cr-3 
 
Eleanor Alexander
Foreign Minister
Walther Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau
Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I am most grateful to you for your kind words
    of sympathy and comfort that you have given me.
    - Rathenau -

I write about the life of Walter Rathenau (1)

in sorrow because I still remember the day, June 24, 1922 when my father came home saying: "Sie haben Rathenau ermordet" (they murdered Rathenau.) I was eight years old. Rathenau was the Foreign Minister of Germany, a country trying to recover from a lost war, and many Germans blamed Rathenau for their troubles.

He was born in Berlin in 1867; his father owned a small iron factory, but in the 1870's he became interested in Thomas Edison's invention and decided to buy the patents for electric light. With borrowed money he founded the factory that eventually became the German equivalent of General Electric, AEG. Reluctantly the son joined the Board of AEG and supervised the building of electric stations in Manchester, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires and Baku. By 1914 Rathenau was a friend of the Kaiser and an influential member of the international capitalist superstructure. Rathenau was in despair when World War I started; many Germans cheered.

He was one of the first to realize that the nature of war had changed and offered his services to the government. He organized the Division of War Raw Materials needed for keeping the war going and may have thus prolonged the duration of the war considerably. The Committee consisted of Rathenau, a retired colonel and five assistants. The little group began by overseeing the production of metals, then chemicals, wool, rubber, cotton and leather. But he did not remain long in this position; he was always in trouble because he was a Jew.

My father writes that, "Rathenau was an excellent speaker, but in his writing often verbose, writing in an artificial prose. On the strength of isolated sentences the opponents were able to persuade a maddened crowd that Rathenau neither loved his country nor had believed that it could win. In spite of his many friends he remained essentially a lonely man."

After the war, Rathenau became one of the founders of the new Democratic Party and eventually was appointed a member of the cabinet and later Foreign Minister. "He felt deeply compelled to accept this office in spite of all the warnings of his intimates, among them his mother, and the doubts of his more rational self."

The Treaty of Versailles demanded high reparations from Germany and in 1921 the German government declared its inability to pay the large sums. The Allies called an Economic Conference in Genoa, Italy in January 1922. At the meeting, payments were rescheduled. It was the first time the Allies had invited Germany and Soviet Russia. The new schedule lightened the load of Germany somewhat.

Then, suddenly, on Easter Sunday, April 16, the members of the Genoa Conference learned that Germany and the Soviet Union had concluded a secret treaty in the nearby seaside resort of Rapallo. The reaction of the Allies was violent, and Friedrich Ebert, the President of the Weimar Republic, was outraged.

Many decades later Ann and I celebrated my seventieth birthday in Castagnola on the Lago di Lugano. During our stay there, we made an excursion to Locarno on the Lago Maggiore and visited the local museum where we saw many photographs of the Conferences at Genoa, Rapallo and Locarno. This visit brought back many memories.

The treaty of Rapallo was the idea of the Conservatives, but Rathenau had been unable to prevent it; and since he was the Foreign Minister, he was widely blamed for it. Soviet Russia was considered an outcast in Europe and the Allies believed that the two defeated nations had no right to such a treaty. There were constant threats against Rathenau from all sides, but even so he refused government protection. On June 24, 1922, riding to his office in an open car, he was assassinated by three young Germans.

The public's reaction to the Rathenau assassination was astonishing. While his body lay in state in the Reichstag, where President Ebert read the oration and an orchestra played Siegfried's funeral music, the labour unions decreed a national day of mourning. Despite the fact that he was an aristocrat, an archcapitalist, and a rather cold and aloof personality, an estimated one million people marched through the streets of Berlin to protest the murder.

Undoubtedly, he was hated by many Germans because he was a Jew - how did he himself feel about being a Jew? In 1980 Peter Loewenberg gave the Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture, entitled Walter Rathenau and Henry Kissinger The Jew as Modern Statesman in Two Political Cultures. He discusses with great insight Rathenau's attitude toward Judaism. Rathenau's model was the British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, but England was a far more tolerant country than imperial Germany. Rathenau described the two forces tearing at him: the German and the Jew.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I am a German of the Jewish tribe. My people are the German people, my homeland is the German land, my faith is the German faith that stands above the religious confessions." And in August 1918 he avowed, my task is not a Jewish one. I feel German and will never sever myself from the German people. He was a strong opponent of Zionism; one day two eminent figures in the Zionist movement visited him for five hours and tried very hard to bring Rathenau to Zionism. Albert Einstein and Kurt Blumenfeld, a high Zionist official, pleaded with Rathenau to surrender his office as Foreign Minister on the grounds "that a Jew did not have the right to manage the affairs of another people." They were unsuccessful, but Einstein drew a penetrating and moving picture of Rathenau.
    "On several occasions, I spent hours in Rathenau's company discussing diverse subjects. These talks tended to be rather one-sided on the whole, he spoke and I listened. For one thing, it was not easy to get the floor and, for another, it was so pleasant to listen to him that one did not try very hard.

    His avowed allegiances were contradictory. He felt himself to be a Jew and thought along its international lines, but at the same time was in love with Prussianism, its Junker class and its militarism. Strange enough, he was a person inwardly dependent on the recognition of men much inferior to him in their human quallties."
Rathenau believed that he was a German first of all. He was drawn to the Prussian ruling classes and eager to participate in the political life of his country. He also was very much drawn to the teachings of Christianity, but, nevertheless, he remained a Jew all of his life.

An old family friend, Clara Levysohn, wrote to Fritz Mauthner after she heard about the death of Walter Rathenau.
    "When I heard of the sad, horrible death of Rathenau, I was reminded of the time when you were able to talk to him a few times and got to know him. I believe that his death will have shaken you for many reasons. He was a very gifted man, not in quite the light place in the war, perhaps kept down by envy. During the last year I was under the impression that he could have become a statesman of the kind that Germany does not have in abundance. He was a man who, starting slowly, might eventually have been able to do something extraordinary. Now death has put an end to our hopes, and it seems to me that no one is able to find a person to replace him - even as he was when he died.

    I do admire his courage, and I am happy that he remained a Jew, as his funeral showed. Of course, I am not a religious person, but he showed courage and great understanding: he did not convert during the last twenty years, he kept the faith into which he was born in spite of all the attacks and his own doubts."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Berliner Handelsgesellschaft Office of the Director
Berlin
July 18,1921

Sehr geehrter Herr Mauthner:

Warmest thanks for you kind words. I look forward with great anticipation to your new book. I think very highly of the philosophical insights of the Jews; this strength was demonstrated three times. The second time, alas, it turned out badly for us.

We have every reason to expect a secular "Carmen" (poem) from you, written in beautiful German and not in technical philosophical language.

Your sincerely devoted Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why was Mauthner interested in electric currents?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Berliner Handelsgesellschaft
Office of the Director
Berlin
February 4, 1905

Verehrter Herr Mauthner:

I would not recommend testing the effect of strong alternate electrical currents on the uninitiated. Nature often responds with brutality to improvident questions; it is better to leave it to the scientists.

An expert would be more helpful, but I hardly consider myself such a person. My abilities in this field are way below what I would like them to be and below the opinion that others have of me.

With sincere devotion, Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft
Office of the President
Berlin
January 11, 1916

Sehr Verehrter Herr Mauthner:

Your kind words of praise gave me a special pleasure, a double one: the expression of your sentiments and a chance of a dialogue.

I am no longer involved in public affairs and thus am unable to put you in contact with the relevant agencies. However, you serve your country always and in the most enlightened way. Germany can only exist as long as German intellectuals remain active.

With sincere devotion, Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft
Office of the President
Berlin
March 24,1917

Lieber und sehr Verehrter Herr Mauthner:

I am truly grateful to you for your beautiful essay in the Berliner Tageblatt. As a faithful admirer of your work it is of the greatest importance to me that you judge my ideas so favorably - yes, you taught us to see the world in a new light.

Always with admiration, yours, Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allgemeine Elektricitäts -Gesellschaft
Office of the President
Berlin
November 21, 1919

Deutsche Verlagsanstalt
Stuttgart

Please accept my sincere thanks for the kind announcement of your intention to send me a copy of Fritz Mauthner's selected essays. Please convey my thanks also to the author.

Sincerely, Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wire: November 1919

To the Master of Thought and Language, my warmest wishes and greetings.

Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allgemeine Elektricitäts - Gesellschaft
Office of the President
Berlin
December 19,1919

Lieber und sehr Verehrter Herr Mauthner:

It is no mystery - when I asked myself how I could best show you my love and admiration, that page came into my hands, and it was a double pleasure to put my name among those of your older friends. My friendship may not be as old, but my admiration and heartfelt good wishes are as great.

No, Lieber und Verehrter, it is not as you say; your influence is great and your work very important. Don't forget: for men of your caliber, not only the public of the present time matters, but your influence on future generations is important. So there will be many more admirers than we can count now. Friedrich Schiller speaks of the long term influence of the "Best of our Time" on future generations.

Do remain faithful for a long time to the world around - then readers will remain faithful to you. As a contemporary I give this testimonial with admiration and in friendship.

Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rathenau certainly was right: many decades after Mauthner's death, there remains an interest in his work. There is an active Mauthner Society in Germany and his memoirs were published by Fischer in 1964 as "Prager Jugendjahre", and several books about him have been published.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allgemeine Elektricitäts - Gesellschaft
Office of the President
Berlin
November 17, 1921

Lieber und hochverehrter Herr Mauthner:

Since I am no longer a member of the government, all I can do, is to ask the Foreign Office for help; this I have done; whether this will be successful, I cannot tell. I hope we will be able to meet soon to discuss questions of common interest, hopefully find a good solution.

Yours, Rathenau


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On December 13, Rathenau informed Mauthner that he had been able to get a residence permit for his friend, Mr. Nexö.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LITERATUR - Letters to Fritz Mauthner, Translation by Eleanor Alexander, Winter 2001
    Anmerkungen
  1. The account of Walter Rathenau's life is based on my father's book, "A History of the Weimar Republic", (Harvard University Press 1962) and Otto Friedrich's "Before the Deluge" (Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1986)