In
zijn onuitgegeven Erinnern schreef
hij, afstand nemend van de joodse godsdienst "so war men Vater Jude."
Maar in een brief van 29 juli 1916 schreef hij aan Martin Buber: “Aber ich bin
ein Jude, ich bekenne und betätige und lebe Judentum — ohne in die Synagoge zu
gehen und ohne den jüdischen Turnverein für etwas anderes als eine Absurdität
zu halten.” 1
Over
Spinoza (en Rembrandt) schreef hij
Julius
Bab, “Spinoza: Zwei Gedichte.” In: Freie
Jüdische Lehrerstimme 1 (1912/13), 45. Ik heb uit deze antiquarische aanbieding niet de indruk dat ze in Ausgewählte Gedichte zijn opgenomen –
dat wordt dus nog goed zoeken. [Toevoeging: de gedichten gevonden! Cf. blog van 12 maart 2019]
Julius
Bab, Rembrandt und Spinoza. In: Der
Morgen 5, n. 4 (1929), 393-397 [te lezen in Sammlungen. ub.uni-frankfurt.de]
Julius
Bab, Rembrandt und Spinoza. Ein Doppelbildnis im deutsch-jüdischen Raum.
Berlin; Philo. 1934 – een verdere uitwerking van zijn 1929-artikel.
Tweemaal
schreef David Wertheim over deze Bab:
David
J. Wertheim, "The Symbolic Meaning of a Presumed Relationship: Rembrandt
and Spinoza in German Literature. In: Martin Bollacher, Thomas Kisser und
Manfred Walther (Hrsg.), Ein neuer Blick
auf die Welt: Spinoza in Literatur, Kunst und Ästhetik: with abstracts in
English. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann (Schriftenreihe der
Spinoza-Gesellschaft ; 14), 2010: 73-81. Hierna het abstract:
Een
jaar later verscheen de handelsuitgave van zijn proefschrift:
Daaruit
neem ik hier de boeiende passage over Julius Bab over (zonder – op één noot na
- de verwijzingen mee te nemen).
Julius
Bab (1883-1955) wrote the most extensive analysis of the relationship between
Spinoza and Rembrandt in defense of the belief in a symbiosis between Germans
and Jews. Bab, a Jewish theater critic from Berlin, was a firm believer in a
"tiefen Wesensbeziehung zwischen Deutschtum und Judentum" (profound
essential connection between Germanness and Jewishness)." He was a soldier
during the First World War, and wrote patriotic poems on Germany. He also wrote
a small hook on the subject of Rembrandt and Spinoza, which was printed by the
Jewish publishing house, Philo Verlag.
This book appeared in 1934, one year after Hitler's rise to power. It
elaborated a short article on Rembrandt and Spinoza, published in 1929 in der Morgen. The book concerned the
similarities between Rembrandt's and Spinoza's lives. Bab already indicated the
significance of the parallel lives of the philosopher and the painter in the
title of his book: Rembrandt und Spinoza.
Ein Doppelbildnis im deutsch-jüdischen Raum (Rembrandt and Spinoza. A
Double Portrait in the German Jewish Space). That he spoke of a German-Jewish space, making The Netherlands
part of the German cultural realm, reveals the influence of Langbehn. By
speaking of a German-Jewish space he
indicated his firm belief in the existence of a meeting ground for Jews and
non-Jews. In 1934, such a belief was quite a defiant statement, although
Zionists would also consider it to be tragically erroneous. For Bab, however,
parallels in the biographies of Rembrandt and Spinoza validated this belief.
Bab carefully formulated his aims, and daimed that his book commented on the
"kampfvolle[n] Tage" (days of strife) in which it was written, and
dealt with the author's "Frage nach seiner Existenz als Deutscher und
Jude" (question over his existence as German and Jew). His book also dealt
with the wider issue of whether or not creative spirits would be better served
by "Abtrennung" (separation) or by "intensivere Wechselwirkung
der Menschengruppen" (intensive interplay between groups of people),"
or, as it could also be phrased, whether races could understand each other.
Bab
did not speculate about possible contact between Spinoza and Rembrandt; he
admitted quite frankly that there was no evidence for this. Nevertheless, he
did suggest a spiritual closeness binding the "spanische Jude...
wahrscheinlich das Gröβte,
am meisten bewegende Genie, das das Judentum in nachbiblischer Zeit
hervorgebracht hat" (Spanish Jew ...probably the greatest, most mobile
genius, which Judaism has produced in the post-Biblical era), with Rembrandt,
"der reinste und groβartigste
und gerade dadurch weltwichtigste Ausdruck deutschen Wesens" (the purest
and the greatest and precisely because of that universally most important
expression of German nature). Bab described this mysterious connection between
the great Jew and the great German in the following words: "Wie Rembrandt
und Spinoza aneinander vorbeigingen, jeder zur Erfüllung seines innersten Wesens,
auf das Volk des anderen zu, das scheint nicht Fremdheit und Ausschlieβlichkeit darzutun, sondern eine geheimnisvoll verwandte
Anziehungskraft, ein tief innerliches Bedürfnis nach gegenseitiger Ergänzung"
(How Rembrandt and Spinoza surpassed each other, each toward the fulfilment of
his innermost essence, from one people to the other, then strangeness and
unrestrictedness do not matter, but a mysterious affined attraction, a profound
inner need for mutual supplementation). This, according to Bab, came to
expression in the fact that in their life quests both men resembled Goethe's
Faust, and that no one but Rembrandt ever lived a life so much according to the
Spinozist principle amor fati.*)
Bab's main argument, however, was that the genius of Rembrandt and Spinoza led
them on paths separate to those of their communities. After being banned,
Spinoza acquired a substantial following in the non-Jewish world. This
following had an obviously German tint to it, and Bab included in it not only
Spinoza's "christlich germanische Freunde" (Christian German
friends), but also the German philosopher Leibniz, who once visited Spinoza,
and the "Spinoza-Kult der deutschen Klassik und Romantik"
(Spinoza-cult of German Classicism and Romanticism), which included, of course,
Goethe. Furthermore, Rembrandt ventured into the Jewish ghetto, where he chose
to live and work, and where he found many of his models, particularly for his
Biblical paintings. Symbolically, Spinoza and Rembrandt suffered from the
consequences of the choices they made in their respective lives - the first
with a ban and the second with bankruptcy - on practically the same date. Thus
"die Fremde Art im Tiefsten erfuhlend" (feeling the alien sort in the
most profound way), both Spinoza and Rembrandt had reached their highest peaks.
Grating
against the anti-Semitism of National Socialism, Bab's book commented on the
estrangement of Jews and Germans in his day. The topicality of Bab's hook was
recognized in some of its reviews. Der
Morgen hailed the book as giving both warmth and food for thought. The CV-Zeitung reviewed Bab's work as
"im besten Sinne aktuell: nicht Für den Tag geschrieben und doch auch fur
unseren Tag, und besonderes für ihn gültig" (topical in the best sense:
not written for today, but even so for our day, and particularly for our day
relevant).
*)
[noot van David Wertheim] Bab probably considers the Nietzschean concept of amor fati another phrasing of Spinoza's
concept amor dei inteliectualis.
__________________________
Julius
Bab in de.wikipedia
1) Dit en meer te lezen in
Elisabeth
Albanis, German-Jewish Cultural Identity
from 1900 to the Aftermath of the First World War: A Comparative Study of
Moritz Goldstein, Julius Bab and Ernst Lissauer. Walter de Gruyter, 2002 – books.google
Foto van
hier
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