Jews queers germans, p.4
Jews Queers Germans, page 4
Varnbüler is a suave, somewhat irreverent voluptuary whose diplomatic career Eulenburg has in the past advanced, and who sees Harry Kessler occasionally on the upper-crust social circuit. Kessler finds Varnbüler’s wife Natasha, with her flare for the dramatic—“all artifice and Slavic cleverness” (her father was a Russian sea captain)—more consistently entertaining than her husband, and Kessler and Natasha Varnbüler occasionally go together to the theater. Both are particular fans of Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, and Kessler deeply admires and forms close friendships with the contemporary theater luminaries Max Reinhardt and the designer Gordon Craig. Harry thinks his theater outings with Natasha are making her husband jealous—“laughable, if it’s true,” Harry writes in his diary.
Eulenburg is still closer to his other dear friend, Count Kuno von Moltke, his ghostly doppelgänger. Both men are gentle, musically inclined, ill-suited to military rigor—and problematically attached to family life. Kuno does marry, but he and his wife Lily are constantly at odds, sometimes arguing in public; the marriage quickly dissolves, and Philipp plays a role in its failure. He opposed the union from the first, having described the prospect as “extremely gruesome to me” and having claimed that Kuno was in a state of “despair” over the pending alliance.
Philipp does his best to advance Kuno’s career, though the task isn’t easy. Kuno’s sensitive, passive temperament, even his posture, bears so little resemblance to the ramrod model of Prussian manhood that few take him seriously. Though he manages to botch every political appointment Philipp gets for him, Eulenburg’s influence is such that Kuno, with each failure, somehow continues to move up a notch until his starting point as a mere military attaché culminates in 1905 with Wilhelm appointing him Commandant of the city of Berlin.
Many upper-class 19th-century men, especially in Germany, share the view that male friendship stands at the apex of human relationships, but Kuno’s version is so mawkishly sentimental that “friendship” with him takes on intractably erotic overtones. In letters between Kuno and Axel Varnbüler, they refer often to Philipp as “Philine”—the feminized version of his name—and Kuno, in describing his feelings during a temporary separation from Philipp, writes “I long for the old Philine . . . [I] must see her out of the feeling that we must hold each other doubly tightly after this tear in our intimate circle.” If this is “friendship,” it’s of a declared profundity that neither Kuno nor Philipp has ever made to their wives.
Harry Kessler knows both men from their occasional appearance at Cornelia Richter’s salon, and he finds both likeable enough, though in their linked sentimentality and deference to authority, foreign to his own sensibilities. Kessler’s capacity for friendship is profound, but he recoils from bonds he finds artificially cloying. He equates sentimentality with “phony feelings”—its presence is to him a sure sign that no genuine emotions are at hand; sentimentality in his view equates not with strength of feeling, but with its absence.
Kessler also feels at odds with von Moltke and Eulenburg’s adoring attitude towards the Kaiser, exemplified by their conviction that he rules by “divine right.” Absolutism of any kind raises Kessler’s hackles. In his view there are no preordained masters and no absolute truth, there are only ideas that are “absolutely compelling” because they meet felt needs at a particular point in time—and those ideas lose their validity with the passage of time and the rise of different needs. So it is, he feels, with the idea of God: “You can no longer argue,” he insists, “about whether the idea of God is true or untrue. It has been shown to be untrue”—shown by Nietzsche, among others. In all these ways Harry Kessler is a renegade, a traitor to his class.
Kessler is startled, in the summer of 1906, to get an invitation from Maximilian Harden, the hard-hitting editor of Die Zukunft, to lunch with him at the posh Palasthotel. It happens to be one of Kessler’s favorite restaurants in Berlin, but given his hectic social schedule he accepts reluctantly. He hardly knows the man, though they’ve been introduced here and there. Everyone, of course, hears about Harden; given his penchant for provocation he’s become the most feared—and widely read—journalist in Berlin.
Kessler shares many of Harden’s views, and in particular his fierce criticism of the person and policies of Wilhelm II. But Kessler’s interests are at this point in his life centered on culture, not political polemics. Increasingly connected to artistic circles throughout the continent, he spends nearly as much time in France and England as he does in Germany, and he tends to think of himself more as an urbane cosmopolitan than a German nationalist.
Could it be, he wonders, as he works his way across the Tiergarten to the hotel, that Harden wants to write a piece about the avant-garde German Artists League that he’s done so much to form? No, that seems unlikely; the League is nearly two years old and art has never fallen within Harden’s purview. What then? Some controversial aspect he’s dug up regarding the removal of the Nietzsche Archive to Weimar? Possibly, since Harden manages to find controversy wherever he looks and since Kessler did play an active role in the transfer of the archives from Naumburg. Still, Harden isn’t known for his interest in matters of philosophy or literature either.
Perhaps he’s caught wind of the splash Kessler made as director of the Weimar Museum and the whispering campaign that the town’s conservative burgher class designed to get him removed from his post. Yes, that’s probably it, Kessler decides, as he moves through the crowded Berlin streets (its population has nearly tripled in the years since it became the capital of a unified Reich following the successful 1870–71 war with France); Harden is thinking of writing about the Weimar controversy. Well, Kessler tells himself as he pushes through the fortress-like doors to the hotel, whatever it is, I’ll know soon enough.
On entering the restaurant, Kessler immediately spots Harden’s distinctive face—he’s still ruggedly handsome, Kessler thinks, though older than me, probably in his early forties; a pity he compromises his good looks with a permanently-creased brow of suspicion, his thin lips tightly drawn, his eyes beadily intent.
Harden is already seated at a quiet table toward the back of the crowded restaurant and, as Kessler approaches, rises quickly to greet him.
“So sorry to be late,” Kessler says, as they crisply shake hands.
“I’m grateful to you for coming at all,” Harden replies. “Most grateful.”
“When was it we last met? At the Richters’?” Harden looks puzzled. “Or perhaps it was at Walther Rathenau’s?”
“No, I think this is the first time. I should certainly have remembered.”
“Oh? My mistake. I thought we’d crossed paths earlier.” Curious, Kessler thinks, as he sits down opposite Harden: does he have a bad memory or a bad conscience?
“Perhaps I’m mistaking you for someone else,” Kessler mischievously adds.
The two are now seated facing each other. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering lobster and wine,” Harden says. “I hope that meets with your approval.”
“Indeed yes. Very extravagant of you.” They smile warily at each other.
At that very moment a waiter in white tie arrives at the table and, after serving the food, pours a small amount of white wine in Harden’s glass. He tastes it and smiles with pleasure. “Superb!” he tells the waiter, who, with a flourish, pours wine in both their glasses, then bows and departs.
Kessler glances at the bottle. “Château d’Yquem!” He exclaims. “You are being extravagant!”
“My pleasure . . . And the Ducal Museum, is it still making the locals rabid?” Harden asks.
“I’ve ended my role there. Too much else to do. My friend and ally Henry van de Velde will carry on the good fight.”
“I’ve seen a few of his buildings and admire them.”
“Did you know he designs furniture as well? My own house in Weimar—which I’m keeping—is filled with it. It’s wonderfully comfortable, elegant yet unpretentious.”
On they wander for a time, at one point segueing somehow into Pre-Raphaelite painting, with Harden expressing special enthusiasm for the work of Burne-Jones.
Kessler politely dissents. “Burne-Jones,” he says, “dreams of women he’s seen in photographs, not of real women in flesh and blood. But I do credit the Pre-Raphaelites with agitating for something new. Millais, I believe, is the only one of them to hint at a glimpse of the unforeseen. At best, he’s a continuation of Constable.”
“I’m clearly out of my depth here,” Harden responds, aiming for a graciousness that doesn’t come naturally.
“Augustus John,” Kessler continues, “is the real comer, though still in his twenties. He’s an uncombed bohemian, with more passion and fire than anything I saw in the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit recently in London.”
At the mention of London, Harden perks up. “And how do you find the English these days?”
Ah, Kessler thinks, so politics is to be our topic—what else would it be with Harden? “If you mean working-class Englishmen, their plight is lamentable. Everywhere I go, on the streets, in the shops, I see the same exhausted, pale faces, or rather clueless remnants of faces, that make you despair of democracy, if that’s what the English system is.”
“Surely more so than Germany,” Harden offers.
“I find, strangely, that autocracy and religious intolerance can go hand in hand with absolute freedom in moral, artistic, and economic matters—in Turkey, for example.”
Harden noticeably perks up. “Surely the democracies of England and America are in advance of our own autocracy.”
“I can only say that in both countries I saw a public of mute, tired workers too worn out from their daily labor to engage with political matters. When you see the people, you despair of democracy. When you see the nobility in Germany you despair of the aristocracy.”
“Yet Germany, thanks to Bismarck, is unrivaled in passing legislation to provide health insurance, pensions too, to factory workers.”
“Yet the average work day is still twelve hours long, six days a week—hardly conducive to health, not to mention participation in public affairs.”
“Forgive me, my dear Kessler, but nothing seems to please you.”
“Not in politics, you’re quite right. I don’t think the form of government most conducive to individual freedom has yet been invented. Which is why I devote myself to promoting contemporary art.”
“But there, too, our dear sovereign runs the show. Is that not true?”
“To a great extent, yes. And his taste is abysmal.”
“Did he interfere with your work in Weimar?”
“No, no. That would have been beneath him. But two years ago, he interfered with the committee appointed to choose art pieces for the St. Louis World’s Fair.”
“In what way ‘interfered?’”
Kessler laughs. “He disbanded it!”
“Really? I hadn’t heard a word . . .”
“It seems the committee dared to select a few—a very few—modernists. The Kaiser promptly turned over the choice of paintings entirely to—Anton von Werner!”
“Of course!—The Kaiser’s favorite.”
Kessler thought they were moving from art to politics, but as Harden’s guest he lets him have the reins.
“Several of us from the Artists League started a petition,” Kessler continues. “The Kaiser, you know, views the League as an alliance for the advancement of the Jews—as he so delicately puts it.”
“The Kaiser isn’t fond of Jews. I am one, you know.”
“I do.”
“That is, I was born one.” Harden stares fixedly at his guest, as if daring him to pursue the subject.
Kessler decides to oblige, annoyed at his host’s transparent eagerness for combat. “I see. You converted.”
“I’m a Lutheran now,” Harden says evenly, his tone some unpleasant amalgam of sarcasm and melancholy.
“Would it be rude of me to ask why?” Kessler asks blandly.
“Yes, it would!” Harden cheerfully responds. “But rudeness is my middle name. Haven’t you heard?”
“I ask because my good friend Walther Rathenau, also a Jew, regards conversion—though he’s in no formal sense religious—as futile. In two senses. Christians will still regard you as a Jew: superficially acceptable—unless you’re a Jew from Poland or Russia—yet fundamentally alien. And futile, too, because you cannot disinherit, will away, what is indelibly ingrained—like the Jew’s profound sense of apartness.”
“Your friend Rathenau is wrong. Judaism in Germany has become no more than an empty shell. It has outer form, but no content. A hereditary relic.”
“An empty shell? I myself am not Jewish, but—”
“—you’re a Count—of course you’re not Jewish!” Harden can’t help but chuckle.
“Yes, of course. I see your point.” Kessler looks uncomfortable.
“Come, come—I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“I have no religion of any sort myself, you understand, but it does seem to me that Jews are culturally distinctive in a number of ways. Their intense respect for the intellect, for one. And—at least so their detractors claim—an aggressive desire to achieve, a will to power, if you like. Both traits, as you surely know, have often been ascribed to you.”
Harden can feel his temper flare, but manages to control it. “It’s possible to be culturally distinctive within the context of absolute patriotism.”
“If public opinion will permit. Jews, as you have been quick to remind me, are barred from the higher ranks of the civil service, the nobility, and the officer corps.”
“And are disproportionately represented in the medical and legal professions, and in science—for heaven’s sakes, my dear Kessler, men like Einstein and Paul Ehrlich stand at the very pinnacle of the scientific world!”
“And silently endure the intense resentment of their colleagues.”
Harden shakes his head in dismay. “I can see there’s no persuading you.” Harden is ready to abandon the topic, but Kessler feels the need for a final statement.
“I cannot help but think it a fantasy, a fiction, to insist that the Jewish people are fully assimilated into German life. Such assimilation as exists seems to me partial, superficial, and hollow. I plainly see anti-Semitism in myself. Yes, I admit it. At lunch yesterday at the Natansons’ I thought to myself, ‘There’s an awful lot of talk going on here about how much something costs or is worth.’ What nonsense! There was a great deal more talk—excited talk—about the Nabis school and Vuillard and Bonnard’s new paintings. At the Richter salon, I daresay, there’s at least as much talk of how much something costs, yet I pass right over it. I tell you anti-Semitism is ingrained in all of us. And not just in Germany, though it surely flourishes here.”
“And I can only respond by telling you that as a dissimilated—converted—Jew, I find no doors closed to me that I would care to open in any case. Nor any venue for expressing any views I might wish to offer.”
Topic closed—though Kessler cannot resist a final thrust: “I’ve been told the Kaiser is furious that ‘a Jew’—which is how he refers to you—“should be able to make money by insulting him.”
“When I attack the Kaiser,” Harden icily replies, “it’s because he’s done or said something stupid. He provides abundant copy.” Harden pushes away his plate and signals the waiter to bring coffee. “Come now, Kessler—this petition you mentioned earlier . . . tell me more about that . . .” “I doubt it will interest you . . . The petition’s in support of the modern movement in art. Max Reinhardt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Liebermann, Gordon Craig—a number of luminaries have signed it. Though not—predictably, I suppose—Stefan George. He objects to something he calls ‘interference with the transcendental importance of individual sovereignty.’”
Harden laughs. “Such rubbish. Affectation only suits genius; everyone else is ruined by it.”
“Exactly! It was in order to foster ‘individual sovereignty’—in opposition to lockstep academic conventions—that we formed the Artists League!”
“Has your friend Rathenau signed the petition?”
Kessler picks up Harden’s arch tone, but chooses to ignore it. “He has. Though not before lecturing me about the need to call more attention to the aesthetics of the machine—to ‘suggest to the workers,’ as he put it, ‘the freedom to be found in technology.’”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“Never mind. Rathenau’s a brilliant man, but I fear his longing to combine Prussian order with utopian socialism will never bear fruit.”
“Yes.” Harden has the uneasy feeling that Kessler’s range of interests and suavity will keep them moving further and further away from his agenda.
“Allow me, if I may, to return for a moment to the Kaiser. You see, aside from the sheer pleasure of your company, I did hope to seek your advice today about a certain matter that directly involves his Majesty.”
So here we are at last then, Kessler thinks. The topic is the Kaiser. Why beat around the bush so? “I consider his meddling with French influence in Morocco foolish,” Kessler offers. “It will bring Britain to France’s defense and further cement the Entente.”
This is not the topic Harden has in mind. Better to play along a bit, he decides, rather than risk another abrupt divergence. Harden shakes his head in mock sadness. “First the Kaiser provokes a crisis by visiting Tangiers, then when a conference is called at Algeciras to deal with the crisis, he impedes every effort at compromise—all the while announcing his ‘cherished hope’ for a ‘unified Europe.’”
“Meaning a Europe he controls. About as likely as Victoria returning from the grave—which I don’t doubt she could.” The two men chuckle. “Is it any wonder,” Kessler continues, “that our only remaining friend in Europe is Austria—so feeble it hardly counts as an ally.”
Harden lowers his voice: “I’m glad to hear we’re of one mind about this . . . this situation. But . . . but I . . . I in fact invited you to dine to ask for your counsel on quite another matter.”
