Needed–another Georg Brandes

If the famous Danish critic were alive today, is it to be doubted that Georg Brandes would have employed his incisive pen as a powerful weapon on behalf of the oppressed members of his race in Germany?

The argument may be advanced that while born a Jew. Brandes was not at any time an adherent to the doctrines or customs of his forefathers in the domain of religion. And yet, on a certain occasion while in the United States in 1914, he emphatically declared: “I am just as proud as Spinoza was to belong to the race of Maimonides, and just as indignant as he probably was to be excommunicated by some of them. I have done for my people what I have done for many other oppressed nations. I have done–as a Jew–for the Jews, whatever was in my limited power as a writer. Cananyone refuse me the name of Jew because I do not frequent the synagogue? But I do not go to any church! I am not religious.”

Such championship as Georg Brandes displayed during his remarkable carcer makes us certain that he would never have stood idly by while thousands of those of his own race were being subject to persecution and indignities that point back to the middle ages when ignorance ran riot. Wherever outside Germany men and women could have had access to his written words, they would have found them emblazoned in letters of scornful indignation against those now responsible for turning back the pages of history and aiming brows at a civilization which the World War itself brought to the brink of the abyss.

THE CALL OF THE TIMES

Indeed, the times call for another Georg Brandes; a man as fearless as he, with a commanding voice that made many nations his debtors. Germany owes much to him. In that famous “Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature,” several volumes are devoted to an exposition of the German nation’s cultural development, and its steady growth toward an appreciation of other counries. In his great work on Goethe alone, Brandes offers his tribute to a mentality leagues removed from what obtains in Germany today. One wonders whether the literary works of the Danish critic were included in that bonfire of books which more than ever revealed the low state to which the land of the Hitler domination has fallen. Certainly, religionist or not, Georg Brandes could scarcely have failed to insure the displeasure of the Nazi regime had he bestirred himself as was his wont when injustice loomed before him.

ROBESPIERRE ALONE IN SUPPORT

“He declared their vices to be the consequence of the degraded position in which they had been kept. But he was alone in supporting a measure which, significantly enough, classed Protestants actors and Jews together. The human rights of Protestants and the actors were acknowledged, but as Mirabeau recognized the impossibility of passing the clause of the motion which concerned the Jews, he adjourned debate on this clause indefinitely.”

There is somewhat of a triumphant note in what Brandes writes further. “Two years passed. In 1791 the Jews once more appealed. But in what a changed tone! The humble prayer of the slave has become the peremptory demand of the man . . . Two years spent in the atmosphere of the Revolution had given these pariahs not only self-esteem, but pride. This time the measure passed without debate.”

No. Georg Brandes was no affirming religionist, but he lived the religion of right and justice. And again and again he rose up in behalf of Judaism’s right to live its own life in accordance with its own dictates. Through all his voluminous writings there runs this unspoken pride in his ancestral stock. He shows us that the real big men of their period–Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Ceasar–great leaders of their people, dictators if you please, respected the religious customs of the minority. Coming down to the World War we see Brandes assailing those responsible for the anti-Semitic out-breaks in Russia and Poland that brought such misery to thousands of Jews in those lands.

DEBT FOR INTERPRETATION

The Jews of the world owe Brandes their gratitude for his interpretation of Shylock in his great work, “William Shakespeare.” The Danish critic is distinctly sympathetic with the tragic history of the Merchant of Venice. There is no question that his analysis of Shylock’s character and motives has influenced to some degree the presentation of the part by some of the notable actors in both hemispheres.

Because Georg Brandes spoke his mind freely during the World War, many of his former German friends turned against him. He was neutral in that great conflict, as his native country. Denmark, was neutral. And with what prophetic vision he spoke as far back even as 1881: “The love of liberty, in the English sense, is to be found in Germany only among the men of the generation which, within ten years, will have disappeared. And when that time comes, Germany will lie alone, isolated, hated by the neighboring countries: a stronghold of conservatism in the centre of Europe. Around it, in Italy, in France, in Russia, in the North, there will rise a generation imbued with international ideas and eager to carry them out in life. But Germany will lie there, old and half stifled in her coat of mail, armed to the teeth, and protected by all the weapons of murder and defense which science can invent.

“And there will come great struggles and greater wars. If Germany wins, Europe in comparison with America will be politically as Asia in comparison to Europe. But if Germany loses, then . . . But it is not seemly to play the prophet.”

How nearly correct was the estimate of Germany by Georg Brandes more than half a century ago, and how much of his prophesy did ring true as the same Germany defiles the civilized world today! The Danish critic does term the peace treaty of Versailles a travesty of justice as long ago as 1919. But he far from exonerates Germany because of that fact, when he proceeded mercilessly against the mailed fist in defeat, as well as when he attacked the German regime for starting the world conflagration.

BENEATH THE SURFACE

Returning to the question of Brandes’ championship of Judaism as a rightful element in any national commonwealth, and what he might have done for the people of his race in Germany as an international voice sure of a receptive audience everywhere but in that unfortunate land of Hitlerism, had be been alive today, there was much more to his Jewishness than appeared on the surface and than he himself would admit. We have but to read what Henri Nathansen, the eminent Danish dramatist and friend of Brandes, had to say on that score shortly after Brandes passed away.

In “Georg Brandes: A Portrait,” Nathansen tells of the home environment of Brandes, his mother, his two brothers and the attachment of the sons to that mother in Israel. It is the story of Judaic living such as those of the race in comfortable circumstances experienced during the midst of latter parts of the nineteenth century. Is it any wonder that when Georg Brandes wrote his inimitable sketch of Heinrich Heine for the sixth volume of his “Main Currents”–“Young Germany,” that something of himself entered into that remarkable depiction of the poet which did so much for the illumination of the revolutionary spirit? Here, too, a Jew by birth to bring literary glory to his native land. Though Heine left the religion of his fathers he never torgot the stock from which he sprang.

FORESAW POLITICAL SCENE

The political background of Germany, as related by Brandes in his “Main Currents” during the time of Heine, bears considerable resemblance to what obtains in that country today. As a matter of fact, the German has more or less reverted to type if we make the Nazis stand for the supposed popular expression of the ruling class. Hear what Brandes has to say about it:

“The sadness that takes possession of all progressively inclined minds during long and apparently hopeless periods of reaction now weighed upon the spiritual elite of Germany. But the great majority fell a quick prey to carelessness and political indifference. With the reaction, at first forced upon them, they soon familiarized themselves. Many began to be of the opinion that a representative constitution, such as had been promised to Prussia, was a thing of no value.”