“Das jüdische Rassenproblem,” Die Welt 17, no. 48 (1913): 1625–26.
Moritz Goldstein (1880–1977) was a writer and Zionist activist. Born in Berlin, he studied German language and literature (Germanistik) at universities in Berlin and Munich. He wrote numerous plays, stories, and novels, only some of which were published. He is best known for his essay “The German-Jewish Parnassas” (1912), which spurred a public debate over the role of Jews in German culture. In 1933 he fled Germany to Italy, and in 1938 he migrated to the United States. He lived in New York City until his death in 1977. See the entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edition, 7:731. Also see Elisabeth Albanis, “A ‘West-östlicher Divan’ from the Front: Moritz Goldstein beyond the Kunstwart Debate,” in Towards Normality: Acculturation and Modern German Jewry, edited by Rainer Liedtke and David Rechter (London: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 217–35.
The blond type of man can be found among the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Incas, and the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands. Obviously, two conclusions can be drawn from this logically: either the ancient Germans undertook expeditions to Africa, East Asia, America, and the South Seas long before the era of trade, or blondness and all that that entails is not a proof of German ancestry. One might think that the latter explanation would be considered the more likely, whereas commonsense would have to be in revolt against the former. Nonetheless, the unbelievable occurs: science has decided in favor of that which reason contradicts. Suddenly German blood is discerned everywhere around the earth, and everywhere and always it is supposed to be this special liquid or juice that brought forth and continues to bring forth all the cultural achievements of humanity. That such a hypothesis flatters the self-regard of the researcher doesn’t seem to concern a single one of them. This doctrine of the superior Teutonic man is being shouted from the rooftops and taken up by people who have a use for this sort of thing; it transcends the professional circles of anthropologists and becomes common knowledge among the educated and cultivated. No wonder, then, that in his latest book so cultivated a Jew as Walter Rathenau48 deplores with such noble objectivity the de-Germanization of Europe!
Meanwhile, the theory of Teutonism—surely one of the most remarkable examples of human error—teaches us just what a dangerous science anthropology is. Undergirding it is an extrascientific interest that stirs all the positive and negative passions. It concerns itself with the worth of human types, and thus with the worth of you and me; and the world would have to have changed in a strange way if the researcher were not always to discover that just the race or group to which he belongs is superior. This was equally the case at a time when we were still quarreling about the hierarchy of religions. Despite all our dearest objectivity, it has never occurred—as far as I know—that someone finished his studies with the result that it was not his but someone else’s religion that would have to be deemed genuine and true. Lessing had to come along first and offer his parable of the three rings to the hotheaded fighters.49
It is about time that the Germano-maniacs and like-minded chauvinists are brought to their senses with this sort of parable [of the rings]. Until that happens, however, we will have to seek refuge in just that science and scholarship that wanted to deny us Jews—and not only Jews—any worth or honor.
We, too, have an extrascientific interest when we approach this research. We leave that fine nonpartisan attitude—which Germanic theory so readily claims for itself, while publicly bemoaning de-Germanization—to those Jews whose motives, conscious or unconscious, are all too apparent, if not comically apparent to us. We others know, before any and all science: a theory that would render us Jews as being naturally and once and for all second-rate human beings must be wrong. Each and every one of us lives in protest to this every single day and hour.
It is obviously out of this experience, and out of the conviction that his studies must result in a refutation of all theories disgracing the Jews, that [Ignaz] Zollschan has approached the racial problem.50 His book is already in its third edition—testifying to just how urgent the desire is to be informed about questions of race value—and so we may ask today, what do we gain from this work?
We have here the scientific justification of all that we, as modern Jews, believe and must believe if we wish to retain our self-esteem in the face of those who despise us, and if we are supposed to have trust in the future of our Volk. An unendingly rich amount of material has been compiled here from his own and other people’s research; this material has been processed and judged from his own point of view, while being delivered to us with an almost ascetic concern for objectivity and fairness. This author permits himself no emotional expressions, no mysticism, and no hypotheticals, though one might sense a passionate temperament and an enthusiastic partiality pulsating beneath that cool façade. This author does not want to dazzle (or hoodwink) like Chamberlain or Sombart; he accumulates material and with a calm gaze evaluates every for and against, to then draw his conclusions with a powerful logic.
Thus, through his work we find our national Jewish convictions completely justified. We learn why the Jews are a “race”—that is, a unity tied by blood (Blutseinheit) that, though having originally emerged from a myriad component elements, maintained its purity over thousands of years. Furthermore, we learn that our descent or lineage does not place us—as it does the Mongol or the Negro—in opposition to Western culture, but rather that we indeed belong to it; moreover, if there is still a degree of separation between us and the Germanic peoples, we must nonetheless be counted among those who—albeit not recently, but generally—have contributed the most to Western culture.
These remarks about our relationship with the world in which we live feel particularly liberating to me. For the need, under the given conditions, to constantly emphasize our national Jewish unity and individuality will foster a feeling of foreignness, isolation, and solitude that makes those who, next to the desire to be honest, possess a certain sensibility, experience their relation to their surroundings as one continuous anxiety. This book demonstrates—even to the chauvinists within our own camp—where unity surpasses diversity, and it demonstrates that if the struggle between the European peoples and the Jews has become embittered, it is a bitterness between brothers who basically still have the same task and the same goal.
We are a race, but what is there to this race? Is it worth maintaining it? Here, too, Zollschan offers us a rich and, for those fainthearted among us, uplifting source of material. It becomes evident what actually ought to be understood by the notion of racial talent (Rassenbegabung): namely, not an inborn, eternally immutable trait, but an inherited disposition to cultural achievement that emerges through either an extended or a brief cultural process. And it does not appear open to question that we belong, from this point of view, to those peoples that are eminently well suited for culture.
At the same time, it remains without doubt that this cultural capability is being neutralized by our situation. The author [Zollschan] has emphatically proclaimed that what is known and disrespected as the Jewish type is in fact a false type of Jew, a type that had to arise under these despicable conditions, as it was the only one that could arise. Whereas the silent types among us—the deep ones, the dreamers, the ones who among the Germans, for instance, contribute most to the glory of their people—all these remain in the dark and lead a futile existence as schlemiels.
Finally, it [Zollschan’s book] shows how this Volk, whose decline and disappearance (Untergang) would represent a terrible loss for humanity, is nevertheless heading toward its decline. Once again, and maybe more strikingly than ever before, the enormous danger of our condition becomes apparent in Zollschan’s book, the crisis in which the Jewish Volk finds itself: it appears that the choice is between being pressed to waste away by others or losing ourselves to dissipation from the inside.
And this is how strictly scientific logic leads to and, indeed, cannot help but lead to Zionism. However, the question as to whether or not the national goals and plans will be realized is not being answered here, and the author—who will not permit himself to utter hopes or fantasies about the future—leaves us with the possibility that his rescue of the Jewish Volk’s honor really only has the merit of being a eulogy.
This book, with the merits of the abundance of its material, its many-faceted research question, and the matter-of-factness of its answers, has in the end only one fault—if I may be permitted to set forth the paradox: its value depends on its content’s being correct. This might seem like the most reasonable of all demands. Yet there are books whose significance resides in something other than their correctness, and perhaps these are the ones actually deserving to be called books in a higher and authentic sense. I am referring to those books that exercise the highest human right, the right to establish values. What does it detract from the works of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche if one demonstrates their mistakes? Zollschan is quite certainly correct when, in the foreword to the third edition of his book, he subjects Sombart’s theories about the origin and type of all that is Jewish (das Jüdische) to a devastating critique; still, I fear that the imaginative formula of that poetically gifted national economist, “forest and desert,” will prove more powerful than Zollschan’s proof to the contrary. Chamberlain’s disastrous book [The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century] likewise is easily refuted, and yet the energy with which he thereby proclaims and “establishes” the value of the Germanic people cannot be made to disappear from the world. What would be essential here would be to reply to those value judgments so hostile to us with our own counterjudgments. Zollschan refuses to do any such thing; he apparently considers it a particular virtue of his work that it has not articulated notions of value or worth, has not passed judgments, but has offered the facts. For this we are very grateful; nevertheless, we eagerly anticipate whoever it is who will accomplish the former. Whoever seeks material with which to achieve this will find it in Zollschan’s book. However, whether his information is correct, whether ongoing research will have to correct it, and whether his conclusions will hold water—this will have to be judged by anthropologists, historians, and sociologists. As the author tells us, no fundamental objections had been raised by the publication of the third edition. In any case, we hope for his benefit and for ours that his book is correct and that it continues to be seen as correct.
48. [Walter Rathenau (1867–1922) was a German Jewish industrialist, statesman, and author who strongly advocated for Jewish assimilation and against Jewish nationalism.]
49. [The reference is to the German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) and his well-known play Nathan der Weise (Nathan the wise). The play, published in 1779, was an important Enlightenment articulation of religious tolerance.]
50. Das Rassenproblem, Dr. Ignaz Zollschan, 3rd edition, expanded and revised. Wien und Leipzig. Wilhelm Braumüller, 1912.