Discovering Vienna and Its Lost Jewish Facet

bober vienne

Robert Bober: Vienne avant la nuit. ISBN 978-2-8180-4326-4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What a wonderful book! I can say this without any caveat at all. Everything is wonderful. First, the idea: A French writer investigates the origin of his Jewish family and ends up with an intelligent, colourful sketch of Jewish life in Vienna before the night, that is before the extinction of Jewish life in Vienna under the Nazis. Second, the execution of the idea: a highly readable book, with interesting, witty texts written by the author and extensive quotes of eminent Jewish writers like Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Bernhard and Stefan Zweig. Lovely illustrations, admirable drawings, historic and current pictures, scans of original documents complete this work.

The trip to the past reveals the value of Jewish life for Vienna. It shows what is missing today: A part of Vienna’s identity. Wilfully destroyed. What a lost! I am grateful to Bober to have me shown I facet of the city I love so much that I wouldn’t have discovered so easily without him. The next time I will be in Vienna, my look upon the city will not be the same it used to be. I will look for signs. I now know where to look fo them. This said, to all my Jewish readers: Happy New Year or L’shanah tovah!

Bober narrates his adventure in a very intimate style and so some intimate music from a Vienna composer imposed itself as my music suggestion accompanying this review. A piano is de rigueur, a violin too – Johannes Brahms’ Trio in B minor:

 Overwhelmed by a sparkling trio of divine length

Putting Man at the Centre of Music

Michael Heinemann: Claudio Monteverdi. Die Entdeckung der Leidenschaft. ISBN 978-3-7957-1213-6 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I read this book with interest, no doubt. The Dresden based music scholar Michael Heinemann explains in great detail how Claudio Monteverdi’s music presented a radical shift from past compositional techniques, whose limitation were linked to dogmas of the Catholic Church. Compositions were to reflect the cosmic order as it had been created by God, and Monteverdi was the first to systematically deviate from this practice. It is needless to say that he made himself a couple of enemies inside the composers’ guild and inside the Vatican. However he freed music at the beginning of the 17th century and by putting the individual man with his often conflicting emotions at the centre of his music, he allowed for an increase in expressivity unheard of up to then.

While Monteverdi’s early compositions like the Books of Madrigals I to III lack these revolutionary compositional pattern, his later Books of Madrigals, his operas and his masses show a high degree of innovation, which Heinemann explains with scores at hand. If contemporary classical music features since the ascent of György Ligeti basic building blicks like sound clouds or sound surfaces, it was highly amusing to learn that Monteverdi had used these elements already some 350 years earlier by having separate choirs positioned in different parts of the St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice to produce similar effects without electronics.

Heinemann excels also in giving the reader a lot of historical context which demonstrates how Monteverdi’s style evolved and became more and more daring, and how his new ideas radiated through northern Europe. One of the long-term consequences of Monteverdi’s innovation was the sharper differenciation between secular music and church music, the first finding its apogee with Richard Wagner’s operas, the latter remaining anchored in the tradition of Palestrina.

I read this book with increasing irritation too. Heinemann’s style – he seems to be obsessed by short sentences, sentences without verbs or without a subject – makes the reading extremly tiresome, needlessly tiresome, to a degree that makes me think it has a lot to do with self-aggrandizement and much less with transmitting Heinemann’s passion with Monteverdi’s music. Too bad. By his deep understanding of Baroque music, the author has already demonstrated that he deserves scientific and public recognition and is in no need for self-aggrantizement.

All the drama you can get in Monteverdi’s music is encapsulated in his “Il Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorida”, a section of the Book of Madrigals VIII:

Liberating Jerusalem with pizzicato and tremolo

A Revolutionary Thinker Guiding Us towards Enlightenment

Frédéric Lenoir: Le miracle Spinoza. Une philosophie pour éclairer notre vie. ISBN 978-2-213-70070-0 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Baruch de Spinoza – the name alone was enough to spark my curiosity at school. A Jewish philosopher of Portugueuse origin, living and teaching in Amsterdam in the 17th century. At the age of 23, the young intellectual genius had already been banned by the Jewish community because of his revolutionary ideas. If I were to sum his credo up I would say: Reason can explain the universe. Going one step further I would have to admit with Spinoza: God is a man-made fiction. What I specifically appreciate is Spinoza’s lifelong endeavour to reconcile theory and practice and to put rational behaviour at the center of socio-economic and political question. Don’t make fun of anybody, don’t lament, don’t detest, think!

The French writer and philosophy teacher Frédéric Lenoir has written an excellent introduction into Spinoza’s world. I wish I had had it when I still was at school. Our teacher did his best to explain to his students Spinoza’s basic ideas, but the 17th century was way too far from my everyday life and I did not understand much, if anything at all. Lenoir puts the philosopher’s ideas not only into a historic context, he also tries to explain their relevance for our contemporary world. Applied philosophy – I love that!

Spinoza gave a lot of thought to the highly controversial subject of religion, and Lenoir’s way to present this subject alone gave me a lot of satisfaction. Spinoza does not deny the existence of God as many of his critics have said, instead he says that religions – any of the three monotheistic religions – have become an instrument of monarchs, bishops, muftis and rabbis to keep people ignorant and to rule them by fear – fear of punishment by God if they do not obey laws made by men. He opposes this view to a view that sees religion – any of the three monotheistic religions – as the quest for justice and peace, the ultimate Good being intellectual enlightment, control of human passions and science-based judgment in all affairs, a goal that admittedly, only few can reach.

For Spinoza religion, dealing with faith, and philosophy, dealing with the pursuit of truth via rational thought, do not exclude eachother but need to co-exist, covering two distinct aspects of human life, following to different types of logic. He fights for the right to free expression and condemns the interference of religion into politics, which according to Spinoza, need to be guided by scientific analysis and good judgment. Naturally – and quite ahead if his time – he favours democracy over monarchies and aristocracies. The logic corollary to the right to free expression is the right to freely choose a political representative.

With his heavy criticism of some of the foundations of Judaism and Christian faith and central aspects of the political reality of his time, Spinoza made himself a lot of enemies, which led him to publish several of his books under a pen name and some only after his death. Apparently someone even attempted to murder him.

He was conscious about the scandal his claims in the field of teligion would trigger, and I will just mention two provocations Lenoir explains: a) The Torah (or the Pentateuch, five books included in what Christians call the Old Testament) was not written by Moses b) With the fall of the first Jewish state more than 2500 years ago, the Jews cannot claim any longer to be the chosen people, the bond has been severed. To prove his point he produces a systematical critical analysis of the Torah, an interpretation in the light of historical facts. Can you do this in the 17th century? Not if you like a peaceful life.

Christians did not fare much better. Spinoza rejects the idea of the Holy Trinity and Jesus being a human incarnation of God – two ideas that split the Christian church. Spinoza hit a vulnerable spot and he did not stop here. According to him, God cannot be external to this world since human understanding alone can come up with anything called God. God is a concept, made by men. He also objects to a literal interpretation of the Old and New Testament and claims that religions purpose are to give people a set of ethical rules to live more or less in peace together – a manmade system to guarantee a certain social order, convenient for rulers and open to misuse. And yes, Spinoza had read Machiavelli’s treatise “The Prince”. In his time, the ethical framework was set by religion, however, as Lenoir does not fail to mention, there could be alternatives, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The United Provinces, part of which would become today’s Netherlands, may have been a liberal state, however time was not yet ripe for such attacks on central pillars of the established order and the power that seemed to guarantee social and political stability. Along with the French René Descartes, Spinoza certainly was one of the most important prophets of what would later be called the age of Enlightenment. It’s a shame it took me so long to find that out. I find him a fascinating man with fascinating ideas. What’s more, Lenoir’s introduction to Spinoza’s world is a useful reminder about the origin of the scientific, economic and political framework that rules our everyday life today. I couldn’t think of a better book to read on a Dutch beach.

Just for the fun of it, let’s pitch Spinoza against Johann Sebastian Bach, who reached out to God in his music, for instance in his “Brandenburg Concertos”:

Bach appeals to our sense of beauty

Survivors’ Fate: From Nazi Camps to Allied Camps

DP camps

Angelika Königseder, Juliana Wetzel: Lebensmut im Wartesaal. Die jüdischen DPs (Displaced Persons) im Nachkriegsdeutschland. ISBN 978-3-596-16835-4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Reading about this book put my under shock. I was appalled by its subject: After the Nazi concentration camps had been liberated, the freed Jews were put by the Allied forces in camps again, along with other displaced persons, German refugees, prisoners of war, people deported by the Nazis for work etc. Imagine, you have just escaped death, starvation, the utmost humiliation, and your liberators put you back into a camp, with armed guards and barbed wire. For some the camps would become a new home for more than a decade.

I had never given a thought to what happened to Jews right after they were set free. My understanding was that they reintegrated their original communities or emigrated to the US or to what was to become Israel: Palestine. I should have known better actually. Many had nowhere to go, many had nobody to go to. Many survivors did not know if anyone else from the family had survived or where they were. Germany had not become overnight much friendlier to the Jews, nor had the Poles, the Russians or the Austrians. There was no place to welcome them. Hence the idea of a state of their own: Palestine.

Those willing to settle down in Palestine, still under British mandate, grew more numerous by the time as Zionism spread under the displaced Jews streaming into the French, British and US occupation zone. But the British tightly controlled immigration into Palestine as they did not want to upset the Arabs. Alternatives were scarce: Few of the European countries ravaged by war were keen to resettle Jewish refugees on their territory. Other refugees wanted to stay in Germany or Austria, where they had been born and lived all their life, but were afraid about facing a hostile population. Others were too old or too weak to move to another country, not to speak about a state that had to be fought for first: Israel.

To segregate or not?

Between 1945 and 1957, Jews living on German territory shared the fate of hundred of thousands of other displaced persons: They lived in camps without having any clear vision of their future. The Allied authorities quickly realized that Jewish DPs, more traumatized and vulnerable than others, had to be placed in camps reserved for the Jews – a decision that put them into a moral dilemma as they did not wish to replicate the Nazi discriminatory policies. However the Jews, having suffered most under the Nazis, deserved a tailor-made policy.

This strategic decision helped a great deal as it allowed Jewish communities quickly to rebuild themselves – in camps, yes, but it was important for the Jews to overcome the individual isolation and feeling of helplessness. They had their own schools, hospitals, community centers, police, law courts, workshops and sports facilities, managed and financed with the help of international Jewish relief organisations. What didn’t help was the hostile attitude of many Germans towards the survivors of the Holocaust.

Few Germans realized that their own misery during and after the war had its origin in political decisions the Germans themselves had taken, in 1933 and even much earlier, and that there was no reason at all to envy the Jews. Prejudices like “They are being better treated than we are!” or “They control the black market and grow rich!” were rampant, authoritarian behaviour of newly formed German police units was a recurrent problem. It is frustrating to see that some of the racist stereotypes about the Jews voiced in the aftermath of the war are the same that are now applied to Muslim refugees from Irak and Syria. Obviously, the lessons of World War II have been lost on some.

A detailed study

Angelika Königseder and Juliana Wetzel, two German researchers specialized on research about anti-Semitism, have written a valuable book about the Jewish DPs in Germany after World War II with very detailed description of the DPs’ lives, a comprehensive study of the divergent policies applied by the US and the British army and a well researched study of the priorities of the different Jewish relief organisations and their clandestine efforts to exfiltrate as many as possible to Palestine.

One of the bright sides of the life in DP camps was the fact that the Jews were strongly determined to rebuild their lives. Cultural entertainment played an important part. Theatre plays were performed in many camps and the camp of Föhrenwald (Bavaria) had its own string orchestra. A piece of music that comes to my mind in that respect is a string trio written in 1947 by the Jewish composer Darius Milhaud:

Parallel tonalities in a time of infighting and disarray

Towards a Better Understanding of Judaism

Leo Trepp: Die Juden. Volk, Geschichte und Religion. ISBN 978-3-86539-104-9 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Religion is a subject that has fascinated me since I was a child. Wondrous stories, ethical principles, a bizarre, old-fashioned language – I read the Bible when I was 12 or 13, a second time when I was 22 and, a few years later, the Koran with much enthusiasm and interest. Came the time when I started to explore Judaism, the history of the state of Israel and the links to the Middle East conflict – a decade after I had read the Koran. I picked up the thread recently, and you will perhaps remember my review of Paul Spiegel’s “Was ist koscher?” I bought Leo Trepp’s easy-to-read and fairly exhaustive compendium on Jewish history, culture and religion “Die Juden” upon a recommendation of a Jewish fellow blogger Juna Grossmann.

Trepp gives an excellent overview over the origin of Judaism from its origin 2000 BC until today, the Middle Ages, the 19th  century and the Holocaust being important landmarks. He devotes several chapters to current antisemitism, often disguised as an opposition against Israel’s policies. Trepp’s description of Israel’s responsibility in the Middle East conflict is extremely brief and makes me feel somewhat awkward as it follows the stereotype of “Israel is right, the Arabs are wrong”.

I would have expected a more critical approach. My edition of the book is from 2006, and the hard line the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanjahu took in the terms since 2009 could not be taken into account. Reading Trepp’s characterization of the issues separating Arabs and Jews in that light felt like a provocation. It would have been wiser to leave the subject away altogether. Especially as one of the key tenets of Judaism seems to be the role God has given the Jews: to lead by example in terms of morality.

Trepp devotes many, in my opinion too many, chapters to the presentation of Judaism’s central texts with extensive quotes. Having read the Old Testament, it was somewhat tedious to read as it has only marginally added to the understanding of the central elements of the Jewish faith. Less would have been more, here too. A positive aspect of the book is that it devotes several chapters to the position of women in the Jewish society – it’s not an easy one and gender equality is not for tomorrow.

The chapters that interested me most were those on the practical forms of living the Jewish faith today, on the many parallels between the Christian and Jewish faith and on the re-orientation of the Catholic church, who adopted a more conciliatory approach under Pope John Paul II, the Protestant churches following suit. Both the Vatican and Martin Luther did see the Jews as stubborn unbelievers that had to be converted by all means. I am very glad this is history, it makes me sad however that it took so long and that the churches do not take a more decisive stand against anti-semitic violence today.

This leads me the conclusion of Trepp which, at the same time, is his personal credo that he has reiterated since World War II as a university scholar: The generations after World War II are not to be blamed for the crimes committed against the Jews in the context of the Holocaust. However they bear a special responsibility for the Jewish people today. Are they up to that challenge? Trepp had his doubts.

The composer Arnold Schönberg was born into a Jewish family but converted to the Protestant faith in 1898. While fleeing the Nazis in 1933 he returned to the Jewish faith. He was an exceptional composer and one of my favourite pieces is his String Quartet No. 2 (Op. 10), written in 1907/08:

Transcending tonality and harmony