Language:
German
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
Orbis; bulletin international de documentation linguistique
Angaben zur Quelle:
40 (1998) 35-50
Keywords:
Humboldt, Wilhelm von,
;
Jews History 1500-
;
Jews Emancipation
Abstract:
Humboldt has always been considered as having been pro-Jewish because of his close friendships with Jews (particularly Henriette Herz and Rahel Levin Varnhagen) as well as his advocacy of emancipation. Yet Hannah Arendt pointed to his use of crude antisemitic expressions in some of his letters referring to Rahel. To explain this contradiction, suggests that Humboldt related to Jews and non-Jews alike primarily as individuals, and only secondarily as representatives of a nationality. Thus he continued, much of his life, to love and admire Herz, "the big sister", and admit her moral influence on his development; but Varnhagen became distasteful to him, and then he saw her negative qualities as Jewish. While he attributed his intervention against a discriminatory law in 1814 to "a last spark of my piety toward Herz", he also remarked that he only loved the Jews "en masse", not as individuals. His advocacy of emancipation was part of his liberal political philosophy.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink