Jerusalem (Mendelssohn) - History of Reception - Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem and The Rise of Revolutionary Antisemitism

Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem and The Rise of Revolutionary Antisemitism

Karl Marx was not a direct student of Hegel, but Hegel’s philosophy whose lectures were also frequented by Prussian officers, was still very present after his death 1831 as well among conservatives as among radicals who were very disappointed about the present conditions and the failed reform of the state. 1835, when Karl inscribed as a student, Hegel’s book Leben Jesu was published posthumously and its reception was divided into the so-called Right or Old and the Left or Young Hegelians around Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach. Karl has grown up in a family which were related to the traditional rabbinic family Levi through his mother. Because the Rhine province became part of the French Republic, where the full civil rights were granted by the Constitution, Marx’ father could work as a lawyer (Justizrat) without being discriminated for his faith. This changed, when the Rhine province became part of Prussia after the Congress of Vienna. 1817 Heinrich Marx felt forced to convert to the Lutheran church, so that he could save the existence of his family continuing his profession. 1824 his son was baptized, when he was six years old.

The occasion that the Jewish question was debated again, was the 7th Landtag of the Rhine province 1843. The discussion was about a 1839 law which tried to withdraw the Hardenberg edict from 1812. 1839 it was refused by the Staatsrat, 1841 it was published again to see what will be the public reactions. The debate was opened between Ludwig Philippson (Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums) and Carl Hermes (Kölnische Zeitung). Karl Marx was thinking to join the debate with an own answer of the Jewish question, but he left it to Bruno Bauer. His later answer was mainly a reception of Bruno Bauer's argument. Marx' and Bauer's polemic style was probably influenced by Heinrich Heine's Damascus letters (Lutetia Teil 1, 1840) in which Heine was calling James Mayer de Rothschild a "revolutionary" and in which he used phrases like:

For French Jews as well for all the other French gold is the God of the day and industry the dominating religion!

Whereas Hegel's idea of a humanistic secularization of religious values was deeply rooted in the idealistic emancipation debates around Mendelssohn in which a liberal and tolerant state has to be created on the fundament of a modern (religious) education, the only force of modernization according to Marx was capitalism, the erosion of traditional values, after they had turned into material values. The difference between the ancien régime and Rothschild, chosen as a representant of a successful minority of the Jewish population, was that they had nothing to lose, especially not in Prussia where this minority finally tended to convert to Christianity. But since the late 18th century the Prussian Jews were merely reduced to their material value, at least from the administrative perspective of the Prussian Monarchy.

Marx' answer to Mendelssohn's question: "What will be your use of citizens without conscience?" was simply that: The use was now defined as a material value which could be expressed as a sum of money, and the Prussian state like any other monarchy finally did not care about anything else.

Behind Jewish monotheism is the polytheism of various needs, a polytheism which turns even a doormat into an object of the divine law. The practical need, the egoism is the fundament of the civil society and itself finally emerges clearly, when a civil society has born its own political state entirely. The God of the practical need and self-interest is the money.

The money is the busily God of Israel who do not accept any other God beneath himself. The money humiliates all Gods of mankind and turns them into a ware.

Bauer's reference to the golden calf may be regarded a modern form of antisemitism. But Karl Marx turned Bauer's reference into a "syncretism between Mosaic monotheism and Babylonian polytheism". His answer was antisemitic, as far as it was antisemitic that his family was forced to leave their religious tradition for very existential reasons. He hardly foresaw that the rhetorical use of Judaism as a metaphor of capitalism (originally a satirical construction of Heinrich Heine, talking about the "prophet Rothschild") will be constantly repeated in a completely unsatirical way in the history of socialism. Karl Marx used these bizarre words in a less satirical than in an antihumanistic way. Its context was the controversy between Old and Young Hegelian and his polemic aimed the "Old Hegelian". He regarded their thoughts as a Prussian form of the ancien régime, figured and justified as the humanists, and himself as part of a Jewish privileged minority which was more adapted to modern citizenship than any representant of the Prussian ancien régime. While the humanists felt threatened by the industrial revolution, also because they simply feared to loose their privileges, it was no longer the parvenu (as Bernard Lazare would call the rich minority later) who needed to be "ameliorated".

Moses Mendelssohn was not mentioned in Marx's answer to the Jewish question, but Marx might have regarded his arguments as an important part of the humanists' approach to ameliorate the Prussian constitution. Nevertheless Mendelssohn had already discussed the problem of injustice caused by material needs in his way: In Jerusalem he advised to recompense politicians according to the loss of their regular income. It should not be lower for a rich man, and not higher for a poor. Because if anyone will have a material advantage, just by being a member of parliament, the result cannot be a fair state governing a just society. Only an idealistic citizen who was engaging in politics according to his modern religious education, was regarded as a politician by Moses Mendelssohn.