Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

144 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

visited Hamburg en route to Paris, responded on May 25 , 1825 ): “He has trans-

lated Hegel not only in succum et sanguinem, sed etiam in cutem et os. He says

e.g. “das Heckste” for das Höchste [the highest], can’t stand to see any Schiller

lying on the table, etc. The local ultra-monists or Unitarians viewed his apol-

ogy for the triad, which he intentionally pulled out [seine absichtlich hervorge-

suchte Apologie der Trias], as a predestined transgressio in partes infidelium.”^174

Whether Gans’s Hegelian apology for the triad signaled that he was merely a

dyed-in-the-wool Hegelian, already on the way to conversion, or both, Wohlwill

wittily suggests that the Unitarians looked on Gans’s defense of triadic thought

as a regression to heathenism!

Hegel remains a theme of the Moser-Wohlwill correspondence even after the

frequency of their letters dropped off substantially in the late 1820 s and 1830 s.

In a letter of November 19 , 1832 (now largely unreadable due to deterioration),

shortly after Hegel’s death, Wohlwill wonders how Hegel had contracted chol-

era and what his last words were, and asks Moser to inform him “very soon

about everything you have learned about our teacher’s end.”^175 On March 17 ,

1831 , buoyed by what had been happening in France since the revolution of

July 1830 , Moser remarks that the Idee is now becoming real, and that it is as if

the Weltgeist is finally back in action.^176 Writing to the newly married Wohlwill

on November 8 , 1831 , Moser jokingly approves of his wife’s method of keeping

him calm by bringing him Hegel’s Encyclopedia to read (Hegel had revised and

greatly expanded the 1817 version in editions of 1827 and 1830 ): “It is delight-

ful that your wife already knows to bring you Hegel’s Encyclopedia when she

wants to calm you down. That is far more sensible than if she understood it

herself.”^177 In the penultimate (undated) letter of their correspondence, Moser

writes to Wohlwill about the recent publication of Hegel’s lectures as part of

the first edition of Hegel’s complete works. Praising Karl Ludwig Michelet’s

work on the Lectures on the History of Philosophy as superior to Philipp Kon-

rad Marheineke’s on the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Moser remarks

to his friend: “Hegel’s lectures now appearing in print surely will not escape

your attention. For you these must also have the special interest of a memory of

youth.”^178

As late as May 18 , 1828 , Moser still understands his existence in the polarized

terms of individual existence versus Wissenschaft. He shares the following pas-

sage with Wohlwill, copied from his diary: “Wissenschaft and individual (social,

familial) life: my existence stands under the sway of these two powers, and it re-

mains caught in a dim aspiration for unification, which doesn’t get realized [ohne

es zur Gestalt und That zu bringen]. My self [Die Selbstheit] is far too subjected

to these principles instead of taking possession of them to the fullest by generat-