Wassermann
My Life as German and Jew. By Jacob Wassermann. (Allen and Unwin. 7s. 6d.) WERE it not for the recent events in Germany, Herr Wasser- mann's book might be dismissed as the work of a man of very distinguished mind who unfortunately suffered from an obsessive persecution mania. For the whole history of his life, as it is pictured in his autobiography, is concerned with the single fact that he was a German Jew.
Although he suffered from poverty and even from hunger,
when he was a young man, his agony was mainly intellectual. He discovered that in his relationships with his German contemporaries, he was involved always in an • argument of self-defence. He was bound to combat their suspicions either by defending his race, or else by accepting the humiliat- ing privilege of being acknowledged as an " exceptional " Jew. As he grew older he became conscious of his life and his writing as a mission to make the position of the German Jew—the person whose race was Jewish and environment German—tolerable. He was, of course, fighting a losing battle, and he died in exile from Germany.
What is particularly disturbing about this book, is the conviction that emerges, that Herr Wassermann himself accepted the German racial thesis, and that he also tended to produce as an antithesis some corresponding generaliza- tions about the German race. In the most brilliant of his
summaries, he points out that it is perhaps the similarities in the nature of Germans and Jews which makes the Jews so hated : " Here as there we see centuries of dismemberment and decen- tralization. A foreign yoke, and a Messianic hope for victory over all foes and for unification. Indeed, in this connexion a special tIerman God was invented, who figured in every patriotic hymn as the Jewish God figures in prayers. Here as there we find mis- understandings cn the part of the outside world, ill will, jealousy slid suspicion ; here as there a heterogeneous configuration within the nation ; dissension among the tribes. And we find irrecon- cilable contrasts of individual traits ; practical activity and dreaminess ; the gift of speculation in both the higher and lower senses ; the impulse to economize, to accumulate, to trade ; the impulse to learn, to acquire knowledge and to serve it ; a super- abundance of formulae and a lack of form ; a detached spiritual life that inevitably leads to hubris, to arrogance and unteachable stubbornness."
Passionate as Herr Wassermann's plea against injustice is, he does not make the problem seem capable of solution.
In his note at the end of the book, he is forced. finally into a rather sterile literary attitude of conservatism, which makes him conplain bitterly of the young Jews, the young Germans, and the new literature. The Jews are unbalanced because every rich Jewish family now wants to send one of its members into literature or music, or on to the stage ; the young Germans are of course unspeakable ; the new literature is anarchic and without an ideal.
Herr Wassermann's- testament is, it must be admitted, a defeatist work. His • defeat is fully acknowledged, and it is. tragic, unreasoning and evil. Tragie, because it is
clear enough that he was fighting for the 'most- elementary justice ; simply for the recognition of human qualities in
himself and other German Jews, and for the deletion of a guilt with which the Germans have branded the Jewish race, far worse than any war guilt. Unreasoning, because every claim of civilization to be enlightened insists that Herr Wassermann was justified. Evil, because the forces that destroyed Herr Wassermann and the cause for which he lived seem inevitably sinister.
STEPHEN SPENDER.
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