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Elias on Anti-Semitism: Zionism or Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2017

Danny Trom
Danny Trom*
Affiliation:
Centre de recherche français à Jerusalem (CRFJ-CNRS), LIER (Institut Marcel Mauss-EHESS)
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Abstract

This paper proposes to revisit the intellectual trajectory of Norbert Elias on the basis of an article published by the sociologist in a local Jewish newspaper in 1929 and entitled “On the Sociology of German Anti-Semitism.” It argues that in this seemingly circumstantial text, Elias asserts his decision to favor sociology, which had come to replace and envelop his engagement in the Zionist youth movement Blau-Weiss. This is evident in the article's somewhat ambiguous final sentence, where Elias presents German Jews with an alternative: collective emigration to Palestine or a lucid vision drawn from a sociological diagnosis of the situation. The paper begins by situating Elias's text within the range of analyses of anti-Semitism in 1920s Germany, comparing its approach to Zionism with that of Franz Oppenheimer. It then contextualizes its relationship to the sociology of Karl Mannheim: Elias was Mannheim's assistant in Frankfurt and his approach contrasted with the perspective developed in the same time and place by the Frankfurt school. Finally, the paper shows that Elias's sociological distantiation would imperceptibly take the place of the political distantiation that had centered on Zionism—a scientific movement that implied erasing from his memory the political Zionism he had long supported. A new French translation of Elias's 1929 text, also by Danny Trom, is included as an appendix.

Type
Sociology and History
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 249 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Éditions EHESS 2017 

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References

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2. Mannheim, Karl, “Das konservative Denken. Soziologische. Beiträge zum Werden des politisch-historischen Denkens in Deutschland,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 57 (1927): 470–95Google Scholar. Mannheim's full text was published in David Kettler, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr, eds., Konservatismus. Ein Beitrag zu der Soziologie des Wissens (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984).

3. As his biographer Hermann Korte notes: Korte, “Norbert Elias in Breslau. Ein biographisches Fragment,” in Statik und Prozess. Essays (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozial-wissenschaften, 2005), 81–100.

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22. When Herzl read Oppenheimer's “Jüdische Siedlungen” published in Die  Welt 50, no. 5 (1902): 4–6, he immediately imagined that the Zionist movement could conduct this kind of social experiment in Palestine. In his address to Herzl, published on June 12, 1903, in Die  Welt, Oppenheimer publicly expressed his support for the platform of the First Zionist Congress (1897): “You know that I am a Zionist and that I am firmly attached to the Basel Program. … I must add that I do not understand how, after Kishinev, a Jew cannot be a Zionist!”

23. Oppenheimer, Franz, “Stammbewusstsein und Volksbewusstsein” [1910], in Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Zionismus, 1882–1933, ed. Reinharz, Jehuda (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1981), 87–90 Google Scholar.

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30. The expression is Blumenfeld's: Esh, Shaul, “Kurt Blumenfeld on the Modern Jew and Zionism,” Jewish Journal of Sociology  4, no. 2 (1964): 232–42, here p. 236Google Scholar.

31. Blumenfeld, who was president of the Zionist Federation of Germany between 1909 and 1914, later became the president of the World Zionist Organization. When Hannah Arendt broke with Zionism in her article “Zionism Reconsidered,” published in the Menorah Journal 32, no. 2 (1945): 162–96, she sent it to Blumenfeld, anxious to see what his reaction would be. Blumenfeld was angry, as he stated in a letter to Rosenblüth, but their friendship nevertheless endured. See Leibovici, Martine, “Honorer l'amitié,” preface to Arendt, Hannah and Blumenfeld, Kurt, Correspondance, 1933–1963 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998), 7–24 Google Scholar, here p. 18. Arendt's article has recently been republished in Arendt, Hannah, The Jewish Writings, ed. Kohn, Jerome and Feldman, Ron H. (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 343–74Google Scholar.

32. Before the First World War, Rosenblüth, who cofounded the Blau-Weiss with Blumenfeld, defended a public law thesis on notions of the state and the nation, supervised by Georg Jellinek. Under the name of Pinhas Rosen, he became the first justice minister of the State of Israel between 1948 and 1951.

33. In his memoirs Gershom Scholem explains that the positions of the Blau-Weiss became “semi-Fascist” during this period: Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth, trans. Harry Zohn (1980; repr. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2012), 152. On the place of the Blau-Weiss in the German Zionist movement, see Berkowitz, Michael, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 150 sq. For a detailed history of the movement, from its creation in 1912 to its dissolution in 1926, and its rootedness in the German cultural context, see Meybohm, Ivonne, Erziehung zum Zionismus. Der Jüdische Wanderbund Blau-Weiss als Versuch einer praktischen Umsetzung des Programms der Jüdischen Renaissance (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009)Google Scholar.

34. On this intellectual atmosphere and the state of mind of young “Zionist” activists, see Löwenthal's, Leo memoirs of his youth: Löwenthal, Mitmachen wollte ich nie. Ein autobiographisches Gespräch mit Helmut Dubiel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980)Google Scholar.

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36. Letter from Elias to Martin Bandeman, dated May 14, 1920, reproduced in Hackeschmidt, Von Kurt Blumenfeld zu Norbert Elias, 327–32.

37. This is why the suggestion that Ernst Cassirer's neo-Kantianism had an impact on Elias's relational epistemology has been raised and discussed. See Maso, Enjo, “Elias and the Neo-Kantians: Intellectual Backgrounds of The Civilizing Process ,” Theory, Culture and Society  12 (1995): 46–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sieg, Ulrich, Jüdische Intellektuelle im Ersten Weltkrieg. Kriegserfahrungen, weltanschauliche Debatten und kulturelle Neuentwürfe (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is worth noting in passing that Elias and Cassirer both attended the same Gymnasium, one very much prized by the Jewish liberal bourgeoisie of Breslau: van Rahden, Till, Juden und andere Breslauer. Die Beziehung zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Grossstadt von 1860 bis 1925 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2000)Google Scholar.

38. On the complex semantics of “Bildung,” see Koselleck, Reinhart, “Zur anthropologischen und semantischen Struktur der Bildung,” in Bildungsgüter und Bildungwissen, ed. Koselleck, Reinhart (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990), 11–46 Google Scholar.

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42. This tradition can be traced from von Dohm's, Christian Wilhelm famous essay “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of Jews” [1781], in Readings in Modern Jewish History, ed. Rivkin, Ellis, trans. Lederer, Helen (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion, 1957), 12–69 Google Scholar, to Walter Rathenau's momentous appeal to German Jews, “Höre Israël” (“Hear, O Israel”), published in the journal Die Zukunft 5 (1897): 454–62.

43. Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia [1929], trans. Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936)Google Scholar.

44. Elias, Norbert, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen, vol. 1, Wandlungen des Verhaltens in den weltlichen Oberschichten des Abendlandes, vol. 2, Wandlungen der Gesellschaft. Entwurf zu einer Theorie der Zivilisation (Basel: Haus zum Falken, 1939)Google Scholar. Translated into English as The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, trans. Edmund Jephcott, rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

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46. The argument of Elias's thesis is presented in two short texts: “Idee und Individuum. Eine kritische Untersuchung zum Begriff der Geschichte” [1922], and “Idee und Individuum. Ein Beitrag zur Philosophie der Geschichte” [1922], in Elias, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Frühschriften, 29–72 and 73–76. On the neo-Kantian milieu in which Elias's thought developed, see Merz-Benz, Peter-Ulrich, “Richard Hönigswald und Norbert Elias. Von der Geschichtsphilosophie zur Soziologie,” in Studien zur Philosophie Richard Hönigswalds, ed. Orth, Ernst W. and Aleksandrowicz, Dariusz (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1996), 180–204 Google Scholar.

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50. For the rest of his life, Mannheim would remain nostalgic about his experience during the immediate postwar years as part of Budapest's “Sunday Circle,” a group of young Hungarian Jews that included György Lukács, Béla Balázs, and Michael and Karl Polanyi. It was there that he first developed his notion of culture as a produced totality, which, in that period of crisis and alienation, needed to be subjectively reappropriated. See Perivolaropoulou, Nia, “Karl Mannheim et sa generation,” Mil neuf cent  10, no. 1 (1992): 165–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This youthful experience is in some ways similar to Elias's participation in the Breslau Blau-Weiss.

51. On what has been termed the quarrel of historicism, see Laube, Reinhard, Karl Mannheim und die Krise des Historismus. Historismus als wissenssoziologischer Perspektivismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2004)Google Scholar.

52. Arendt, Hannah, “Philosophie und Soziologie. Anlässlich Karl Mannheim, ‘Ideologie und Utopie,’” Die Gesellschaft 7, no. 1 (1930): 163–76Google Scholar. A number of reactions to Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia, including those of Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Hans Speier, and Paul Tillich, are compiled in Volker Meja and Nico Stehr, eds., Knowledge and Politics: The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute (London: Routledge, 1990). The only reaction to which Mannheim responded directly was Curtius's full-frontal attack in his “Soziologie – und ihre Grenzen,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau 22 (1929): 727–36. See Mannheim, Karl, “Zur Problematik der Soziologie in Deutschland,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau  36/37 (1929): 820–29Google Scholar.

53. See the long review published in 1929 by Herbert Marcuse in the journal Die Gesellschaft, 348–55, http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/30spubs/1929DieGesellschaftMarcuseWahrheitsproblematikMannheimOpt.pdf.

54. Norbert Elias, “Sociogenesis of the Antithesis between Kultur and Zivilisation in German Usage,” in The Civilizing Process, 5–30.

55. Kruse, Volker, Soziologie und “Gegenwartskrise.” Die Zeitdiagnosen Franz Oppenheimers und Alfred Webers. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Soziologie der Weimarer Republik (Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag, 1990)Google Scholar.

56. The issue of how critical it was for Elias to move beyond philosophy through sociology is explored in detail in Kilminster, Richard, Norbert Elias: Post-Philosophical Sociology (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar.

57. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 67: “The truth of Max Weber's words becomes more clear as time goes on: ‘The materialistic conception of history is not to be compared to a cab that one can enter or alight from at will, for once they enter it, even the revolutionaries themselves are not free to leave it.’”

58. Norbert Elias, “Alfred Weber and Karl Mannheim (1),” in Reflections on a Life, 101–8.

59. Horkheimer, Max, “A New Concept of Ideology” [1930], in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, trans. G. Hunter, Frederick, Kramer, Matthew S., and Torpey, John (Cambridge: Mit Press, 1993), 129–49Google Scholar.

60. Merz-Benz, Peter-Ulrich, “Ideologiekritik oder Entideologisierung der Gesellschaft. Karl Mannheim und Norbert Elias,” Berliner Journal für Soziologie  7, no. 2 (1997): 183–96Google Scholar.

61. Norbert Elias, “Alfred Weber and Karl Mannheim (2),” in Reflections on a Life, 109. In the same text, Elias stated that he had “often wondered whether the special place Mannheim gave utopia outside the ideologies, despite the fact that it ultimately has the character of an ideology and despite his own concept of total ideology, might have resulted from an involuntary attempt on his part to rescue socialism from relativization as ideology,” specifying that “for me, criticism of ideology was only a means to an end, a step on the way to a theory of society that would take account of the fact that reality-revealing as well as reality-concealing knowledge can be observed” (pp. 108–9).

62. Fromm introduced his friends Löwenthal and Simon to the rabbi Nehemias Anton Nobel. Simon, who enlisted as a military volunteer during the First World War, also defended a philosophy thesis at Heidelberg. He subsequently became close to Buber, with whom he founded Brith Shalom, an association intended to promote a binational political solution in Palestine. In 1928, Simon emigrated to Palestine and taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Another figure who frequented the circle that grew up around Rabbi Nobel at this time was Siegfried Kracauer.

63. Löwenthal's thesis was on “The Social Philosophy of Franz von Baader: The Illustration and Problem of a ‘Religious Philosophy,’” Fromm's on “The Jewish Law: Contribution to a Sociology of the Jewish Diaspora.”

64. For Fromm and Landauer's impact on the direction of the Institut für Sozialforschung, see Abromeit, John, Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 194 sq.

65. See Landauer's seminal article, “Zur psychosexuellen Genese der Dummheit” [1929], Psyche 24, no. 6 (1970): 463–84, which exerted a decisive influence on the theory of prejudices.

66. On the backlash against Mannheim, which extended to the point of caricature, see Barboza, Amalia, “Die verpassten Chancen einer Kooperation zwischen der ‘Frankfurter Schule’ und Karl Mannheims Soziologischem Seminar,” in Das Feld der Frankfurter Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften vor 1945, ed. Faber, R. and Ziege, E.-M. (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2007), 63–88 Google Scholar.

67. On this failure of critical theory, see Ehrhard Bahr, “The Anti-Semitism Studies of the Frankfurt School: The Failure of Critical Theory,” German Studies Review 1, no. 2 (1978): 125–38; Jay, Martin, “The Jews and the Frankfurt School: Critical Theory's Analysis of Anti-Semitism,” New German Critique  19, no. 1 (1980): 137–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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69. According to Gisèle Freund's testimony, Elias was also the link between Mannheim and his doctoral students, showing concern for the advancement of each of the theses being prepared. Cited in Ilieva, Radostina, “Soziologie und Lebensstil des Mannheim-Kreises in Frankfurt,” in Soziologie in Frankfurt. Eine Zwischenbilanz, ed. Herrschaft, Felicia and Lichtblau, Klaus (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010), 123–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 137.

70. For a detailed reconstruction of this milieu and its collective dynamics, see Kettler, David, Meja, Volker, and Loader, Colin, Karl Mannheim and the Legacy of Max Weber: Retrieving a Research Programme (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)Google Scholar.

71. See the chapter on “The ‘Intensive Study Group’ around Karl Mannheim,” in Kettler, Meja, and Loader, Karl Mannheim and the Legacy of Max Weber, 57–74.

72. The preparatory notes for the lectures Mannheim delivered during this period were found in his archives in England: “Introduction to the Social Forms of the Present and Their History,” dated April 20, 1931, and reproduced in David Kettler and Colin Loader, eds., Sociology as Political Education: Karl Mannheim (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 159–63.

73. Weil, Hans, Bildung und Schule. Die Entstehung des deutschen Bildungsbegriffs und die Entwicklung seines Verhältnisses zur Schule, ed. Mannheim, Karl (1930; repr. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1964)Google Scholar.

74. On Weil's influence on Katz's thesis and the lasting impact of Mannheim's sociology on his historical sociology, see Meyers, David N., “Rebel in Frankfurt: The Scholarly Origins of Jacob Katz,” in The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work, ed. Harris, Jay M. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 9–27 Google Scholar.

75. In 1931, Arendt wrote a glowing review of Weil's work: “Review of Hans Weil, The Emergence of the German Principle of ‘Bildung,’” reproduced in Arendt, Hannah, Reflections on Literature and Culture, ed. Gottlieb, Susannah Young-ah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 24–30 Google Scholar.

76. Alongside his contributions in the domain of Jewish social philosophy and a mystical and anarchistic version of Zionism, Buber was known among contemporary sociologists for having founded and directed Die Gesellschaft, a very influential series of monographs in various domains of the social sciences. The volumes included Oppenheimer's Der  Staat, which went through several re-editions, as well as works by Werner Sombart on the proletariat (1906), Georg Simmel on religion (1906), Gustav Landauer on revolution (1907), Ferdinand Tönnies on morals (1909), and Eduard Bernstein on the labor movement (1910).

77. Cited in Kettler, Meja, and Loader, Karl Mannheim and the Legacy of Max Weber, 71.

78. For example, Sébastien Chauvin and Florence Weber, “Un texte de Norbert Elias (1987) : ‘The Retreat of Sociologists into the Present,’” Genèses 52, no. 3 (2003): 133–51.

79. Amalia Barboza, “Zwei Frankfurter Schulen: Wissenssoziologie versus Kritische Theorie?” in Herrschaft and Lichtblau, Soziologie in Frankfurt, 161–203.

80. On this imbalance of institutional resources between Horkheimer and Mannheim, see Shils, Edward, The Selected Papers of Edward Shils, vol. 3, The Calling of Sociology and Other Essays on the Pursuit of Learning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 188–93Google Scholar.

81. On this backlash, see Barboza, “Die verpassten Chancen.”

82. Schöttker, Detlev, “Norbert Elias und Walter Benjamin. Ein unbekannter Briefwechsel und sein Zusammenhang,” Merkur  42, no. 473 (1988): 582–95Google Scholar.

83. On Elias's “wasted” career and the radical vision he developed as compensation for the absence of institutional resources, see Joly, Marc, “Dynamique de champ et ‘événements.’ Le projet intellectuel de Norbert Elias (1930–1945),” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire  2, no. 106 (2010): 81–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. Norbert Elias, “Inquest on German Jewry,” review of Reichmann, Eva G., Hostages of Civilization: A Study of the Social Causes of Anti-Semitism (London: Gollancz, 1950), published in Association of Jewish Refugees Information  5, no. 4 (1950): 5 Google Scholar.

85. Bein, Alex, “Franz Oppenheimer als Mensch und Zionist,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts  7, no. 25 (1964): 1–20 Google Scholar.

86. Elias, Norbert, Studien über die Deutschen. Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989)Google Scholar, 186 sq.

87. Ibid., 25.

88. Elias, “Notes on the Jews,” 125.

89. Elias, Reflections on a Life, 43.

90. Barboza, Amalia, “Distanzierung als Beruf: Karl Mannheims soziologischer Ansatz als ‘Innovationstendenz’ der deutschen Soziologie,” in Deutsch-jüdische Wissenschaftsschicksale. Studien über Identitätskonstruktionen in der Sozialwissenschaft, ed. Barboza, Amalia and Henning, Christoph (Konstanz: Uvk, 2006), 232–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91. Freund in 1985, cited in Amalia Barboza, “Die verpassten Chancen,” 80.

92. Cited in Neubauer, Sebastian, “Elements of a Critical Theory of Zionism: The Jewish State, the Disastrous History and the Changing Functionality of Antisemitism in the Late Thought of Max Horkheimer,” Constelaciones. Revista de teoría critica  4 (2012): 119–32Google Scholar. See also Rabinbach, Anson, “The Frankfurt School and the ‘Jewish Question,’ 1940–1970,” in Against the Grain: Jewish Intellectuals in Hard Times, ed. Mendelsohn, Ezra, Hoffman, Stefani, and Cohen, Richard I. (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 225–76Google Scholar.

93. Jacobs, Jack, The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 138 Google Scholar. See in particular chap. 3, “Critical Theorists and the State of Israel.”

94. Kilminster, Richard, “Norbert Elias’ Post-Philosophical Sociology: From ‘Critique’ to Relative Detachment,” Sociological Review  51 (2011): 91–105 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. Elias, Reflections on a Life, 37–40.

96. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven: Yale, 1982), 455 Google Scholar.

97. Bernd Weiler, “E Pluribus Unum? The Kakanian Intellectual and the Question of Cultural Pluralism” (paper given at the symposium “The Contours of Legitimacy in Central Europe: New Approaches in Graduate Studies,” European Studies Centre, St. Antony's College, Oxford, 2002), http://users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/papers/Bernd_Weiler.pdf, p. 6.

98. Since ideology and utopia share a noncongruence with reality, Mannheim posited that this “functional correlation” could serve as a starting point. This is emphasized by Ricœur, Paul, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 2–3 Google Scholar.

99. Katz's thesis on the emergence of a Jewish Bildungselite in the eighteenth century and its assimilationist ideology, entitled “Die Entstehung der Judenassimilation in Deutschland und deren Ideologie,” was published in English under the title Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Farnborough: Westmount, 1972).

100. Kettler, David and Meja, Volker, “Karl Mannheim's Jewish Question,” Religions  3, no. 2 (2012), 228–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101. Katz, Jacob, With My Own Eyes: The Autobiography of an Historian (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, 104–5: “This was nothing more than a momentary flash, an idea that faded just as rapidly as it had come.” In their article “Karl Mannheim's Jewish Question,” Kettler and Meja doubt Katz's interpretation that his doctoral supervisor, isolated and delivering sparsely attended lectures, was prepared to contemplate absolutely any solution, remarking that this encounter occurred at a moment when Mannheim was considering an offer to join the University in Exile in New York and that on his death he bequeathed his library to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ). It should also be noted that the HUJ was a desirable destination for German sociologists who had been removed from their universities in 1933, as demonstrated by the letter Oppenheimer addressed to Albert Einstein, a member of the HUJ board of directors. Warmly recommending his son, Ludwig Oppenheimer, who had been driven out of the Hochschule für Politik, the recently retired sociologist also disqualifies in passing his own student Adolphe Löwe—who at that time was close to the Institut für Sozialforschung—for being “too economistic,” as well as Mannheim, his successor in Frankfurt, whom he judges “too philosophical”: http://www.fb03.uni–frankfurt.de/54043985/Oppenheimer_Chronik_06_02_2015.pdf, p. 137 (July 12, 1933).

102. Elias, Reflections on a Life, 28.