Trudy Gold
Germany and Jewish Identity 1750’s – 1933, Part 2

Trudy Gold Germany and Jewish Identity 1750’s-1933, Part 2

- I just want to say welcome back, everybody, and always lovely to have Trudy back with us. Today we are going to be doing German Jewish identity from 1750 to 1933, part one.

• Part two.

• And then this afternoon, we are going to have a fun event. Dorinda Medley, who’s a friend of mine, is going to be interviewed by another friend, Greg Calejo. She was an American housewife. She’s a really impressive young woman, and she’s agreed to come on Lockdown this afternoon. She’s launching her book tonight, so she’s about to take off in that sphere.

• That’s great, Wendy.

• That will be the 2:30 start, so over to you now, Trudy.

• Thank you, Wendy. Thank you very much.

• Thank you.

• Well, good morning, good afternoon, everyone. And this is my second in the series on German Jewish identity. And those of you who were with us yesterday, we looked at the beginnings, we looked at the life and work of Moses Mendelssohn, and who really, his mantra, very much a man of the Enlightenment, he believed in the Age of Reason, and he did believe that if everyone was educated to a certain level cultivation, that we would realise there were universal values. He believed that religion was a private affair. He was not a political reformer. But, of course, one of the issues with Germany is that it’s even more, the whole issue of Jewish identity is even more acute than in France, and I think for one main reason, in Germany, emancipation, remember, Germany up until 1816 was over 350 city-states. After 1815, it’s cleaned up to 800. Sorry, 36. So you are looking at a country that is not in the least bit unified, but what happens, particularly as a response to Napoleon’s invasion, you begin to see the stirrings of German nationalism.

And then finally in 1812, Prussia, on its own right, emancipates the Jews. In Greater Prussia, it doesn’t happen. And after the Congress of Vienna of 1815, which marked the defeat of Napoleon, many of the war right awarded to Jews are taken away if they wanted to keep back the ideas of the French Revolution. So having one emancipation in certain parts of Germany, falling in love with German culture, you have this situation where Jews have to really make a decision, and it’s going to lead to all sorts of soul agony because it’s going to tie up with the rise of German nationalism. Germany is not going to be unified until 1870, ‘71, through war with France. Remember, it’s Bismarck, the Chancellor of Prussia. Under Prussian leadership, Germany is finally united. Now I want to stress that Jews are a very tiny percentage of the German population. In Berlin, the capital of Prussia, they were under 3% of the population. And I already talked about the fact that there was a court Jew and that in Mendelssohn’s time, many of the wealthier Jews were allowed to live in Berlin proper because Frederick the Great was very much a mercantile king.

He wants to create not just a modern country but through it a modern economy. And Jewish bankers, Jewish traders were very useful. And you have this extraordinary situation where salon Jewesses, as they’re called, today it’s quite a pejorative term, where you have women, the wives and daughters of bankers, who host glittering salons, where the figures of the German Enlightenment meet with prominent Jews. So for the first time, there’s quite a bit of admixing between Jew and Gentile. Now Mendelssohn dies in 1786. He was not prepared for Kent’s last book, “The Critique of Pure Reason,” the death nail of the Enlightenment. And, of course, in the toing and throwing between Jewish rights taken, Jewish rights snatched back, and also a love for German culture, most of Mendelssohn’s childrens converted, as did many of the prominent Jews in Berlin. Now a little bit more background before we get onto some of the personalities. In the Napoleonic Wars, in 1806, Prussia was defeated by Napoleon at the Battle of Jena. Now later on, of course, they win the war, but the point is it led to a huge sense of defeat for the Prussians, for the Germans, and I now want to talk about a man who’s going to be very important in the history of German nationalism.

That is a man called Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Now he’s a very interesting fellow because he came from a very poor background, his parents were peasants, but he was extremely bright. And he came to the attention of a landowner who paid for his education. He had a very strong grounding in classics, so very much a man of the people, and then a brilliant education. Later on, he’s going to have incredible pupils himself, characters like Schlegel and Nietzsche. He studied theology at university. He transferred to Leipzig, and he then becomes a tutor. Now the point about him, he becomes very, very important in German thought. He’s a prolific writer. And in 1793, he writes the beginnings of pamphlets which are going to come together, addressed to the German nation, where he calls the German people to rally cry. You see, the Enlightenment was about universalism, universal values, the romantic movement, which gradually is taking over from the Enlightenment. What is it about? It’s about going back into nature. It’s about going back into your glorious history. It’s about strong emotion. It’s about real force of thought and to accept the fact that we are not creatures of reason.

And in these, he’s addressed to the German nation. This is the first rallying cry of German nationalism, that to say that “we once were a great people. We were the tribes that defeated the might of Rome, and we are completely disunited.” At this stage, 360 separate states, ruled over by little autocrats. What we need to do is to work towards understanding our greatness. Now the problem in this is what he wrote about the Jews. I’m just going to read you a short extract. There were 14 different lectures, and they were very important. This is just a small extract from one of them. “A powerful, hostilely, disposed nation is infiltrating every country in Europe. This nation is a state of war with all these countries, severely afflicting their citizenry. I’m referring to the Jewish nation. It is a people whose most humble member elevates his ancestors higher than we exalt our entire history.” Now he said many, many other things which made him incredibly popular in Germany, but the point is, he already had this very negative image of the Jew and the tragedy of the Jew after Mendelssohn’s death. What’s happening to them? Look, there’s a flood of conversion amongst the wealthy.

They fall in love with German society. They almost want to wash away their Jewish identity. Now what happens to Fichte is very important because the Humboldt University is created by the Humboldt Brothers, and he becomes the rector. He’s actually elected by the other colleagues. He’s a very, very important character. And another important character at Humboldt University was Schleiermacher, the Protestant theologian. I mentioned him to you yesterday when I talked about the conversions in Henriette Herz’s salon. He was really responsible. He was a very charismatic character, and he was responsible in pulling her towards Christianity. So but at the University of Berlin, the Humboldts set up something extraordinary. Obviously, there was to be a strong anchoring of traditional subjects, the classics, et cetera, but sciences, law, theology, history, medicine. And the younger Humboldt brother was particularly interested in the new sciences, chemistry, natural sciences.

Later on, it’s going to become a mecca for so many Jews who are attracted to the new sciences. I think one of the easiest ways to understand the path of the Jew in the modern world is to see them as outside the tradition. The modern world is exploding with ideas, and so as a result, the Jew who has no real tradition in modernity is very much at the forefront but also a great love affair. And let me just give you a lovely little comment by one of the students, Feuerbach. “There is no question here of drinking, duelling, and pleasant communal outings. In no other university could you find such a passion for work, such an in inclination for the sciences in such silence.” So the point is, you have this character, these characters at University of Berlin. They’re setting up an incredibly rigorous education, which is amazingly attractive to many people and particularly Jews, and yet, on the other hand, many of the professors, beginning with Fichte, have problems with the Jews. Can a Jew really be a German, at a time when the small group of acculturated Jews in Germany, in Berlin in particular, are trying to show that they are the most loyal citizens?

I’d now like to come on to the last of the women I’m going to talk about, Rahel Varnhagen. Can we see her picture please, Judi? Yeah. She was Rahel Varnhagen. Her dates are 1773 to 1833. Like many of the other of these women who ran salons, she was very close to Dorothea Mendelssohn, to Henriette Herz. And she was part of that coterie of wealthy, intelligent Jewish women. Her father was a banker and a jeweller, and it was her who hosted one of the most glittering salons of the whole of Berlin. Like many of them, her dream was Goethe. She met Goethe twice. She met him in Carlsbad and met him again in 1815. And it’s ironic it’s these young Jewesses who fall in love with Germany. And who do they idealise? The long-living German intellectual Goethe. She had a few unhappy love affairs, and then in 1814, she converts to marry a much younger, younger man.

His name is Karl August Varnhagen Von Ense. He was a biographer. He was a diplomat. And like many of these characters, he was very much a figure of the Enlightenment. He was close to the Humboldt brothers. He was a very important figure in Berlin society. And evidently was, as I said, he was 14 years younger than her, but it was a marriage of love. There was money because of Henriette’s father. And in 1815, they were in Vienna. And 1814, I beg your pardon. And in 1815, at the Congress, their home became the meeting place for all the individuals who were involved in the Congress of Vienna to settle the peace of Europe. She had a real problem with her Jewishness. She’s in love with German society. She’s in love with Christianity. She’s a figure of the romantic movement. I’m going to quote from Amos Elon, who I think has written the very best book on German Jewry, “The Pity of It All.” This is what he had to say. “She hated her Jewish background and was convinced it had poisoned her life. Her overriding desire was to free herself from the shackles of her birth. She never really succeeded. She converted to Christianity after her mother died, but her origins haunted her even on her deathbed.

The idea that as a Jew, she was always required to be exceptional and to go on proving it all the time was repugnant to her.” Now, interesting, she established herself as an intellectual in her own right. And she really, what she was most interested in is letter writing. There are over 6,000 letters that she wrote in the Main or received to very important intellectual figures. And for a woman at this time, she really succeeded in making a mark for herself as a figure of German intellectuality. Now ironically, if you want to propel to the future, the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, her first book, which was actually on Rahel Varnhagen, and in many ways I see parallels between her life and the life of Hannah Arendt. She began it in 1929, when she was a very young woman, and she actually, of course, had to get out of Germany in 1933. It wasn’t published till the '50s, but it was very much the work of a young woman who herself was very conflicted about her Judaism. And this is what she wrote. It’s the biography of a remarkable, complicated, troubled, passionate woman, important in German romanticism, central to the cult of Goethe. And for Hannah Arendt, and I wonder if she’s talking about herself, “the burden of being an intelligent woman and born a Jew.”

And another quote from Hannah Arendt, “Only because she remained a Jew and a pariah did she find a place in the history of European humanity.” Hannah Arendt also realised it was the outsideness that gave her her intellectual edge. And this is the first title of the book, which is also, I think, indicative of how Hannah Arendt and so many German Jews in the '20s and '30s also dealt. And the first title of the book was this, “On the Problem of German Jewish Assimilation Exemplified in the Life of Rahel Varnhagen.” Now can we move on to the next slide, please? Now that is a man called Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, and I’m going to tell his biography against the background of what’s going on. So a little bit more about the, he’s actually born in 1800. He lived a long life. He died in 1882. Now when he was 19 years old, he, along with many other sensitive, intelligent Jews, are going to be horrified by the Hep-Hep riots, Hep-hep riots which break out in Germany 1819, remember.

One of the sources for the name of the riots, and it is quite complicated. It’s Hierosolyma est perdita, which is the death knell of the Crusaders as they went into Jerusalem murdering Jews and Muslims. Now why did the riots occur? It was a period of chaos. It was the end of the Napoleonic Wars. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was a famine and also a set of reactionary measures, the Carlsbad Decrees which had been introduced by the German Confederation Diet. And it was very, it was convened by Prince Metternich. It was to push back all the forces of liberalism and to make Germany very, very conservative again. And what happened was he was terrified that German universities would actually be a threat to the monarchy and a threat to the existing order. Remember that after the Congress of of Vienna, Germany’s now cleaned up to 36 separate states, and the status of Jews varied from one to the other. Some of them had a kind of tenuous emancipation.

But for example, even in Prussia, which had emancipated them, they weren’t allowed into public administration. They were forbidden to hold teaching posts at the universities or in schools. Now this is Amos Elon again. “In some places, attempts were made to return Jews to their old mediaeval status. As of 1816, only 12 Jewish couples were allowed to marry in Frankfurt. The 400,000 gulden the city’s Jews had paid for emancipation was returned. In the Rhineland, which had now come back to Prussia, Jews lost their citizenship given by the French. Few were appointed to, those few who’ve been appointed to public office were dismissed.” So the riots begin in 1819 in Wurzburg. It was only after a few days that the troops were called in to quell them. The Jewish population fled the city. They were living in tents on the outskirts. Several of them were killed. Riots spread through Bavaria, Bamberg, by Rot Darmstadt. It was from city to city where the Jew becomes the only non-Christian minority in the German lands, becomes the scapegoat. It spreads in other cities along the Rhine. It was almost like the fear of what had happened in the old crusading days, this terrible, terrible fear.

Now in Karlsruhe after three days of pogrom, what happens is the Duke of, because there were good people too, the Duke of Baden actually decided to go to the house of a prominent Jew to express solidarity. So let me emphasise. There was also liberal opinion in Germany. However, what happens is it’s finally sort of quietens, but it’s a huge threat to the Jews, and it’s like a dagger in the heart. Having said that, in Heidelberg, two professors and students prevented the pogrom. So you have those people who still are of the Enlightenment, but the mob have been awakened. There’s been famine, there’s conservatism forced, so let’s go for the scapegoat. And in fact, Rahel Varnhagen wrote about it. She did say this: “I’m infinitely sad on account of the Jews in a way I have never experienced before. What should this massive people do, driven out of their homes? They want to keep them only to despise and torture them further. I know my country. I know my country.” She’s referring to Germany. “The Germans were bold with indignation, and why? Because they are not the most civilised, peace-loving, and obedient people. Their newfound hypocritical love for Christianity, may God forgive my sin, and the Middle Ages, with its poetry, art, and its atrocities incites the people to commit the only atrocity they can still be provoked to: attacking the Jews.”

You see the very clever Rahel Varnhagen. What is she going back to? She’s going back to that time in German history when the Jews went on the, when they went on the march against the Jews. There was another response, a much more, in many ways, interesting response, and that is the Wissenschaft des Judentums. A group of young Jewish intellectuals came together in Berlin to create a movement to, if you like, to place secular Jewish culture on a par with Western Jewish culture. It was founded by three extraordinary men, Eduard Gans, Leopold Zunz, and Moses Moser. A man called Michael Beer, who was the younger brother of Meyerbeer, was also involved, as later on was the extraordinary poet Heinrich Heine. But I want to bring your attention first to Moritz Daniel Oppenheim because he very much was in, he was very much in sympathy with their ideas. And what is fascinating about Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, he’s really the first Jew of any, I suppose, of any merit to become an artist.

Now I discussed him with Patrick, and today he’s seen, he’s not seen as a great artist at all. But what we’re going to do is I want to look with you as a historian and not as an art historian at what he tried to do through his art as part of his ideas of Wissenschaft because what he wants to do is to show that the Jew can be on a par with Germany and also to to show that the Jew also has an interesting history. And now his background, he came from a religious family. He was born just outside Frankfurt, where he lived all his life. And remember, Frankfurt was the home, original home of the Rothschilds. I mentioned it last time. It was, of course, a city that was atavistic in its attitude to the Jews. But he was incredibly gifted, and there’s always a way through, because he took his first lessons in painting in Hanau. Where it comes from, who knows? This is what he wanted to do. He entered the Munich Academy of Arts at 17. He later on went to study in Paris and in Rome. Now in Rome, he came under the influence of a group of German painters called the Nazarenes.

Now they very much were, they were very much into religious art, and they were extolling the New Testament. He then studied also in Paris. He had a idea that perhaps if he could extol the Hebrew Bible and Judaism itself, then maybe that’s one way of taking it on a par. So can we have a look, please? And I’d like to thank my son-in-law, Phil, for doing this. Here you see his illustration from the Hebrew Bible. This is Moses blessing Joshua as he… Remember, Moses is not allowed to enter the land of Israel, and Moses is blessing Joshua as he goes on his journey. So it’s quite derivative, but it’s important because this is a biblical scene from the Hebrew Bible painted by a Jew. And there were about 19 paintings like this. And something else he did. Could we go on, please? This is “Shauvot.” This is his depiction, and you see it’s very civilised. It’s very beautiful. As I said, it’s derivative, but the point is, he is showing Hebrew worship. This is “Shauvot.” Shall we go to the next one, please? He did many festivals. This is the, he called it the, it’s called the “Eve of Yom Kippur,” and, of course, it’s Kol Nidre. This is Jews in the synagogue and coming out of the synagogue on Kol Nidre.

So what he’s doing, he’s putting before the Christian public his works. Now he had a huge number of admirers. Goethe came to his workshop, to his studio, and he sort of becomes the talk of the German Enlightenment intellectuals. They come to his studio. They admire another exceptional Jew. And at the instance of Goethe, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar actually confers on Oppenheim the title of professor. And not only that, he makes himself a very, very good living because he becomes the major painter to the Rothschild family. So can we see some of those, please? That is Gutle. Gutle has got to be one of my favourite figures in history. She was 93 years old when she finally died in the ghetto of Frankfurt. She refused to leave the ghetto, and yet at a time when her sons were the most prominent financiers in Europe. Of course, whenever there was a great Rothschild wedding, they had to come to Frankfurt for the mother’s blessing. And there are so many stories about Gutle. What a strong woman. I think that’s rather the lovely portrait of her actually. It gives you an idea of her strength. And that was commissioned, of course, by her sons. So let’s have a look at the next picture. That is the beautiful Charlotte de Rothschild on the eve of her wedding to her cousin.

And you can see that she’s sort of dressed in Renaissance-type garb. This is, I think, a paeon to a Renaissance-style painting. Very beautiful woman. And the next one, please. And here you see his depiction of the five Rothschild Brothers. It was painted in 1855. This is 1856, and Nathan died very soon afterwards. And they are the famous five. One, of course, remained behind in Frankfurt; Nathan in London; James, the youngest, in Paris; the others in Naples and in Vienna, creating the incredible Rothschild empire. And there are many, many pictures of the Rothschilds. Can we see the next one, please? I think this is particularly lovely. These are the Rothschilds at prayer, commissioned by them. The Rothschilds at prayer. Yeah. He didn’t just depict Jewish ritual scenes from the Hebrew Bible. He turns to Jewish history. This was very much the work of Wissenschaft, who he felt totally in sympathy with. Don’t worry, I’m going to do a lot of detail on Wissenschaft. You see, their dream, remember, is to bring Jews into the orbit of German culture and also to stop the conversions. They want to reinforce Jewish identity. They want to bridge the gulf between secular and religious education. Wissenschaft, what is it? It’s knowledge, it’s learning, it’s understanding, plus philosophy and speculative thought. The dream, let’s reconcile the Jews with the Germans. So he also paints some important scenes from modern Jewish history. Can we go on to the next one?

Now this is his take on Mendelssohn. Now remember when we looked at Mendelssohn’s life, the man standing, Mendelssohn is in the red coat, and you see Fromet bringing in the tea. Of course, it’s all done from imagination and from portraits that he already had of these characters. But Mendelssohn is playing chess with Pastor Lavater. Pastor Lavater was the Swiss man, the enlightener, who actually had said to Mendelssohn, “Why don’t you convert? Because Christianity is such a downgraded religion.” And the figure in the back watching is, of course, Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who wrote the play “The Jews,” which failed on the Berlin stage. And then later on in 1782, he writes “Nathan the Wise.” And he’d found his Nathan. He’d found Moses Mendelssohn. Now this is important because this is a Jewish artist who doesn’t convert but he’s painting, question, question, question, and yet he’s painting what? A Jewish story. This is one of the great stories of the Jewish Enlightenment.

And can we go on to the next one, please? Yes, and I’m sorry about this. We had to take it from, I don’t know, the net, but this is the Mortara affair. This was in 1858. It was a total scandal. A young Jewish boy was taken from his parents. You see the parents, the mother looking terribly, terribly distressed. They lived in Bologna, one of the papal states, and the child was taken by his Catholic nurse who had secretly baptised him to the Jesuits. And they said basically, “This is a Jewish, this is a Christian child now.” The parents tried to get the child back. Of course, they didn’t succeed. It was a huge, huge event. Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux intervened. The papal legate for foreign affairs refused even to, the Pope refused to see them. It was, of course, Pius the IX, one of the most anti-Semitic popes of all time. And his foreign affairs nuncio actually asked Montefiore how much money did the Rothschilds pay for the firman? The firman was issued by the Sultan of Turkey over the false blood libel of 1840, which Montefiore had also intervened in. But this is fascinating because this is a Jewish painter painting scenes from Jewish history. Before I come onto the Wissenschaft itself, I want to talk about, can we go on please with the next picture? 'Cause I want to talk about one of the most complicated, extraordinary men, I think, in history, and that, of course, is the poet Heinrich Heine. Now I am giving this presentation as a historian, not as a musician and not as a literary person.

But I have been speaking to Patrick and to David, and you will hear much more of Heine later on because the man, of course, was a genius. He was also, to me, I think, a prophet. I mean, quite often, how often do you hear his important sayings quoted? Like, “Any people who burned books will one day burn people.” And that incredible diatribe against Germany that I said, I spoke about the other day. So let’s look first at his life and then a little bit about his work, but what interests me more than anything is his Jewishness. How did Heine view his Jewishness? So he’s born in Dusseldorf in 1797. He dies in February 1856 in Paris. He’s born to Samson Heine, and his mother’s name was Betty. His father was a wealthy merchant. His mother was the daughter of a physician. He was the eldest of four children. He had two other brothers. One brother, Gustav, later became Barron Heine and became the publisher of a very important Viennese newspaper. And another brother, Maximilian, became a physician. They became an acculturated, very successful Jewish family. Maximilian actually became a physician in St. Petersburg and converted. A cousin of his was Karl Marx, and later on they’re going to come together in Paris. There was the French occupation at the time of his birth, and it went to the Electorate of Bavaria before being ceded to Napoleon.

Upon Napoleon’s downfall, it becomes part of Prussia. Now Heine’s formative years were under Napoleon, and it’s Napoleon who, of course, liberated the Jews from the ghettos, and Heine always had a love for French culture, a romantic attraction to Napoleon, who he saw as a liberator. He also was very, very impressed by the Code Napoleon and the idea of trial by jury, because when you teach Jewish history, it’s always very complex because how was Napoleon as far as the Jews were concerned? But Napoleon was an incredibly forward-thinking individual. The Code Napoleon, trial by jury, this man after the defeat of Napoleon is going to be living in a reactionary German state again. So you have this, if you like, this first period. When he is a young child, he is under Napoleon, and he also admired him for his revolutionary ideas. He very much loathed the political atmosphere in Germany that he grew up with after Napoleon’s defeat. Now Heine’s father had a very traditional Jewish background, but his mother was very much a child of the Enlightenment. She believed in Deism, God in nature.

And although he went as a young boy to a Jewish school, he didn’t really ever become fluent in Hebrew, and he then went to a Catholic lycee. So importantly, see, important to remember, his Jewish education was never the secular education he had. Consequently, there’s always going to be this imbalance in Heine. Now in 1814, he went to business school in Dusseldorf. He learnt to read English because that was the commercial language of the day. The most successful member of the family was Solomon Heine, who was a merchant banker, and he was known as the Rothschild of Hamburg. And by the time of his death in 1844, he had a master fortune of over $100 million. Heine always had an incredibly ambiguous attitude to money and his rich relatives. Don’t forget, his cousin Marx was also had this ambiguous attitude. He also had rich relatives in the Main through his mother’s side. Who were they? They were the people who later created the Philips Empire in Holland. So Heine, and you can see from the clothes he’s wearing, he’s already seeing himself as a figure of the romantic movement. He hates business. For a while, he’s in Hamburg. He becomes, he’s apprentice at the bank. Evidently he falls in love with his uncle’s daughter. The uncle does everything to quash any romance. He didn’t think he was good enough for him. So he then transfers his affections to the other sister, also unsuccessful. He has no talent for business, so it’s decided he should study law.

So remember, he comes from a wealthy background. He goes to the University of Berlin, the Bonn in 1819. This is where, remember, it’s just after the Hep-Hep riots, and the liberal students are already at war with the Prussian authorities. He becomes very radicalised. He becomes very involved in politics. He doesn’t want to study law. He’s very interested in history. He’s also interested in German history and in literature. He soon acquires an incredible knowledge of the legends of Germany, which later on are going to play such an important part in German nationalism. When was Germany great? Remember, the tribes who defeated the might of Rome. Just think about the myths and legends of the Teutonic forests, those extraordinary tribes, the music of Wagner, an atavistic belief that the life of the peasant, the life of the German before modernity was better. And as a young student, he wrote two works. One was called “William Ratcliff,” but the other one was called “Almansor.” And this is terribly important because the quote I gave you, “Any people who burns books will one day burn people” is actually “Almansor,” is the story of the burning of the Koran. The Koran of the Moriscos in Spain by the Inquisition. Just as there were Jewish conversos who practised Judaism in secret, there were Muslim conversos known as the Moriscos.

And instead of talking about the Jews who were being persecuted or the conversos, he talks about the Moriscos. He then transfers his law studies again to another university. He really hates it. He also very much, he then he then goes to Berlin. By this time, his books are attracting attention and he then becomes one of the characters you find in the various salons. He becomes close to Rahel Varnhagen. He was very complicated even at this stage about his Jewishness, about Henriette Herz, who he was very fond of, but he actually said of her, “She wore a cross around her neck the length of her nose.” So already he’s worried about his Jewishness. He meets up with the characters who created the Wissenschaft, which I’m going to talk about with you on Monday. And remember what it’s about. Or he realises how much, how many people are converting, he decides that he wants to do something about it. He’s very ambiguous about Germany. At one stage, he said the two great ethical notions, the Jews and the Germans can create a new Jerusalem in Germany, but at the same time, he also came up with that incredible quote, if the talisman of the cross will ever fall in Germany and the hammer of Thor will rise up, et cetera.

He saw the darkness of Germany, but he also saw the Germany of incredible culture and Enlightenment. Now particularly because he is involved with the Wissenschaft, he becomes interested in Jewish history. Remember, he hasn’t had a very good Jewish education. And he begins a work called the “Rabbi of Bacharach.” It was never ever completed. But in order to really soak himself in it, he travelled to Poland and studied conditions relating to the Jews in society. He saw the danger. He went around the shtetl, and he saw the Jews as a buffer between the peasantry and the nobility. He was worried for them. He was very much an outsider, Heine. He was a real visionary. He could see longer and further than most people, and he looked at the condition of the Jews in Germany, in Poland, he looked at their poverty, but he saw the role they played in the economy. And he said, “We’ve got to switch them to agriculture.” But he does say, he said, “They have scholarly traditions and dreams. It’s linked to their religion because they had to abandon their fatherland and their comforts.” He did realise that that tradition, in his eyes, had become stagnant, and that’s one of the reasons he became involved with the Wissenschaft, where for a while, as I said, he taught there, but he did say orthodoxy, a modernised orthodoxy, is the best antidote to the poison of Christianity.

He hated Christianity. Now this is interesting because in 1824 he decided to convert. Now why on Earth did he do that? Well, the pastor who converted him said that he had a sincere belief, but he actually wrote a letter to a friend about his conversion, which I think would give you a completely different view. Let me just find it for you. Then I’m using an amazing book, “The Jew in the Modern World.” He converts. And this is a letter he writes to a friend. “From the nature of my thinking, you can deduce that baptism is a matter of indifference to me, that I do not regard it as important, even symbolically. I hold it beneath my dignity and a stain on my honour to undergo conversion in order to obtain a position in Prussia. We are living in sad times. Scoundrels become our best, and the best must become scoundrel. The baptismal certificate is the ticket of admission to European culture.” That is the essay title that you have for the week. “The baptismal certificate is the ticket of admission to European culture. My becoming a Christian is the fault of those Saxons who suddenly changed sides at Leipzig, or Napoleon, who really did not have to go to Russia, or of his teacher of geography at Brienne, who didn’t tell him that Russian winters were too cold.”

So he’d hoped to have a chair in literature at the University of Dusseldorf. And as I said to you before, no Jew could have a chair, but that’s what he dreamt of. He gave in. He converted. It was never a sincere conversion, and he grew to despise himself for doing it. But he converted in order for his dream, which was never ever realised. And he reverts back to writing more about the Rabbi von Bacharach. He’s going to be an incredibly prolific writer. And what I’ve done, obviously, is I’m pulling out things that emphasise his Jewishness. And he talks about a Jew he came across in Poland. Now, obviously, this is his imagination. He talks about Moses Luempchen. “When he comes home on Friday night, he finds the candles lit, the table covered with a white cloth. He puts away his bundles and his worries and sits down with his unshapely wife and still more unlovely daughter, eats with them fish cooked in a pleasant white sauce and sings the splendid songs of King David.

He rejoices from the bottom of his heart at the exodus from Egypt and is happy that all the tyrants who plotted evil from them have died, that Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus, Titus, and all such folks have died, but that he, Luempchen, still lives and eats fish with his wife and child. This man is happy.” And Heine maintained that they were a lot happier than their assimilated brethren in Germany because they lived with the Bible. They lived a Jewish way of life that gave them comfort, where the assimilating Jews of Berlin were so full of angst, temperament and feeling a lack of self-worth. He never questioned the desirability of Jewish survival, but in many of his writings, he expresses a fear of what would happen to the Jews because of German radicalism. He writes this: “In evil days, which are bound to come, the German rabble will hear my voice so that it echos in German beer hall and palaces.” He did see the Germans and Jews as two distinct people. When he was in a mood of loving Germany, he believed it was a good thing that they should come together.

In Heine’s eyes, he looked at the growth of anti-Judaism. I mean, he was very young child when Fichte began his work, but it was really spreading this idea of German nationalism, which was becoming very anti-Jewish. I’m not going to use the word anti-Semitism because it didn’t exist yet. The term is coined in the 1870s by a German journalist called Wilhelm Marr, but I do not want to use that term because at this stage it is not yet racial. He said that he saw the real problem, that it’d been religious, it had been religious opposition that had led to, if you like, the singling out of the Jews that had pushed the Jews into trade and finance. But in the modern world, they were so very, very good at it, and that led to appalling envy. So the underprivileged, he said, hated the Jews as capitalists, and capitalists, Christian capitalists, hated the Jews as competitors, and, of course, the radicals. There were many Jewish radicals, and the capitalists hated Jewish radicals, and the radicals hated the Jewish capitalists as Jews. So he saw the Jews in a completely different, difficult position. Now he has to flee Germany for France. He’s a radical, as I’ve already said. And in France, he becomes, in Paris, which he loved, he became at the centre of a young group of radical intellectuals.

He moves more and more towards socialism. And outside Germany, he always mourned for Germany, but outside Germany, he loved it, hated it, saw it. I think because he was the double outsider, I think he was a very acute observer. Tragically, he married. He married a French seamstress who adored him. He died in 1856, and, tragically, the end of his life was terribly miserable. He contracted syphilis and he was confined to, in third stage syphilis, he was confined to his mattress grave. On the subject of syphilis, it was, of course, Salvarsan was created by Paul Ehrlich, a Jewish chemist, and it was the beginnings of a cure for syphilis. And the Catholic church newspaper at the time, this is the beginning of the 20th century, of course, was absolutely horrified because syphilis was a punishment from God. They blamed the evil Jew, Ehrlich, for trying to find a cure. So it’s fascinating how the forces of reaction in every way find the Jew as the perfect scapegoat.

Anyway, as I said, this is not a lecture on the works of Heinrich Heine, although, there are one or two that I am going to refer to. There were many people who absolutely adored Heine. For example, the Empress Elisabeth, the wife of Franz Joseph, the very conservative ruler of the Habsburg Empire, she had a bust of Heine in her villa on Corfu, and she read all his poetry. His poetry is absolutely magic. He’s considered to be Germany’s greatest lyric poet. He was a playwright, he was a writer, and he was a great poet. He was also adored by liberals. His fame spread throughout the world. And in England, “Daniel Deronda,” if you think about the image of the Jew in “Daniel Deronda,” George Eliot absolutely adored Heine’s writings. In a newspaper, a British magazine called “The Athenian,” this is what was their analysis of Heine. “Jewish he was in his tenderness and above all in his hatred. Jewishness in his versatility and worldwide sympathy. Jewish in the proud consciousness of human dignity, in his nervous temperament, his incredible capacity for suffering, his wonderful endurance of sorrow, Jewishness in his boldness and recklessness of his scepticism, in his wit, his humour.

Also, Heine was a true child of the Hebrew race. However original he may have been, he exhibited the characteristics and peculiarities of Hebrew humour, of the wittiest and the most lighthearted people in the world.” Wait till we get onto American humour. “Which in the midst of unparalleled misfortunes and sufferings have preserved an eradicable buoyancy and an unconquerable spirit of satire.” I think that is just wonderful. This was written 20 years after his death in a paper about him. Emma Lazarus. Now of course, she was the American Jewish poetess whose words were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. “He was a Jew with the eyes and mind of a Greek. He was a beauty-loving, myth-creating pagan soul imprisoned in a sombre Hebrew frame. His lyrics were unique in Germany, and it was necessary to go back to the Hebrew poets of Palestine and Spain to find a parallel in literature for his magnificent imagery and voluptuous Orientalism.” Now towards the end of his life, on his mattress grave, he had a lot of time to think about his Jewishness. This is some of the things he wrote. “I know the goal and where it is, but I cannot reach it. We do not have the courage to wear the traditional beard, to fast, to protest, to suffer for the right to protest. I too lack the courage to let my beard grow and risk the taunts of children crying 'Hep! Hep!’ or ‘dirty Jew’ after me.”

He composed, in the last years of his life, he composed the “Hebrew Melodies.” And this is the last evaluation, his lasts evaluation of his heritage. “Formally I felt little affection for Moses, probably because the Hellenic spirit which dominated me. and I couldn’t pardon the Jewish law giver for his intolerance of images and for every sort of plastic representation. I failed to see that despite his hostile attitude towards art, Moses was himself a great artist, gifted with a true artistic spirit. Only in him the artistic instinct was exercised solely upon the colossal and indestructible, unlike the Egyptians. He did not shape his works of art out of bricks of granite. His pyramids were built of men, his obelisks hewn out of human material. A feeble race of shepherds he transformed into a people bidding defiance to the centuries, a great, eternal, holy people, God’s people, an exemplar to all other peoples, the prototype of mankind: he created Israel. Now I understand that the Greeks were only beautiful youths, why the Jews have always been men, powerful, inflexible men.” Now, fascinating.

As I said, I’m not going to go into his literature enough because it is not my field. I’m going to leave that to others. But there’s one or two things I want to say because he is regarded as Germany’s greatest lyric poet. And some of his works were, of course, set to music by some of the greatest of the German composers: Schubert, Schumann, Clara Schumann, and, of course, “Lorelei” by Mendelssohn and Liszt. Lorelei, just to give you a notion, this is his knowledge of all the German myths and legends. Lorelei is the legend of a beautiful maiden who threw herself into the Rhine because of an unfaithful lover. She is transformed into a siren, which lures boatmen to their death. Now I’m going to read you the first three stanzas. Now I think this is a very good English translation. “I cannot explain the sadness that falls on my breast. An old, old fable wants me and will not let me rest. The air grows cool in the twilight and softly the Rhine flows on. The peak of a mountain sparkles beneath the setting sun. More lovely than a vision, a girl sits high up there. Her golden jewellery glistens. She combs her golden hair.” Now it’s beautiful, it’s romantic, and it gives you a notion of his love affair with Germany, the double exile. He could never go back to Germany. He writes for radical newspapers. He would be put in prison if he went back. He’s a journalist as well. So consequently, but this is the love of Germany.

Now having said that, it becomes very important in German song. What On Earth happens in 1933? Well, in 1933, everything by Heine is banned. He is on the burnt list. It’s fascinating because there was a man called Michael Raucheisen, and I should thank Patrick for this. He was a very important pianist. He was born in 1889. He died in 1984. He, for example, was the pianist to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Later he was very, very important. But he cooperated with the Nazis, and he strove to complete a complete catalogue of German song and lieder. He was head of the department. And if you think about it, Schumann’s “Dichterliebe,” the “Swan Song,” 6 of the 14 songs are words of Heine. Think also of the works of Schubert and Schumann. So ironically, he’s not mentioned in this complete work, which was 67. It was put onto 67 CDs of all German song, and Heine is, of course, excluded. “Lorelei” they had trouble to ban, so that’s anonymous. Now it’s fascinating because there’s a statue to Heine, in the Bronx of all places, and it’s known as the Lorelei Fountain.

And I just want to finish on what I think is a strange and rather powerful story. Patrick and I had a very close friend called Trude Levi. She was Hungarian Jewish and tragically went to Auschwitz, where she was put to slave labour, working, of course, on munitions. And she used to talk about how they managed to sabotage the shell casings that she worked on in the factory not far from Auschwitz, because Auschwitz, of course, was also a slave labour reservoir. I use that term advisably ‘cause they were not considered people. And she told us how she used to get all the girls in her division to sing “Lorelei.” It’s such a story. Where does Heine fit in? He was asked if he was going to convert back. He said, “I don’t need to, I’ve always been a Jew.” He mocked the assimilated. He mocked those who converted. He himself did it, the doubly-alienated poet, who I think is so resonant for our age. Anyway, I’m going to stop there, and on Monday, when I see you again, I’m going back to the Wissenschaft. So we will spend more time on this because I don’t know about you, but I just find this absolutely a fascinating period. So shall I take some questions, Judi?

• [Judi] Yes, Trudy, if you have, do you have time?

• Yeah, and what I’m going to try and do, if I do it with my pen, can you see me? No, you can’t. Q&A and Comments:

Oh, there’s… Oh, this is lovely. This is for you, Judi. Saving one life, saving the world.

This is, “With Moses Mendelssohn being raised in an orthodox tradition, how did it happen, that all his kids married up?” One of them didn’t. I tried to explain, I tried to explain it, Rose, yesterday. I think the point was that he fell in love with German society. He himself had a very, very good Jewish education. He didn’t give it to his children. They were overbalanced. They fell into German society. They fell in love with it at a time when political events were occurring that made it very difficult to be Jews.

Oh, Rose and Dudley also complimenting you, Judi.

“Please repeat the name of the writer who wrote the pamphlet in 1793.” His name was Fichte, F-I-C-H-T-E. Yes, exactly, Kirk. Hannah Arendt’s first book. And as I said to you, I think it’s very much, it echoes a lot of her problems with her Jewishness and her Germanness. Don’t forget that she had an affair with Heidegger and tried to rehabilitate him. And although in her early years she was a Zionist, she later had terrible problems with Zionism. And, of course, she covered the Eichmann trial for “The New Yorker.” It was an unbelievably complicated story that erupted there.

Marilyn’s telling us that Henry Kissinger wrote a book, “The Balance of Power,” dealing with the Vienna Congress and Metternich, yes. You see, that’s the problem. We always have to know quite a bit of outside history in order to deal with Jewish history. “How did two students prevent the pogrom in Heidelberg?” And the professors. They stuck the Jews in one room, and they just didn’t let the mob in. The mob are usually cowards. When the troops finally come in, everyone falls away.

Q: Leon, what is my view of Niall Ferguson’s biography on the Rothschild dynasty?

A: I think it is an incredible work of scholarship that I would never, ever have the temerity to even try and attempt. It’s brilliant. I mean, the man has huge stamina. Look, I’m not suggesting you sit down and read it from cover to cover, although, it does read beautifully. What I do is I read the chunks that I’m interested in at the time.

Q: Yes, Ellie, he’s pointing out in… In the painting of Mendelssohn in the red coat, do I notice the traditional , the hanging candelabrum that was so typical for German Jews? It’s seen in many Oppenheim paintings.

A: Yes, that he was very, very prolific. He went on painting right up until the end.

Q: Eva’s asking, “What was the affair called when the little Jewish boy was taken away and baptised?”

A: And it’s answered by Audrio. I love you all. The Mortara affair. Thank you.

“There’s no statue in honour of Heine.”

Actually there is, there is, but it’s… Now it’s in Dusseldorf, and it’s in the park, and it’s a very remote, remote spot. I know that because Patrick… It is a long story. Ask Patrick to tell you the story of the Heine statue, please.

Q: “What was the influence that Goethe had among Jews?”

A: They fell for him. They fell in love for the beauty of his language, the subject matter. Yeah, I mean, remember, he was the man who wrote fast, and he lived a very, very long life. He wrote beautiful German, as did Heine. You’ve got to remember that this is a nation that isn’t yet formed, so they’re looking for heroes.

Yes, this is from Ronnie Feldman. “Emma Lazarus translated Heine to English.” Thank you for that, Ronnie.

“Please recommend a biography about Heinrich Heine.” I’m trying to think which one I like best. Leave it with me. I’ll give you an answer on… I’ve got about four in my shelves because I love him. Oh, it’s so difficult.

Oh, Monty, “It’s fascinating learning about the German Jewish elite, but it makes me curious about the man in the street, the ghetto Jew. It would be interesting to learn about their contacts with the elite.” Well, don’t forget Mendelssohn, Monty. He tried to civilise them. Look, I’m trying to remember the figures. I think in 1900 there were about 150,000 Jews in Germany. Of the original Jewish community, remember, the Austrian coming after 1881, and the German Jews look down on them. The original Jews in Germany, when they’re out of the ghettos, they get involved in a great success story. The Jews that Heine was talking about were in Poland.

Q: Oh Leo, I love your Jewish question. “Was Heine’s wife Jewish?”

A: No, she was a French seamstress.

Bobby Newman, the correct spelling is hep-hep. Hierosolyma est perdita. They were in 1819, yes. Audrey’s done it. Well, Heine’s writings, yes, yes, yes. There is an extraordinary list. The Nazis made a list of all the writings that were banned. His writings were banned. Can you imagine? This is the man who their great musicians set to music. Schubert, Schumann, Liszt.

My Hungarian friend who perished in Auschwitz was Trude Levi. She didn’t, no, she didn’t perish in Auschwitz. God forbid. No, she survived Auschwitz, and she wrote a book about her story. Her name was Trude Levi. T-R-U-D-E L-E-V-I.

Oh this is from Rose and Dudley. “Fond memories of Trude and our time together in Munich and at the old JCC.” Thank you so much, Rose. Wasn’t it? That was great fun. That’s when Patrick and I both came together with a group.

And people are saying nice things.

Q: Mickey’s asked the big one. “Do I see a parallel with the Jew situation today?”

A: I do believe that anti-Semitism has gone up 20 notches, but I think it’s a very, very different situation. I think to start with, look, you’ve got to remember, the world of yesterday is over. 1939, 1945, where are the centres of Jewish population? Israel? America? There is now a State of Israel. Just to be incredibly controversial, a very close friend of mine, Felek Scharf, Polish Jew, grandfather was the rabbi of Oswiecim, but he was a very much a modern man. He once said they killed the gentle Jews. There’s a Jewish state now, and I think that’s made it very, very difficult. I think Jews living in the diaspora still suffer a lot of the soul agonies that Jews… I don’t know. We are a complicated. I still think we’ve fall in love with the societies in which we live, and we still have to try and make them better. We have to go into their businesses. I’m saying their, aren’t I? I’m not saying our.

Q; Hi, are we outsiders?

A: That’s such a complicated situation. Jeremy Rosen and I are going to have a debate over on the key to Jewish survival.

Q: What has saved us? Is it education? Is it anti-Semitism?

A: So Mickey, I’m going to have to give that idea so much thought. It’s something you can all think about.

Q: What is the parallel?

A: Look, I’ve said this to you many times before, in countries like China, which have no problem with the Jews, they all assimilated

“The Jew in the Modern World,” Sheila, it’s a source book, and it’s by Paul Mendes-Flohr, that’s F-L-O-H-R, and Jehuda Reinharz with a Z.

Q: Can you tell us what Judi did, please?

A: Sheila, and when I finish, I’m going to tell Judi to tell us.

• [Ellie] This is Ellie.

• All right, when I finish this, do you mind, Judi, will you tell them?

• [Judi] You know what, I do mind.

• Okay, all I’m going to say is she was incredibly brave and she saved someone’s life. Got them out the sea. Can I say that Jude? It’s out. She’s going to be embarrassed now, so no one survived.

• [Judi] I am embarrassed, but that’s fine.

• No, but she’s going to be embarrassed now.

And this is from Ellie. “I’ve read much of Heine in the original German.

It is really beautiful lyric, prophetic and so human, but doesn’t do it much justice.” Yeah, that’s the problem. I mean, I don’t read German. I had one of those English educations where ancient Greek and Latin is considered better than modern languages, which I’m rubbish at anyway. You can tell that from my pronunciation. So I’ve looked at quite a few translations of Heine. I think the one I read you was the one I liked best.

Oh, this is Ellie. “My mother loved to sing, and she sung 'The Lorelei’ more often than not. It became kind of treacly to me as I got older.”

Look, my mother loved the song “My Yiddishe Momme.” I think that was, I think Heine was a little more poetic.

Thank you, Georgina.

Yes, Maurice, what I’m going to do is I will ask Judi to actually put up some of the biographies at the beginning of my next lecture.

“Heine’s house in Dusseldorf has a plaque and is named after him.” Where he died in Paris, there’s also a plaque.

Q; Am I going to talk about Rabbi Raphael Hirsch?

A; Leo, I’m going to come clean. I’m not going to do the development of reform, but I am going to be talking to a colleague to do it for me. I feel uncomfortable. One is we all have our things that we don’t like doing, and that’s one of the things I don’t want to teach, but it should be taught and somebody will.

Oh, I’ve lost them, Jude.

Anita’s saying, and this is Ellie family. Yes. Leo and Ellie. By the way, Arendt, Arendt, Arendt. You are right. My friend Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is always telling me to pronounce properly, Arendt, sorry .

Yes, Sheila’s mentioning Trude’s memoir, “A Cat Called Adolf.” She was an extraordinary woman. She was very, very close to Patrick, and towards the end of her life, she was almost crippled with arthritis. She used to come on our tours. I remember when we went on a tour to Poland, we went to Krakow and we went to Auschwitz, and it was Trude who was comforting everybody.

Q: “Is there any chance that Patrick and yourself will take tours in the future?”

A: Ah, who knows what the future holds? It would be fun, I think, particularly with a group such as yours, to visit Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Warsaw, Krakow. Look, we have to discuss it with Wendy. I don’t think Wendy would want to be involved or Judi will want to be involved in organising any such thing, but who knows once lockdown is over what is possible. A friend of mine Lionel Unterhalter, who’s also a friend of Wendy’s, he used to organise our tours. I dunno if he could be dragged out of retirement. And love to Lionel. He’s got COVID. Thank God he’s been vaccinated.

Mickey, thank you for trying to answer. The price of emancipation is assimilation.

This is from Josie, “My Berlin, Lutheran baptised mother, first a denationalised refugee from Hitler then an exile in South Africa said, "You’re not what you think you are. You are what other people decide you are.” Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I think characters like Heine who lived on the edge, it’s a difficult place to be, but in many ways it’s a kind of safety for characters like him. Look, think about it. He loved Germany. He was ambiguous about it. On one level, he admired his Jewish roots, but he also loved Paris. But he was also a rake and a libertine. He was a multi-complex genius.

Oh, this is from Dina. “My mother born in Ukraine, a pious, levee family, grew up in a small town, London, Ontario, loved poetry, and named my late sister Lorelei after her father, Aryeh Leib.” Oh, that’s lovely, Dina. Thank you. Thank you.

This is from Abigail. “Gabor Geluc, a native in Telki, Hungary, showed me a book of pictures of Hungarians who served in World War II. This was their way to fight anti-Semitism.” In World War I, beg your pardon.

Yeah, look, Jews in Hungary fought for Hungary. Jews in Germany fought for Germany. It’s so complicated. Today the only way to fight anti-Semitism is to be an educated Jew. I think we’ve got so many things to unravel here. I think all we can possibly, all I can ever do, I think, for me, is to pose the questions.

Oh, this is from Judith. “My mother was always proud that her father had the works of Heine, Shakespeare, and Goethe in his library in Berndorf, Austria.” I must tell you a story because it’s in my mind at the moment. My friend Rafael Sharf, his mother was hidden in, he managed to come to England in ‘38, goes to study LSE. His mother was hidden in Warsaw, though she came from Krakow. But she was betrayed, and in gestapo headquarters, she suddenly quoted Goethe, and the Nazi said, “This woman cannot be a Jew. She knows Goethe.” And Raphael always said to me, “In fact, only a Jew in Poland would know Goethe.” You see, this is the tragedy. I mean, Felek, I used to go round to his house. He had all of these. He had Heine, he had Shakespeare, he had Goethe. He also had the Polish classics. That’s what it was to be a European Jew. You were at home in the culture of, you were at home in the culture of Europe, and you added to it. Look, many of the great literary critics in every language have been Jews. “Schumann and Schubert wrote lieder set to Heine’s writing.

You mentioned this. What particular works? Is that from Asher Rubinstein? Is that from my grandson?” I will phone you later.

“He was orthodox.” Who was orthodox? Oh, I’m sorry, you’re talking about your families.

“Jews cannot fight anti-Semitism. That is the problem of the haters themselves.” Abigail, I’m going to think that one through. Prejudice, you see, the tragedy is though, it’s like any kind of hatred. The haters is the problem, but what about the victims of the haters? They suffer too.

Oh, so we’ve got students already for our tours.

Now this is from Josie. My maternal German antecedents, last family bar mitzvah was in 1842. I have Hebrew handwritten document. Although they were baptised, they remain part of Jewish society.“ Yes, Josie.

This is very interesting. My friend Anita told me that she was acculturated. She never baptised. Their family were acculturated, and they were very much part of German society, but their social group were nearly all, they lived in Breslau, were acculturated Jews. Somebody’s saying, is recommending, Ayelet Tours in the US, led by the Jewish historian Stephen Berk. Yes, of course. There’s loads of good tours for Jewish, of Jewish groups.

Abigail, "Let’s face it, non-Jews have wonderful sparks of culture.” Yes, of course they do. And just imagine, look, the Jews had been ghettoised. You come out of the ghetto, and it looks to you like the world has exploded and left you behind. It’s not the same in Poland. It’s not the same in Russia. It only happens when there’s a world you want. America was different. America, of course, we talk about America, or was it different, pluralism?

Robin, “A popular book among educated was…” No, “Siddhartha” was Hermann Hesse, I think, Robin. Yes, it was. I can remember that. That was the hippie book, wasn’t it?

This is from Ellie. “My great-grandfather and his family, Schiff, were both orthodox and very cultured, taking an active part in the Germanic culture in Vienna. Somehow they managed to straggle the tightrope.” Yes, some families did. Yes, “Rabbi Hirsch combined the value of orthodoxy with German culture.” Yeah, I think that’s it actually, Judi. Jude?

• [Judi] I’m here. I’m just-

• Oh, you’ve come up as dude. I said Jude.

• Judi.

• Anyway, thank you very much, Judi. God bless all of you, and don’t forget that in another 40 minutes we have another great presentation. So lots of love and see you on Monday, I think, isn’t it, Jude?

• [Judi] Yes, we will see you again on Monday. Thank you, and just see everybody in about 40 minutes. Thanks, everybody.

• God bless.

• Bye-bye. Take care.