Page 196 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg
P. 196
The Track of the Jew through the Ages
life long and this, along with his organic incapacity, may have been
one of the reasons for his eager smearing of Goethe. However, it
would take too long to go into Heine's character more closely.
I know that I deviate somewhat from a strict adherence to
my subject, but in such details is revealed the essence of a feeling
and thought. If the representatives of all the nations of Europe see
in Goethe the greatest poet and man, two Jews, and two of the most
intelligent Jews, do their best to distort this image of the man. One,
Heinrich Heine, rises even to a complaint of moral cowardice, the
other, Ludwig Borne, says, when Goethe died: "Now we shall finally
have freedom!" Can one pass over such facts without saying a word
when the greatest of all Germans is said to be a moral coward and
an obstacle to true freedom? Should such words not give thought to
every German that Goethe's native city, Frankfurt am Main, set up
a monument precisely to this Ludwig Borne not too long ago?
No, that is a symbol of a conscious or instinctive tendency.
But this tendency means the combating of all "depth of feeling and
tenderness", as Schiller praised it in Goethe, which words finely
express the essence of the European soul as well. And here I would
like to add a warning word of Goethe's to all those who still place
some value on our culture: "We tolerate no Jew among us, for how
should we grant to him a share in our highest culture, whose origin
and customs he disowns?" 421
The Jewish character
The Jewish Energy
It is the disadvantage of a writer that he can speak only
consecutively of things which, when they emerge, form a unity. The
direction and the type of the mind is always corresponding to the
mainspring of the character and conditioned by the latter. Now, a
421
Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. [Goethe's second novel, after Die Leiden des
jungen Werthers (1 774), consisted oftwo parts, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre [1795-
1796] and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821/1829).]
422
Introduction to Farbenlehre. [Goethe's work on colours, Zur Farbenlehre,
appeared in 1810/1820.]
173
