ideal, while German Zionists remained faithful to the values of the transitory national community unul the utopia could be realized ° It1s not surprising then that for the young German Jewish “genera- tion of 1914” itis this modern Jewish type that emerges as the negative ten, ed Bruno Strauss (Veroffenthchungen der Akademie fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums) Vol II (Berlin, 1924), p 318, See Hans Liebeschutz, “Hermann Cohen and his Historical Background,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 12 (1968), pp 3-38 More general surveys and useful collectionsare Hans Liebeschutz, Von Georg Simmel zu Franz Rosenzweig Studven zum judsschen Denken m deutschen Kulturbereich (Tubingen, 1970), Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans Masters and Vactums in Modernst Culture (New York, 1978), also see Werner E Mosse ed Juden in Wilhelmmsschen Deutschland 1890-1914 Ein Sammelband (Tubingen, 1976), Werner E Mosse ed Deutsches Judentum m Kneg und Revolution 1916-1923 Em Sammelband (Tubingen, 1971), George L Mosse, Germans and Jews The Right, the Left, and the Search for a “Third Force” in Pre-Naxt Germany (New York, 1970), Sidney M Bolkosky, The Distorted Image German Jeunsh Perceptions of Germans and Germany, 1918-1935 (New York, 1975), Gershom Scholem, “Jews and Germans,” On Jews and Judaism in Crsts (New York, 1976), pp 71-92 3 Central to any study of modern Socialism and the Jewish question 1s Julius Car- lebach, Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism (London, 1978), also see Robert S Wistnich, Soaalsm and the Jews (Rutherford, N J , 1983), Robert S Wistrich, Revolu- thonary Jews from Marx to Trotsky (London, 1976), Donald S Niewyk, Soaalist, Ants-Semite, and Jews German Socal Democracy Confronts the Problem of Ant-Semitsm, 1918-1933 (Baton Rouge, 1971), Isaac Deutscher, The non-Jewish Jew and other Essays (London, 1968) A Tecent reinterpretation of Kautsky, which shows him to be an excepuonal case 1s Jack Jacobs, “Kautsky on the Jewish Question,” Unpublished Ph D disserauon, Columbia University, 1983 4 Ludwig Quessel, “Die judische Neukolonisation Palasunas,” Sozialstsche Mon- atshefte, 211 (4 June 1914), 673 5 StephenM Poppel, Zionism in Germany 1897-1933 The Shaping ofa Jewish Identity (Philadelphia, 1977), Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York, 1972), David Vital, The Onguns of Zionism (Oxford, 1975)80 Enlightenment and Apocalypse umage of the assimilated German Jews. As Béla Balazs observed of Georg Lukdcs in a diary entry written in that crucial year “Gyum has discovered in himself the Jew! The search for ancestors The Chassidic Baal Shem Now hetoo has found his ancestors and his race Only lam alone and forlorn ” Lukacs, he noted, believed that “there 1s emerging or re-emerging a Jewish type, the anu-rationalist or Jewish sceptc, one who 1s the anuthesis ofall thatis commonly descnbed as Jewish ”’ This new Jewish spirit, a product of the “post-assimilatory Renaissance,” can be described as a modern Jewish Messianism radical, uncom- promising, and comprised of an esotenc intellectualism that 1s as uncomfortable with the Enlightenmentas it 1s enamored of apocalyp- tuc visions — whether revolunonary or purely redemptive in the spirit- ual sense. . One could of course also point to many parallels with the non- Jewish “generation of 1914” that Robert Wohl and others have written about, with its revolt against rationality and authority Certainly we can also see the further connection to the entre tradiuon of what Georg Lukécs referred to as pre-1914 European “romanuc anu-capitalism” which ranged across such a wide “poliucal” spectrum, providing the impetus for such diverse figures as Lukdcs, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Paul Ernst, Hermann Hesse, Paul de Lagarde, Ernst Junger and Moller van den Bruck ® The crucial component of the new Jewish sensibility, however, 1s a 6 There1sno adequate study of the Jewish generation of 1914 The memorrhtera- ture 1s, however, voluminous Good introducuons are provided by Eva Reichmann, “Der Bewusstsemnswandel der deutschen Juden,” in Werner Mosse ed , Deutsches Judertum in Kneg und Revolution, pp 511-613, Robert Weltsch, “Die schleichende Knise der yudischen Idenutat — Ein Nachwort,” Werner Mosse ed , Juden sm Wilhelminsschen Deutschland, pp 689-704 7 “Béla Balazs Notes from a Duary, (1911-1921)” The New Hunganan Quarterly 18 47 (Autumn 1972), pp 125-6 8 In an interview with Istvan Eorsi Lukdcs said of his Jewishness “I always realized that I was a Jew, but it never had a significant influence on my development ” See Istvan Eorsied , Georg Lukécs Record of a Life An Autorographucal Sketch, trans Rodney Livingstone (London, 1983), p 29 9 Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass , 1978), Jeffrey Herf, Re- actonary Modernism Technology, Culture, and Politics tn Wetmar and the Tard Resch (Cam- bridge, Mass , 1984) (especaally chapter I), Michael Lowy, Georg Lukdcs — From Ro- manticasm to Bolshevism, trans Patrick Camuller (London, 1979), Michael Lowy, “Jewish Messianism and Labertanan Utopia in Central Europe,” New German Critique, 20 (Spring/Summer 1980), pp 105-115, Ferenc Féher, “Am Scheideweg des roman- uschen Anukapitalismus Typologie und Beitrag zur deutschen Ideologiegeschichte gelegentlich des Briefwechsels zwischen Paul Ernst und Georg Lukécs,” Dee Seele und das Leben Studwen zum friuhen Lukdcs, Agnes Heller ed (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), pp 241-827, Robert Sayre and Michael Lowy, “Figures of Romanuc Anu-Capitalism,” New German Critique, 32 (Spring/Summer 1984), 42-92