Wagner and Nordau on Antisemitism in 19th-Century Europe – CJ Glicksman

Wagner and Nordau on Antisemitism in 19th-Century Europe

By: CJ Glicksman

Until the mid-1800s, European Jews were ghettoized and disenfranchised, often being regarded as a nation inside a nation, a parasite leeching off its mother organism.1 In late 18th century revolutionary France, however, Jews were emancipated and given equal rights. This set a precedent, and Jewish emancipation eventually spread across all of Western Europe. Nevertheless, throughout the 19th century, there was still palpable anti-Semitic sentiment pervading the continent. The trend of Jewish emancipation had generated severe apprehension on the part of many Western Europeans. They were afraid of what the newly liberated Jew’s effect on Western European culture would be.2 This manifested itself in vehement anti-Semitism.

In 1869, Richard Wagner, an esteemed German composer of the time, published an updated version of his formerly anonymous essay, titled “Judaism in Music,” that attempted to explain and justify the hostility he felt towards Jews.3 It described the basis for a hatred of Jewish nature and the reasons why Jews have a deleterious effect on European culture and art.4 Max Nordau, a Western European Jewish writer who lived a little later than Wagner, experienced this anti-Semitic antagonism; in response, he became one of the leaders of the early Zionist movement, a nationalist movement to find a homeland for the Jewish people.5 Wagner and Nordau may have come from opposing sides of the Jewish question, but a comparison of their differing positions reveals that the two historical figures actually share a major opinion: the Jews may not have been capable of assimilating into European culture, try as they may.

Though many people postulate that Wagner had personal motives for writing his essay, he undoubtedly also wrote it with a sympathy towards societal anti-Semitic sentiment. In the essay, Wagner describes a certain “involuntary repellence”6 that people inevitably feel towards the inherent nature of the Jew, regardless of his religiosity. He attempts to explain where this repellence is rooted and why it is warranted, ultimately claiming that because of the Jew’s inherent nature, s/he has a terribly pernicious effect on culture and art, especially on music.7 The repulsiveness of the Jew, says Wagner, exists because s/he is foreign to all who meet him.8 “Only he who has unconsciously grown up within the bond of [his] community, takes also any share in its creations.”9 The Jew, however, “has stood outside the pale of any such community,”10 not having taken part in its evolution; therefore, he is not capable of contributing to its culture.

 Max Nordau originally considered himself to be an assimilated and cultured Western European. Eventually, however, he came to the realization that no matter how hard he tried, people like Wagner would always despise him because of his Jewishness.11 Like Wagner, Nordau realized that there was a subconscious repulsion towards Jews in the psyche of society.12 In his opening speech at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, he spoke about the “psychological law”13 that stops Jews from being able to assimilate. According to Nordau, the nations of the world were “inventing seemingly reasonable causes for the prejudices which are aroused by emotion.”14 Nonetheless, their hatred was groundless and prejudicial.

Remarkably, Wagner and Nordau understood the Jewish emancipation of the 19th century in almost exactly the same way. They both felt that Europeans had fooled themselves into thinking that the emancipation had stemmed from genuine motives.15, 16 On the contrary, Europeans did not truly want the Jews emancipated, but did so as “champions of an abstract [liberal] principle.”17 The emancipation of the Jews was “not out of fraternal feeling for the them but because logic demanded it.”18 For Wagner, this meant that there really was something revolting about the Jewish nature,18 while Nordau saw this as indicative of baseless hatred towards Jews20.

One of Wagner’s most vehement attacks was against the “cultured Jew”21 that emerged in society. As opposed to the “common Jew,”22 the cultured Jew had “taken the most indicible23 pains to strip off all the obvious tokens of his co-religionists”24 and assimilate into European society. Unfortunately for him, Wagner writes, his efforts were to no avail. It is impossible for the secular Jew to genuinely connect with European culture, and he can only have a real, albeit shallow, relationship with “those who need his money.”25 The secular Jew stands “alien and apathetic;”26 he is alien to the European society that won’t accept him and apathetic to his own “history and evolution.”27

Nordau made an identical observation. One of the central themes of his speech to the First Zionist Congress was the miserable limbo in which the emancipated Jew finds himself.28 The emancipated Jew renounces his Jewishness but cannot be accepted by the nations of the world.29 “He flees from his Jewish fellow…but his gentile compatriots repulse him.”30 Before emancipation, a Jew’s identity was defined by the ghetto community in which s/he lived; now free, s/he no longer wished to be part of the Jewish community, but could not assimilate into European culture.31 Similarly to Wagner, Nordau believed that the secular Jew stood alien and apathetic – he no longer had an identity.

 The solution to the spiritual plight of the European Jew was, for Nordau, the creation of a Jewish state and the cultivation of a national Jewish identity.32 He tasked the First Zionist Congress with helping the isolated European Jew reach his or her intellectual and cultural potential, being denied such freedom by the gentile nations.33 He felt this could only be accomplished with the establishment of a homeland and the development of Jewish self-determination.34 Interestingly enough, in “Judaism in Music,” Wagner indicates that he also felt the only solution to be the creation of a Jewish state. At the beginning of his essay, he writes that the objection to the Jews is not a matter of politics.35 Politically, Europeans “have even granted [the Jews] the erection of a Jerusalemitic realm.”36 He further states that Europeans “have rather had to regret that Herr v. Rothschild was too keen witted to make himself King of the Jews, preferring, as is well known, to remain ‘Jew of the Kings.’”37 Here he is referring to Baron de Rothschild, a rich English Jew who, in the mid-19thcentury, sent much of his wealth to provide for Jewish settlements in Palestine.38 Wagner is accusing Rothschild of not taking the responsibility to establish and govern a new Jewish state, choosing instead to live amongst nobility and wealth in England. Wagner may have believed that a Jewish nation-state would solve the problem of Jews in European culture by freeing Europe of their influence.

 Wagner and Nordau associated themselves with two utterly divergent ideologies—one was an anti-Semite; the other a proud Jew. Yet strangely, they agreed on quite a few issues regarding the Jewish question. Both felt that Jewish emancipation was not a genuine demonstration of European kindness, but rather the next logical step in a progressive social movement.39, 40 Both understood that the Jew was unable to truly participate in European culture.41, 42 Both looked at the formation of a Jewish state as the only viable answer to the Jewish question.43, 44 Their opinions only differed in why the Jews were incapable of integrating into European society. Wagner believed that the inherent nature of Jews prevented them from doing so,45 while Nordau felt that Wagner’s unwarranted disgust itself represented the European type that engendered the unassimilable Jew.46 Nonetheless, the similarities between their perspectives seem to indicate the state of European Jewry in the 19th century, as one that created the foundations for both the state of Israel and for the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Footnotes

  1. Eli Barnavi, “Jewish Emancipation in Western Europe,” My Jewish Learning.
  2. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 232-245.
  3. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co. Ltd., 1907) 76-100.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 232-245
  6. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  7. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 76-100.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Ibid., 84.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 234.
  12. Ibid., 235, 236.
  13. Ibid., 241.
  14. Ibid., 235.
  15. Ibid., 236.
  16. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  17. Ibid.
  18. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 236.
  19. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  20. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 235.
  21. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  22. Ibid.
  23. French for unspeakable
  24. Ibid.
  25. Ibid., 88.
  26. Ibid.
  27. Ibid.
  28. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 239.
  29. Ibid.
  30. Ibid.
  31. Ibid., 238-239.
  32. Ibid., 242.
  33. Ibid., 241.
  34. Ibid., 242.
  35. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  36. Ibid.
  37. Ibid.
  38. Kosak, Hadassa. “Immigrant Nations: US and Israel.” Course Lecture from Yeshiva University, New York, NY, September 8, 2017.
  39. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  40. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 236.
  41. Ibid., 239.
  42. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  43. Ibid.
  44. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 242.
  45. William A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. III The Theatre, VIII vols., 80.
  46. Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 235.

Bibliography

Hertzberg, Arthur. The Zionist Idea: A historical Analysis and Reader. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 1997.

Ellis William A., trans. Richard Wagner’s Prose Works Vol. III The Theatre. VIII vols. London: Kega Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co. Ltd., 1907.

Eli Barnavi, “Jewish Emancipation in Western Europe,” My Jewish Learning. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-emancipation-in-western-europe/ Accessed December 24, 2017.

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