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Liberalism, Nationalism, and Degeneration: The Case of Max Nordau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

P. M. Baldwin
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Extract

How anyone today first comes to hear the name Max Nordau says much about his interests. He might, if his literary tastes so dictate, chance across him in Bram Stoker's Dracula, where Mina Harker cites Nordau as evidence that the count is a criminal and therefore of imperfectly formed mind. For Dracula's and Nordau's contemporaries, however, no such fortuitous encounters were necessary. Nordau was a household name whose most popular books appeared in scores of editions in a dozen languages. As a personality he was as colossal as his reputation. As critic, philosopher, novelist, playwright, sociologist, versifier, orator, journalist, polyglot, Zionist, psychologist, and physician, his versatility is impressive even when measured against an age when many tried their hand at more than one thing.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 99 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1980

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References

1. Foster, Milton Painter, “The Reception of Max Nordau's Degeneration in England and America” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1954)Google Scholar; Gold, Milton, “Nordau on Degeneration: A Study of the Book and Its Cultural Significance” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1957)Google Scholar; Fischer, Jens Malte, “Dekadenz und Entartung: Max Nordau als Kritiker des Fin de siècle,” in Bauer, R. et al. , eds., Fin de siècle: Zu Literatur und Kunst der Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt a.M., 1977).Google Scholar

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4. Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v. “Max Nordau.” Ben-Horin, 's major work on Nordau is in his Max Nordau: Philosopher of Human Solidarity (New York, 1956)Google Scholar and “The Zionist Ideal: Max Nordau's Legacy of Human Solidarity,” in Common Faith.

5. Note the radical nature of the break indicated by the name change, from “Süd-Feld” to “Nord-Au”; Launay, Robert, Figures Juives (Paris, 1921), p. 159Google Scholar. For Nordau's cosmopolitanism, see his introductions to Aus dem wahren Milliardenlande: Pariser Studien und Bilder, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1878)Google Scholar; Paradoxe (Chicago, 1885)Google Scholar; and the French translation of Zeitgenössische Franzosen, entitled Vus du dehors (Paris, 1903)Google Scholar. The comparison with Brandes is in Muret, Maurice, L'Esprit Juif (Paris, 1901), pp. 259–307Google Scholar, quoted in Ben-Horin, Max Nordau, p. 20, n. 31.

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7. His early liberal thought is found primarily in Die conventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit, Paradoxe, Aus dem wahren Milliardenlande, Zeitgenössische Franzosen, Von Kunst und Künstlern, Entartung.

8. Nordau, , La biologie de l'ethique (Paris, 1930), pp. 232–33Google Scholar; Menschen und Menschliches von Heute (Berlin, 1915), p. 83.Google Scholar

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11. Nordau, , Zeitgenössische Franzosen (Berlin, 1901), p. 72Google Scholar. For his dislike of nationalism, see Milliardenlande, 2: 227—28, Menschen und Menschliches, p. 36, Paradoxe p. 287. A curious aspect is that while he rejected conservative nationalism in his social and philosophical works, his fiction often contains elements to the contrary. A case in point is a short story entitled “Prince and Peasant” in How Women Love and Other Tales (New York, 1896)Google Scholar which could have been written by the later, conservative Barrès. It deals with a blasé nobleman who is catapulted from the narrow bonds of his individuality into the invigorating life of his country (Germany) while watching a gruesomely depicted slaughter of French troops during the Franco-Prussian War. Similar examples may be found in “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (How Women Love, p. 226) and in The Malady of the Century (London, 1898), pp. 62ff. and 96.Google Scholar

12. Foster, “The Reception of Max Nordau,” p. 317.

13. Nordau, , Die conventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit (Leipzig, 1884), p. 1Google Scholar; Entartung, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1892), 2:471Google Scholar. Nordau's view of the uniqueness of the fin-de-siècle situation is found in “A Reply to My Critics,” North American Review 61 (1895): 92–93.Google Scholar

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15. Nordau, , “Society's Protection against the Degenerates,” Forum 19 (03–08 1895): 538.Google Scholar

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21. Lügen, p. 35.

22. Entartung, 1:68.

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26. Examples include: Lügen, p. 2; Entartung, 1:325; Milliardenlande, 2:229; The Drones Must Die (New York, 1897), p. 221Google Scholar. Although Nordau described anti-Semitism as one form that degeneration assumed, especially in Germany, he later repeatedly denied that it was a problem of cultural decline and thereby cut the link between his pre-Zionist and Zionist thought in this respect. As a Zionist, he argued that anti-Semitism is a result of the natural propensity of man to dislike that which is different from himself, that it would therefore not disappear by itself, and that it could only be resolved by evacuating the Jews from Europe. See his Zionistische Schriften (Cologne and Leipzig, 1909), pp. 199, 228, 356ff.Google Scholar

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29. Milliardenlande, 2:150.

30. Zionistische Schriften, pp. 45–46.

31. Paradoxe, p. 296.

32. Zionistische Schriften, p. 250.

33. Zionistische Schriften, p. 286. Compare with Paradoxe, pp. 283–84.

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36. Compare “Socialism in Europe,” Cosmopolitan 36, no. 5 (03 1904): 518Google Scholar, and Lügen, pp. 291–92, with Zionistische Schriften, pp. 265ff.

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39. Letter from Nordau to A.C., June 21, 1903, in Heymann, Michael, ed., The Uganda Controversy (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 82Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that Ahad Ha'am scorned this personal goal in Zionism as the need of effete Western Jews alone. “As he contemplates this fascinating vision, it suddenly dawns on his inner consciousness that even now, before the Jewish State is established, the mere idea of it gives him almost complete relief. … For it is not the attainment of the ideal that he needs: its pursuit alone is sufficient to cure him of his moral sickness.” Kohn, Hans, ed., Nationalism and the Jewish Ethic: Basic Writings of Ahad Ha'am (New York, 1962), p. 75.Google Scholar

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42. Zionistische Schriften, pp. 303, 393.

43. Zionistische Schriften, pp. 72, 283.

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49. Zionistische Schriften, pp. 20—21.

50. Zionistische Schriften, pp. 11–12.

51. Zionistische Schriften, p. 114.

52. Kohn, ed., Nationalism, p. 79.

53. Fraenkel, Josef, Dubnow, Herzl and Ahad Ha'am: Political and Cultural Zionism (London, 1963), p. 24Google Scholar; Meisels, Judenköpfe, p. 215.

54. Kohn, ed., Nationalism, pp. 173ff.

55. Mallison, W. T. Jr., “The Zionist-Israel Juridical Claims to Constitute ‘The Jewish People’ Nationality Entity and to Confer Membership in It: Appraisal in Public International Law,” George Washington Law Review 32, no. 5 (06 1964): 996Google Scholar; Kohn, Hans, “Zion and the Jewish National Idea,” in Selzer, Michael, ed., Zionism Reconsidered: The Rejection of Jewish Normalcy (London, 1970), p. 195.Google Scholar

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58. Zionistische Schriften, pp. 22–23, 177.

59. Das Judentum im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, p. 23. One of the most extreme statements of the contrast between Zionism and liberalism comes from Morris Cohen who writes of Zionism that “It claims to be a solution of the Jewish problem; and its emphasis on Palestine rests on a nationalist philosophy which is a direct challenge to all those who still believe in liberalism.” The Faith of a Liberal (New York, 1946), p. 327.Google Scholar

60. Menschen und Menschliches, p. 86.

61. Ben-Horin, Max Nordau, p. 211.

62. Ben-Horin, Common Faith, pp. 189–90. Italics his.