Gustav Landauer: Anarchist and Jew Gustav Landauer: Anarchist and Jew Edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Anya Mali in collaboration with Hanna Delf von Wolzogen ISBN 978-3-11-037395-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-036859-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039560-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/München/Boston Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Contents Abbreviations  vii Paul Mendes-Flohr Introduction  1 Paul Mendes-Flohr Messianic Radicals: Gustav Landauer and Other German-Jewish Revolutionaries  14 Ulrich Linse ‘Poetic Anarchism’ versus ‘Party Anarchism’: Gustav Landauer and the Anarchist Movement in Wilhelmian Germany  45 Michael Löwy Romantic Prophets of Utopia: Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber  64 Martin Treml Between Utopia and Redemption: Gustav Landauer’s Influence on Gershom Scholem  82 Anthony David Gustav Landauer’s Tragic Theater  92 Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann Gustav Landauer and the Literary Trends of his Time  107 Philippe Despoix Toward a German-Jewish Construct: Landauer’s Arnold Himmelheber  121 Corinna R. Kaiser Gustav Landauer’s Early Novella Geschwister: Dying to Communicate  132 Hanna Delf von Wolzogen Gustav Landauer’s Reading of Spinoza  155 Yossef Schwartz Gustav Landauer and Gerhard Scholem: Anarchy and Utopia  172 vi   Contents Wolf von Wolzogen Ina Britschgi-Schimmer: Co-Editor of Gustav Landauer’s Letters  191 Chaim Seeligmann Gustav Landauer and his Judaism  205 Ernst Simon Der werdende Mensch und der werdende Jude: Gustav Landauer’s Development as a Human Being and Jew  213 Brigitte Hausberger My Father, Gustav Landauer  233 Index  238 Contributors  241 Abbreviations GLAA Gustav Landauer Nachlass, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, No. GLAJ Gustav Landauer Nachlass, The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Varia, No. Lebensgang I/II Gustav Landauer, Sein Lebensgang in Briefen, ed. Martin Buber and Ina Britschgi-Schimmer, 2 vols., (Frankfurt/Main: Rütten & Loening, 1929). Mauthner Briefe Gustav Landauer–Fritz Mauthner: Briefwechsel 1890-1919, ed. Hanna Delf, (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994). Aufruf 1911/1919 Gustav Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, (Berlin: Socialist Bund, 1911; 2nd ed. Berlin: P. Cassirer, 1919). Beginnen Beginnen: Aufsätze über Sozialismus, ed. Martin Buber, (Köln: Marcan-Block, 1924). Meister Eckhart 1903/1920 Gustav Landauer, trans., Meister Eckharts mystische Schriften. In unsere Sprache übertragen, (1903; 2nd ed., Berlin: K. Schnabel, 1920). Revolution Die Revolution, vol. 13, Die Gesellschaft. Sammlung sozial- psychologischer Monographien, ed. Martin Buber, (Frankfurt/ Main: Rütten & Loening, 1907; new ed., Berlin: K. Kramer, 1974). Der Sozialist Der Sozialist, Berlin: 1891-1899; Der Sozialist. Organ des Sozialistischen Bundes, ed. Gustav Landauer, (Bern/Berlin: 1909-1915; repr. Vaduz, 1980). Shakespeare I/II, 1920/1923 Shakespeare. Dargestellt in Vorträgen, (1920), 2nd ed. (Potsdam: Rütten & Loening, 1948). Skepsis 1903/1923/1978 Skepsis und Mystik: Versuche im Anschluß an Mauthners Sprachkritik, (Berlin: Marcan-Block, 1903; 2nd ed., Köln: Marcan-Block, 1923; repr. Wetzlar: Büchse der Pandora, 1978). WM 1921 Gustav Landauer, Der werdende Mensch: Aufsätze über Leben und Schrifttum, ed. Martin Buber, (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1921). WA III Gustav Landauer, Dichter, Ketzer, Außenseiter: Schriften zu Literatur, Philosophie, Judentum, ed. Hanna Delf, vol. III of Gustav Landauer, Werkausgabe, (Berlin: Akademie, 1996). Macht und Mächte Gustav Landauer, Macht und Mächte: Novellen, (Berlin: Egon Fleischel, 1903; 2nd ed. Köln: Marcan-Block, 1923). Gespräch Gustav Landauer im Gespräch: Symposium zum 125. Geburtstag, Conditio Judaica 18, ed. H. Delf and G. Mattenklott, (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997). Sensation “… die beste Sensation ist die Ewige … ” Gustav Landauer – Leben, Werk und Wirkung, (Düsseldorf: Theatermuseum, Dumont-Lindemann-Archiv, 1995). NG Die Neue Gemeinschaft: Ein Orden vom wahren Leben. Vorträgen und Ansprachen, part 2, Das Reich der Erfüllung, ed. Heinrich Hart and Julius Hart (Leipzig: Diederichs, 1901). Paul Mendes-Flohr Introduction Idealist war ich immer, Idealist bin ich und das will ich bleiben. Amen … . Güte, grosse, unendliche Güte thut uns noth, und die will heute so warm aus mir hinausströmen in alle Welt. Gustav Landauer1 In February 1912, the forty-two-year-old Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) addressed a group of young socialist Zionists in Berlin. His topic was pointedly entitled “Judaism and Socialism.” Acknowledging his bond to his fellow Jews, he reflected on the “Jewish renaissance,” the awakening sense of Jewishness among erstwhile assimilated Jews. The renewal of a Jewish consciousness, he suggested, is born “first and foremost” of a new appreciation that Jewishness is “an indomitable fact, a natural characteristic that there is something that by nature bonds Jews to one another. One is a Jew, even if one does not know it or wish to confess it.” The socialist anarchist Landauer further observed that this reawakened conscious- ness obliged the Jews to face fateful decisions, and hence the need for leaders beholden to a spiritual vision: “For when a nation stands once again at a turning point when it should initially become what it could and what its inner possibil- ity demands of it, then the poets, then the prophets are needed.” These leaders, Landauer held, should emerge from the ranks of Jewish socialists, who would ally the re-born nation with a cause greater than itself – the command to create a compassionate and just social order. Some socialists will understandably seek to shape the “national community as the basis of the new society. Hence, many Jewish socialists will decide that what is initially needed is a [new] Jewish com- munity.” But, Landauer continues, for other Jewish socialists “the Galut, exile as an inner disposition of isolation and longing, will be the utmost calling that bonds them to Judaism and to socialism. For these [lonely] individuals Judaism and socialism will be the same; they will know that Judaism and socialism have 1 “An idealist I always was; an idealist I am and I will remain so. Amen … . Goodness, abundant, endless goodness is what we need most; and goodness will warmly flow from me throughout the world.” The epigraph is taken from G. Landauer, “Aus meinem Gefängnis-Tagebuch,” Der sozialistische Akademiker I (1895), nos. 13-18, 319. Cited in Ruth Link-Salinger, Gustav Landauer. Philosopher of Utopia (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1977), 47, n. 103. 2   Paul Mendes-Flohr charged them to demand [human] solidarity and justice.”2 A year later Landauer had the occasion to elaborate this gracious and elegant explanation of why he could not align himself with Zionism. In an essay provocatively entitled, “Are these Heretical Thoughts?”– frequently cited in the present volume – he asserts that “the Jews can only be redeemed with [all of] humanity, and that the two are one and the same: to pursue persistently the messiah in [national] banishment and dispersion, and to be the messiah of the nations.”3 In the same breath, he gently rebukes the Zionists for posing a false dilemma of having either to be true to one’s Jewish identity and cultural memory or to embrace world culture and court the inevitable scandal of assimilation. The embrace of world culture, he defiantly affirmed, need not vitiate one’s Judaism. On the contrary, Judaism and other cultural affiliations may dwell parallel to one another in mutual enrich- ment. The modern Jew is a complex amalgam of many cultures, and the demand for a “simplification” of his or her cultural identity and loyalty is both insipid and invidious. Similarly, Landauer regarded himself to be both a socialist – or rather an anarchist – and a Jew. He saw no contradiction between these commitments, nor even a necessary tension between them. This volume of essays explores various aspects of Landauer’s parallel fidel- ities as a Jew and as an anarchist. He fashioned his anarchism as a form of Kul- tursozialismus, with a view to enlisting culture – theater, music, literature – to nurture the values and attitudes necessary for the “realization” of socialism. This conception of the political function of culture goes back to the German romantics who assigned to aesthetic education the exalted task of transforming a society’s moral and spiritual sensibilities. Hence, Landauer’s critique of Marxism, which he faulted for placing what he regarded to be a false emphasis on the objective forces of political economy. True socialism, he argued, would emerge only through the moral and spiritual regeneration of human beings; it cannot be imposed from above either by governmental fiat or by the decree of a revolutionary vanguard: “Revolution is not what revolutionaries think it to be.”4 There is nothing inevi- table about socialism, no inner dialectical logic guiding history. A revolutionary change of the moral fabric of human relations in all spheres of life – economic, social and interpersonal – is indeed the exigent need, but it will only come about with the maturing of the “will to revolution,” with the resolute decision to break with history, to fold back the sad millennial record of social injustice, and begin 2 Landauer, “Judentum und Sozialismus,” Selbstwehr (7 February 1912); also in Die Arbeit. Organ der Zionistischen Volkssozialistischen Partei (June 1920). Reprinted in WA III, 160f. 3 “Sind das Ketzergedanken?” in Vom Judentum, published by the Jüdischer Studentenverein, Bar Kochba (Leipzig: K. Wolff, 1913), 250-57; also in WA III, 170-74. 4 Letter to Fritz Mauthner, 5 October, 1907. Lebensgang I, 172.