Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

236 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

on a career-defining life of their own. Well into his work on the Schwarzwälder

Dorfgeschichten, Auerbach continued to look to Spinoza as a model for liberal

German cultural and political values. For Auerbach, Spinoza’s ethics could ad-

vance the liberal ideal of the Vaterland above all by encouraging individuals to

move beyond egoistic pursuits and dedicate themselves to the common weal.

I have argued that two prominent aims of Auerbach’s Spinoza novel—recov-

ering a usable past for German Jews through nostalgic depiction of traditional

Jewish life, and depicting Spinoza as an all-reconciling figure and a model for

an inclusive liberal Germany—worked largely at cross-purposes. In his abortive

Spinoza cycle Auerbach sheds the former aim and retains only the latter. He dis-

places Spinoza entirely from the historical milieu of traditional Jewish life and

into contemporary German middle-class culture. Spinoza appears in these sto-

ries, whether explicitly (“Deutsche Abende: Wer ist glücklich?”) or implicitly

(“Liebe Menschen”), only as a set of philosophical teachings that Auerbach

would clearly like to see shape liberal German self-understanding.

“Deutsche Abende: Wer ist glücklich?” stages a social conflict not between

Jews and non-Jews but between different members of the German middle class.

The story opens as Edmund, a young lawyer fresh from the university, has just

finished reading Clemens Brentano’s novella “Die Geschichte vom braven

Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl” (The story of brave Kasperl and the fair

Annerl; 1817 , republished 1838 ) to a salon at the home of Hofrat and Hofrä-

tin Romann. Brentano’s now-classic story of the maid Annerl and Corporal

Kasperl is a tragedy less of love than of the savage consequences of social codes

of honor.^154 Brentano’s theme of honor sets the stage for Auerbach’s plot, in

which the Hofrat and Hofrätin Romann cruelly thwart the love between Ed-

mund and Antonie, their daughter, because they deem Edmund a disadvanta-

geous match. Edmund is arrested for alleged involvement in the publication of

radical literature in Switzerland and spends several months in jail. Let out in

1840 , when Friedrich Wilhelm IV, at the start of his reign, grants amnesty to

political prisoners, Edmund learns that Antonie is to be married to the widower

Regierungsrath Meißner and has fallen gravely ill. Edmund rushes to her, and

they embrace in a tearful scene before Antonie dies.

What fills out this meager plot and constitutes the real substance of the story

is the extended conversation among the society at the Romanns’ salon con-

cerning the nature of happiness. The conversation touches on familiar Auer-

bachian themes, including egoism versus community; the differing roles of the

poet, statesman, and philosopher; and romantic versus intellectual love. One of

the guests, a professor, introduces Spinoza’s definition of happiness into the

discussion, and Spinoza remains the chief philosophical touchstone through-