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Nietzsche's Jewish Problem
Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism
By Robert C. Holub PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4008-7390-6
CHAPTER 1
The Rise and Fall of Nietzschean Anti-Semitism
REACTIONS OF ANTI-SEMITES PRIOR TO 1900
Discussions and remarks about Jews and Judaism can be found throughout Nietzsche's writings, from the juvenilia and early letters until the very end of his sane existence. But his association with anti-Semitism during his lifetime culminates in the latter part of the 1880s, when Theodor Fritsch, the editor of the Anti-Semitic Correspondence, contacted him. Known widely in the twentieth century for his Anti-Semites' Catechism (1887), which appeared in forty-nine editions by the end of the Second World War, Fritsch wrote to Nietzsche in March 1887, assuming that he harbored similar views toward the Jews, or at least that he was open to recruitment for his cause. We will have an opportunity to return to this episode in chapter five, but we should observe that although Fritsch erred in his assumption, from the evidence he and the German public possessed at the time, he had more than sufficient reason to consider Nietzsche a like-minded thinker. First, in 1887 Nietzsche was still associated with Richard Wagner and the large circle of Wagnerians, whose ideology contained obvious anti-Semitic tendencies. Nietzsche's last published work on Wagner, the deceptive encomium Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1876), may contain the seeds of Nietzsche's later criticism of the composer, but when it was published, it was regarded as celebratory and a sign of Nietzsche's continued allegiance to the Wagnerian cultural movement. Nietzsche's break with Wagner occurred gradually during the 1870s, although it may have been punctuated by particular affronts, but from Nietzsche's published writings we can detect an aggressive adversarial position only with the treatises composed in 1888, The Case of Wagner, which appeared in that year, and Nietzsche contra Wagner, which was published in 1895 after his lapse into insanity. Nietzsche's closest friends retained their connection to Wagner; Franz Overbeck, for example, the Basler professor of New Testament Exegesis and Old Church History who had been close to Nietzsche since their time together on the faculty of the Swiss institution, was the head of the local Wagner society, and Malwida von Meysenbug, with whom Nietzsche was on good terms for almost two decades, was a fervent adherent of Wagner. The break with Wagner that Nietzsche felt so strongly was almost impossible to perceive from the outside. Second, Nietzsche appeared to be closely associated with anti-Semitism through his brother-in-law, Bernhard Förster, who was a member of the extended Wagner circle. Förster, a Gymnasium teacher in Berlin, was well known for his anti-Semitic convictions and one of the initiators of the notorious Anti-Semites' Petition in 1880, which demanded severe restrictions on rights for Jews and Jewish immigration. He married Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth in 1885 and left with her the following year to found a pure German colony in Paraguay. Third, Nietzsche's publishers were known for their anti-Semitic proclivities; both Wilhelm Fritzsch, who was originally Wagner's publisher, and Ernst Schmeitzner, with whom Nietzsche worked from the third Untimely Meditation until the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85), were involved with anti-Semitic agitation. In Schmeitzner's International Monthly, whose subtitle after 1882 was Journal for the General Association Combating Judaism, we find frequent advertisements for Nietzsche's writings; any reader of this journal might well assume that Nietzsche harbored the same racist sentiments as his publisher. Finally, we should not discount that Nietzsche's early writings, which adopted many of the Judeophobic motifs found in Wagner's critique of modernity, and his later works, which implicated the Jews in slave morality and decadence, could easily have convinced Fritsch — as well as others — that Nietzsche's interest in anti-Semitic politics was greater than it actually was. An outsider unacquainted with Nietzsche's journals and private remarks in correspondence would have been completely justified in concluding that Nietzsche was a potential participant in the widespread and disparate movement that encompassed not only professors like Heinrich von Treitschke or court officials like Adolf Stöcker but also the well known philosopher and socialist Eugen Dühring and the celebrated cultural figure Richard Wagner.
In general, however, Nietzsche's relationship to Jews and Judaism was infrequently thematized in commentary written during his lifetime and into the first decade of the twentieth century. Although it is likely that some individuals, like Fritsch, simply assumed Nietzsche harbored anti-Semitic convictions, Nietzsche's remarks on Jews were infrequent and ambiguous enough that they did not constitute an emphasis in these initial discussions of his thought. In the early years of his reception Nietzsche was much more appealing for his general oppositional attitude, and accordingly he was read and admired by many writers and critics who identified with his polemics against the status quo and his vaguely defined vision of the future. In some instances he received praise from aesthetically inclined writers, and often they highlighted his early work on Greek tragedy, his emphasis on the irrational creativity of the Dionysian, and his criticism of philistinism in German culture. For many of these Nietzsche enthusiasts, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85), Nietzsche's most literary work, provided both inspiration and the possibility to flaunt one's exegetical skills. Others placed his observations on morality in the center of their reception. Nietzsche was often considered a keen observer of the foibles in Wilhelmine society and someone who did not hesitate to expose the hypocrisy of middle-class norms while envisioning a new, emancipatory, and more natural moral code. Those who opposed Christianity, or who believed that Christianity had betrayed its original teachings and mission, could admire Nietzsche for his ruthless criticism of the Church and its oppressive restriction on human development. Nietzsche especially intrigued members of politically oppositional groups, even if Nietzsche excoriated the groups' doctrines in his writings. We find an eager reception among anarchists and non-Marxist socialists, despite Nietzsche's overt and repeated rejection of their doctrines. In a little-known play from 1902 titled Children: A High School Comedy, the son of a staid member of the middle class reports to a classmate: "Nietzsche is nonsense, father says, a hack and a social democrat." Because of the conservative nature of German society, Nietzsche's adversarial profile made him initially more attractive to the left. This attraction extended well beyond German borders; in the initial commentary in the United States, for example, Nietzsche is appreciated as a man sympathetic to the working-class struggle and a champion of individual liberties. Indeed, translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal Benjamin Tucker edited. What fascinated leftist and left-leaning intellectuals about Nietzsche was not his views on socialism, anarchism, or feminism, but rather his vivid expressions of contempt toward the institutions of middle-class society, which they also rejected. Nietzsche could be an uncomfortable confederate, and even admirers admitted that his philosophy had glaring shortcomings, but long before he became identified with the anti-Semitic racism of the political right, we find him serving as an inspiration for intellectuals of the left, for aesthetically minded individuals outside of mainstream culture, and for outsiders to Wilhelmine society.
Among those early commentators were writers and thinkers who were Jewish or from Jewish backgrounds. But for the most part they too studiously avoided discussions of anti-Semitism in Nietzsche's thought. Even Max Nordau, cofounder with Theodor Herzl of the World Zionist Organization and a searing critic of Nietzsche's philosophy, skirts any possible relationship to Judeophobic sentiments in Nietzsche's writings. In Degeneration (1892), Nordau does emphasize the role Jews play in the origins of slave morality and cites relevant passages from the Genealogy of Morals (1887), in which Jews and "Israel" are blamed for overthrowing a previous moral system of values, obviously preferable to Nietzsche and identified with aristocratic norms as well as superior physical strength and will. He recognizes as well that Nietzsche's influence has extended to individuals we today associate with anti-Semitism, noting that Julius Langbehn's Rembrandt as Educator (1890) is modeled on Nietzsche's early Untimely Meditation, Schopenhauer as Educator (1874). But among the many intellectual sins Nietzsche commits, according to Nordau, anti-Semitism is not included. He accuses Nietzsche of "insane gibberish," of "wild assertions," of "delirious sallies," and of "fabulous stupidity and abecedarian ignorance"; his system is characterized as "a collection of crazy and inflated phrases"; Nordau describes him as an egomaniac and a sadist, who was "obviously insane from birth, and his books bear on every page the imprint of insanity"; and he is associated with megalomania, mysticism, false individualism, and aristocratism. But Nordau never comments on Nietzsche's relationship to the Judeophobic tendencies of the era. Nordau, of course, may have considered it obvious that Nietzsche was anti-Semitic. In the works of other Jewish writers of the era we find this association asserted with the same sort of evidence Nordau produces. In Bernard Lazare's study L'Antisemitisme: Son histoire et ses causes from 1894, for example, Nietzsche is grouped together with Eugen Dühring as part of "Christian anti-Semitism":
After Dühring, Nietzsche, in his turn combated Jewish and Christian ethics, which according to him are the ethics of slaves as contrasted with the ethics of masters. Through the prophets and Jesus, the Jews and the Christians have set up low and noxious conceptions which consist in the deification of the weak, the humble, the wretched, and sacrificing to it the strong, the proud, the mighty.
Lazare's reference to Nietzsche is fleeting, however; although he is included in this survey of anti-Semitic tendencies of the times, his work does not warrant more than this brief mention. We might justifiably conclude that for most early commentators, both Jewish and non-Jewish, Nietzsche's attitude toward the Jews was of little interest. There may have been general and tacit agreement that he had much in common with more noted anti-Semites of the Wilhelmine period, but other items in his writings attracted more attention, and for those concerned with prominent anti-Semites, there existed a sufficiently large selection and variety of anti-Jewish writing from which to choose without needing to have recourse to Nietzsche.
The only critics of Nietzsche who seemed overly concerned about his attitude toward the Jews before the turn of the century were the anti-Semites themselves. As we will see later, after receiving an unequivocal rebuke from Nietzsche in two letters, Fritsch not only ceased courting him for the anti-Semitic cause but also published an extremely harsh criticism of his thought, especially regarding the Jewish Question. Once Nietzsche's assault on the anti-Semitic movement in his late works became better known, other anti-Semitic commentators followed suit. One of the most vituperative accounts of Nietzsche's philosophy occurred in 1896 in five consecutive issues of the Modern Spirit of the People, a journal that was published for only six years, from 1894 to 1899, and was subsequently relaunched as Personalist and Emancipator by its guiding spirit, Eugen Dühring, continuing publication until 1922, a year after Dühring's death. The article, "Friedrich Nietzsche, Part of the Jewish and Lunatic Question," was authored by "–t –n," but the anonymity was lifted in 1931 when the author, Dühring's disciple Ernst Jünemann, republished the essay in a short book format. By the time Jünemann's original essay appeared Nietzsche had started to attract considerable attention among his compatriots after nearly two decades of neglect during the 1870s and 1880s. In the same year that the serialized critique of Nietzsche was published, Heinrich Mann wrote that Nietzsche was such "a modish philosopher" (Modephilosoph) that it was difficult to assess his true importance. Three years prior to Mann's utterance, the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies composed a pamphlet titled "Nietzsche Nitwits" in which he criticized Nietzsche's views on morality and all those who mindlessly borrowed them. And in 1897 Tönnies would write a text rebuking The Nietzsche Cult, which had appropriated Nietzsche in the false hopes of liberation. Jünemann is therefore writing in the initial phases of Nietzsche's burgeoning popular reception in Germany, and he feels justified in dealing at the outset with the reasons that Nietzsche was suddenly being accorded such widespread attention. In keeping with the anti-Semitic tenor of the journal, he attributes Nietzsche's fame to Jewish advocates:
The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who several years ago fell into a state of deep derangement, are currently being purchased and read with great enthusiasm by the public since Hebrew advertisements in particular have propped him up, and Jewish opinion, as is well known, is unfortunately fashionable, which is evidence of how low the intellectual and moral level of today's dominating social powers has sunken.
The author, who is transparently acting as the mouthpiece for his mentor, feigns regret at having to take up this topic at all, but rationalizes that since Nietzsche is currently influencing so many people and therefore exercising an unhealthy effect on German society, he must deal with subjects that in themselves have no "internal value." Much of the article is spent on an account of Nietzsche's illogical conclusions and apodictic claims, and because Dühring and his thought are the foundation for the periodical, throughout Jünemann portrays Nietzsche as the lesser intellect who envies the superior philosophical insights of Dühring, trying unsuccessfully to present arguments and hypotheses that challenge his more renowned Berlin rival.
Jünemann describes Nietzsche's philosophical trajectory as a steady decline into insanity and Judeophilia. After a promising beginning when he was engaged productively with Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer, he strayed from the nationalist and anti-Semitic path in his aphoristic period and descended into irrational argumentation and pandering to Jewish interests in his last writings. In the fourth part of his article Jünemann argues at length that Nietzsche stole his most important insights in his later works from Dühring, but modified them in such a way to make them a virtual parody of the original; ultimately, they amount to little more than an "unsuccessful attempt at plagiarism." But Jünemann reserves his most venomous attacks for Nietzsche's perverse, because supportive, relationship to Jews and Judaism. He claims that despite some apparently critical remarks about Jews, they remain for Nietzsche "a non plus ultra of intellectual abilities and powerful will"; they are the true bearers of culture and the creator of values. In reality, of course, Jünemann maintains that Jews are "the opposite of what Nietzsche believes them to be, namely parasites destructive of peoples, culture, and morals." Fortunately, continues Jünemann, anti-Semitic doctrine has penetrated far enough into contemporary German thought that its assertions and teachings have become common knowledge, and "every normally thinking and perceiving individual can confirm the correctness of these claims on every Hebrew specimen that crosses his path." Ultimately we are left with the choice of believing that Nietzsche is "the greatest psychologist" and nature is a "comedian," or considering nature to be true and honest and Nietzsche to be "spiritually and morally defective." To a large extent Nietzsche's philosophy is reduced to either illogical nonsense or regarded as propaganda for Jewish interests. At one point his writings are compared to a "Jewish junk shop." Jünemann suggests what amounts to almost a conspiracy between Nietzsche and the Jews. Nietzsche achieves fame and popularity only when he repudiates Wagner and jumps on the Jewish bandwagon; he then receives favorable coverage in the press and even monetary sponsorship of his collected works: "the publication of the many volumes appears to have been made possible only through Jewish money." Since Nietzsche could no longer profit from these alleged subsidies, Jünemann draws Elisabeth into his account, claiming that Jewish interests similarly funded her Nietzsche biography. Indeed, so complete is Jünemann's rejection of Nietzsche that he censures even Elisabeth's husband, Bernhard Förster, the darling of other anti-Semitic periodicals such as Fritsch's Anti-Semitic Correspondence. Förster, Jünemann contends, is a "reactionary anti-Semitic agitator," the proponent of an "anti-Semitic Jewishness and Judaism" that harmonizes well with Jewish blood and has the effect of "watering down genuine anti-Hebraism and weakening it to the point of inefficacy." Jünemann's attacks culminate in the speculation that Nietzsche himself is Jewish, or at least that he has "Jewish blood" in his ancestry. In this manner Jünemann can more easily account for the numerous Jewish traits he detects in Nietzsche's writings: "impudent self-indulgence that knows no bounds; cruelty; crude powers of discernment; abject worship of power and authority; a low, servile morality and mentality." Jünemann concedes that he does not know Nietzsche's family tree, but he concludes nonetheless from his intellectual proclivities that he must have had Jewish ancestors: "His forefathers were pastors, which does not mitigate against this assumption, since baptized Hebrews used to prefer turning to the theological trade. The family is also supposed to have emigrated from Poland, and it is well known that one finds many Hebrews there." In contrast, therefore, to many casual observers who assumed a loose affiliation between Nietzsche and anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitic press not only rejects any connection with Nietzsche but also even considers his works, his reputation, and his family to be infected with the worst aspects of Jewishness.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nietzsche's Jewish Problem by Robert C. Holub. Copyright © 2016 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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