Karl Kraus

Some time ago, one of the gentlemen who now position themselves as advocates of the Jewish people and, with eyes strangely twisted towards the sunrise, agitate for the return of all remaining Jews to their ancestral homeland of Palestine, asked me to contribute a bit to those causes that are called Zionist or, to use a good old-fashioned word, anti-Semitic. It seemed to be a campaign similar to the one recently suggested by Mr. Schneider [1] in the Lower Austrian parliament. At first I really believed that the friendly collector, as ultimate executor of the Christian-social will – not, as he believes, of the Old Testament – had come to collect the famous ‘bounty on Jews’, but I was soon instructed that anti-Semitism, as preached by the Zionists, refrained from such barbaric measures for the time being and was content to raise the funds necessary for the mere expulsion of the Jews. I had already been told earlier that the Member of Parliament Schneider was sincerely sympathetic to the endeavours of the Zionists, even though they were Jews; however, he had already become impatient in view of the lack of success of Zionist aid to date and had finally, as his motion in the Lower Austrian Parliament proves, energetically taken the matter into his own hands. Since then, it is said, there has been a certain degree of discord between Zionists and Christian Socialists; the former had to put up with accusations of lukewarmness, while the latter have been repeatedly accused of breaking the common bond. In addition, there was the performance of The New Ghetto, a play which, although portraying a thoroughly corrupt Jewish society, disappointed audiences by unexpectedly foregrounding a single noble-minded Israelite, thereby depriving the author of the sympathy of influential anti-Semitic circles.

But these skirmishes only seemed likely to weaken both parties, which, as it soon turned out, were dependent on each other. However, the anti-Semites, who could do nothing without the influx of Zionists, were the first to suffer from the rift. The Christian-social agitation fell silent and, in view of the parliamentary battles which consumed all the energy of the parties, one could indulge in the hope that even the lowest Viennese would perhaps soon move beyond the most obtuse anti-Semitism. It was only the appearance of a few articles in the main Zionist organ, especially the one entitled Mauschel [2], that brought about the reconciliation secretly longed for by both groups, and the cry ‘Out with the Jews!’ spread from the camp of the Jewish nationalist student body into those regions whose ever-ready political inertia was receptive to this convenient slogan. And soon the Jewish anti-Semites were again seen to be heading towards the common goal with a fervour never witnessed among the Aryan anti-Semites.

Referring to the example of numerous literary figures who did not belong to the Zionist party, the friendly collector in Ischl [3] asked me to give my contribution to the emigration fund in September. He called the sum requested a ‘shekel’ but assured me that, despite the unusually biblical name, this donation did not commit me to any party affiliation and merely ‘entitled me to participate in the election of delegates for the next congress and to receive the notices to be issued by the congress office’. Because this right did not seem to me to be a particularly oppressive one – since I did not see why I should deny my sympathy to a pernicious cause that would never be realised – and because, after the probable failure of the Zionist idea, I foresaw material compensation for the deceived Polish proletariat as the only possible and laudable end to the whole hullabaloo, a monetary contribution in the spirit of that human charity which is the enemy of Zionism did not seem at all inappropriate to me. After all, why should I refuse a cheap favour to a colleague who goes around with his notepad and wants to become the finance minister of the Jewish State by distributing as many of those little yellow stickers as possible, which entitle the holder to enter the new ghetto? Nevertheless, it was only after much protest and an explicit promise that I would never be coerced into the new faith that I agreed to pay the shekel. I did the right thing, but it did not help. The power of the Zionist promise is so compelling that even those who wish to escape it will soon find their names on a printed list of party members.

[…]

This is not the place, nor it is necessary, to pin the doctrine of assimilation against the attacks of the Jewish nationalists and to counter the adaptability of the Jewish tribe against the rigidity of Zionist minds. But I would like to advise those gentlemen who have not yet tried it on themselves to finally give it a go. Even the most stubborn Zionist should be able to be civilised into a European in just a few years. The irrefutable belief in the adaptability of the Jewish character is the best orthodoxy; it just needs to start becoming the faith of the fathers. Destined to become inextricably intertwined with all surrounding cultures and yet to always remain a ferment, it proves stronger than its overzealous proclaimers. It is not this faith that anti-Semitism has chosen as its object of struggle, but the circumstances surrounding it. After all, what is at stake are only certain outward appearances created within the confines of the ghetto, which our harassing rabbis would like to preserve as the holy of holies, in the parodistic awareness of their ‘mission’. Judaism will have to sacrifice them; it will not be difficult to deprive its opponents of these few pitiful tools at their disposal.

[…]

The centre of gravity of Zionist agitation naturally rests in Galicia [4]; once it finally forgoes the support for the ‘cowardly assimilationists’ of the European West, the plan to remove the Polish Jews will make the great amount of feeling that Zionism has set in motion appear completely out of place. Where a sober settlement project is under consideration, messianic rapture is entirely dispensable. Let those who despair of the possibility of solving the Eastern Jewish question on the spot make friends with this project. It seems to me that the woes and aches of Basel [5] can be cured in one fell swoop, and I would bet that, if treated systematically, it would take little more than two generations to transform a Galician Jewish primary school into a luxury casino. If one has higher aims, the money now being collected for Zionist purposes will certainly suffice to acquire a decent education. The gentlemen would only have to decide to stop helping the Polish aristocracy, for whom anti-Semitism is the only source of income. With a thorough rejection of orthodox influences and a complete renunciation of certain ancestral prejudices in clothing and hairstyle, which have long since gone out of fashion, the thought of a final colonisation in one's own country seems to me to have much less of a utopian quality than the planned radical cure of an exodus. We would have to be given very compelling reasons for the latter, as have recently been put forward by authoritative Zionist sources. We heard that the governments were so cruel as to extend the law of Sunday rest to Jewish workers as well. But the latter did not want to abandon the observance of the Sabbath and, because they now have two days off work per week, are doomed to perish miserably in Europe. In Palestine – so ends the logical line of Zionism – of course no obligation to rest on Sunday awaits them.

It is ill-fitting to try to counter the irresistible force of such reasoning with heretical objections. The Zionist pathos of resignation, rekindled in Basel in front of a Jewish flag that beckons fulfilment, overcomes all obstacles that reason and reality might place in its way. Many more shekels will flow into the National Fund before the more reasonable realisation dawns on the authorities that world suffering does not require specialists and that all that oppresses us is everywhere only misguided socialism that is destined to make a return on itself even before the Jews return to Palestine. Would it not be possible to improve European culture more quickly than to found a Jewish national one? Until now the Jews have been scattered all over the world; so have the Christians – they forgot for a time that the Jews were citizens. Nevertheless, I believe that the Christians, if the others only give them time, will succeed in overcoming their forgetfulness with a little cultural enlightenment, and the gentlemen in Basel, who presumed to want to rush the historical development of a people, may then have contributed to the regeneration of the operetta genre after all.

In any case, I imagine that the time is still far away when, whenever there is talk of a crown donated for Zionist purposes, one is led to reflexively think of the attributes of the kingdom of Zion. Offenbach's orchestra, which plays the urgent invitation ‘Off to Crete!’, turns out to be, as is well known, unaware of any plan or precise itinerary. Let the journalists who telegraph promising news from Basel to the uninterested world be patient and not go around with a face as if they had been reporters at Bethlehem’s massacre of the innocents [6]. The game of nations may well continue for a while yet, and – arm in arm with the political admirers of ‘medieval music’ – this enthusiastically fabricated Judaism, which pretentiously flaunts a kind of right to persecution, may put the last few months of the century back in its place. If Zionists and anti-Semites share a worldview that is already poor to begin with, then that worldview must soon be over.

It seems so shallow and so easy to refute with the most commonplace arguments that one must be ashamed to be opposing it so emphatically. Even the most remote humanitarian phrases are liable to regain the appearance of tantalising originality when set against the ghetto tendencies. However, abstracting from all possibilities of political danger, good taste still has the right to protest against the fact that the wealth of thought out of which the drunken grocer in the Viennese district of Hernals draws his shout ‘Out with you, Jews!’ is simply repeated in Zionism, and that the answer ‘Yes, out with us Jews!’ offers too little variety despite its more solemn tone.

[…]

Ischl has recently become a popular transit station for Zionist race researchers who want to take their latest experiences or disappointments with them on their way to Basel. The only Zionist who was able to stay here for a longer period of time was bound to Ischl by professional considerations; he is a dentist and as such lived only in thoughts of the thousand-year-old toothache of Judaism ...

The friendly coffee house on the Esplanade might seem like the last refreshment stop before the final departure. On closer inspection, however, one discovers that this is where the prototypes of sedentariness have gathered, who could truly upset even the most inveterate anti-Zionist; people who want no disturbance whatsoever of the peace guaranteed to them by MP Noske [7], but who are still fighting tooth and nail against any attempt at assimilation. Nature seems to have shown a greater ability to adapt. When I went out recently, I was able to observe how, over time, it has adopted the habits of the people who visit it every day. I heard a little stream murmuring, and when, in astonishment, I called out into the forest, the echo answered me with a question ...

As you can see, this is a minor change in nature, which is insignificant compared to the devastation that the 300 delegates may have caused in the Swiss countryside. All those who did not heed the call from Basel must be defended against them. Come here, all of you – I would like to say to them – who are weary and burdened; shake the grouchiness from your foreheads and don't let the Zionist promises of a better future make you sad! Do not look longingly towards the land to which they want to lead you – for this is the land of Uz [8]. This is how I would like to speak to the people who live on the Ischl Esplanade, in the land of servitude, where the Traun flows and where the tourist tax is high ...

But this warning is not directed solely at the people of Ischl, at those settled souls who can only be roused by a social nudge; it is directed with much more justification and more love at the countless who stand to lose nothing, or at most a deceptive hope. The propertied classes, feudal Jews and bourgeois alike, will respond to the Zionist plea with a broad smile. In the weary hearts of the Galician proletariat it will kindle pernicious embers. The longing only warms as long as the ignorance of the real facts lasts. The creation of a Fata Morgana, i.e a mirage, is not social reform, but false pretence, and for the wanderer in the desert every illusion must prolong the path of suffering. It is hardly to be expected that the Jews will enter the promised land with dry feet this time; another Red Sea, social democracy, will block their way there.

A few gentlemen at present feel disturbed by the sluggishness of their surroundings; being finely organised natures, blasé about the early successes that have endowed them with an abundance of talent and good fortune, they urgently need a new, more serious purpose in life. Without doubt, this requires the participation of the public. One may well be worried about the development of Dr. Theodor Herzl, the finest of the younger Viennese prose writers. But the fact that, for the mere reason that he needed a transition from the feature pages to the editorial page, hundreds of thousands, fooled by a glimmer of vain splendour, had to sink back into their old lot in redoubled misery, was certainly not the course of events predetermined by the order of the world. Where is Mr. Nordau [9], the great literary doctor, who always thought he had, with rare urgency, to feel the pulse of the dying century at the slightest anomaly of the times? ...

Oh, he is the chairman of the Zionist Congress!

Notes

[1] Ernst Schneider, an Austrian politician who, in the Diet of Lower Austria, said that the government should offer a premium for the shooting of Jews similar to that offered for shooting wolves.

[2] Theodore Herzl, Mauschel, Die Welt, 15 October 1897.
(see: https://www.panarchy.org/palestine/mauschel.html)

[3] Town in Austria.

[4] Galicia is a historical and geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine.

[5] The First Zionist Congress was held in Basel on August 29–31, 1897. Two hundred and eight delegates and twenty-six press correspondents attended the event. It was convened and chaired by Theodore Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionism movement.

[6] The reference is to the killing of the newborns ordered by Herod in Bethlehem and surrounding area, as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew.

[7] Gustav Noske (1868-1946) was a German politician, one of the leading members of the German Social Democratic Party. He became famous, in a negative sense, for using army and paramilitary forces to suppress the socialist/communist uprising of 1919 that led to the killing of around 165 people.

[8] The land of Uz is a location mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible, most prominently in the Book of Job which begings: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job”.

[9] Max Nordau (1849-1923) was a physician, essayist, social critic and Zionist leader. He was co-founder, with Theodore Herzl, of the Zionist Organization, and president or vice-president of several Zionist Congresses.