10 - Jews and the German Language: The Concept of Kulturnation and Anti-Semitic Propaganda

Summary

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

One does not need to have a Zionist outlook to conclude that the history of the Jewish people is unique, absolutely unlike the fate of any other people. Although this is certainly true of the near extermination of the Jewish community in Germany, the conclusion would be flawed if it could not be verified on several levels. One might well have a perception that there is something unique about the linguistic fate of the German Jews from the eighteenth to the twentieth century - and that that perception can also be documented. Take, for example, Jakob Wassermann, who reported in detail on his “path as a German and a Jew”:

Up to now, I was innocently convinced that I was not merely a part of German life and the German people, but that it was an innate part of me. I breathe in the language. It is much more than my means of communicating. . . . Its words and rhythm make up my innermost being. . . . It is familiar to me, as if I had been bonded with this element for all eternity. It has shaped my features, illuminated my eye, guided my hand, taught my heart to feel and my brain to think.

Is the German language, then, the core piece of proof that one is a German? Or is this the eccentric argument of an oversensitive spirit?

Apparently the first is true, for Elias Canetti, a man with a sensitive but fundamentally strong, independent nature, says the same thing, although with even more extravagant intensity: “The language of my spirit will always be German, because I am a Jew.“ So the German language is inextricably linked to being Jewish! Is it only literary figures who assume such a curious amalgamation of the two identities? No, even sober scientists come out with startling statements.