Trudy Gold
France: Heroes and Villains

Trudy Gold | France: Heroes and Villains | 08.10.21

- Well, good evening everyone. I’m in Cornwall now, in London, and I hope everyone’s well.

Visuals are displayed throughout the presentation.

And we’re continuing with the history of France and the Jews, and I want to take you back to the year 1889. That is a hundred years since the Revolution. It’s now the period of the Great Republic. If you remember back in 1870, ‘71, the Franco-Prussian War where France had been humiliatingly defeated, the dishonour of the army, and of course, you had this republic which was so controversial. On one level, if you loved art, if you liked music, if you liked the beauty of Paris, the ideas of the republic, it was wonderful. But if you were a staunch Catholic, if you were a conservative, if you believed in the army and the monarchy, then this was not the France you wanted. And of course, 1889, a hundred years since the Revolution, the French celebrated it with a Great Exhibition. And that, of course, is where the Eiffel Tower was established, and of course it was just to be for the exhibition, but as you all know, it is now the symbol of Paris.

Now, the Great Exhibition, it had all begun back in 1851 when the British held a wonderful exhibition of the future, of how England was, how the world was, and that had been the brainchild of Prince Albert. The French had held a few exhibitions. The one in 1889 was to celebrate a hundred years of the Revolution. And then there’s going to be another one in 1900 where, for the first time, the moving image is going to be shown. There’s going to be a lot about electricity. It’s looking at the world for the next hundred years. So I want you to see France, as I began to discuss last time, as really a split society. And the problem for the Jews is they were completely on the edge of that split. Now, to talk numbers, France had a population of about 36 million. If you look at about 1880, there were only 60,000 Jews living in France because the Alsace-Lorraine community had of course been…

The Alsace-Lorraine community was now part of Germany. So you’re looking at a tiny community. You’re looking at a situation where the Jews are really a pinprick of the population, but as is so in practically every story I’m going to tell you about the Jews, after emancipation, you did have this extraordinary success story, these people from another planet as it were, who really do become involved in the modern world. They fall in love with Paris. They fall in love with France, and they do scale the heights of modernity, be it in business practise, be it in movements for change, be it in whatever that was different. Whatever that was new, you would find Jews. And it led to people who were suffering from the trauma of French society.

Remember what we looked at last week, and I know many of you know so much about this. If you think about it, the French could not decide whether they were a monarchy or republic. What force would survive in France? And what basically I’m going to argue with you today and in the next session is that really that division hasn’t changed, that France still can’t decide what kind of country it is. And those of us who love Paris, what kind of Paris are we in love with? So anyway, what we established, of course, with Napoleon, his envoy, think of the words of Count Marie, “To the Jews as individuals, everything. To Israel as a nation, nothing.”

The deal was quite simple. Give up any notion of nationhood. Be French citizens of the Jewish religion. And basically, that is what the French did, the French Jews did, and it’s really summed up by some of the people that I’m going to talk about. The problem was, as we discussed last week with the great financial scandals, Frenchmen, Frenchmen who were seeing themselves displaced, who was feeling, who were suffering from the results of modernity, were looking for a scapegoat. And the Jew was the perfect scapegoat. We looked at what happened with the Panama Canal Company. We looked at what happened with the collapse of the Catholic Bank, the Catholic Union Bank, where thousands of people lost their life savings. Who do you blame? The stock exchange was called the Jewish Exchange.

Of course the majority of the stockbrokers weren’t Jewish, but again, if you are seen as an outsider, however much you try to be French, you have this issue. And I think this is an issue that dogs Jewish history to this day. So anyway, I’m going to start with an extraordinary man called Theodore Reinach. We’ve already met his uncle. His uncle had committed suicide after the Panama Canal Company. His uncle was a member of the Academie Francaise. Now, many of you know all about the Academie Francaise. It had been established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu. It grew out of informal meetings of intellectuals, and the point about it was that it was really the pinnacle of intellectual achievement in France. There were 40 seats in the academy and the members are known as the Immortals.

Now, you become a member for life, and of course that makes you into one of the most important people in French society. It’s fascinating living in Britain, where in a way, to the English, that extraordinary phrase, “You are too clever by half,” which never really applied to the French or to the Germans. So basically, the Academie Francaise, and Theodore Reinach was a member of the Academie Francaise. I read you what he had to say last week on his Jewishness, and I want to repeat it. This is what he wrote at the time of the hundredth anniversary of the Revolution. “The Jews, since they have ceased to be treated as pariahs, must identify themselves in heart and in fact with the nations that have accepted them, renounce their practises and aspirations, the peculiarity of custom and language, which tended to isolate them from their fellow citizens, and in a word, cease to be a dispersed nation and henceforth only be considered as a religious denomination.”

And of course, this was also the notion that was espoused by the majority of Jews. So who was Theodore Reinach? Because he was an extraordinary individual. His dates are 1860 to 1928. He came from a very wealthy family originally of German origin. They were bankers. They were very much part of French high society. He had, because don’t forget, there are two Frances. There is the liberal France. He was an incredible scholar. He had become a lawyer. He was called to the bar, 1881. And he eventually, though he was a wealthy man, he devoted himself to the study of coins. He held a chair in ancient numismatics, I can’t even pronounce the word, the study of coins, at the College of France. He directed many journals. He worked on assignment in America. He was an international figure.

He’s wrote important works on the ancient kingdoms of Asia Minor, also the history of the Israelites during the ruin of their independence to today. A great scholar. He was the editor of the study of Greek. So he’s at the centre of French intellectual life with a huge career and a member of the Academie Francaise, and also a great collector. And this is going to be very, very important, because many of the characters I’m talking about were collectors of, really, the artefacts of European civilization. And there is that incredible book that’s just come out on fragile things that I really advise you to read. He married Charlotte Marie Evelyne Hirsch. She, of course, was the daughter of a wealthy banker. They had two daughters, but she died when she was 26 years old. And he married a second time to Fanny Kann, who was the daughter of Maximilian Kann and Betty Ephrussi.

Now this brings him into, really, the circle of the French version of the Cousinhood. You know, these interlinked cousinhoods, be it in Britain, be it in France, be it in Germany, be it in the Habsburg Empire. These interrelated, incredibly wealthy, very civilised, very educated Jewish families. And he also had a chateau in Southeast France. And as a resident of the chateau, he becomes, he’s elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He was a member of the Bloc des gauches, which of course was the left wing. He, like many of these very wealthy Jews, huge social conscience. He was one of the founders of the great synagogue in Paris, the Rue Copernic, which I’m sure many of you have been to. He also spent time on the Riviera. He built a villa, which I think you will know of, Villa Kerylos.

His wife died in 1917, his daughter in 1928. And he bequeathed the, he actually bequeathed the villa on his death to the Academy Francaise. He had a son, Leon. He became keeper of the archives at the Villa. And he married Beatrice de Camondo, by whom he had two children. And I’m sure you also all know about Nissim de Camondo and that extraordinary house in Paris where there have been quite a lot of books written quite recently about the Camondos, about the Ephrussis, and about these incredible connections. Not just “The House of Fragile Things,” but other books. And it’s really an interesting period to study. And tragically, of course, you know what happened. Because in the war, the villa was seized and the family murdered in Auschwitz. Fanny Reinach’s mom, daughter, beg your pardon.

Fanny Reinach’s cousin was married to Beatrice de Rothschild, and inspired by the Villa Kerylos, they built the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild nearby. So they had these magnificent homes, just as the Rothschilds had those homes in England, and the Hirschs, they were patrons of European civilization. They adored the world they’ve come to. They brought with it their Jewish sensibilities that they saw themselves at the centre, if you like, of French society. But he did say this, “Strengthening our attachment to Judaism, we must strengthen our attachment to the great and painful past of Israel, a no less filial attachment to the rediscovered homeland of 1789.”

So he believed he could walk the tightrope. And this is going to be the question that I’m going to keep on posing. How do we walk the tightrope? We’re going to talk about it. I’m going to begin with France. I’m going to talk about Germany. Later on, I’m going to talk about America. Is it possible to have hyphenated identity? Because in this time of lockdown, I think we’ve all had a lot of time to think, and really, to think about identity and where we fit in the world. And of course, there’s no right or wrong answers. These conditions, really, are how you feel inside.

But one of the issues we do have to deal with is how we relate to the outside world. And one of the tragedies of characters like Reinach is he was at the pinnacle. He gave a lot to France. A great collector, a member of the Academie Francaise, a great scholar. And he believed you could walk the tightrope. I do not believe in determined history. You could not have sat down in 1889, year after the Revolution, and imagined what would’ve happened in occupied France and in Vichy. You cannot do that. There were so many intervening events. And even the Rothschilds, who, if you think of Baron de Rothschild, who was a contemporary of Reinach, who was supporting Jewish establishment in Palestine.

He wasn’t a Zionist, though. He wanted to help poor Jews in trouble. Baron de Hirsch, another friend, what was he doing? He was setting up colonies in Canada, he was setting up colonies in South America to help poor Jews who were escaping from the horror of Russia. And in fact, Jews were fleeing into France from Russia, from the Russian Empire. Many of them were being encouraged to go further on, because also the insecurity of Jewish communities. We have become French, or we have become English, or we have become German. All these foreigners are coming over. If there are too many of them, it’s going to make us seem foreign too. So many of them were pushed on.

So I now want to turn to Zadoc Kahn, if we could see the next slide, please. Now, I’ve already mentioned him to you. He, of course, was the chief rabbi of Paris. And I just want to read what he said in 1889. “We have adopted the customs and traditions of the country which has generously adopted to us. And today, thanks to God, there are no longer anyone but Frenchman in France.” He later said, now remember, this is 1889, “France will not repudiate her past, her traditions, and her principles, which constitutes the best of her moral patrimony. As for us, we will continue to love our country and bear witness in all circumstances as to our gratitude and devotion.” He, though, was more likely to help with the beginnings of Zionism.

Remember, the word isn’t coined until 1891, but of course the sentiment did. It is before the word itself. And he was rather interested in an organisation called Benet Moche. But he was really in the pay, remember, he works for a consistory, he is in the pay of the wealthy Jews of France, and he is actually paid, his salary is paid by the French state. That is how Napoleon began to control the Jews of France, just as he controlled the Huguenots, just as he controlled the Catholics, because Napoleon wanted no rival in the country. Now, and if we could just quickly turn to Abraham Bloch, the next slide. Now, he also sums it up, another important Rabbi, “The Jews have enriched the arts, letters, politics, the military, industry, and commerce with avidity and love and not without success, better to show how they cherish their new home and to make themselves worthy of her love and protection.”

So 1889, can we go on please with the next slide? So what I’m trying to explain, really, is how, for the majority of Jews living in France, they are the loyalest of Frenchmen. They’re giving everything to France. And later on, on Saturday, David Peimer is going to be talking about Proust and again, the agony of the Jew. Can they really be accepted? Because this is, of course, is against the backdrop of various financial scandals. And we haven’t even yet come to the Dreyfus case. And I want talk about Maurice Barres. Now, this is what he had to say. He also was a member of the Academie Francaise, therefore one of the greatest intellectuals in France.

And this is what he said. “The Jews do not have a country in the sense that we understand it. For us, La Patrie is our soul and our ancestors, the land of our dead. For them, it is the place where their self-interest is better preserved. Their intellectuals thus arrive at their famous definition. La Patrie is an idea. But which idea? That is what is most useful to them. For example, the idea that all men are brothers, that nationality is a prejudice to be destroyed. You will not deny that the Jew is a different being.”

Because what he’s pointing to, because it’s not, of course, just the wealthy who’re at the forefront of mechanising France, at the forefront of banking, et cetera. It’s also those Jews who were involved in revolution. Again, the majority of French revolutionaries were never Jewish. However, Karl Marx, even though he hated his Jewish roots, he is seen as the symbol. And many of the deputies on the left, it has to be said, were of Jewish origin. Just as they were pioneering new developments at universities. Again, I tend to go back to Isaiah Berlin’s great notion of the outsider.

So let’s talk about who was Maurice Barres. His dates are 1862 to 1923. He was born in northeast France. He lived in Paris. He studied law. He established himself in the Latin Quarter and he became very involved with the Symbolist movement. He was attracted to the Romantic movement. He’s a famous journalist, he’s a famous writer. He travelled in Italy, becomes a very important travel writer. He writes plays. The Comedie-Francaise produced his plays. So basically he becomes a very important figure in the intellectual life.

But gradually there’s a change in his writings. His writings turn away from the individualism of Symbolism, from the individualism of the characters of the Quartier Latin, to Patriotism. And it’s the Dreyfus affair that for him is the big symbol. And I’ll be talking about the Dreyfus affair in a minute. Many of you who’ve been on Lockdown for a long time, we did sessions on the Dreyfus affair. So what I’m just going to do today is encapsulated. I know so many of you know so much about it. The Dreyfus affair was the great scandal of France, and I’ll talk about it in a minute. But he becomes very anti-Dreyfus. He becomes, he very much throws, he becomes a nationalist, a strong patriot, and he throws himself on the side of the reactionaries. He becomes very close to a man called Charles Maurras, who was later the leader behind Action Française.

And he wrote that, quote, “Patriotism and militarism are faith in one’s roots and family. What we must fight for is the preservation of the old French provinces.” Gradually he becomes more and more anti-modern. He finds modernism decadent. He finds there’s something very, you know, on the edge about modern society, that it’s leading us into an abyss of destruction. You know, many people who studied, who suffered from the modern world, you know, the modern world isn’t the dream for many people. I want you to imagine the peasantry. If there’s a harvest failure, they come to Paris looking for jobs. They’re put up in tenements. They can’t earn a living. There’s terrible poverty.

Just think of some of Zola’s works. Think of Zola, of “Germinal,” the story of the miners. Think of poor women in France forced into prostitution. Yes, you have the exotic life of the “Grand Horizontal,” but what was it really like? And this is a man who changes his position. He wants to take France back to an ideal France, the fantasy of France. You’re going to see a lot of this in Germany as well as a reaction to Bismarck’s modernization. And again, you’ve got this picture of the Jew on the edge of modernity. He assumes, he becomes a very, very important figure on the French right and he writes very antisemitic pamphlets. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, he said this, “That Dreyfus is guilty, I deduced not from the facts themselves, but from his race.”

The fact that he is born a Jew, and this is very much the area that Professor Geems was talking about. Because what is changing in the 1860s, 70s, 1880s, 1890s, it’s no longer theological hatred. It is “scientific racism,” inverted commas. It’s pseudoscience, that in fact, races are determined by the bloodline. And a Jew is a tainted race. So doesn’t matter whether Dreyfus is guilty or innocent, the race itself is guilty. Let me repeat that, it’s terribly important. “That Dreyfus is guilty, I deduced not from the facts themselves, but from his race.” Hatred, you see, for him, it’s got its roots because he turns back to Catholicism. And don’t forget who is on the papal throne for much of the 19th century.

The longest reigning Pope, 1845 to 1878, through terrible change, as far as the papacy is concerned, Pius IX, who said that France is in the hands of the Freemasons and the Jews. France, the flower of the church. So for him, the hatred is both theological. This is a man who had once been part of the Dadaist movement, you know, this movement of huge change. And he, as I said, he assumes leadership of the league of Patrie Francaise, and then the Ligue des Patriotes. Now these are going to be right wing leagues after the First World War, very, very dangerous. He becomes a deputy for the Seine in 1906. He becomes a proponent of the Union Sacrée.

And now, he, later on, ironically, he begins to change his attitude towards Jews. It’s fascinating. The problem is he writes, what he writes is what is taken up by the antisemites. Ironically, in the spring of 1921, the Dadaists organised a mock trial of him, and what they accused him of was the attack on the safety of the mind. They sentenced him. Of course, it was a mock trial. They sentenced him in absentia to 20 years hard labour. In fact, he died in 1923. And of course, for the Dadaists, they were anarchists, and the fact that they had staged a mock trial, for many of them, was terribly, terribly problematic. So basically, here you see a member of the Academie Francaise who is violently antisemitic.

Now, one or two other important statements “Though assimilated, the Jews have preserved their distinct characteristics. They are foreigners, and foreigners do not have their heads made the same way as us. So Jews use capitalism to exploit the hardworking Frenchmen. Their money has enabled them to infinitely surpass the natural proportion to which their numbers entitle them.” So a member of the Academie Francaise, one of a number of individuals who are seeing that tiny percentage of Jews in France as the problem with French society. And this is pure scapegoating.

And now I must turn to another important writer, a man called Romain Rolland. His dates are 1886 to 1944. In his very important novel, “Jean-Christophe,” “For the time being, the Jews occupy positions out of all proportion to their true merit. Jews are like women, who are admirable when they are reigned in. But with Jews, as with women, their use of mastery is an abomination.” You know, this is fascinating, because this is also very much part of German thought, the notion of the weakness of women, the weakness of the Jew. And tragically, many Jews themselves are going to take on the attitudes of the antisemites. And in Germany, Otto Weininger, who was himself a Jew and he was gay, he was very important to his day. His books were as widely read as Freud. And he converted when he was 21 years old. And he killed himself when he realised he was still taken as a Jew.

You must understand, as it were, the incredible bitterness. Now this guy, Romain Rolland, he was incredibly clever. He had a brilliant mind. He went to an ecole superieure. He studied philosophy. He abandoned his studies because he didn’t want to submit to dominant ideologies. He took a degree in history. He lived in Italy, he was an aesthete. He fell in love with the art of Italy. He did his PhD in Paris on the origins of the modern lyric theatre. He directed the main school at the Sorbonne, the school of music history. He directed the musical section of the French Institute in Florence.

So I’m talking about someone who is very much at the pinnacle of intellectual life, an interesting man, and he became very involved in left wing thought. He actually visited after the First World War and the Revolution, he visited, he had Maxim Gorky’s invitation. He went to Russia. He met Stalin, who he admired, and he isolated himself during the occupation to research the work of Beethoven. And he also wrote his memoirs, the story of a French socialist and a nationalist.

So despite his highfalutin ideas, he has this terrible problem with the Jews. So it seems that it doesn’t matter whether you are a socialist, it doesn’t matter whether you are a, or whether you are a capitalist. It doesn’t matter whether you are pre-modern or anti-modern. If you are looking for a scapegoat, tragically, the Jew fulfilled this niche. And I think that’s what led to so much soul agony for so many sensitive Jews on the European mainland. Never quite so acute in England, and that of course is another story for another time.

Shall we come on to the next important French intellectual, Jacques de Lacretelle. His dates are 1888 to 1985. He lived a very, very long life. His father, Amaury, was a consul general in Salonica, then in Alexander and in Florence. He spent his early years with him. He was very, very well travelled. And he studied not just in France, he also studied at Cambridge University. He had ill health, so he becomes very much part, he devotes himself to writing. He was a friend of Proust, he was a friend of Andre Gide. He wrote many important books, including a book upon Jews called the “Silbermann.” And I’m going to quote from that in a minute. He won the grand prize at the Academie Francaise, and he was in France at the time of the Dreyfus case.

Now this is what he wrote. “The Jews,” he, in many ways, he was pro-Jewish, and this is what he wrote, and then he changed his mind. This is his first novel. The novel on the Silbermanns encompasses two novels. Silbermann was meant to be a close friend of his, and he is very much influenced by the Dreyfus affair and what it did to his young friend’s sense of identity. “The Jew represents the values of the mind in a society succumbing to the cult of force. The Jews have been true to their sacred mission, which in the midst of the other races is to be a foreign race. The race which is to link up the network of human vanity. They break down the intellectual barriers between the nations to give divine reason an open field.”

You see, this is a completely different take on the Jew, but again, it gives the Jew huge importance. He looks at Jews from country to country. He sees how involved they are in the intellectual life of the nations, be it to the left, be it to the right. And he sees some sort of divine, if you like, inspiration in the Jews themselves. And he returns though to the subject of “Silbermann” in a 1929 book. And he says, Silbermann, who’s, as I said, it’s based on a friend of his, tragically his friend dies of TB at 24. And this is, he traces the decadence of the Jew. He says, if you like, “All the forces that we are putting on the Jew is proving too much for him.”

And his fictional character travels to America. He makes a fortune, but he fails in every moral endeavour. And in spite of his intellectual brilliance, he’s plagued by what the author calls, “typically Jewish urge for self-destruction,” which leads to his death. So he’s looking at the dark side. He’s very well aware of what these forces in French society are doing to the Jews. Remember, he’s an intellectual, he’s aware of what’s going on in France, what’s going on in Germany, what’s going on in the Habsburg Empire. Because if you take Vienna at the same period, just imagine the forces that are at work.

In Vienna, the Jews make up 10% of the population. But think of Freud, think of Marla, think of all those characters who fall in love with the modern world, and yet they see the flaws in it. And what do you do when you love something and it seems to reject you? You know Freud, Freud was also very aware of the Dreyfus affair. He was a student at university. And you know what he wrote? He said, “Because I do not belong to the compact majority, I can do what I did.”

Another important intellectual, Charles Peguy, he is also more favourably disposed. Can we see him, please? Thank you. He died in 1914 in the First World War, very important individual. And he says this, “Being everywhere, the great vice of that race, their great secret virtue, the great vocation of that people is to disturb society by calling for justice for all.” You know, some of the intellectuals were aware that, if you like, the Jews were the yeast. They really made society ferment. Just look at how many Jews were involved in movements for change. If you were positive, they seemed to be the people that were pushing the world on.

But the point is, Jewish identity, many of these characters had become internationalists. They were no longer, they no longer saw themselves as religious, let alone as part of the Jewish nation. The problem was, if you had a problem with the Jews, then they were all together and they were all part of the, if you like, this disease that was affecting French society. Somebody else that Rolland said, “Unfortunately, the past does not exist for the Jews.” So it’s important to remember that even before the Dreyfus affair, the whole issue was incredibly complex. And already, Jews were, many Jews were finding themselves to be singled out as those that were, if you like, on the edge of modernity. And many of them, if we investigated most of the families in France, they were bourgeois. They wanted to live as French patriots. They were madly in love with France.

How on earth did they deal with the horror story that was engulfing them, which exploded into the Dreyfus affair? So can we skip on, I think, Judy, because really, if you could go onto the next. Georges Sorel, I’ll be talking about him later on. Let’s have a look, please, at Dreyfus. I’m not going to spend too much time on the Dreyfus affair. There are hundreds of books. There are many, many films on the Dreyfus affair. And it really is the cause celebre. And as I’ve said in the past, if I was teaching it in a university, how important would Alfred Dreyfus’ Jewishness be? Yes, it’s absolutely important to Jewish history, but really, it is what force in French society was going to come to the fore? Is it the force of the army, the church, the military, conservative France, or is it the France of the Enlightenment and the Republic?

And you have this Jew, Alfred Dreyfus, at the centre. And his dates, he’s born in 1860. He dies in 1935. So please bear with me. Although I know many of you know the facts, I’m just going to outline them. Having said, there are so many books on it. It’s a subject that has really captured people’s imagination. Robert Wistrich, who was probably the world expert on antisemitism, this was the book he never wrote. He had a whole suitcase full of notes on Dreyfus.

This was the book he always intended to write, because the notion of the scapegoat absolutely fascinated him. And quite often when he travelled, he brought this suitcase with him full of his notes on Dreyfus. And ironically, he had been commissioned, ‘cause sometimes you have to lighten it, he’d been commissioned to write the book, but it was never written. And he was in a bookshop in Paris where he saw the title of the book he’d been commissioned to write cited as a footnote in a new book on the Dreyfus affair. And you can imagine what he made of that. But sometimes you have to use Jewish humour.

So the facts of the Dreyfus affair. Think about it. The whole affair breaks in 1894. From the point of view of Jewish history, many of you listening might well think that the most important aspect of the Dreyfus affair was the impact it made on an Austrian, a Hungarian born Austrian journalist who was in France, a man called Theodore Herzl. Theodore Herzl had written in his diary, he first arrives in Paris in 1891 and he says, “France is the centre of civilization. It would take the rest of the world a hundred years to achieve what the French have already achieved.”

Now of course, coming from Budapest to Vienna, being at the University of Vienna, close friend of Schnitzler. Fascinating man, Theodore Herzl. I’ve already lectured on him. There are hundreds of books on him. And the point about Herzl, he doesn’t create Zionism, he creates political Zionism. He was already aware of antisemitism, but it’s the Dreyfus affair and his relationship with Max Nordau, a very important intellectual also from Budapest living in Paris, who had written a book on degeneration, which Professor Geems had also had referred to. We’re trying to tie all this up for you. It’s the Dreyfus affair, as far as Herzl’s concerned, if it can explode in France, which is the flower of civilization, please never forget how much Paris means to people who believe in freedom.

Again, I’m going to lighten it a bit. Ernest Hemingway, when he was with the Liberation forces in Paris, he went to the Ritz to liberate the wine cellar, because to Hemingway, along with so many young intellectuals in the 20s and 30s, Paris was the centre of the world. Just as in the 1840s, Hyner was in Paris, Marx was in Paris. The whole, if you like, intellectual circle of life in France that believed in the France of the Republic, in France of the Enlightenment. If you knew how many times I’ve been in Paris with friends, wandering around the streets, arguing about the Enlightenment, because it hits you with the music, the arts. Just think of all the great modernist movements in France that Patrick’s lectured on so beautifully. And yet, the Dreyfus affair. So 1860, he is born in Alsace.

Now that is that area which, of course, is now under German rule. So the family moved to Paris because they’re very French, they’re very patriotic. So, and the whole affair breaks in 1894. The army, remember, the honour of the army was lost where? On the battlefield of the Franco-Prussian war. The army, the great flower of France. The France with their great empire, remember. So how does it all begin? A French cleaning woman finds a bordereau, which is a secret military document, in a waste paper basket in the German embassy, and she sends it to a man called Colonel Henry, who’s head of French intelligence.

It’s unsigned, but Colonel Henry realises that it must be an artillery officer attached to the general staff. He was already aware, from other spies in the German embassy, you can imagine, the German embassy under Schwartzkoppen, who was the ambassador, you can imagine how many spies the French had in the German embassy, and you could also imagine how, in the French embassy in Berlin, there were many German spies. And Schwartzkoppen, they already knew that he was in touch with a French soldier, a scoundrel, “D.” That was the note that Colonel Henry knew. So Alfred Dreyfus, Alfred Dreyfus was the only Jew on the French general staff.

So Colonel Henry immediately thinks Alfred Dreyfus, the Jew, the foreigner, he must be guilty. And he has a consultation with the Minister of War, Mercier, and the chief of staff. After further investigation by Major Paty de Clam, who was a cousin of the chief of staff and evidently a handwriting expert, they bought in a graphologist and they decided Dreyfus was the man. He was arrested, he was interrogated, he was not told of his crime, he was not allowed to contact his family. He was treated like a common criminal. Now, it’s the end of October. The story is leaked by Colonel Henry to le Libre Parole.

I talked about le Libre Parole last week. It is an obscenely antisemitic newspaper which was, the proprietor, of course, was Edouard Drumont, the, I suppose, the doyenne of French antisemites. He denounced Dreyfus as Judas, speculating that the case was being hushed up because he was a Jew, and everyone knows the French press is controlled by the Jew. Now, to ensure that Dreyfus was found guilty, they begin, under Colonel Henry, to manufacture more forgeries. We know that later. By mid-December, there is a closed court martial, the secret dossier, the manufactured evidence, evidence is provided that Dreyfus must be the traitor. And they gave out the reason 'cause he was a gambler and he needed money. He’s found guilty, he’s publicly humiliated.

I’m sure you’ve all seen representations of it in film, even though the moving image had been created by the Lumiere brothers in 1895. We have no documentary of it, but there’s at least six films where you see the sword’s broken, the epaulettes ripped off his shoulders. He is publicly dishonoured in the Palais de Justice, and this is it. It’s not whether he was guilty or innocent. The mob were at the gates screaming, “Death to the Jews,” whipped up by le Libre Parole. It’s death to the Jews. And Theodore Herzl is in the press box. And he writes, “If such things can happen in Republican France, modern civilised France, a century after the Declaration of Human Rights, then the Jews need a land of their own.”

This is what came from Libre Parole. “It was not a man being degraded for an individual error, but an entire race whose shame was laid there.” This is from le Figaro. So le Libre Parole, we know, is an antisemitic paper, but one of the main French papers, le Figaro, “He was the colour of treason, a wraith from the ghetto.” Now, the Jewish community believed he was guilty, and they, this is what Michael Marrus, one of the greatest scholars of this period wrote, “Having emphasised for so long that they were French, they could scarcely assert with any vigour their right to be Jews. In this, as everything else they did, they showed themselves to be Frenchmen that they claimed to be.”

Bernard Lazare later wrote after the truth was revealed, “It was because Dreyfus was a Jew that he was arrested. It was because he was a Jew that he was tried, and it was because he was a Jew that the voice of truth and justice was not allowed to speak on his behalf.” Later on, Leon Blum, who I’ll be talking about next time or the time after, who later, the Jew who became one of the two present prime ministers of France, he said this in 1936, “On the Jewish response, they didn’t talk of the affair. A great misfortune had fallen Israel. One suffered it without a word, waiting for the time and silence to wipe away the effects.”

So basically, in the consistoire, and people have looked at the various minutes of the various consistoire, you know, the organisations that controlled the Jews of France, it was hardly talked about. When Herzl wrote an article for the Austrian newspaper that he was writing for, and it was fascinating because the proprietors were Jewish, he talked about “Death to the Jews,” They changed it to “Death to Judas.” So in Vienna, you know, the Jewish community, they felt very, very under pressure because of the Dreyfus affair. And of course it’s going to become the cause celebre of French history. He’s going to be sent off to Devil’s Island. I’ll talk more about that next time we meet.

And it’s going to take until 1906 that he is finally, he is finally found innocent. So, and it’s going to divide France. I mean Patrick’s already talked to you about the impact with the Impressionists. Some of them were pro-Dreyfus, some of them were anti-Dreyfus. I collect, I know Patrick’s talking about collections, I collect a lot of old French magazines. I have hundreds. We go to the flea market. I have hundreds of covers around the Dreyfus affair, taken at this period. It really divided France. But it’s not just about Dreyfus, it’s what side would succeed. And when he’s pardoned, it also coincides with the separation of church and state. But my contention is that all these events are actually going to really exacerbate after the First World War all the way through to Vichy. And I would suggest they’re still with us.

Now, I’ve talked a bit about the villains. I’ve talked about the heroes. For me, I think one of the greatest two heroes are Colonel Picquart, who I haven’t mentioned yet in the the affair itself, the great Emile Zola, who I’m going to talk about. So there are heroes too, but there are many villains. And the tragedy was the majority of people were swept along or were bystanders. And I think the sadness of the Jewish community, they felt so insecure in their Frenchness that they just kept their heads down and waited for the whole thing to disappear. And what happened to Dreyfus, of course, when war broke out in 1940, both he and his son rejoined the French army. So he always proclaimed his innocence. He was a rather ordinary individual around whom great events swirled. But there were the heroes. And as I said, we go on to them next time.

I think what I should do now is have a look at questions.

Q&A and Comments

Yes, “The House Of Fragile Things,” Debbie, from James McAuley. Yes, it’s brilliant. This is, Beatrice de Camondo converted to Catholicism and it didn’t spare her from the Shoah. You see, this is one of the problems. As far as racism is concerned, it doesn’t matter. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. The fact that Karl Marx loathed his Jewishness and wrote some of the most antisemitic things didn’t stop him being considered a Jew by antisemites. It’s not about religion, it’s about blood.

Joan Adler, “One wonders why the national loyalties of Jews are questioned when we are essentially leaderless, whereas Catholics look to the Pope for leadership and their national loyalty is never questioned.” You know, it’s fascinating. I think one of the secrets, I’m going to throw something at you here, I think one of the secrets of the Jews is in fact that we do tend to not have hierarchy. We’re better without hierarchy, actually. I think that leads to freedom of thought. France is just another excuse for antisemites to have a scapegoat. You see, today we live in a different world where there are many scapegoats.

Q: “Historically, if one chooses to acknowledge it, countries that were kind to Jews prospered. The difficulty was often intermarriage. When Jews were expelled, the countries declined. Why is that not noticed?” A: I think you have to be careful here, Arlene. In one level, it would be rather nice if we could say there’s some sort of symmetry to it. But that’s not really the case. Don’t forget also how the Jewish world has changed so much. If you’re looking at the Jewish world today, I mean, Israel now has the largest Jewish community in the world. Who would’ve thought that, at the time of the Dreyfus affair, 1894, who would’ve thought that by 1948, who could have predicted the Shoah? Who could have predicted the establishment of the Jewish state? And in that brilliant lecture yesterday, what were we told when we looked at the Jews of the Arab world? If you look at the majority citizens of Israel today, it’s the Russians, the Moroccans, and the Iraqis. Who would’ve thought? And apart from Israel, there’s America, there is Russia. How important is the European Jewish community? And please don’t forget that the majority of Jews in France today are Jews from the old French colonies.

Yes, Rashel Marks, the Villa Ephrussi is now part of the French Academie des Beaux-Arts. Yes, of course, because it was left to them, yeah. By people who collected and by people who loved France. Yes, what happened to the Ephrussi family who were prominent in France, patrons of so many Impressionists, their homes were confiscated by the Germans in Austria as headquarters of the Nazi. Yes, but you couldn’t have predicted it. You see, this is the problem. You can study history, you can study trends. You cannot predict the future.

Q: Maurice, “What percentage of the population were the Jews at the time?” A: Well, if there’s about 36 million and we are 60,000, the numbers swell after 1881, remember, I think by 1900 there were under a hundred thousand. I am not a, I’m no good at maths. I’m sure someone online, let’s say by 1900 there’s a hundred thousand, what percentage of that is 36 million?

“Completely off topic, but I’m fascinated by the chair you’re sitting in.” Oh, it’s my, I mean it’s my son-in-law’s, Margaret. “Was Romain Rolland,” no, he wasn’t, Beverly. “Even Herzl was initially,” this is from Bonnie, “Even Herzl was initially a self-hating Jew from what I’ve read, and the Dreyfus affair changed his beliefs.” Was Herzl a self-hating Jew? I won’t go that far. I think if you are a young intellectual, and remember, he was at the University of Vienna at a time of huge antisemitism. He’s sensitive, not a religious man. He believed in his own place in the world. What do you do when you feel hatred? You want to deflect it from yourself.

“Stefan Zweig was an admirer of Rolland.” Yes, and of course, the wonderful Stefan Zweig, another great intellectual. “All Our Yesterdays” is one of the great books. We’ve already put it on the reading list that we were developing when the website is up. And what happened to Stefan Zweig? He committed suicide in South America because the world he loved was gone.

Christopher, “Another thank you. My question is, can we seriously ever call an antisemite intelligent, however intellectual they would claim to be? The same applies to misogynists and other types of racists. I don’t believe that their context excuses them.” You know, it’s interesting points you’ve brought, Christopher. Now let’s think about this. The study of IQ and EQ. A lot of these characters had huge IQs. The one thing they didn’t have was an emotional intelligence. One of the problems that we’ve had to face, if you believe in, as I think most Jews do, we are the people of education. That was all that, you know, if you think of the dream of Eastern Europe, what on earth can you give your children? What does the Talmud say? We study for the sake of study because study leads to love of God. You study, you study, you study. Study does not make you enlightened. That’s obvious. I mean, tragically, if you want the greatest example in history, is Nazism. If you look at the number of PhDs who sat around the table at Wannsee and wrote down the Final Solution. But what you’re saying, you are, you are, I think, it’s a very important point you’ve made. You are saying that you cannot really be emotionally intelligent if you see the division of races. That, I would agree with. Yeah, I would agree with that.

However, what is obviously true is a huge number of people who have high intellectual and academic qualifications are racists, are prejudiced, and do prejudge. You know, this is the problem. Once we start delving into history, we have to ask the big questions. And the big questions are really on the nature of humanity. Wendy and I have talked about this so often. You know, you have to bring in psychology here. What makes people hate the Jew was the perfect scapegoat. Today we’re living in a world where there are many scapegoats.

And Margaret said, “Being clever is not the same as being intelligent.” Should we say being clever is not the same as being emotionally intelligent? Margaret, I’m just beginning to think this through. It’s a very important debate. Maybe if Wendy’s listening, we can do something about this. Yes, Teddy, “The book by Robert Harris on Dreyfus shows that all the evidence was bogus.” Yeah, yes. And of course I’ll be talking about this. I’m going to begin with this next time. Of course you’re right, Teddy. It was completely trumped up charges, and they kept on trumping up and trumping up.

Q: Trudy, “Can we replicate the, combat the note found in the dustbin?” A: It was a secret military document which proved that it was about, it was very minor. It was about troop, it was about cannoning placements and trooping placements.

Q: “How can one reconcile what Rolland wrote in 1938? "But you, my friends, the Jews, whom I see cast down, do not resign yourselves to despair, and to doubt which is worse than despair. Your place in the history of human process is enormous. You are paying with incomparable misfortune. That will be your glory.” A: How can one reconcile these words with his accomplished, with his antisemitic lean?“ Yet he changes his mind towards the end of his life. Yes, Hillary. Yeah. And of course he was acutely, remember he dies in 1944. He basically became a hermit in the Second World War. Yeah, people change their minds. Yes.

• Trudy. Sorry, Trudy, I just wanted to, I’ve been trying to jump in, I was just muted.

• No.

• I just, I just wanted to add, I think one needs to look at belief systems.

• Yeah.

• Primary belief systems. Is that to do with IQ, EQ, where’s that coming from? Nature versus nurture. That is a very interesting topic. So sorry, I’ve been, actually, I’m,

• No, I think this is very important, Wendy.

• I’m backpedalling.

• This is something you and I have talked about. I think when you get to the core of these important historic events, you really do have to strip it away. The fact, I mean, Marshal Petain was a member of the Academie Francaise. These characters are called the Immortals. You know, they are the most revered people in France. And it’s fascinating, because some of them are dyed in the wool Jew haters. And it, as you said, where do our belief systems come from? And you know, in a way, I think with the lockdown, we’re beginning, and it’s wonderful having the kind of audience we’ve got, that these are the questions that are being posed. Who knows where we can go from here?

So that’s very important, Wendy. Shall I just see if we’ve got any other comments? I do love this group. And can I tell you, I’ve had a lovely email today from one of my friends who’s a grandmother, aren’t we all, saying that two other grandmothers who were introduced by their grandchildren and were worried that they were lonely, they all had in common the, was the fact that they all listened to Lockdown University.

• And the other day, I want to just jump in and say, the other day I was walking in Central Park, and somebody stopped me and they said, "Excuse me, are you Wendy Fisher?” And I said, “Yes.” She said, “I recognise your hat.” And I said, “Yes,” , and she said, “I’m on Lockdown University.”

• Oh, that’s lovely. That is so lovely.

“Barres maintain that no intelligent person can believe in religion, but Catholicism was good for the masses.” You see, that is him at his most cynical. Yeah, that Catholicism will keep the people in the check.

Ann Evans, “I think the attitude of British Jews towards Israel is similar to that of Jews of France towards Dreyfus. I would like your take on this.” Oh boy, we are into an incredibly complicated argument. What I do believe, Ann, is that many Jews, be they in England, be they in France, who are witnessing the most extraordinary hostility towards Israel are internalising it. Yeah, I do believe this. Look, let me say, look, I was on ITF Ira, and I think that definition is about as good as it gets. I have absolutely no problem with criticism of the policies of the State of Israel. But as the great Jonathan Sacks said, “First they hated our religion, then they hated our race, Now they hate our nation.” I think the kind of a programme Israel has is against, is out of all proportion. And I do believe it does make many Jews who are not that connected with the community anymore, this is the issue, and yet they’re being singled out because of Israel. And it’s the same kind of thing. Where are we? Where do we belong? It’s a very, very complicated issue, what it means to be a Jew. Let’s go back to Elias Canetti.

“There are no people more difficult to understand than the Jews.” This is from Beverly. “My cousins in France truly believe in the republic. Only, he was hidden on two farms.” Yeah, I mean of course. And don’t forget, there were good French people too. The trouble is the good tend to, I dunno, I do look, having experienced an incredible amount of kindness in lockdown, I just think it’s difficult to make people into activists. And Susan is talking about the march in Charlottesville in 2017. White nationalists were marching and chanting against the Jews, yeah.

Reva is saying “Herzl was not self-hating. He was a secular intellectual Jew.” Herzl was a hundred things, wasn’t he? What a character. I gave a very long lecture on, couple of lectures on Herzl in the past. And once Lockdown, once the website is up, you will be able to listen. But there are so many books on Herzl if you’re interested. And obviously, Reva, you know a lot about it. He is one of the important characters to study. If I was pinned against the wall and I had to think about the 10 most influential Jewish characters in history, in modern history, I’d have to go with Herzl. And this is Jonathan recommending “An Officer and a Spy.” That, of course, is by Harris about the Dreyfus affair.

Q: “Why did you tell us about anyone other than Barres and the guy with the long name? Because you didn’t tell us what the others did other than being prominent Jews and socialites.” A: I am trying very hard to skirt over it. Look, there are 60,000 of them. There are Jews in the new sociological department in the university. There are Jews doing what Jews do in the forefront of modernity. Andre Citroen, Citroen cars, in the banks, et cetera. I was actually following a theme tonight, Allen.

This is, “David Matlow from Toronto has the world’s biggest Herzl private collection. He is devoted to Jewish communities. Might be interesting.” Yes, thank you for that. “Fear makes people hate.” Joe, “Being clever and intellectual doesn’t mean you have wisdom,” certainly. This is from France. “Yes, as Jean-Paul Sartre said, "If there were no Jews in the world, an antisemite would invent one. There will always be those who would rather find a scapegoat than look for solutions to problems, either their own or the world’s.” Yeah. It’s, look, the point about, it seems that every society under threat, under stress, takes that old Jewish notion of the scapegoat and finds its own scapegoat. And different peoples at different times. I mean, if you’re looking at Britain, the Catholics would say very strongly that they have become the scapegoats of British society. The problem about the Jews, as Isaiah Berlin said, is that many people in the western world, they have been the scapegoat.

Carol, “Look at the ultra-Orthodox who sit and study, and they are not enlightened. How do they look on the world in which we live here in Israel, living out a ghetto life and lifestyle?” Look, the Jewish community is very, very complicated. I’m not saying it isn’t. And I’m not saying that we are the good guys and everyone else is the bad guys. You know, it’s a very complicated story.

“Perhaps belief systems emanate from the gospels.” Robert, one of the problems we have with the gospels as far as the Jews are concerned is you have that line in Saint Matthew’s Gospel where Pontius Pilate washes his hands and the crowds say, “May his sin,” and they say, “May the sins,” he washes his hands of the death of Jesus. And the crowd screamed back, “May the sin be upon us and upon our children.” And it’s, the gospel is problematic because it’s the Christian belief in the goodness. But I think, but from a Jewish point of view, it makes the accusation that the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus. And please don’t be logical with me. I know it had to be a Roman execution if he existed. But that’s, there isn’t, if you’re looking for evidence, it’s very problematic. But this is what the belief that developed over the centuries.

“I’m reading Kast and I think human beings have a character of wanting to be better than your labour.” Yeah, if only we could unlock human behaviour. Nature versus nurture, very interesting. But down to the influence of religion, you can’t get away from it. And this is from Linda, “Lockdown has contacted us to many friends and relatives across the world. And Wendy, they love us, thank you.”

Claire, “Many Jews from Eastern Europe came to France because of the outcome of the Dreyfus case.” Yes, of course. In the end, Claire, the Dreyfusards won. But from Dreyfus to Vichy. “And the differences between whites and Blacks, differences in religion, slaves, et cetera.” Yes, if you think of Black history, what a horrible history that is. Yeah. You see, racism, the whole notion of the pyramid of the races, with Judaism, with Judaism, it starts out as theological. In the 19th century, it transmutes into race theory. And if you look at some of these appalling race theorists who were, inverted commas, “intellectuals,” like Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Black, using their dialogue, using their their term, the Negro is at the bottom of the racial pile. The Jew is the anti-race. They’re not even human. So.

Lawrence is suggesting a good book on Dreyfus by Jean-Denis Bredin. Jennifer, “I can’t think of any other people who’ve been prejudiced against whose country was hated as well.” Yeah, but there’s an awful lot of people who love it as well. There’s an awful lot of people who admire Israel. Never forget that. Don’t spend too much time on the net because you have a very, very dark view of the world if you do that. My daughter’s a journalist and she said, she always says that to me, “Get your head out of the net.” Yeah. So a lot of people actually admire Israel and admire what Israel has done, and that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. Let’s be careful here. Anyway, Wendy, I think that’s all the questions. If you’re still.

• Thanks, Trudy, for a fantastic presentation as always.

• Nice to see you, darling. And take care, everyone. Lots of love.

• Likewise. Thanks for joining us, bye.

• Bye.