Karl Kraus

Some time ago, one of the gentlemen who now pose as historical advocates of the Jewish people and, with eyes strangely twisted towards the sunrise, agitate for the return of all remaining Jews to the homeland of Palestine, asked me to contribute a small amount to those causes that are called Zionist or, to use a good old word, anti-Semitic. It seemed to be a similar action to the one recently suggested by Mr Schneider [1] in the Lower Austrian parliament. At first I really believed that the friendly collector, as final executor of the Christian-social will - not, as he believes, of the Old Testament - would get the famous ‘shot at Jews’ money, but was soon instructed that anti-Semitism, as preached by the Zionists, refrained from such barbaric measures for the time being and was content to raise the funds necessary for the mere expulsion of the Jews. I had already been told earlier that the Member of Parliament Schneider was sincerely sympathetic to the endeavours of the Zionists, even though they were Jews; only he had already become impatient in view of the unsuccessfulness of Zionist aid to date and had finally, as his motion in the Lower Austrian Parliament proves, energetically taken the matter into his own hands. Since then, it is said that there has been a certain degree of discord between Zionists and Christian Socialists; the former have had to put up with accusations of lukewarmness, while the latter have been accused time and again of breaking the common bond. In addition, there was the performance of ‘The New Ghetto’, a play which, although presenting a thoroughly corrupt Jewish society, disappointed by the unexpected elevation of a single noble-minded Israelite and deprived the author of the sympathies of the authoritative anti-Semitic circles.

But these skirmishes only seemed likely to weaken both parties, which, as it soon turned out, were dependent on each other. However, the anti-Semites, who could do nothing without the influx of Zionists, were the first to suffer from the rift. The Christian-social agitation fell silent and, in view of the parliamentary battles which consumed all the energy of the parties, one could indulge in the hope that even the lowest Viennese would perhaps be beyond the most obtuse anti-Semitism in the not-too-distant future. Only a few articles that appeared in the main Zionist organ, especially the one entitled ‘Mauschel’ [2], brought about the reconciliation secretly longed for by both groups, and the cry ‘Out with the Jews!’ transplanted itself from the camp of the Jewish-national student body into those regions whose ever-ready political inertia was receptive to this convenient slogan, and soon the Jewish anti-Semites were again seen to be heading towards the common goal with a fervour never heard among the Aryan anti-Semites.

Referring to the example of numerous literary figures who did not belong to the Zionist party, the friendly collector in Ischl [3] asked me to give my contribution to the emigration fund in September. He called the sum requested a ‘shekel’, but assured me that, despite the unusually biblical name, this donation did not commit me to any party affiliation and merely ‘entitled me to participate in the election of delegates for the next congress and to receive the notices to be issued by the congress office’. Since this right did not seem to me to be a particularly oppressive one, since I did not see why I should deny my sympathy to a pernicious purpose that would never be realised, and since, after the probable failure of the Zionist idea, I expected material compensation for the deceived Polish proles as the only possible and laudable end to the whole hullabaloo, a monetary contribution in the spirit of that human charity which is the enemy of Zionism did not seem to me to be inappropriate. After all, why should I refuse a cheap favour to a colleague who goes around with a tear-off pad and wants to become the finance minister of the Jewish state by spreading as many of those little yellow patches as possible that entitle to enter the new ghetto? And yet, it was only with all kinds of protests and against the express promise that I would never be usurped in favour of the new faith that I agreed to pay the shekel. I did so wisely, but it did not help. The power of the Zionist promise is so compelling that even those who wish to evade it can read their names in a printed list of party comrades after a short time.

[…]

This is not the opportunity, and it is probably superfluous, to defend the doctrine of assimilation against the attacks of the Jewish nationalists and to play off the adaptability of the Jewish tribe against the rigidity of Zionist minds. But I would like to advise those gentlemen who have not yet tried it on themselves to finally make a start. The refractory Zionist should be easily civilised into a European in just a few years. The irrefutable belief in the adaptability of the Jewish character is the best orthodoxy; just let it first become the faith of the fathers. Destined to merge inextricably with all surrounding cultures and yet always remain a ferment, it proves stronger than its overzealous proclaimers. It is not him that anti-Semitism has chosen as its object of struggle, but the circumstances surrounding him. After all, it is only about certain outward appearances created in the pen of the ghetto, which our stirrers would like to preserve as the holy of holies in the parodistic awareness of their ‘mission’. Judaism will have to sacrifice them; it will not be difficult to deprive its opponents of the few tangible tools at its disposal. ‘They won't break us!’ I recently heard an impatient gentleman from Tarnopol [4] lament in a Zionist meeting. I believe that the whole Jewish question hangs on this re-sounded ‘o’. Between the cry: ‘See that you get on!’ and the despondent: ‘They won't break us!’ there seems to me to be only a slight misunderstanding of a purely dialectical nature ...

The centre of gravity of Zionist agitation naturally rests in Galicia [5]; if it now finally renounces support for the ‘cowardly assimilationists’ of the European West, the plan to remove the Polish Jews makes the great amount of sentiment that Zionism has set in motion appear completely out of place. Where a simple settlement project comes into question, messianic rapture is quite dispensable. Let those who despair of the possibility of solving the eastern Jewish question on the spot make friends with him. It seems to me that the woes and aches of Basel [6] can be cured from one point, and I would wager that, if treated systematically, it would take little more than two generations to transform a Galician Jewish primary school into a casino for the nobility. If one has higher aims, the money now being collected for Zionist purposes will certainly suffice to acquire a decent education. The gentlemen would only have to decide to stop helping the Polish aristocracy, for whom anti-Semitism is the only source of supply. With a thorough isolation from orthodox influences, with a complete renunciation of certain ancestral prejudices in dress and hairstyle, which have long since been overtaken by fashion, the thought of a final colonisation in one's own country seems to me to have much less of a utopian quality than the planned radical cure of exodus. We would have to be given such cogent motives for this as have recently been put forward by the authoritative Zionist side. The governments were so cruel, we heard, as to extend the law of Sunday rest to Jewish workers. But the latter did not want to abandon the observance of the Sabbath and would have to perish miserably in Europe because they now have two unemployed days a week. In Palestine - so ends the logical line of Zionism - of course no compulsion of Sunday rest awaits them.

It is unfortunate to try to counter the irresistible force of such evidence with heretical objections. The Zionist pathos of resignation, rekindled in Basel in the face of a Jewish flag that beckons fulfilment, overcomes all obstacles that reason and reality would like to put in its way. Many more shekels will flow into the national fund before the more reasonable realisation dawns on the authorities that world suffering does not require specialists and that everything that oppresses us is everywhere only a stray socialism that is destined to return to itself before the Jews return to Palestine. Should it not be possible to improve European culture more quickly than to found a Jewish national one? Hitherto the Jews have been scattered all over the world; so have the Christians - they forgot for a time that the Jews were citizens. Nevertheless, I believe that the Christians, if the others only give them time, will succeed in giving up their forgetfulness with some cultural dawning, and the gentlemen in Basel, who presumed to want to break the historical development of a people over their knees, could then at least have contributed to the regeneration of the operetta genre.

In any case, I imagine that the time is still far away when, whenever there is talk of a crown donated for Zionist purposes, one involuntarily has to think of the attributes of the kingdom of Zion. Offenbach's orchestra, which plays the urgent call ‘Off to Crete!’, is, as is well known, unaware of a plan and a more precise itinerary. Let the journalists who telegraph promising news from Basel to the uninterested world be patient and not go around with a face as if they had been reporters at the Bethlehemite infanticide [7]. The playing of nations may well continue for a while yet, and arm in arm with the political supporters of ‘castle music’, that enthusiastically made-up Judaism which pretentiously flaunts a kind of right to persecution may put the last few months of the century in its place. If Zionists and anti-Semites share a worldview that is already a poor one, then it must soon be over.

It seems so shallow and so easy to exploit with the flattest of arguments that one must be ashamed of emphasised opposition. The most remote humanitarian phrases are able to regain the appearance of tantalising originality against the ghetto tendencies. However, if one disregards all possibilities of political danger, then good taste still has a right to protest against the fact that the wealth of thought from which the drunken grocer in the Viennese district of Hernals shouts his ‘Out with you, Jews!’ is simply repeated in Zionism, and that the answer ‘Yes, out with us Jews!’ offers too little variety apart from the more solemn tone.

I would not like to arouse the suspicion that I am speaking as an advocate of those assimilated people who, because they can no longer establish any national connection between their milieu and Galicia, because they are quite rightly rebelling against Zionist harassment, are now turning their new-found social arrogance against their fellow tribesmen who have been left behind in the lowlands of dreary unculture. It does not occur to me to join in the familiar ‘Pss’ sound of reverent admiration that goes through the whole of lower-class Jewry when the name of one of the great Jewish dynasties is pronounced. The sons have found an inner emptiness and an aristocracy of fine nails with their Aryan sporting comrades and can only be distinguished from them by the overzealousness with which they emphasise their similarity. They represent the perfect type of the feudal Jew, who is separated from the snob bourgeois society and the plebeian in the caftan by infinite differences of class. I know someone who now only appears in his traditional or, more correctly, ancestral coffee house with iron-shod shoes because he wants to give the impression of being on horseback. The horse that goes with it must have been left behind somewhere in the Middle Ages. Certainly, this was already a proud family at that time, and only later must it have come down to some extent; for it is a dark chapter in the genealogy of this house that suddenly the grandfather of today's progenitor tried his luck in the trade of rabbit fur. Admittedly, the memory of the spore-rattling descendant goes back at most to the Middle Ages ...

Ischl has recently become a popular transit station for Zionist racial researchers who want to take their last experiences or disappointments with them on their way to Basel. The only Zionist who was able to stay here for a longer period of time was bound to the Ischl clod by professional considerations; he is a dentist and as such lived only in thoughts of the thousand-year-old toothache of Judaism ...

The friendly coffee house on the Esplanade might seem like the last snack stop before the final departure. On closer inspection, however, one discovers that the prototypes of sedentariness have met here here, which could really upset even the most inveterate anti-Zionist; people who want nothing to do with a disturbance of their peace guaranteed by MP Noske [8], but who are still fighting tooth and nail against an attempt at assimilation for the time being. Nature seems to have shown a better ability to adapt. When I went out recently, I was able to observe how, over time, it has adopted the habits of the people who visit it every day. I heard a little brook murmuring, and when I, astonished by this, called into the forest, the echo answered me with a question ...

As you can see, a small change in nature that means nothing compared to the devastation that the 300 delegates may have caused in the Swiss countryside. All those who did not heed the call from Basel must be defended against them. Come here, all of you - I would like to say to them - who are weary and burdened; shake the grouch from your foreheads and don't let the Zionist promises of a better future make you sad! Do not look longingly towards the land to which they want to lead you - for this is the land of Uz [9]. So I would like to speak to the people who live on the Ischl esplanade, in the land of servitude, through which the Traun flows and in which the tourist tax is high ...

But this admonition is not only addressed to the people of Ischl, to the settled people who can only be shaken up by a social push; with much more justification and more love to the countless who have nothing to lose, at most a deceptive hope. The propertied classes, feudal Jews and bourgeois alike, will respond to the Zionist appeal with a broad smile. In the weary hearts of the Galician proletariat it will kindle the pernicious embers. The longing only warms as long as the ignorance of the real facts lasts. The creation of a Fata Morgana, i.e a mirage, is not social reform, but false pretences, and for the wanderer in the desert every illusion must prolong the path of suffering. It is hardly to be expected that the Jews will enter the promised land dry-shod this time; another red sea, social democracy, will block their way there.

A few gentlemen feel disturbed by the sluggishness of their surroundings; finely organised natures, blasé about the early successes that have given them talent and good fortune in abundance, they urgently need a new, more serious purpose in life. Without doubt, this requires the participation of the public. One may well be worried about the development of Dr. Theodore Herzl, the finest of the younger Viennese prose writers. But the fact that for the sole reason that he needed a transition from the feuilleton to the editorial, hundreds of thousands, fooled by a glimmer of vain splendour, had to sink back into their old lot in double misery, was certainly not the course of events predetermined by the world order. Where is Mr. Nordau [10], the great literary doctor, who always thought he had to feel the pulse of the dying century at the slightest anomaly of the times and with rare urgency? ...
Oh, he is chairman of the Zionist Congress!

Notes

[1] Ernst Schneider, an Austrian politician who, in the Diet of Lower Austria, said that the government should offer a premium for the shooting of Jews similar to that offered for shooting wolves.

[2] Theodore Herzl, Mauschel, Die Welt, 15 October 1897.
(see: https://www.panarchy.org/palestine/mauschel.html)

[3] Town in Austria.

[4] Tarnopol (now Ternopil) is a city in western Ukraine.

[5] Galicia is a historical and geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine.

[6] The First Zionist Congress was held in Basel on August 29–31, 1897. Two hundred and eight delegates and twenty-six press correspondents attended the event. It was convened and chaired by Theodore Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionism movement.

[7] The reference is to the killing of the newborns ordered by Herod in Bethlehem and surrounding area, as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew.

[8] Gustav Noske (1868-1946) was a German politician, one of the leading members of the German Social Democratic Party. He became famous, in a negative sense, for using army and paramilitary forces to suppress the socialist/communist uprising of 1919 that led to the killing of around 165 people.

[9] The land of Uz is a location mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible, most prominently in the Book of Job which beging: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job”.

[10] Max Nordau (1849-1923) was a physician, essayst, social critic and Zionist leader. He was co-founder, with Theodore Herzl, of the Zionist Organization, and president or vice-president of several Zionist Congresses.