336 } Notes to Chapter 5
which Auerbach wanted to rehabilitate as a cure for the very Zerrissenheit for which Heine,
more than any other figure, was the emblem (“Das junge Deutschland und die Juden,” 3 : 514 ;
on Heine’s pantheism, see also 3 : 513 ). In a March 1836 review of Heine’s History of Philoso-
phy and Religion, Menzel underscores how, of all the religious thinkers and philosophers he
discusses, Heine shows true admiration only for “the Jew” Spinoza. Among the attempts by
philosphers to offer something new in the place of religion, Heine finds “that of the Jew Spi-
noza the most deserving of thanks. To this Jew alone he grants unqualified honor. The Chris-
tian philosophers, even when he praises their anti-Christian engagement [Treiben], always
receive some sort of mocking parting shot” (Menzel, “Rezension zu Der Salon Bd 2 ,” 3 : 566 ).
53. See Heine, DHA, 8 (part 1 ): 62.
54. Gustav Pfizer, “Heine’s Schriften und Tendenz.” The essay was originally published
in the inaugural issue of Deutsche Vierteljahrs Schrift. As Jonathan Skolnik (“Writing Jewish
History between Gutzkow and Goethe,” 119 , note 10 ) points out, Auerbach refers in Das
Judenthum und die neueste Literatur to Pfizer’s poem “Der ewige Jude,” which appeared
in his 1831 Gedichte ( 284 – 89 ). Pfizer’s poem is also an intertext in the culminating scene of
Auerbach’s 1837 Spinoza, in which he attempts to put the figure of Ahasuerus, as the embodi-
ment of base particularity, literally to rest.
55. For Riesser’s Jüdische Briefe, see volume 4 of his Gesammelte Schriften. The letters
pertaining to Heine and his critics are reproduced in Riesser, “Jüdische Briefe.”
56. Riesser, “Jüdische Briefe,” 5 : 221.
57. Ibid.
58. Gustav Pfizer, “Heine’s Schriften und Tendenz,” 4 : 239.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., 4 : 247.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., 4 : 267.
63. Ibid., 268. Pfizer forgets his own contention a few sentences earlier that Jews show
their support for Heine only through secret gestures, a contradiction that was not lost on
Riesser. See Riesser, Gesammelte Schriften. 4 : 76.
64. Pfizer, “Heine’s Schriften und Tendenz,” 4 : 268.
65. Ibid.
66. On this dynamic, see Breckman, DS, 182 – 83.
67. Riesser, Gesammelte Schriften 4 : 69.
68. For a passage of Ruge’s 1838 Heine essay (originally published in the Hallische Jahr-
bücher) with antisemitic overtones, see Arnold Ruge, “Heinrich Heine, charakterisiert nach
seinen Schriften,” 4 : 301 – 2.
69. Breckman, DS, 252. Ruge makes his change of view explicit in his 1842 essay “The
Christian State.” In the early 1840 s, in such essays as “Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ and the
Politics of Our Times” ( 1842 ) and “A Self-Critique of Liberalism” ( 1843 ), Ruge emphatically
follows Feuerbach.
70. Theodor Echtermeyer and Arnold Ruge, “Der Protestantismus und die Romantik,”
258.
71. Heine would finally redeem himself in Ruge’s eyes with his politically engaged
Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen of 1844. After the publication of this text, Ruge—along
with Marx; Heinrich Börnstein, editor of the radical German exiles’ Paris journal Vorwärts;