To H. G. (1 May 1939)
(NG) No Jews
From a letter to H.G.
In spiritual terms, the fate of the Jews is probably the most horrific thing the history of mankind has ever produced. In a certain sense this is a matter of course for {Fine}. In purely geographical terms, mankind has never existed before as a circle of all the inhabitants of our planet surrounded by a cultural experience. (Correspondingly, the new diaspora is no longer Mediterranean, but planetary in the literal sense).
But that is not the point here for the time being. What I mean is that only the Jews are unable to give any meaning to their own fate. That they alone have been excluded from a spiritual event of the most inconceivable dimension, even though it stands in its suffering center. That the emptied symbol still bears human face, even though it has been eliminated from the life that sprang from it, that the new world ignites itself in the struggle for an object that, although man, does not know of this struggle. For all the religious ideas of the Occident that dominates our world come from this tired womb: faith in blood, race and being chosen; faith and love, grace and world vocation. Both nature and spirit are revealed to the Occident through this medium, as long as they are the source of living meaning. In Berlin and Moscow, energies of tension are accumulating, from which a new humanity will be born in feverish white heat. And both poles of tension are charged with elements of Jewish nature: Mosaic power and racial belief on the one hand, Christian universalist messianism on the other. The blessed bodily existence of Judaism must - according to spiritual laws - act as a stone of offence. Not in the sense of an impulse to becoming and new life, but in the abysmally negative understanding of mere survival: - a dead shell.
I believe in Russia as firmly as I do in America. The history of the states is a chain of extremely disappointing phases, which seemed nothing less than promising for the future. Nevertheless, according to the law of their accession, their development unfolded. Perhaps already at this age America will prove itself as a leader figure in a human problem. The same will be Russia's role for centuries to come and even if it would need age to unfold. - The international situation has now been clarified for some time. Germany and Italy are on the march. A reversal is impossible. The German path has been mapped out. It leads to world domination or to collapse. England has finally come to a decision (by no means to a decision). It reads: Germany must be confronted, however not in an alliance with the S.U. Thus Germany is to remain open the way to the solution of its problems at expense of the S.U. its problems. That is the English way out. One hopes for a kind of braking of the German advance and an establishment of relative power positions which are suitable and usable for influencing the German thrust. Thus an extremely dangerous phase of the overall development is initiated.
New intermediate forms bridging peace and war are to be expected: partial wars, occupations, mutual vegging of a more neutral nature, but still for a long time while avoiding an overall war. Russia wants to remain neutral and align its positions with those of the USA in such a way that these two large, ideologically interested, neutral, self-sufficient empires are at roughly the same distance from the events (particularly those anchored in the Pacific region).
The English people never recovered from the "popular community period" of the middle of the 19th century. It is dulled, incapable of spontaneous cooperation in the modern state, the victim of a capitalist-oligarchist development. Signs of spontaneous regeneration are absent.
Text Informations
Reference:
Copy of the letter in the KPA: Aus einem Brief an H.G.
KPA: 47/09, 15-16
| Lge | Name |
|---|---|
| FR | Extrait d'une lettre à H.G. |
| ES | Extracto de una carta a H.G. |