The Question Dodged
Felix Mendelssohn: Letters.
by G. Selden-Goth.
New York, Pantheon Books Inc., 1945. 373 pp. $2.50.
Felix Mendelssohn’s music in recent years has assumed an importance far beyond its inherent value. This is due in no small measure to anti-Mendelssohn propaganda on the part of the Nazis. Because his music seems so deeply rooted in German romanticism, both ideologically and musically, and because his work represented a substantial part of the concert repertory of pre-Hitler Germany, he is considered as the chief example of the alien intruder by anti-Semites, and the prototype of the emancipated Jew by others.
Ever since the beginning of emancipation composers of Jewish origin followed one of three tendencies in integrating themselves in the culture of their respective countries. One tendency was embodied by those who consciously introduced Jewish religious themes into Western music—Halévy, Bruch, Goldmark and Bloch. Others, like Mahler and Schoenberg, were assimilated enough to initiate new musical directions that were entirely indigenous to Western music. And then there were those who, like Offenbach and Meyerbeer, dodged the Jewish issue, proclaimed themselves as French—or German or Italian—as the next man, yet could not help displaying pronounced Jewish traits. Mendelssohn belonged to this category.
That he was hardly aware of his Jewishness enabled Mendelssohn to enter the strange world of pixies, mystery and obscurantism that characterized the German romantic movement of his time. But that, as Mrs. Selden-Goth states in her introduction, “there is not a single bar in his compositions inspired by motives of Jewish folksong or synagogue music” is a rather strong exaggeration when one recalls certain turns in his famous violin concerto or some of the slower movements of his symphonies. Nor does Mendelssohn seem to have been completely oblivious of Jewish tradition. His grandfather Moses had played a decisive role in the history of Jewish emancipation, a role of which the family was exceptionally proud. The first names of his parents were Abraham and Lea, and those of his sisters, Rebecca and Fanny—names that would hardly have adorned the baptismal certificates of non-Jewish children in the Germany of 1809.
But what is more important is the fact that Mendelssohn’s contemporaries were quite conscious of his Jewish origin. Mrs. Selden-Goth remarks: “The famous conversion of Abraham Mendelssohn and his family had lifted the talented child (Felix) far above the complex and problematic intellectual world of his forefathers.” And then again: “It was not the racial issue, merely the religious one, that had been raised in Germany of that time.” But she herself quotes a letter from Zelter, Mendelssohn’s teacher, to Goethe in which young Felix is introduced with the words, “To be sure, he is the son a a Jew, but no Jew himself. . . . It would really be eppes rores if the son of a Jew turned out to be an artist.” The last sentence, and especially the use of the Yiddish jargon, can hardly be interpreted as evidence of complete disregard of Mendelssohn’s Jewish origin.
The problem of Mendelssohn’s emancipation was construed artificially by the Nazis, but it was very real and rooted in the composer’s time. Unfortunately, these well-translated letters offer hardly any clue to the composer’s feelings in the matter. This is partly because of the deletion of all objectionable and controversial passages, insisted upon by the composer’s family when the letters were first published after his death. (It is unknown whether other topics than his love life were affected by this measure.) Partly, of course, it is because of Mendelssohn’s deliberate avoidance of the issue and partly because of the unavailability of sufficient original material, which, if not destroyed by now, is in its bulk in the possession of the Berlin State Library.
Thus the editor has had to confine herself to whatever material was available in already existing English translations or in archives and libraries outside Germany. Nevertheless, Mrs. Selden-Goth has made excellent selections; never repetitious, they make extremely interesting and appealing reading. They show the attractive character of the tender and sensitive, even if slightly superficial, young man-about-town. But more than that they offer a most impressive picture of Western Europe in the first third of the 19th Century. Mendelssohn’s descriptions of the old Goethe, his humorous reports of a performance of Hamlet in the England of 1829 and of the coronation of the Hungarian king in Pressburg, and the vivid criticisms of the Papal Choir in Rome are invaluable contributions to social history.
That this book does not contribute anything to the problem of German-Jewish cultural relations—and how important this would have been can be gleaned from a caption under the composer’s picture in Time magazine, saying with deliberate primitiveness, “He partly agreed with Goebbels”—is the fault of our era which destroys the evidence together with the victim.
