Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Becoming Citizens of Hegel’s State { 51

and illusions of that Association may have appeared also to him as the brightest

halcyon days of his troubled life.”^28

What Heine remembers having been most salient about Marcus to his fellow

Verein members was not his prodigious knowledge or scholarship but rather his

enthusiastic participation (Teilnahme) itself, his devotion to the endeavors and

illusions (Bestrebungen und Illusionen) of the Verein—which, clearly, were not

reducible to the pursuit of Wissenschaft. Heine underscores an experiential and

performative dimension of the Verein: its members felt that in it something was

happening, and what was happening was not only happening in or around the

production of scholarship, but also—and perhaps primarily—in the participa-

tion in the exhilarating, if ultimately illusory, collective enterprise. Heine also

recalls that “the esoteric aim of this association was none other than a recon-

ciliation [Vermittlung] of historical Judaism [Judentum] with modern Wissen-

schaft, of which one assumed that it would, in the course of time, achieve world

dominance.”^29 The Verein was a vehicle for Wissenschaft, but Wissenschaft, in

turn, allowed the thoroughly marginalized Vereinler to sustain a triumphalist

fantasy. Wissenschaft was less the humble activity that scholars actually practice,

and more an imaginary means of mobilizing political power. As Gans remarked

in his secretarial report to the Verein of March 11 , 1820 , regarding the Verein’s

future prospects: “In this period the Verein not only sought to organize itself or-

ganically inwardly, but the intention [Ansicht] was also brought forward to seek

a firmer, more certain external delimitation. Should this intention be granted, as

is not to be doubted [will be the case], and also supported from without, then

the Verein should [dürfte] very soon be comparable to a state that, well ordered

inwardly [in sich durchaus gerundet] and morally strong, has only to look where

it wishes to make conquests.”^30 In a similarly triumphalist idiom, Gans went on

to characterize the statutes that the Vereinler were in the (long) process of elabo-

rating as the “granite cliffs upon which our beginnings are erected” and as “the

Magna Carta of our institutions.”^31

Hanns Reissner, Gans’s biographer, characterizes Hegel’s theory of science

(Wissenschaftslehre) as an intellectual catalyst (geistiger Katalysator) that thrust

the Verein in directions that members at the founding meeting scarcely could

have anticipated.^32 As they conceived of and established the Verein, Hegel’s

young Jewish devotees heard him lecture in Berlin on an array of subjects. The

most influential lectures for the Verein were those on the history of philosophy

(summer 1819 and winter 1820 / 21 ), the philosophy of religion (summer 1821 ),

the philosophy of world history (winter 1822 – 23 ), and the philosophy of right

(winters 1818 – 19 , 1819 – 20 , 1821 – 22 , and 1822 – 23 ).^33 The book version of Philoso-

phy of Right also appeared in January 1821. Noteworthy, too, is Hegel’s elabora-