German Life and Letters 37:2 January 1984

0016-8777 $2.00

THOMAS MANN AND ZIONISM

BY MARKH. GELBER

Thomas Mann’s relationship to Zionism is complex, primarily because he

changed his mind regarding the movement over time, but also because evidence
reveals an unmistakable discrepancy between public pronouncements and
private utterances. During the first decade of the century, i.e. at about the
same time he wrote Wdsungenblut (which has been called an example of literary
anti-Semitism, and, as such, repeatedly caused scandals of one kind or another),’
he expressed pro-assimilationist ideas concerning the Jews. Doubtless he had
witnessed the manifold advantages of Jewish acculturation, presented in the
highly cultured home of his in-laws, the Pringsheims, and he had in truth
maintained a certain distance from the more pronounced anti-Semitism
propagated for a short time by his brother Heinrich Mann, when Heinrich
served as editor of the German-nationalist journal, Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert,
from 1895 to 1896.2 In his answer to a survey about the Jewish presence in
Europe, published in the Miinchner Neueste Nachrichten on September 14, 1907,
Thomas Mann was exceedingly confident that the Jewish problem would
eventually disappear by itself:

Ich glaube, dass die ‘Judenfrage’ nicht gelost werden ’wird, nicht von heut
auf morgen, nicht durch ein Zauberwort, heisse es nun Assimilation,
Zionismus oder wie immer, sondern dass sie sich selber losen,--sich wandeln,
entwickeln, auflosen und eines Tages, der in unseren Gegenden nicht gar
fern zu sein braucht, einfach nicht mehr existieren ~ i r d . ~

In 1907 he was sceptical of Zionism, which he understood as the utopian

Zionist call for a total exodus of all Jews from Europe. He viewed that dream
as a potentially devastating blow to the continued development of European
culture, which desperately needed Jewish input. Mann referred to the Jews as
‘diesen unentbehrlichen europaischen Kultur-Stimulus’.*
Subsequent political developments in German society following upon the first
World War, together with the author’s enhanced understanding of the reality
of practical Zionism, encouraged Mann to gravitate toward a more clearly
positive view of Zionist aspirations and to support them publicly. His
preparations in the 1920s for the fictive treatment of Joseph had a significant
impact in this regard. Not only did he turn to Jewish rabbinical authorities for
guidance in his pre-novel studies ; he also consulted personalities sympathetic
to the Zionist movement, notably Alfred Jeremias, an authority on ancient Near
East studies, and the Zionist activist, Dr. Elias Strauss of Munich.6 I t may have
been Strauss who recruited Mann for membership in the ‘Deutsches Komitee-
Pro-Palastina’, a non-sectarian, pro-Zionist organization dedicated to the
promotion of Jewish settlement in Palestine. At the constitutive assembly of
the organization, held in Berlin on December 15, 1926, Kurt Blumenfeld,
 THOMAS MANN AND ZIONISM 119
chairman of the ‘Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland’, read from the
congratulatory telegrams, among them a message from Mann, who had lent
his important name in support of the committee. The message clearly illustrated
how his work on Joseph was intertwined with his public appreciation and
support of Zionism. Mann wrote :

Ich kann nur sagen, man braucht weder Zionist noch iiberhaupt Jude zu
sein, um den Gedanken, das Land aus seiner o d e zu wecken, in dem sich
seit den Tagen des getriebenen Menschen, der aus der babylonischen
Mondstadt dort einwanderte, bis zum Kreuzetod des Nazareners eine so
gewaltige, menschheitsgeschichtlichgeistige Entwicklung abgespielt hat,
ich sage: um diesen Plan gross und schon und riihrend und fordernswert
zu finden. U m so weniger, sollte ich denken, brauchten deutsche Juden,
in deren Blut die Erinnerung an dieses Urheimatland lebendig ist, zu
fiirchten, in ihrem Deutschtum bezweifelt zu werden, wenn sie den Plan
unterstutzen . . .a

Following criticism of his pro-Zionist stance in the German press, he

endeavoured to maintain a lower profile, while still belonging officially to the
Pro-Palestine organization.’ During an interview in Vienna, published in the
Prague Zionist newspaper Selbstwehr on November 23, 1928, he referred to the
attacks against him in the press, while characterizing Zionist activities as
valuable for mankind. Impressed by the tangible achievements of the second and
third Jewish ‘aliyot’ (immigrations) to Palestine, Mann expressed ‘Bewunderung
und Ehrfurcht’ for Zionist accomplishments. At the same time, he continued to
reject the utopian Zionist idea of a total Jewish emigration from Europe, again
on the grounds that the Jewish presence in Europe was indispensable for the
development of European culture :

Den Juden Deutschlands, besonders den grossen Juden des 18.

Jahrhunderts, verdankt die deutsche Kultur schopferische Ideen, die aus
der deutschen Geisteswelt nicht mehr hinwegzudenken sind, und auch
heute noch ist der jiidische Spiritualismus ein Element von hochster
befruchtender Kraft auf verschiedenen Gebieten der Wissenschaft, der
Kritik und des offentlichen Lebens.*

In the interview, he also expressed concern for the resident Arab population of
Palestine, commenting on the increased visibility of dangerous Jewish
‘chauvinistic’ elements within the Zionist spectrum, those associated with a
maximalist political position and known as Zionist Revisionists.
His simultaneous affirmation of Zionism and Jewish assimilation in the
Selbstwehr interview is noteworthy, in that without giving up his longstanding
sympathy for Jewish assimilation, he now also admitted the desirability of
Zionist activity, despite its nationalistic aspect. When asked about Jewish
assimilation in Europe, Mann said :
120 THOMAS MANN AND ZIONISM

Ich glaube an die historische Notwendigkeit der judischen Mission, ein

Ausgleichungsfaktor in der Welt zu sein und durch die verbindende Kraft
des judischen Wesens nationale Gegensatze innerhalb der Menschheit
aufzuheben. Dies bedingt freilich in unserer hergebrachten Terminologie
gesprochen, ein gewisses Opfer an nationaler Eigenart, das das Judentum
trotzdem in der exzeptionellen Art seine Diasporaexistenz in einem
besonderen Sinne des Wortes fruchtbar gemacht hat.e

His praise for Jewish ‘Spiritualismus’, for Jews as ‘das urbanisierende,

weltgerichtete Element’ that complements German sensibilities, is an indication
of his desire to please in public every Jewish faction as far as possible.
Partial reservations Mann had about Zionism were not totally dispelled by
his visit to Palestine in late March-early April 1930, as part of a study tour for
his Joseph novels, despite the fact that interviews in Jerusalem and pronounce-
mentssubsequent to the visit project an image of a committed Zionist. T o be sure,
Zionists were eager to count on the Nobel prize-winning novelist in their
struggle for recognition of the legitimacy of the movement, a fact which must
be appreciated when evaluating recorded interviews in the press. As it turned
out, he saw relatively little of the land itself. After a short visit to Tel Aviv and
an abbreviated stop a t Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim on the road to Jerusalem, he
fell ill after a brief tour of Jerusalem and spent the bulk of his time in the
Deutsches Diakonissen Hospital in the old city of Jerusalem. Katja Mann, who
had fallen ill in Egypt, joined her husband in Jerusalem only to suffer a short
relapse before their immediate departure from Haifa en route to Trieste. I n
Jerusalem, Mann met with Judah L. Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew
University, and S. Hugo Bergmann, director of the Jewish National-Hebrew
University Library, who accompanied him on a tour of the library on Mt.
S C O ~ U SYet,
. ’ ~as far as can be determined, he did not have an opportunity to
visit in person the sites he was to describe in the Joseph novels: Shechem,
Beth-El, Hebron, Beersheva, etc.’
Taking into account just how disappointing the actual tour must have been,
Mann’s exuberant enthusiasm for Jewish settlement seems artificial. In an
interview before he left Jerusalem, published in the Jiidische Rundshau (Berlin)
on April 16, 1930, he cited the Jewish achievement in Palestine, comparing
Zionism with the romantic movement in Germany, which also had its roots in the
wish for self-liberation.12 His approval here (and in an interview published in
the Palestine Bulletin on April 10, 1930) of spiritual Zionism, indeed his primary
characterization of Zionism as a spiritual self-liberation movement, shows
how close his thinking was to that of Judah L. Magnes. His praise for Magnes
in the Palestine Bulletin interview underscores this point.13 His hope for the
feasibility of Jewish-Arab cooperation and co-existence in Palestine must have
been encouraged by Magnes’ commitment to this same end. The Palestine Bulletin
interview shows clearly that Mann was not ‘decidedly with Zionism’, as he was
quoted in the body of the text, but more ‘definitely with spiritual Zionism’,
as he emphasized at the very end of the interview.’*
In an interview he granted after returning to Europe, Mann reformulated
 THOMAS MANN AND ZIONISM 121
his positive impression of Zionist settlement, singling out for special commenda-
tion the idealism and rigorous, physical labour of the ‘Chaluzim’ (Zionist
pioneers). His most admiring words, though, as in the Palestine Bulletin interview,
concern Tel Aviv, still in its infancy, but the surest sign of Jewish self-liberation :

Am merkwiirdigsten ist wohl Tel-Awiw. Stellen Sie sich eine Stadt von
45000 Einwohnern vor, von denen 44500 Juden sind, eine Stadt, in deren
schonen Strassen europaische Technik und ein gelungener Ansatz zu einem
eigenen jiidischen Stil zu finden ist, in der der Polizist, der Chauffeur, und
der Biirgermeister, der Schriftsteller und der Strassenkehrer Juden sind,
Juden die ausschliesslich Hebraisch sprechen und schreiben, die Sport
treiben und in ihre hebraische Oper gehen. Diese Stadt, vor zwanzig
Jahren noch eine leere Sanddiine am Meer, stellt heute eine gliickliche
Verbindung von alttestamentarischem und modernem Geist dar.

I n this same interview, which followed upon the elections where Nazi
representation in the Reichstag increased ten-fold, Mann continued to see a
strong relationship between Jews and Germans : ‘Beide Volker sind politisch
unreif, beide reagieren stark, beide sind romantisch und materialistisch
zugleich’.16
While he continued to express publicly his support for the Zionist movement
through the 1930s and 1940s, he gave the impression to acquaintances, either
in conversations or in letters, of being fundamentally sceptical about the
prospects of the movement, especially insofar as the Zionist movement was
heading in the direction of founding a Jewish national state. In conversations
with the German-Zionist poet Manfred Sturmann, directly following upon
Mann’s return from his Middle East tour, he gave Sturmann the feeling that
he could not come to believe in the ‘Realitat und . . . Erfolg’ of Zionism.
Sturmann reported that Mann considered Zionism ‘eine anerkennenswerte, aber
in seinem Endziel doch wohl zum Scheitern verurteilte Bemiihung’.17 At about
the same time, excerpts from a conversation with Mann served as the introduction
to Manfred Georg’s biography of Theodor Herzl, published in 1932. Yet, his
praise of Magnes and the paean to self-liberating spiritual Zionism found here
are quite removed from Herzl’s brand of political Zionist endeavour. Mann is
quoted as follows:

. . . es war doch ein ebenso neuer wie frappierender Eindruck, als ich zum
ersten Ma1 freie Juden in einer freien judischen Stadt, Juden ungezwungen
unter sich sah. Es waren verwandelte Menschen. Das Minus der
Bedrucktheit, das Moment einer gewissen Unsicherheit, das ich so oft bei
der Begegnung mit jiidischen Menschen gespiirt habe, war hier vollkommen
verschwunden. Ich habe begriffen, dass es die Juden nach Palastina zieht,
damit sie sich dort seelisch erfullen und befreien.’*

His radio broadcast to the United States, first published on February 22,
1932 in the Palestine Bulletin, and his tribute to Chaim Weizmann, entitled ‘An
122 THOMAS MANN AND ZIONISM

Enduring People’ (1944) are two notable examples of his public support for
the Zionist idea. In the radio broadcast, he called upon ‘the Jewish citizens of
America, and all Americans who have similar spiritual contacts with the Holy
Land as [he himself]-a non-Jew, to further the work of the Jewish people in
Palestine with all their energy’.’ Yet, he continued to distinguish between
utopian and practical Zionism, and was careful to refer to his initial misgivings
about Zionism in general. This same sceptical tone continued to come to the
fore in his private correspondence as well. For example, in a letter to Jacob
Billikopf, written as late as the spring of 1942 (after Billikopf had forwarded a
pamphlet written by Weizmann), Mann wrote:

I have always maintained a somewhat skeptical and negative attitude to

Zionism insofar as its aim is the foundation of a Jewish national state
after the pattern of other, more or less well organized states, for it is my
conviction that the Jews are a cosmopolitan people (Welt-Volk) who are of
the greatest importance for the cultural life in general as a fermenting and
stimulating element, and who can play a n important part in the building
of a new, socially better organized world after the war. It seems to me
that the foundation of a national state is below the real task of Jewry,
especially at a time in history where the importance of the national state
in general is so clearly on the decline.20

I n ‘An Enduring People’ a subtle shift in his appreciation of the nationalistic-

political aspect of Zionism can be perceived, especially when contrasted with the
earlier radio broadcast or the letter to Billikopf. In the tribute to Weizmann,
written two years later, when the full horror of the European Holocaust and the
destruction of East European Jewry were already undeniable, Mann continued
to employ the old terminology, but it can be seen that he now emphasized and
affirmed the nationalistic and political aspects of the movement :

I t is no wonder, it is right and just, that the national consciousness of the

Jewish people has been immeasurably intensified by the events of recent
years and that the Zionist idea proves to possess a steadily growing
persuasiveness and power. The idea of a national concentration of the
Jews in a place other than that of the Dispersion, that is to say, the Zionist
idea, is no longer a controversial one today. I t is a spiritual fact which
must be respected, and it will overcome every resistance that opposes its
realization. 21

In fact this tangible shift in his appreciation of the necessity of political

Zionism, together with his unequivocal support for the ,proposal of the United
Nations to partition Palestine, occasioned a serious disagreement with Judah
L. Magnes, which is attested to in the preserved correspondence.22 In a letter
dated March 1, 1948, Magnes protested against the memorandum, ‘Could the
Arabs stage an armed revolt against the United Nations?’, submitted to the
United Nations by the Nation Associates, a group of public figures affiliated with
 THOMAS MANN AND ZIONISM 123
~~ ~

Nation magazine-a group which included Mann. Writing ‘in the midst of the
bloody war’, Magnes besought Mann to ‘lift his powerful voice on behalf of a
truce, of a conference, of determined efforts to bring about a settlement through
agreement’. His detailed reply to Magnes, dated April 1, 1948, demonstrated
continued respect for the person of Magnes, while taking issue with Magnes’s
appraisal of the political situation. This letter may be seen in conjunction with
Mann’s public comment on the rescinding of American support for the establish-
ment of a Jewish State in Palestine, published in Aufbau on March 26, 1948.
Mann likened this diplomatic betrayal to the reprehensible abandonment of
Czechoslovakia by the democratic world in 1938. At this crucial time, he did not
hesitate to denounce Arab blackmail and the ‘Feudalismus der arabischen
Olmagnaten’.23 He was ‘convinced that the partition, the foundation of a
Jewish State in its extremely modest boundaries, could have been carried out
with a minimum of conflict if that small area had not become the vortex of the
big power fight involving oil and bases’.24 In Magnes’s reply, dated April 12,
1948, he restated his objections to the pamphlet submitted by the Nation
Associates, lamented the partition plan, and admitted that ‘for the first time’
he and Mann were ‘on opposite sides of the fence’. Although Magnes represented
a minority opinion within the wide spectrum of Zionist thought at this time, his
disagreement with Mann serves to illuminate clearly where the latter stood at
this turning point in modern Jewish history.
It may be fair to say that Thomas Mann’s own experience in exile, his concern
for members of Katja’s family deemed racially Jewish by Nazi law, and his
increased association with Jewish causes and Jews, as allies in the struggle against
Nazi Germany, contributed to the significant shift in his thinking about Zionism.
Also, there is reason to believe that his affiliation with the Nation Associates
in the United States-a public group which had taken a firm, activist, pro-
Zionist stance in the 1940s-affected this development. As Thomas Mann’s diaries
from the period under discussion are published, additional information in regard
to his late support for Zionism may come to light.

NOTES

See Thomas Mann, Dichter iiber ihre Dichtungen, ed. Hans Wysling, Munich n.d., pp. 224 231 ;
Thomas Mann, ‘An die Redaktion der Staatsburgerzeitung Berlin’, GW XI, Frankfurt a.M. 1960,
pp. 730-73 1 ; Klaus Pringsheim, ‘Ein Nachtrag zu Walsungenbht, Neue Ziircher Zeitung, December
17, 196 1 ;and Marie Walter, ‘Concerning the Affair Walsungcnbht’, The Rook Collector, 13 ( I 964), 47 1 ,
* See Klaus Schroter, Thomas Mann, Hamburg 1964, pp. 39ff. ; Peter de Mendelssohn, Der Zauberer,
Erster Ted, Frankfurt a.M. 1975, pp. 211-219; and Nigel Hamilton, The Brothers Munn, New
Haven 1979, p. 49.
Mann, G W XIII, p. 460.
Ibid., p. 459.
6 Reported by Manfred Sturmann, ‘Spaziergange mit Thomas Mann’, Mitfeilungsblatl (Tel Aviv),
June 9, 1950, p. 6, and June 16, 1950, p. 8 ; Also, see ‘Zu Thomas Manns 60. Geburtstag’,
Jiidische Rundschau, June 6, 1935, p. 10.
124 THOMAS MANN AND ZIONISM

In ‘Bericht iiher die konstituierende Versammlung’, (Deutsches Komitee-Pro-Palastina)

December 15, 1926, Berlin. (This pamphlet can be found in the Jewish National-Hebrew
University Library, Jerusalem.)
’See letter, Thomas Mann to Martin Buber, dated April 2, 1928; original in the Martin Buber
Archive (Jewish National-Hebrew University Library-Archival Division), MS Var 3501/472.
8 ‘Thomas Mann iiber das Judentum’, Selbstwehr, Jg. 27, November 23, 1928.
Ibid.
la From a conversation with Gershom Scholem, March 11, 1981.
II In this regard, Mann relied on illustrations of these and other sites. See Hans Wysling (ed.),
Bild und Text bei Thomas Mann, Bern/Munich 1975, pp. 187-207. Mann’s copy of Ludwig Preiss
and Paul Rohrbach, Paliirlina und das Ostjordanland, Stuttgart 1925, (Thomas Mann Archive, Zurich)
contains the author’s own underlinings.
Quoted by Kurt Loewenstein, ‘Thomas Mann zurjiidischen Frage’, Bulletin der Leo Baeck Instihtts,
10, No. 37 (1967), 54.
l3 See my forthcoming article: ‘Thomas Mann and Judah L. Magnes’ in Midsheam.
l4 Cf. Erich Gottgetreu’s commentary on this interview in Ma’ariu (Tel Aviv), January 2, 1976.
l5 Neue Freie Presse (Vienna), October 26, 1930, pp. 11-12.
l6 Ibid.
I’ Sturmann, ‘Spaziergange mit Thomas Mann’, ibid.
I* Thomas Mann, ‘Das Aufbauwerk in Palastina’, in Manfred Georg, Theodor Herd, Berlin 1932,
pp. 8-9.
l8 Thomas Mann, G W XIII, p. 476.
2 o See letter, Mann to Billikopf, dated May 25, 1942. The original is housed in the Central Zionist
Archives, Jerusalem.
21 Thomas Mann, G W XIII, p. 506.
22The complete texts of the three letters in question are included in my article ‘Thomas Mann
and Judah L. Magnes’. Cf. note 13.
23 Thomas Mann, G W XIII, pp. 515-516
24See letter, Mann to Magnes, April 1, 1948. Original housed in the Magnes Archive of the
Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, P3/222.