MY LIFE AS GERMAN AND JEW BY JACOB WASSEHMAJVN Translated by N
BIIAIAEV Published In Now York by COWARD-MeCAiMV, Inc. COPYRIGHT
1933 BY JACOB WASSERMANN FIRST EDITION PRINTED. IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA DEDICATED TO FERRUCCIO BUSONI THE FRIEND AND THE
ARTIST DISREGARDING my mental habit of moving among images and
figures, impelled by an inner need and by the urgency of the times,
I would render an account of the most perplexing side of my life,
that which concerns my Jewishness and my existence as a Jew. Not as
a Jew in the simple sense but as a German Jew a double concept
which even to the disinterested lays bare copious
misunderstandings, tragedies, conflicts, quarrels and sufferings. A
delicate subject always, whether it was treated diffidently or
freely or defiantly, one side seeking to extenuate, the other
openly malicious. Today it is an incendiary focus. I am very
anxious to present my point of view. Nor shall I take for granted
anything that I previously regarded as demonstrated. Thus I shall
depend on no proof, no vindication or in- 1 MY LIFE AS GERMAN AND
JEW dictment, nor any sort of constructive eloquence. I shall cite
experience only. An imperative urge has driven me to seek a clear
understanding of the nature of that discord which runs through all
my activity and being, and of which the years have made me ever
more painfully aware and conscious. While still im mature, man is
much less susceptible to certain perplexities than in his maturity.
Then, to the extent that he is devoted to a cause or an idea
fundamentally the same thing he gradually escapes from that
delirious state in which his ego possesses the magic of
absoluteness and in which the world and humanity, byvirtue of a
pleasant and half - voluntary delusion, appear subservient to his
dormant will in its condition of emotion born change. To the extent
that ones own per son ceases to be a miracle and to constitute a
purpose, until at last it becomes a scarcely per ceived
intermediate element the shadow, so to speak, of a body unknown and
unknowable to that extent does the difficulty and perilousness 2 MY
LIFE AS GERMAN AND JEW of life with and among men increase, as does
the mystery of all that we call reality and ex perience.
Ultimately, even in the most gifted and re ceptive minds, few
distinctive signs remain to mark the road covered. How many
unforget table and ineradicable traces persist in the soul depends
on the breadth of ones destiny. 3 I WAS born and raised in Fuerth,
a predominantly Protestant manufacturing city of Middle Fran conia,
with a large Jewish community consisting principally of artisans
and tradesmen. The Jews formed about a twelfth of the total popu
lation. Tradition has it that this is one of the oldest Jewish
communities of Germany. Jewish set tlements are said to have
existed there as far back as the ninth century. Probably, however,
they began to increase and flourish only at the end of the
fifteenth, when the Jews were expelled from the neighboring city of
Nuremberg. Later another stream of refugees Jews driven out of
Spain came across the Rhine into Franconia. Among these, I believe,
were my maternal an cestors, who for centuries lived in villages in
the 4 MY LIFE AS GERMAN AND JEW valley of the Main, near Wiirzburg
my ancestors on my fathers side lived in Fuerth, Roth am Sand,
Schwabach, Bamberg and Zirndorf . Thirty or forty decades of living
in this coun trymust have given those Jews a close inner
relationship to its soil, climate and people a relationship which
must have been bred in their very bone, even though they resisted
this in fluence and formed a distinctly alien element in the
national organism. Until the middle of the nineteenth century
oppressive restrictions were in force the registry law, inability
to live wherever they pleased without paying special taxes, the
prohibition of free choice as to trade or profession. My mothers
father, a cultured man of noble gifts, was destroyed by these
restrictions...
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