342 } Notes to Chapter 6
spiritual community outward from a domestic sphere, which is to serve as both its model
and center. In a richly ironic moment that enfolds Jewish resonances within this German
domestic sphere, the Protestant theologian’s words elicit from Rudolph a quintessentially
Jewish gesture: “he involuntarily kissed the open book” (ibid, 141 ).
160. Auerbach changed the title only after giving a reading of the manuscript (Deutsche
Abende, vi).
161. Auerbach, “Liebe Menschen,” 168.
162. Ibid., 165 – 66.
163. Ibid., 122.
164. Ibid., 122 – 23.
165. Ibid., 131.
166. Ibid., 132 – 33.
167. Auerbach, “Das Leben Spinoza’s,” cxxv.
168. One further 1842 text by Auerbach, “Tagebuch aus Weilbach,” is noteworthy for the
way it also (silently) stages Spinozan intellectual love as the key to consolidating the German
Vaterland. Published in the first quarterly (spring) issue of Der Freihafen, “Tagebuch aus
Weilbach” derives from observations Auerbach made about the local culture during a stay
at a spa in Weilbach in summer 1842 , where he also wrote one of his most famous village
tales, “Ivo der Hairle.” In an extended passage (“Tagebuch aus Weilbach,” 116 – 18 ), Auer-
bach meditates on the possibility of an individual’s realizing himself and/in participating in
a collective life—in particular, that of the Vaterland—that initially seemed foreign. Toward
the end of the passage he alludes to Spinozan “intellectual love” (intellektuelle Liebe) as the
most reliable means of overcoming narrow subjective limitations and realizing a harmonic,
inclusive collective existence. Acknowledging that institutional religion can raise individuals
to a higher plane of existence through a more or less dogmatic formulation of religious con-
sciousness, Auerbach asks whether love and religion that derive from individual conscious-
ness also can do this. His answer is yes, as long as this love and religion become “intellectual
love”: “Certainly, if it has become intellectual love, free and pure knowledge [Erkenntniß];
knowledge uplifts more surely and unwaveringly than any law that has become external. It of-
fers the most unshakeable support, only we must habituate ourselves to being able to invoke
it always, make it independent of our individual circumstances; we then live, in any situation
whatsoever, in the eternal life of knowing love [der erkennenden Liebe]” (ibid., 117 – 18 ). Here
too we see that, even as Auerbach was writing his early village tales, he continued to view
Spinozan intellectual love as the key to overcoming confessional and regional differences and
consolidating a liberal Vaterland.
6. Moses Hess
- Moses Hess, Moses Hess Briefwechsel, 95.
- Auerbach edited Das Deutsche Familienbuch for 1844 and single-handedly wrote Der
Gevattersman: Neuer Kalender für Stadt- und Landbürger auf 1845 ( 1844 ). - Anton Bettelheim mentions Freytag’s comment in Berthold Auerbach (hereafter BA),
- The writers and socialites included Heinrich Laube, Karl Gutzkow, and Gustav Freytag
(see the anonymous chronology of Auerbach’s life in Thomas Scheuffelen, “Berthold Auer-
bach, 1812 – 1882 ,” 52 ).