Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Patriotic Pantheism { 20 7

von Cotta.^28 The Eos campaign against Heine, which unfolded with interrup-

tions over the next several years, by no means created the image of Heine as

egoistic, frivolous, insincere, or witty but lacking in substance, for, as George Pe-

ters has shown, this litany of Heinean flaws had become widespread by the late

1820 s.^29 The campaign was novel, however, in associating these traits with He-

ine’s Jewishness in an emphatic and sustained way.^30 Döllinger conflated Prot-

estant liberals with morally decrepit and venal Jewish journalists à la Heine and

underscored Heine’s self-indulgent subjectivity.^31 In an 1831 review of the fourth

volume of Heine’s Reisebilder Döllinger dismisses the “Freiheit” for which

Heine calls in Englische Fragmente as a passing fad and so much aping of the

French.^32 Neither Heine nor the crowd (Menge) understands what true freedom

is, in Döllinger’s view. Heine’s book is a “most despicable product of the most

depraved Jewish impudence [Judenfrechheit] .”^33 What Heine and the liberals

understand as freedom is really “detachment from mores and morality [Sitte

und Sittlichkeit] .”^34 In a word, liberal freedom is depraved ( Jewish, French)

egoism, as opposed to wholesome German Catholic communal solidarity.

In 1831 , in response to the first volume of Ludwig Börne’s Briefe aus Paris

(Letters from Paris; 1830 ), Eduard Meyer, a Hamburg gymnasium teacher, pub-

lished Gegen L. Börne, den Wahrheit-, Recht- und Ehrvergeßenen Briefsteller aus

Paris (Against L. Börne, the letter writer from Paris oblivious of truth, right, and

honor). Directed chiefly against Börne, Meyer’s pamphlet also attacked Heine

and the Jewish-born satirist Moritz Saphir. Though all three writers had con-

verted to Protestantism, Meyer contended that the name “Jew”

denotes not only the religion, but also the entire nationality, and so stands

in relation to Germans, Slavs, and Greeks, not only Moslems [Muhammed-

anern] or Christians. It is not the Jews’ faith that we hate, as they would like

to exculpate themselves by having us believe, but rather the many ugly pecu-

liarities of these Asiatics [Eigenthümlichkeiten dieser Asiaten], which cannot

so easily be cast off with baptism: the insolence and overbearance so com-

mon among them, the immorality and insouciance, their cheeky character

and their frequently so mean fundamental disposition.^35

Meyer further characterized Börne and Heine as the most “significant Jewish

political literati” whose “ultrarevolutionary orientation” had its “chief cause in

the exasperating, misguided [verkehrten] nature of their disposition, which is

closely linked with their Jewishness [Jüdischheit] and which harbors not a bit

of love and respect for that which has been historically achieved and cultivated

by the German people.”^36 In response to Meyer’s polemic, the stalwart Jewish

rights activist Gabriel Riesser contested the purported Jewishness of Börne and