308 } Notes to Chapter 3
Gans actually faults the perpetual depravity of the race or line [des Geschlechtes jederzeitige
Verderbtheit].
76. Gans, “Erste Rede vor dem ‘Kulturverein,’” 58 – 59.
77. Hegel, PR § 294.
78. Hegel’s civil servants are martyrs of sorts, through whose self-sacrifice particular in-
terests become reconciled to universal concerns: “The service of the state requires those
who perform it to sacrifice the independent and discretionary satisfaction of their subjec-
tive ends, and thereby gives them the right to find their satisfaction in the performance of
their duties, and in this alone. It is here that, in the present context, that link is to be found
between universal and particular interests which constitutes the concept of the state and its
internal stability” (ibid.). The Vereinler saw themselves precisely as self-sacrificing Hegelian
civil servants, mediating between the particular interests of Jews and the universality of the
state. Moreover—in contrast to the agent who is contracted to render a service, a mere means
to an end—the civil servant performs work that is valuable in itself. Unlike an external in-
strumental service, the civil servant’s work is fused with his inward character and substantial
being (see ibid.): the civil servant’s work is his essence, and vice versa. I would suggest that
this elision of civil servants’ work and being, coupled with Hegel’s emphasis on civil servants’
comportment (their habit, demeanor, and carriage; see ibid. § 296 ), allowed the Vereinler to
equate a certain intellectual and bureaucratic habitus with the actual performance of crucial
work. “Being” Hegelian civil servants through performative self-sylization could double as
“doing.” What to Jost seemed like such a waste of time and resources was in fact a crucial
component of the Vereinler’s lived Hegelianism.
79. Hegel’s claim that “women may well be educated, but they are not made for the higher
sciences, for philosophy and certain artistic productions which require a universal element”
(PR § 166 , Addition) hypermasculinizes the sort of universal reason the Vereinler claim to
embody. In making that claim, they participate in the ethical substance of the (masculine)
state, the Vaterland. On Hegel’s views on women, see Paul Franco, Hegel’s Philosophy of
Freedom, 243 – 47.
80. Hegel, PR § 172.
81. Gans, “Dritte Rede vor dem ‘Kulturverein,’” 80.
82. ibid.
83. Ibid. Gans’s critique of subjective isolation echoes Hegel: “Since the state is spirit
objectified, it is only as one of its members that the individual himself has objectivity, genuine
individuality, and an ethical life. Unification pure and simple is the true content and aim of
the individual, and the individual’s destiny is the living of a universal life. His further particu-
lar satisfaction, activity, and mode of conduct have this substantive and universally valid life
as their starting point and their result” (PR § 258 ).
84. Gans, “Dritte Rede vor dem ‘Kulturverein,’” 80.
85. Ibid.
86. Heine bemoans and ironizes the impenetrable style of the Zeitschrift in a letter to
Zunz of June 27 , 1823. See Heine, Säkularausgabe, 20 : 102 – 3. Regarding the journal’s elitism,
see also Zunz’s letter to Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg of April 18 , 1823 , in which an exasperated
Zunz declares that the Zeitschrift is not a Jewish journal and not intended “to educate the
Jews of Braunschweig” (Nahum Glatzer, Leopold and Adelheid Zunz, 43 ).
87. Gans, “Zweite Rede vor dem ‘Kulturverein,’” 64.