Between visiting diary and political visions: recovering treasures from the Lazarus estate for the present

ABSTRACT

Making accessible the estate of 19^th-century German-Jewish intellectual Moritz (Moshe) Lazarus at the National Library of Israel benefits biographical research as well as studies in history, sociology, memory studies or philosophy. Documents like his visiting diaries demonstrate the reality of an intense German-Jewish social life not at all restricted to Jewish circles, even in a nationalist, Christian and authoritarian environment like Imperial Germany. This article discusses the possibilities and problems of digital editions and proposes four paths through the digital material now available, from the personal networks found in the diaries, to the political visions of the lectures and manuscripts.

KEYWORDS:

• Lazarus
• nineteenth-century Germany
• German Jewry
• antisemitism
• idealism
• pluralism

Introducing Moritz Lazarus

Who was Moritz Lazarus – and what makes him so important as to preserve and utilize his written estate? First and foremost, he was a prominent and successful German-Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century (see Figure 1). He was born in 1824 as the second son into the family of a Talmud scholar in the small town of Filehne in the Prussian province Posen. Rejecting the career as a merchant planned for him by his father, he finished gymnasium in Braunschweig, studied philosophy, philology, psychology, history, and natural sciences at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, took part in the revolution of 1848 as editor of the journal of Berlin’s militia, married Sarah Lebenheim and thanks to her dowry could work as a private scholar in the Prussian capital during the 1850s. The product of this period was his most successful book, the multi-volume Leben der Seele (Life of the Soul),¹ a collection some contemporaneous reviewers regarded as re-establishing philosophy’s reputation for a public that, in their eyes, had been ruined by Hegel and his school of thought.² Lazarus tried to popularize philosophy for a broader educated public – yet he not only popularized, but also contributed new perspectives to the scholarly debates of his time. The most important essay in this book was Geist und Sprache,³ on the relation of psyche, spirit, language, and culture in history.

Figure 1. Moritz Lazarus, portrait, undated, ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 8, file NLI526282_0027.

In philosophical terms, Lazarus was part of the movement to reconcile idealism and the empirical sciences, or, the ideal and the material, in a kind of Idealrealismus (‘idealrealism’) where spirit is not understood in a Hegelian manner as an entity in its own right and life, but as a cultural phenomenon that emerged through historical human action and communication.⁴ One should bear in mind that at the time psychology was a branch of philosophy and had not yet developed the tendency towards the natural sciences, as it did toward the end of the century, after its emancipation from philosophy. Accordingly, Lazarus ought to be understood as a philosopher and a psychologist.

Lazarus was an influential innovator in his field. He introduced phenomena of the everyday world, such as honor, tact or friendship, to psychological reasoning. But most importantly, with his project of establishing a Völkerpsychologie, Lazarus can be considered a founder of social psychology and a proto-sociologist.⁵ Georg Simmel later wrote to his teacher Lazarus that he had acquired from him not only the psychological perspective but also a general interest in sociological phenomena: an interest in social phenomena beyond the individual and in the relation between the individual and the collectivity.⁶ Lazarus’ contributed to cultural theory an understanding that human beings with all their relations needed a common cultural world of language and artifacts – what he termed objektiver Geist (‘objective spirit’).⁷

It was the success of Leben der Seele and the project of Völkerpsychologie which gained Lazarus his first professorship in 1860 – not, as he had hoped for, in Prussia or other German states, but in Bern, Switzerland. But here, he held the first ever chair in psychology in the world.⁸ He nevertheless returned to Berlin in 1866, taught history of philosophy at the Prussian War Academy, and in 1873, was awarded an (unpaid) honorary professorship at the philosophical faculty of Berlin’s university where he taught psychology and Völkerpsychologie. He never gained a full professorship at a German university. When he retired in 1897, he left Berlin and Germany and moved to Meran, where he died in 1903.

Lazarus was not only a philosopher and psychologist. He was also a key figure in the reform movement of Judaism, mostly in German-speaking regions of Europe, but acknowledged in Jewish communities in France and the United States as well. He presided the reform synods in 1869 and 1871 in Leipzig and Augsburg, and his contributions to the German debates about how to be Jewish in a modern, bourgeois, and national society held much influence. In his last major work, the Ethics of Judaism, Lazarus collected sources from the Jewish tradition throughout the centuries in order to form an ethical foundation of Judaism, which he tried to merge with Kantian philosophy.⁹

As a prominent Jew, Lazarus was also one of the first to publicly react to German academic antisemitism spread by Heinrich von Treitschke in his infamous essay of 1879.¹⁰ In his rejection of antisemitism as a malicious and backward attack on civilization, Lazarus combined his deeply pluralist social theory, his ethical understanding of Judaism and his national-liberal political position. In his key text on the topic, Was heißt national?, he explicitly based his rejection of antisemitism and every ‘blood and race’ theory on his Völkerpsychologie works from decades earlier. Regarding the question of belonging in modern society, he discarded assumedly objective and essentialist criteria like language, descent, or religion. Belonging, according to Lazarus, rather depended on whether one considered oneself as part of a people, and who voluntarily contributed to a common project.¹¹ Historian Till van Rahden has described this definition as ‘radically voluntaristic, pluralistic, and processual’, a founding text ‘for constructivist conceptions of the nation’.¹²

Apart from this, Lazarus left traces as an educator who, during his time in Bern, had tried to reform Swiss academia and promoted social statistics within university and in research. He was an active member of several literary circles, like the Rütli,¹³ with close relations to writers like Berthold Auerbach, Paul Heyse, or Theodor Fontane, as well as an extremely well-connected networker with multiple roles within Jewish communities and in charitable organizations. And let us not forget that he was also a businessman who managed the assets of his wife’s family and of his friend Paul Heyse, mostly by stock trading as well as by building up and administering real estate property in Leipzig.

Lazarus’ biography is marked by success: from the second son of a poor teacher in a small town in the Prussian province of Posen, to a renowned professor, orator, public intellectual and functionary in Berlin, Bern, and Leipzig. With all these accomplishments, Lazarus is an ideal-typical representative of the advancement of bourgeois German Jews of the post-Emancipation era. But despite these successes, Lazarus remained a ‘marginal man in the centre of society’.¹⁴ One highly interesting document from the estate demonstrates this always problematic position as a Jew in German-speaking Europe. According to his birth certificate (see Figure 2), he received the name Moses, amended, in brackets, by Moritz. And through all his life, he never adopted either of them fully. All his books and articles which appeared during his lifetime were published under ‘M. Lazarus’ or just ‘Lazarus’. It was only after his death in 1903 that his works appeared under ‘Moritz Lazarus’. He even signed letters to his friends with his last name. Only some letters to family members would be signed with ‘Moshe’. It seems as if Lazarus was never ready to fully embrace the Germanized ‘Moritz’ and give up the Jewish ‘Moses’ or ‘Moshe’. And why should he? Although he had stressed time and again to be a patriotic German, he always insisted, too, that he was a patriotic German Jew and that he was as German as every Christian could be.¹⁵

Figure 2. Lazarus’ birth certificate from 1850, ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 7, file NLI526281_0052.

The archive

I had spent some time with the physical material of the Lazarus estate at the National Library of Israel (NLI)¹⁶ in Jerusalem before being asked by the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Hamburg university to comment on the digitalization provided by the NLI. When I started browsing the digital files, a preliminary feeling was simple gratitude: what great success and amazing work it was that we now have all the material from the Lazarus estate digitized! And what an opportunity for further research on Lazarus and his time. I was deeply impressed by the sheer number of documents. Of course, as somebody who had spent weeks in the basement of the archive department in the NLI, ordering, shuffling, reading, and scanning parts of the estate, I am aware of the size and content of the NLI holding Ms. Var. 298. But still, it is something else to have all those 34,680 images (45 GB of data) just a click away, knowing that you can zoom into each and every one of them in an instant, without the need to fill out a paper form and wait for the file to be delivered, weighed and handed over to you.

Of course, digital access provides faster routes to important documents. The aforementioned birth certificate, for example, had slipped my attention until I started browsing through the digital archive. Lazarus was born as ‘Moshe’ and later, during naturalization, changed his name to ‘Moritz’. The certificate has both ‘Moses’ and ‘Moritz’ on it, which at first glance could be confusing, but had been issued by the magistrate of Filehne in April 1850, when Lazarus was 25 and about to marry his first wife, Sarah (see Figure 3), thus only informing us about the post festum state of his names.

Figure 3. Sarah Lazarus, born Lebenheim, July 22, 1878, Immánuel Löw archive, ARC. 4* 794 01 135, file 3,735,672-10_0015.

On the other hand, browsing a folder of image files on my computer at home is still something completely different than experiencing the original material in the archive. The provenance and materiality in parts is lost: in the seriality of a hundred images in a folder, it is no longer absolutely clear which back-side – and with it sometimes enlightening marks or remarks – belongs to which front-side. Of course, the magic of the material will never be reproduced by the picture on a screen: the look, the touch, the smell. Despite all complaints about the working conditions of the reading rooms of the world, the situational context of the archive – the small talk with the staff or other visitors in the cafeteria, the focus on the material without distraction by other things on the screen, or the sounds in the office or home office: all this is also part of the archive experience that cannot be replicated in digital access.

Additionally, the digital tools for accessing material are not perfect. The usability of an Excel table is limited when it comes to representing all the metadata of an archive this size. Data cells containing dozens of lines of text are anything but easy to interpret, since it is difficult to keep track of entries over rows of such length. And full text search has its pitfalls when character encoding normalization issues pop up, such as when what appears to be an ‘Ü’ on the screen cannot necessarily be found by typing ‘Ü’ in the search field: the umlaut appearing as ‘Ü’ on screen does not actually represent the precomposed Unicode character ‘Ü’ in the file, but the combination of the letter ‘U’ and the diacritical mark ‘¨’. Therefore, searching the provided digital index table for ‘Briefbücher’ (visiting books) will yield no results, although file number ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 19, according to the ‘File title’ field, holds ‘Briefbücher und Übersichtslisten’.

Another problem in digitizing archival material concerns enumeration. In the case of the Lazarus estate, I was disturbed when I realized that the fascicle numbers of the old archive have not been recorded separately and that the new numbering system only partially matched the old one. This sometimes makes it difficult to locate material of which one only knows its old file number. Corresponding notes thereof are rendered worthless. Additionally, some files seem to have just vanished.¹⁷ Fortunately, after a long search, I recovered the precious visiting diaries which were previously filed under Ms. Var. 298–3, and are now registered under Ms. Var. 298 04 3 (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Lazarus visiting diary, extract from January/February 1884, ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 3, file NLI526278_0200.

Much worse than this problem of retrieving material internally is that through the labelling change source references in existing publications have now in some cases become meaningless. Future generations of researchers may have trouble in referring to the same sources or in reproducing published findings relating to them. Thus, some kind of versioning which carries along previous ordering systematics should be part of the digital archive. Even the material archive carries over such a versioning: the files bear the marks of several generations of ordering systems Ms. Var. 298 went through since the 1930s.

Condensation of knowledge and cooperation

By making the archive accessible digitally, the first step has been accomplished for imagining future prospects. For instance, it would be great to have an intuitive user interface that presented the contents of the files more comprehensibly than the plain table and enables one to actually browse the material, e.g., chronologically, topically or systematically. While of course this would entail a great deal of additional work, one might dare to dream of an even deeper metadata indexing of the material, e.g., all dates, places, and names from the correspondence or from the visiting diaries.

Partially and unofficially, this already exists. Our work with material like the Lazarus estate rests on the shoulders of forerunners and colleagues, notably the staff at the NLI’s archive department, most importantly Stefan Litt. But my own work on Lazarus has also been much facilitated by a single Word document handed over by the extremely friendly and helpful NLI archivist Paul Maurer, who had compiled a list of all the correspondents in the Lazarus archive, with name, date and place, sorted according to the fascicles. Of course, while this is just a simple list that would need considerable effort to be systematically transformed into a proper database, it is a beginning that at least makes it possible to search which letters are in the estate, from when, whom and where.

Maurer’s list is not the only preliminary collection for which I was thankful with regard to my work on Ms.Var. 298. Klaus Christian Köhnke, a Lazarus expert from a generation before (who, as a teacher, introduced me to the work of the Völkerpsychologe in the first place), provided me with a chronology he had begun to compile. Like Maurer’s documentation of the correspondence, this was also just a simple Word document containing an unformatted list, but 36 pages of it. It soon became a core reference for my work. In it, Köhnke had begun to chronologically list every information he could find that documented times and places of Lazarus’ life, beginning with Belke’s edition of the correspondence of Lazarus and Steinthal,¹⁸ and Lazarus’ own publications (which often contain a foreword with the date and location of writing). The list also included the respective source of the information for later reference. This document turned out to be of such value that I quickly made it a habit to supplement it whenever I stumbled upon new information in a letter, newspaper clipping or book. So, it grew from year to year. And it waits to be made available to others interested in M. Lazarus.

This list of helpful colleagues, however, is far from complete. Kerstin von der Krone, for instance, shared her transcriptions of select Lazarus correspondence without hesitation. Jobst Paul and the Steinheim Institute provided access to transcriptions of political texts of Lazarus they had already produced from published sources. Last but not least, it has to be mentioned those whose work all our research on the Lazarus estate depends, those who have collected, sorted and archived all the material in the first place: Lazarus’ second wife, Nahidas Ruth Lazarus, his students and biographers, Alfred Leicht and Aron Tänzer, and later the Leo Baeck Institute with its efforts to pursue Tänzer’s plan to publish Lazarus’s correspondence, then carried out by David Baumgardt, Kurt Wilhelm and finally Ingrid Belke. Their hands (especially those of Nahida Ruth Lazarus and Aron Tänzer) can be identified all over the Lazarus estate at the National Library, not only in the sorting and indexing of it.

The contributions of all these predecessors and colleagues in the work on the Lazarus estate have not only produced the archive in its current state and knowledge about it. They all are also part of a venture Lazarus described as a ‘condensation of thought in history’(Verdichtung des Denkens in der Geschichte),¹⁹ the historical process of knowledge condensation and distribution, one of the main features and functions of culture, or, in his terms, ‘objective spirit’ (objektiver Geist).²⁰ This idea should also determine the way we deal with the archive in the future: further building on the stock of knowledge about M. Lazarus and making it more accessible. It would be a humbling privilege if the information I have amended to the work of my predecessors one day would become part of a well-sorted, thoughtfully edited, meticulously documented, easily accessible and also beautiful documentation project about Lazarus. But more on that later.

From image to edition: why and how?

When asked what could be done with the treasure of 34,680 images representing the Lazarus estate at the NLI, the most obvious answer is to realize a digital edition according to academic standards. Now that one of the first steps of such projects, digitization, has already been accomplished, the path seems open. But digitization is still only one step of eight, since an edition also needs preparation of the data structure, transcription, collation, structuring and systematizing, annotation^, (optional) analysis and introduction. I’ll return to those steps later, but for now the question must be answered as to why on earth such an effort should be expended in the first place. What is the use of academic editions of such material in the NLI’s Lazarus estate?

Why editions?

Editions, and particularly digital editions, bear great potential from several perspectives. They can provide links to other sources and contexts in order to help understand and interpret the material: for example, the reproduction of a manuscript could be enriched by links to the work context, such as related publications, to the biographical context, such as the place and affiliation the author inhabited at the given moment, or to the historical context to which the text can be attributed. The text could also be annotated by links to internal or external sources, like letters, manuscripts, or photos in the same archive or to external digital media servers. All these enable an indispensable background for understanding and dealing with a text, which a mere reproduction, even as a full digital text, cannot provide.

Editions may also structure and present the material along appropriate and preconceived criteria. Ideally, the editor should know her material well enough and better than others in order to construct a framework to represent the material in a thoughtful manner that is comprehensible to others and makes the archive more understandable.

This also leads to the work of making accessible the unknown and the obscured material. Even when full digitization has already been realized and the archive has already been intelligently sorted, like in the case of Ms. Var. 298, an edition based on the existing knowledge about Lazarus can highlight previously unearthed texts, documents or letters that are technically available now, but still only as mere images buried in a vast amount of data. A rewarding job for an editor, for instance, can be to highlight the manuscript Entwurf zur Gründung einer Humanitätsgesellschaft ohne Grenzen des Staates, der Nation und Religion (Draft for the foundation of a humane society without borders of the state, the nation or religion),²¹ to make it accessible as a full text, explain what makes it so interesting for the present and relate it to other political essays of Lazarus (and his contemporaries; see below for more on this text).

Strongly related to this purpose of editions is the job of collecting the dispersed. While this would be irrelevant in case of only editing material from one archive, it would be of great use in a project like an edition of all political texts of Lazarus: most of his published texts are available online, but mostly only in German Type, only as images, not full text, and scattered across many repositories. Although diverse catalogues and search engines can help in scavenging them from Google, archive.org or national digital archives around the globe, it would be of great assistance for the work on this corpus to have the texts collected in one place.

Digital editions, of course, make automatic data collection and analysis possible. If the important work of annotation has been done (not to be underestimated), that is, persons, places, events, dates or works have been tagged in the text, then a whole field of data driven research is opened up, thus enabling research on trends, networks or a host of other possibilities.

All these tasks of an edition help to enable research on the material without the need to re-enter the basic process of establishing the authoritative text itself over and over again. It thus is part of the process Lazarus had described as the condensation of thought in history: all culture is built on the work of its predecessors which have condensed thought through a work-intensive process but leading to results easily comprehended in the future. Lazarus names Pythagoras’ theorem as an example which had required considerable effort from the Greek mathematician but could then be understood by the school children of later ages without much difficulty.²²

From document to edition

For an edition that fulfills all these purposes, several steps must be taken, from the document (here: the image) to the text, and from there to the edition.²³ The mere digital availability of the image is necessary but not sufficient. It needs the construction of a text and editorial processing: providing context, creating a structure, delivering analysis, and providing perspectives. The usual steps to take have been mentioned above and shall now be elaborated more extensively.²⁴ An academic digital edition of textual material requires:

• Data structure preparation: decide on formats, databases, standards, hosting, long-term repository, digital rights, etc.

• Transcription: if the goal is an edition of textual material, the scanned images have to be transcribed into full digital text. Considering the amount of data and the time this requires, a manual transcription of the Lazarus estate as a whole is out of discussion, but feasible for selected parts. Automatic transcription, however, that only has to be audited and edited afterwards, plays an ever-increasing role. It was only until recently that even printed but fractured text was hard to transcribe by computers. This has improved a lot, mostly due to the development in deep machine learning, and even the recognition of old German handwriting has become available.

• Collation: all digital text has to be collated, that is, verified against the original, ideally at least twice.

• Structuring/Systematizing: the texts need to be sorted in a systematic manner according to the respective project topic.

• Annotation/Contextualization: in order to be understandable for contemporary readers, every historical text needs information about its origin, context and impact. In addition, many historical, ideological, literary, work-historical, and personal references, such as events, names, contexts, or sources, will need explanation. Some of the contemporary terms, allusions, topics, and quotations will also likely have to be translated, explained, and referenced accordingly. This is the purpose of the editorial commentary. Online editions, additionally, can link directly from the terms to internal and external databases like GND/Integrated Authority File.²⁵

• Analysis (optional): if the edition project wants to answer specific questions, the material can already be subject to interpretation.

• Introduction: regardless of whether the edition is targeting a small scientific community or a broader interested public, it needs introductory commentary that explains the goals, describes the material and the methods used.

Dangers of digital editing

Before finally coming to my proposals of what to do with the NLI’s Lazarus estate, the risks, and pitfalls of (digital) editions should not go unmentioned. First, the sheer amount of it comes with the danger of losing focus of what is important and thus potentially wastes resources on material without providing new insight. Second, every decision on certain formats and hosting servers comes with the danger of being the wrong decision, insofar the format loses support by the community or is incompatible to other formats that only later turn out to be important, because resources for maintaining the servers dry out or hosting solutions fall in the wrong hands, and so on. Finally, like every edition, digital ones also have to struggle with the contingency of the records. In the historical context of antisemitism and the Shoah, the material in Jewish archives is always subject to displacement and loss. But contingency is a general problem. Also, in non-persecution and non-genocidal contexts, archives are always contingent, fragmented, incomplete and curated collections. One of the most dangerous forces of selectivity is, from the editor’s perspective, the much-hated practice of ‘Flöhen’: the weeding out of material by husbands, wives, relatives, pupils – or even the person preparing her own estate – because they regard it as irrelevant or disturbing their view of the past. In the case of Lazarus, this is well documented in several instances: as interferences by his second wife Nahida, who gave away, sold or destroyed valuable or unwanted documents;²⁶ his pupils Leicht and Tänzer, who openly admitted to have sorted out letters and other material;²⁷ and also by his own hand, when he regularly discarded documents.²⁸ Every edition and collection, thus, should always remain hesitant to claim completeness.

Keeping these notes on editing in mind, the following sketches four proposals of how the successful digitization of the Lazarus estate at the NLI could be utilized for new insights within the fields of German-Jewish history, the history of the nineteenth and twentieth century as well as memory studies.

Four paths through the treasure chamber

Path 1: discovering the unknown

While many people have spent time in NLI’s archive department browsing through the material of Ms. Var. 298, there is still so much unknown but valuable information to discover in the estate. This is the point of departure for the first path described here. Particular unknown areas can be identified in family affairs and networks.²⁹ Relevant document types, apart from, obviously, the correspondence, are calendars, visiting books, notes and diary fragments which could be salvaged systematically to uncover more details on Lazarus’ connections in Imperial Germany, or what the everyday life of a prominent and busy German Jewish intellectual looked like in the second half of nineteenth century. One example here is the ‘Kalendarium 74’ (see Figure 5), a self-made diary that only survived from a few periods (or was only created for a few years). In his own handwriting, we find lists such as the following:

Figure 5. Lazarus’ Kalendarium from 1874, p.1, source: see note 41.

Diary of November 1874

1. Arrived from Meerane and Leipzig

2. In the morning chatting hour – preparation – lecture class 12 to 1 – afternoon many university and college students³⁰ – in the evening chatted and read.

3. In the morning two chatting hours, preparation, lecture class, visit to Hertz,³¹ afternoon students, visit of Mrs. Griesinger³² – [visit] to Traube³³[,] by Löw³⁴ in the evening, two letters (Roin, Röper)

4. Preparation. Noon visit to Griesinger and Twestens³⁵ – commissions in town – lecture class 5 to 6. Chatting hour

5. Chatting hour (so many chatting hours because the child [his wife Sarah]³⁶ indisposed all week) – preparation, lecture class – afternoon many students and stenographers – daily 4 to 5 petitioners (except students)

6. In the morning preparation: letters Neumann – police insp[ector] Neumann, Geh[eimrat] Liebermann, Roin, Leonhardt. lecture class. Visit of Mrs. Schumann.³⁷ Afternoon students. – Goldmann and son – visit of Blaschke, Brandes, Frl. Ascher, Fr. Schaum[,] at 6 to 7 visit to Abeken³⁸ – evening Steinth[al,] Löw and Weisstein³⁹ at our place.

7. In the morning chatting hour. Visit to Werder,⁴⁰ Zunz,⁴¹ Dr. Geiger jun.⁴², Hertz, Maliken, commissions. Afternoon visit of the Rütli – three[?] meeting of the Hilfsverein f. jüd. Stud. [benevolent society for Jewish students] – later chatting hour and reading.⁴³

Just these few notes about one week in November 1874 provide fascinating insight into the social network of Lazarus the German-Jewish scholar, functionary, intellectual and businessman. On the first day, he arrived from one of his many travels to Leipzig, where he ran a real estate business, with an office in the city and several construction projects throughout town. In the outskirts of Leipzig, in Schönefeld, he owned a manor where he, his wife, as well as his friend and Völkerpsychologie colleague Chaim Steinthal spent many days throughout the year. The rest of the week is dominated by his lectures at Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and consultations with students, but also meetings with friends and colleagues – at his home and theirs – occupy large amounts of his time. Looking into the names, we see a wide range of acquaintances: from the musician Clara Schumann to the Hegelian philosopher Karl Werder; from his friend of the 1840s and the 1848 revolution, the national liberal politician Bernhard Abeken, to the family of the national liberal politician Carl Twesten; the representative of Berlin’s Jewish community Wilhelm Herz, Rabbi Leopold Löw and the famous Jewish scholar Leopold Zunz. Equally interesting is the more private information in this calendar, like the visits of the wife of his former colleague in psychology, Wilhelm Griesinger, who had died just a few years before, or how he tries to justify the many hours spent in ‘Plauderstündchen’ (chatting hours) with his wife Sarah, as she was unwell throughout the whole week. This demonstrates not only that he seems to have written this diary as a matter of justification and control over his spent time. It also illustrates how he, despite his many other occupations, did not hesitate to take care of his relationship to Sarah. And not least it underscores how much of an intellectual partner she was to the successful philosopher and thinker. It is thus no coincidence that guests wrote about their visits to the house of Moritz and Sarah Lazarus, that the two had run one of the last salons of Old Berlin.⁴⁴ Last but not least, we see in this schedule the different meetings in commissions and circles, from the literary circle Rütli, with writers, artists, historians and critics like Fontane, Menzel, Heyse, Kugler, Eggers or Roquette, to the Hilfsverein, the Berlin-based Jewish community organization supporting Jewish students, which Lazarus headed for a decade.

If we can draw so much information and illustration from just half a page of the material in the estate, imagine what treasure is still to be unearthed. Another source that needs further attention would be the family correspondence of Lazarus. Since the work around the publication of a selection of the letters by Tänzer, Baumgart and Belke, not much interest has been placed in them. Specifically interesting are the letters with his father, Rabbi Aron Leb Lazarus (1790–1874), a pupil of Rabbi Akiba Eger, his brother Rabbi Leiser Lazarus (1822–1879), a Rabbi in Prenzlau and director of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau, or his cousin Johanna Berendt, born Sander (1822–1917).

Path 2: unfolding biographical constructions

Another trail through the jungle of images could be blazed following the infamous blue pencil everyone who ever browsed the Lazarus archive knows very well. It comments newspaper clippings, contextualizes folders or single documents, marks parts of texts as important and so on. Figure 6 provides an example: the clipping from a yet unknown and undated newspaper reports on presumedly rich professors in Berlin, ‘Professoren-Millionäre’. It also cites Lazarus as an example, attributing more than a dozen houses in Leipzig to his ownership. The text speaks about the ‘species’ of these professors in a certain ironic and hostile manner and describes Lazarus rather spitefully as the ‘feine Stilistiker’ (fine stylistician) who was able to forgo the salary of the professor without having to worry about food for himself and his family. Of course, as an honorary professor, Lazarus received no regular salary for his work at Berlin’s university, as the text at least concedes. However, the blue pencil protests against this ‘gross lie’ in handwriting at the margins of the clipping, and the remark has been included in the clipping, the scissors cut around the relevant part of the article as well as the remark. And it also gives reasons for the protest: the houses in Leipzig were not the property of Lazarus but of the Parisian relatives of his first wife Sarah, and that further, they had ‘caused him great pains since he as the trustee had to split his energy undeservingly’.⁴⁵

Figure 6. Clipping, no title, no date, from around 1887, source: see note 45.

The blue pencil was the preferred annotation tool of Nahida Ruth Lazarus, the philosopher’s second wife (see Figure 7). They married on the fourth of April, one year after Sarah had died. Nahida (1849–1928), born Sturmhöfel and later married to the critic Max Remy, was a journalist and wrote novels and plays. 25 years younger, she had first met Lazarus in 1882. Since then, she intensively studied Judaism, wrote the widely read book Das jüdische Weib and finally converted.⁴⁶ She never made a secret of how much she admired Lazarus and even wrote a book about it (Ich suchte Dich).⁴⁷ She collected and edited, together with Lazarus’ student Alfred Leicht, the memoirs of the philosopher⁴⁸ and published several other biographical volumes and articles.⁴⁹

Figure 7. Nahida Ruth Lazarus, born Sturmhöfel, photo undated, ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 8, file NLI526282_0018.

Against this background, following the trail of the blue pencil found all over the material of the estate is a very worthy undertaking – from a memory studies perspective. The Lazarus archive can be studied as an example on how to collect, reconstruct, construct, narrate and sometimes destroy a material legacy. Nahida continued Lazarus’ own efforts in weeding out the material, constructing the past life of hard work, altruism, success, connections and influence, correcting the story by leaving out unwanted details or delivering interpretation tools for problematic phases, such as Lazarus’ near bankruptcy following the Panic of 1873, carefully selecting the elements of his heritage, and not least building the image of a visionary scholar, hard-working man and philanthropist who always strived to help others.

It is a typical trait of the memories of German Jews of this time of ascent after emancipation that ‘in the mild light of remembrance’, all efforts and pains to become respectable – or rather, respected – citizens of German society tend to disappear.⁵⁰ Systematically analyzing Nahida’s correspondence (in the same archive) and her handwritten annotations throughout the documents of the Lazarus estate could reconstruct these processes of active memory work and how Nahida’s blue pencil attempts to speak to the future reader and to steer their gaze in the admiring way she was accustomed.

Path 3 and 4: bringing Lazarus’ work to the present

The final proposal for making use of the Lazarus archive at the National Library of Israel concerns two closely connected, but nevertheless separate, or at least separable, paths. Path no. 3 leads to a collection of the political texts of Lazarus, and path no. 4 would be the road to a lasting and extendable Lazarus Online Portal that aggregates all data and sources on the scholar.

Path 3: publishing the political texts

Political motives, goals, and topics, but also politically interested audiences traverse the life and work of Lazarus, although he never would have characterized himself as a politician or member of – in a strict sense – political movements. He nevertheless took part in the revolutionary events of the years 1848/49 as editor of the political feuilleton in the journal of Berlin’s militia; throughout his life he was friends with politicians from the national liberal party and movement; during his time as professor in Switzerland in the early 1860s, he was in close contact and exchange with Swiss liberal politicians and German revolutionaries in Swiss exile; and he was prominently involved in several endeavors to organize German Jewry, be it the Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund (DIGB, the German Israelite Community Association), different committees against antisemitism, the Gesellschaft der Freunde (Society of Friends) or the German branch of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. And if we look at his work, it is obvious how much his social theory combining realist and idealist philosophical approaches, his modern but historically grounded Ethics of Judaism, his social psychological and philosophical books and articles as well as university and public lectures and, most of all, his texts against antisemitism are informed and motivated by political questions like:

• the emancipation of the Jews and equal rights for everyone in (German) society,

• the important role of plurality in modern national societies in general, or

• the relations between the individual and the collective, between ethics, sociality and culture.

A collection of all his texts on political topics in this wide sense could carve out the intrinsic cohesion of his writing and speaking about Völkerpsychologie, ethics, religion, antisemitism, and the nation. This in turn would contribute to a better understanding of questions about modernity in the nineteenth century that are still relevant, such as inclusion and exclusion, tradition and innovation, migration and integration/cohesion, the relation of individual and collective phenomena, of the universal and the particular, of the ideal and the material. And it would help to close a gap in the research on Lazarus which (apart from the texts against antisemitism) by now has mostly focused on his contributions to Jewish reform and ethics as well as to sociology, cultural theory, and psychology.

Such a collection would not only ease the access to texts which are already published in one form or another and dispersed through libraries around the world. It would also provide access to hitherto unpublished and either unknown or at least neglected texts of Lazarus. It would thus aggregate the scattered and unknown and – coming back to the goals and principles of academic editions – render the material accessible to a broader public by means of introduction and commentary. By including unpublished but nevertheless relevant material, the Lazarus archive fulfills its role.

The document that inspired my idea to realize such a collection of political texts is a visionary manuscript in the estate called Entwurf zur Gründung einer Humanitätsgesellschaft ohne Grenzen des Staates, der Nation und Religion. Ein Fragment (Draft to Found a Society of Humaneness Without Borders of the State, the Nation and Religion: A Fragment), 32 pages in quarto format bearing the pencil-mark ‘1851.’ The manuscript has never been published and there is no hint that Lazarus has ever spoken on the topic in a public lecture. Of course, such a fragment from his early creative period should not be expected to be a succinct summary of his thoughts on religion, state, society, and humaneness. But in its attempt to bind together historical developments from ancient Jewry, Rome, and Christianity to the nineteenth century into an argument that the final goal of a future humankind was humanity, clearly exposes the guiding principle of most of his work: an optimism that a modern and complex society of equality, plurality and mutual solidarity is possible if constructed according to idealist principles. Lazarus bases his argument on a conception of humaneness in which the behavior of every human being to each other is defined by understanding them as ‘fundamentally equal, capable, obliged and entitled to rising to the greatness of humaneness’; this mutual relation of solidarity (‘jenes brüderliche Verhältnis’) ought to be the destination of humankind and the basic guiding principle not only for individuals but for every collective.⁵¹

Other unpublished material, be it manuscripts or lecture notes from public or university lectures, covers topics like women’s education, international law, cultural politics, ‘nationality and morality’, the psychology of war or the more theoretical ‘sociality, centrality and individuality’. Many of them have already been prepared for print, while others are rough manuscripts.

However, beyond the unpublished material from the NLI, there are also other important texts that, while published once, cannot be left out of a collection of the political writings of Lazarus. Probably the most important is the already mentioned Was heißt national?, from 1880. Going back to a speech in front of the general assembly of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1879, this essay is an impressively exemplary of German-Jewish self-confidence under liberal-pluralist and universalist premises. For the first time, Lazarus openly uses the results of his scientific work for the political goal of opposing antisemitism and supporting German Jewry. The text is a rejection of the academic antisemitism brought forward by Heinrich von Treitschke in his infamous article published earlier the same year. Lazarus stresses here that he stands up against Treitschke not as a Jew, but as a German. He then lays out his aforementioned definition of those who belong to a nation. The essay is more than a rebuttal of antisemitic ideals of homogenizing society, but a conception of what an ideal nation (or society) would look like based on the collaboration of its members, on their mental act of considering themselves parts of a collective, not on presumedly objective criteria such as language, descent or religion, and certainly without racist essentialisms which Lazarus openly despised as malicious and the basest ideas of his time. True culture on its highest moral and historical level, Lazarus summarizes, lies in ‘Mannigfaltigkeit’ (plurality).⁵²

Among the published material we also find a fascinating article from 1886 in the journal Nord und Süd, which proves that the Völkerpsychologist Lazarus did not shy away from pondering educational practice. This was not something absolutely new to him, since already more than 30 years before, as professor at the university of Bern, he had put some effort into the reformation of the cantonal school system. But here he develops the vision of a secular ‘Sonntagsfeier’ (Sunday celebration), comprising educational, informational, and cultural events taking place each Sunday at community centers to be established in every village and neighborhood throughout the country.⁵³ Clearly based on Jewish, Protestant and Enlightenment education ideals, Lazarus expected from such an institution the stabilization of an emancipatory and pluralistic society.

At present, such a publication of Lazarus’ political texts can be realized in a hybrid form, as printed book and online edition. This has many advantages since it can combine the best of both worlds: the book, in the form of a study and reading edition, is apt to collect the most relevant texts and present them to students, researchers, but also the broader interested public. A book, even if not conceptualized and read serially from front to back, can present its material in a concentrated, structured, condensed, explained, and contextualized manner, and can focus on the most important texts. In its introduction and interpretative elements, it can draw a line from the historical material to the present: connecting the pluralist ideas and ideals to today’s situation and needs. Such an edition would also be a perfect supplement to the existing edition of the most relevant Völkerpsychologie texts.⁵⁴ Under certain conditions a book provides the more effective way for the condensation of knowledge: its restricted hypertextuality helps avoid distraction and getting lost in a rabbit hole, while its linearity proposes a narrative, an intuitive way of comprehension, and its limited amount of text as a result of careful selection makes it manageable.

An online edition, on the other hand, does not need to be selective in its material – rather, it can aim for the ideal of completeness. Even with keeping in mind that full completeness will always be an unreachable ideal, such an approach hands over much more control to the reader, the consumer, the user more than the print edition would ever be able. In addition, of course, a digital collection allows for the use of all digital tools already known or that may emerge in the future.

Full text research springs to mind first, something I often wished for in my research on the public perception of Lazarus. If I had at hand a full text search tool for German newspapers in the nineteenth century, as the Austrian National Library has already had for some years now with regard to the Austrian press, my work would have been completely different: without narrowing down time frames according to knowledge about biographical events, reserving time slots in the newspaper department of the Staatsbibliothek or in the microfilm department of Berlin’s Central Library, and then spending weeks scanning through pages, numbers and volumes of papers that, at certain times, published three editions each day. Second, as already mentioned, an online edition can be enriched with a plethora of hypertext, linking content to other content, internal and external, like databases, wikis and so on. The only limits here are the resources the editors have available for researching and producing links. Finally, there are multiple ways to structure, encode and digitally interpret the material using keywords or data structures such as GND or VIAF.

Building a Lazarus online portal

At this point the question emerges of why, if there are no limits to size or structure, an online edition ought to be limited to Lazarus’ political texts? Why not establish an online portal with the structure and resources capable of presenting all material available on Lazarus?

A website could provide a convenient GUI to search and browse the material an Excel document couldn’t, and probably even a locally installable GUI for accessing the material of the estate would in the end build on features borrowed from a web browser.

There are already many good practice examples of online digital editions that present material in every thinkable manner: the facsimiles of the documents, full texts connected to images, TEI-annotated full texts, automatically formatted PDF versions of the full texts (for printing), XML versions of the full texts (for the screen), including semantic connections or systematic sorting (chronologic or topical). Further, if such a project would follow compatible protocols for metadata harvesting, like OAI-PMH, this would make possible the use of digital tools for analyzing the material, such as regarding persons, names, or places as already common in corpus linguistics, literature studies, history, or other digital humanities.

Such an online portal could not only collect the manuscripts from the estate and the published texts by Lazarus in an image and full text representation. It would also be a place for correspondence with all metadata and context information. It could also assemble all the pictures to be found in the estate for use in the public domain. But a real asset that would add much to already existing material on the internet would be an enriched timeline and a database of persons extracted from the correspondence, calendars, visitors’ books and other documents from the estate.

Regarding how valuable this would be for the research on Lazarus, as well as nineteenth century and German-Jewish history, let us return to the visitors’ books previously mentioned. They are a source similar to the aforementioned diary but cover wider timeframes. The example from November 1883 (see Figure 8) lists to whom Lazarus was paying visits and vice versa. It contains names like the Rütli members Adolph von Menzel and Theodor Fontane, the former director of the Prussian War Academy where Lazarus taught history of philosophy, general Friedrich August von Etzel, his long-time acquaintance since his period in Bern, baroness Hildegard von Spitzemberg, his student, sociologist Georg Simmel, writers Paul Heyse and Leopold Zunz, his colleague and academic rival, philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, amongst others.

Figure 8. Lazarus’ visitors book from November 1883, ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 3, file NLI526278_0204.

Why would an online portal with all these types of documents be useful? First of all, it could assemble much more content than any other form of publication. Second, it could provide as much hypertextuality as possible and needed for illuminating contexts and relations. And third, it could make possible new and unforeseen research approaches to the material.

To arrive at an online resource as described here, there is, of course, much work ahead. It would need, according to the steps mentioned above regarding editions in general: metadata processing, sorting, and structuring of all material, additional transcription, collation and accordingly the editing of texts. Fortunately, in technical and methodological terms, the wheel need not be invented again. This project can build on resources already available, for instance the DFG-funded portal Juedische Geschichte Online⁵⁵ (where it could be integrated as a sub-project), including database structure as well as web frontend and XML-editing frameworks. Elements of the fine-tuned digital text edition frameworks can rely on existing projects like the also publicly funded (DFG) Wilhelm Windelband edition based in Wuppertal.⁵⁶ Apart from the possible connection to Juedische Geschichte Online, all the material on Lazarus presented on such an online portal should be linked to existing directories and meta-archives like Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (the German Digital Library),⁵⁷ the German archive portal archivportal-d,⁵⁸ the Zentralverzeichnis digitaler Drucke (central directory of digital printed material),⁵⁹ Kalliope (a central German catalogue of estates, autographs and publisher’s archives),⁶⁰ Europeana, the collection of European cultural heritage, and others.

Of course, questions remain. Such a project would need substantial funding for all transcription, collation, coordination, editing and software development/deployment work. It is unclear how work intensive it would be to transfer NLI’s metadata to preferable formats like TEI-DTABf. Also warranting discussion are copyright and repository issues; for example, if the images would have to be transferred to a public repository in Germany as DARIAH or TextGrid, or would remain in Jerusalem only and be linked to the NLI’s servers, which would be particularly relevant when a frontend was designed to present the image alongside other presentations of the text, as the full text, the edited XML-TEI and the formatted edited text. In sum, I have tried to present some arguments for why such an online edition would be possible and worth the effort, but of course for others there still could remain questions whether it is feasible or necessary.

Conclusion

The joint feat of the National Library of Israel and Hamburg University’s Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures to digitize the estates of prominent German-Jewish intellectuals is of much more importance than just for the biographical work on individual historical figures. Its benefit lies far beyond a biographical l’art-pour-l’art, in its potential to inform general history, sociology, communication and media studies, memory studies, philosophy and more. It even reaches beyond intrinsic academic interests in its ability to deepen an understanding of how the foundation of today’s societies also lies in the problems, questions, and answers of the lives of German Jews, such as the one presented here, Moritz Lazarus. A simple glance at the diaries and visitors’ books of the scholar makes visible what is hard to grasp decades after the Shoah and in a time when Jewish life across the planet is more endangered than ever. These documents alone demonstrate the intensity of common social life no matter who was Jewish and who not, even in a nationalist, Christian and authoritarian environment like that of Imperial Germany, even if only for some decades. Contextualized with Lazarus’ work in Völkerpsychologie, Jewish reform and culture and language theory, and with his political texts, one could write a theory of how modern societies could be built on emancipatory ideals along the material of the Lazarus estate alone.

This short essay has discussed the ways and problems of an edition of digital material and proposed four paths through the vast amount of digital material available after digitization. Of course, such a project would need further resources to realize these four proposals. Some of them, namely the edition of the political texts and the Lazarus online portal, are projects already at a certain level of development – but with digitization they are now one important step further. The other proposals are mere visions of what else could be done with the estate. They do not, of course, exhaust the possibilities. Very promising, digital humanities-led statistical analysis has already been undertaken by Stefan Reiners-Selbach at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. One could also think of an edition of Lazarus’ pedagogical works, or his Judaic texts related to reform and ethics of Judaism, which have been of enormous influence for the liberal, rather secular, and bourgeois majority of German Jewry in the second half of the nineteenth century. But once the digital material is openly accessible for all kinds of scholarship, there will be a multitude of further possible paths through the treasure chamber of which have not yet been thought.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [BE 4317/2-1; BE 4317/2-2].

Notes on contributors

Mathias Berek

Mathias Berek is a research associate at the Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technische Universität Berlin, and coordinator of the Berlin section of the Research Institute Social Cohesion. His research focuses on European-Jewish history, antisemitism, and memory studies. His habilitation in Cultural Studies at Leipzig University has led to a monograph on Lazarus (Wallstein, 2020), last article: “Moritz Lazarus: A Marginal Man in the Centre of German Society,” Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change 8 (2023).

Notes

1. Although Seele normally translates to ‘soul’, Lazarus’ essays in these volumes are more concerned with phenomena falling under the term ‘spirit’.

2. M. Lazarus, Das Leben der Seele in Monographieen über seine Erscheinungen und Gesetze. Erster Band (Berlin: Heinrich Schindler, 1856) and M. Lazarus, Das Leben der Seele in Monographieen über seine Erscheinungen und Gesetze. Zweiter Band (Berlin: Heinrich Schindler, 1857a). A third volume appeared with the second edition in 1876, and the whole series saw four editions until 1917, cf. Mathias Berek, Moritz Lazarus. Deutsch-jüdischer Idealismus im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2020), 73–156.

3. M. Lazarus, “Geist und Sprache,” in Das Leben der Seele in Monographieen über seine Erscheinungen und Gesetze. Zweiter Band, (Berlin: Heinrich Schindler, 1857b), 3–258.

4. Klaus Christian Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus: die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 150, 174–1755; Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 114–116.

5. Georg Eckardt, “Die frühe Völkerpsychologie – Wegbereiter oder Hemmnis für die Entstehung einer wissenschaftlichen Sozial- und Entwicklungspsychologie?” Studies in the History of Psychology and the Social Sciences 5, (1988): 192–201; idem, Völkerpsychologie – Versuch einer Neuentdeckung. Texte von Lazarus, Steinthal und Wundt (Weinheim: Psychologie Verlags Union, 1997); Gerhart von Graevenitz, “Verdichtung. Das Kulturmodell der Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft,” kea. Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften no. 12 (1999): 19–57; Moritz Lazarus, Grundzüge der Völkerpsychologie und Kulturwissenschaft, ed. Klaus Christian Köhnke (Hamburg: Meiner, 2003); Hans Bernhard Schmid, “Volksgeist. Individuum und Kollektiv bei Moritz Lazarus (1824–1903),” Dialektik – Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 16, no. 1 (2005): 157–170; Céline Trautmann-Waller, “La Psychologie des peuples de Heymann Steinthal et Moritz Lazarus ou les sciences de la culture comme religion de l’humanité à Berlin (1850–1890),” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines – Dossier: Histoire des savoirs policiers en Europe (XVIIIe-XXe siècles) no. 19 (2008): 197–210; Mathias Berek, “Schnittpunkt sozialer Kreise statt völkischer Verwurzelung – Die Entstehung moderner Sozialtheorie aus der deutsch-jüdischen Lebenswelt des 19. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel Moritz Lazarus,” Medaon 3, no. 5 (2009): 1–14; Egbert Klautke, The Mind of the Nation. Völkerpsychologie in Germany, 1851–1955 (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2013); Nicolas Berg, “Völkerpsychologie,” in Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur. Bd. 6: Ta-Z, ed. Dan Diner (Stuttgart, Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2015), 291–296; Mathias Berek, “Völkerpsychologie,” in Simmel-Handbuch, ed. Hans-Peter Müller and Tilman Reitz (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2018), 580–584; Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 235–312; Stefan Reiners, ‘“Our Science Must Establish Itself”, On the Scientific Status of Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie,’ HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 10, (2020): 234–253.

6. Letters from Simmel to Lazarus, 6.8.1880 and 5.11.1894 (see Klaus Christian Köhnke, Der junge Simmel in Theoriebeziehungen und sozialen Bewegungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), 342 and Klaus Christian Köhnke, ed., Georg Simmel Briefe 1880–1911 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 9–11.

7. Hans-Ulrich Lessing, “Bemerkungen zum Begriff des objektiven Geistes bei Hegel, Lazarus und Dilthey,” Reports on Philosophy 9, (1985): 49–62. See also H. Steinthal, Allgemeine Ethik (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1885), VII – VIII; G. Simmel, “Anzeige H. Steinthal: Allgemeine Ethik,” Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie 10, no. 4 (1886): 487–503; Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 260–265.

8. Dieter Heller, “Zur Geschichte der Psychologie an den Schweizer Universitäten – Moritz Lazarus in Bern,” Psychologie. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie und ihre Anwendungen 45, no. 1/2 (1986): 1–16; idem, “Moritz Lazarus – der erste Inhaber eines Lehrstuhls für Psychologie?” Psychologische Rundschau 38, no. 2 (1987): 96.

9. See Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 313–388, 489–554.

10. Heinrich von Treitschke, “Unsere Aussichten,” Preußische Jahrbücher 44, (1879): 559–576. Cf. Walther Boehlich, ed., Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit (Frankfurt/Main: Insel, 1965); Karsten Krieger, ed., Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit 1879–1881. Eine Kontroverse um die Zugehörigkeit der deutschen Juden zur Nation. Kommentierte Quellenedition (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2003); Walter Boehlich and Nicolas Berg, eds., Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit. Neu herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Nicolas Berg (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2023).

11. M. Lazarus, Was heißt national? ein Vortrag, gehalten am 2. Dezember 1879 (Berlin: Dümmler, 1880), re-edited in Krieger, ed., Antisemitismusstreit, translated to English in Marcel Stoetzler, The State, the Nation, and the Jews: Liberalism and the Antisemitism Dispute in Bismarck’s Germany (Lincoln, Nebraska/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008). See also Till van Rahden, “Germans of the Jewish Stamm: Visions of Community between Nationalism and Particularism, 1850 to 1933,” in German History from the Margins, ed. Neil Gregor, Nils Roemer and Mark Roseman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 27–48, here 28; Sebastian Voigt, “Erforderliche Reaktionen. Moritz Lazarus’ Erwiderung auf Heinrich von Treitschkes Unsere Aussichten (1879) und Bernard Lazares Auseinandersetzung mit Édouard Drumonts La France Juive (1886),” in Antisemitismus im 19. Jahrhundert aus internationaler Perspektive, ed. Mareike König and Oliver Schulz (Göttingen: V& R unipress, 2019), 335–354; Marcel Stoetzler, “Moritz Lazarus und die liberale Kritik an Heinrich von Treitschkes liberalem Antisemitismus,” in Beschreibungsversuche der Judenfeindschaft. Zur Geschichte der Antisemitismusforschung vor 1944, ed. Hans-Joachim Hahn and Olaf Kistenmacher (Oldenburg: De Gruyter, 2015), 98–120. On the perception of the text, see Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 405–433. Lazarus’ description of a voluntaristic and idealistic belonging to a nation appeared a few years before Renan’s famous definition of the nation as a ‘daily plebiscite’: Ernest Renan, Qu’est ce qu’une nation?: conférence faite en Sorbonne, le 11 mars 1882 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1882; repr. and trans. to German in Was ist eine Nation? und andere politische Schriften, Wien, Bozen: Folio, 1995), see Siegfried Weichlein, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? Stationen der deutschen statistischen Debatte um Nation und Nationalität in der Reichsgründungszeit,” in Demokratie in Deutschland. Chancen und Gefährdungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Historische Essays, ed. Wolther von Kieseritzky and Klaus-Peter Sick (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999), 71–90.

12. Van Rahden, “Germans of the Jewish Stamm,” 28, 47.

13. The Rütli was a literary circle of which Lazarus was a member. Here he discussed recent publications, historic or literary topics with other members like Theodor Fontane, Adolph von Menzel, Karl Zöllner, Karl and Friedrich Eggers, Paul Heyse, August v. Heyden, Otto Roquette and Franz Kugler. See Lazarus and Leicht, Moritz Lazarus’ Lebenserinnerungen, 577–622; Ingrid Belke, “Der Mensch ist eine Bestie … ” Ein unveröffentlichter Brief Theodor Fontanes an den Begründer der Völkerpsychologie, Moritz Lazarus,” LBI Bulletin 13, no. 50 (1974): 32–50.

14. Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 555; Mathias Berek, “Moritz Lazarus: A Marginal Man in the Centre of German Society,” Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change 8, no. 2 (2023): 1–13.

15. See, apart from Lazarus, Was heißt national?, especially: M. Lazarus, Unser Standpunkt. Zwei Reden an seine Religionsgenossen, am 1. und 16. December 1880 gehalten (Berlin: Stuhr, 1881); idem, An die deutschen Juden (Berlin: Walther und Apolant, 1887) and idem, Reden zur Eröffnung und zum Schluß der zweiten israelitischen Synode in Augsburg am 11. und 17. Juli 1871 gehalten (Augsburg: Reichel, 1871). Cf. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, “Unser Standpunkt. Jüdische Reaktionen auf den Berliner Antisemitismusstreit,” in Aus den Quellen. Beiträge zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte. Festschrift für Ina Lorenz zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Andreas Brämer, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum and Michael Studemund-Halévy (Munich/Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2005), 276–283.

16. Another major part of Lazarus’ written estate is held at the archive of Humboldt University, Berlin (a large collection of letters). The archive of the DIGB at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, also contains a Lazarus file, but the archive of the NLI definitely possesses the largest and most important holdings.

17. For instance, the manuscript Ueber den deutschen Nationalstolz which, according to my notes, bore the id ARC. Ms. Var. 298 02 19, or Politik und Recht, formerly filed under Ms. Var. 298-26c.

18. Ingrid Belke, ed., Moritz Lazarus und Heymann Steinthal. Die Begründer der Völkerpsychologie in ihren Briefen (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1971), and volumes II/1 and II/2 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1983 and 1986).

19. M. Lazarus, “Verdichtung des Denkens in der Geschichte. Ein Fragment,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 2, no. 1 (1862): 54–62, re-edited in Lazarus, Grundzüge der Völkerpsychologie, 27–38. Cf. Klaus Christian Köhnke, “Einleitung des Herausgebers,” in ibid., IX – XLII. and also Graevenitz, “Verdichtung“.

20. See note 7 above.

21. ARC. Ms. Var. 298 02 60.4.

22. See note 19 above.

23. See the graduate program 2196 “Dokument Text Edition” at Wuppertal university: https://www.editionen.uni-wuppertal.de.

24. Patrick Sahle, Digitale Editionsformen. Zum Umgang mit der Überlieferung unter den Bedingungen des Medienwandels. Teil 2: Befunde, Theorie und Methodik (Norderstedt: BoD, 2013); Bodo Plachta, Editionswissenschaft. Eine Einführung in Methode und Praxis der Edition neuerer Texte (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2013). See also consortia like text+ within the German national research data infrastructure framework, which focuses on a text and language-oriented data culture in the humanities: text-plus.org.

25. https://www.dnb.de/EN/Professionell/Standardisierung/GND/gnd_node.html (accessed Oct 1, 2023).

26. ’Frau Nahida hat, wie ich aus Ihren Aufzeichnungen weiss, in den letzten Jahren, seit sie in Miete wohnte, Vieles weggeben, teils verschenkt, teils verkauft, doch von einem Manuscript ist an keiner Stelle die Rede. Auch mir fehlt im Nachlass Manches.’ (letter Tänzer to Leicht, 23.1…9 [1929], ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 17, files NLI525603_122–126, here: 124 and 126).

27. ‘Es liegen noch ganz andere intimere Dinge vor als die Briefe an Sie, [sic] Ich habe bereits dafür gesorgt, dass alles derartige, das ich bereits ausgeschieden habe bezw. noch ausscheide, niemals in fremde Hände kommen kann, vielmehr nach meinem etwaigen vorzeitigen Ableben sofort ungesehen vernichtet wird. Bleibe ich am Leben, dann werde ich selbst gleich nach Fertigstellung des Buches alles irgendwie verletzende oder für fremde Augen nicht geeignete Material vernichten. Ich bin das sowohl Lazarus selbst, wie Ihnen wegen Ihrer Verdienste um Lazarus schuldig.’ (letter Tänzer to Leicht, 13.2.29, ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 17, files NLI525603_128–132, here: 130).

28. Nahida Lazarus, Ein deutscher Professor in der Schweiz. Nach Briefen und Dokumenten im Nachlass ihres Gatten (Berlin: Dümmler, 1910), 30.

29. But cf. Yaniv Kadman’s Ph.D. thesis: ‘Ḥayaṿ u-foʻalo shel Moris (Mozes) Latsarus 1824–-1903 (The Life and work of Moritz Lazarus (1824–1903))’, under supervision of Shulamith Volkov, Universitat Tel Aviv 2011.

30. ‘Studenten und Hochschüler’ probably referring to university students from the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and college students of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies).

31. Probably the entrepreneur Wilhelm Herz (1823–1914).

32. Her husband, Wilhelm Griesinger (1817–1868), was the founder of the Berliner Medicinisch-Psychologische Gesellschaft, of which Lazarus was a co-founder.

33. Probably the physician Ludwig Traube (1818–1876). Lazarus gave the funeral speech at his grave and was the legal guardian of his children.

34. Probably Rabbi Leopold Löw (1811–1875).

35. Carl Twesten (1820–1870), a national liberal politician. Lazarus wrote the preface and edited his book Die religiösen, politischen und socialen Ideen der asiatischen Culturvölker und der Aegypter in ihrer historischen Entwickelung dargestellt. ed. M. Lazarus. 2 vols. (Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler/Harrwitz u. Gossmann, 1872).

36. Although she was five years older, Lazarus often called his wife Sarah das Kind (the child).

37. Lazarus and his wife were acquainted with the pianist and composer Clara Schumann (1819–1896).

38. Bernhard Abeken (1826–1901) had been a friend of Lazarus since they both had lived in Braunschweig in the 1840s. He studied together with Lazarus in Berlin and became writer and member of the German Imperial parliament for the national liberal party. See Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 91–93.

39. The writer Gotthilf Weisstein (1852–1907) was a student of Lazarus.

40. Karl F. G. Werder (1806–1893), philosopher at FWU Berlin, was a friend of Lazarus. See Nahida Lazarus and Alfred Leicht, Moritz Lazarus’ Lebenserinnerungen (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1906), 309–314.

41. Lazarus had been acquainted for a long time with Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), scholar, politician and founder of the German Wissenschaft des Judentums, since the 1840s, see Lazarus and Leicht, Moritz Lazarus’ Lebenserinnerungen, 492–499.

42. Probably the historian Ludwig Geiger (1848–1919).

43. ‘Kalendarium von November 1874: 1: Angekommen von Meerane und Leipzig//2: Morgens Plauderstündchen – Vorbereitung – Vorlesung 12–1 – Nachmittags viele Studendenten und Hochschüler – Abends geplaudert und gelesen//3: Morgens 2 Plauderst. Vorbereitung, Vorlesung, Besuch bei Hertz, Nachmitt. Studenten, Besuch von Griesinger – bei Traube Abends von Löw, 2 Briefe (Roin, Röper)//4: Vorbereitung. Mittags Besuch bei Griesinger & Twestens – Commissionen in der Stadt – Vorlesung 5–6. Plauderst.//5: Plauderst. (weil Kind die ganze Woche unwohl, so viele Plauderst.) Vorbereitung, Vorlesung – Nachmitt. viele Studenten & Stenographen – täglich 4–5 Petenten (außer den Studenten)//6: Morgens Vorbereitung: Briefe Neumann – Polizei-Insp.[ektor] Neumann, Geh.[eimrat] Liebermann, Roin, Leonhardt. Vorlesung. Besuch von Fr. Schumann.i Nachmitt. Studenten. – Goldmann & Sohn – Besuch von Blaschke, Brandes, Frl. Ascher, Fr. Schaum[,] um 6–7 Besuch bei Abeken – Abends Steinth. Löw + Weisstein bei uns.//7: Morgens Plauderstündchen. Besuch bei Werder, Zunz, Dr. Geiger jun., Hertz, Maliken, Commissionen. Nachm. Besuch des Rütli – drei Sitzung des Hilfsvereins f. jüd. Stud. – später Plauderst. & Lesen.’ (ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 3, file NLI526278_210, translation: M.B.).

44. Gotthilf Weisstein, “Erinnerungen an Lazarus und Steinthal,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, August 7, 1903, 378; cf. also Ludwig Geiger, ‘Neues aus dem alten Berlin,’ Die Gegenwart, September 29, 1906, 39; Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 393.

45. ‘Eine grobe Unwahrheit! Die Häuser in Leipzig gehörten den Pariser Verwandten seiner Frau und haben ihm schwere Sorgen bereitet, da er als Verwalter seine Kraft unwürdig zersplittern musste.’ ARC. Ms. Var. 298–9 (old numbering, probably new numbering: ARC. Ms. Var. 298 04 9, but this folder has not been scanned; photo and translation: M.B.).

46. Nahida Ruth Lazarus, Das jüdische Weib (Leipzig: Laudien, 1892).

47. Nahida Ruth Lazarus, Ich suchte dich! Biographische Erzählung (Berlin: S. Cronbach, 1898). Cf. Bettina Kratz-Ritter, “Konversion als Antwort auf den Berliner Antisemitismusstreit? Nahida Ruth Lazarus und ihr Weg zum Judentum,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 46, no. 1 (1994): 15–30; Dagmar Reese, “Philosemitismus als Kalkül? Über die jüdische Identität der Nahida Ruth Lazarus,” in Geliebter Feind – gehasster Freund. Antisemitismus und Philosemitismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Julius H. Schoeps, ed. Irene A. Diekmann and Elke-Vera Kotowski (Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2009), 577–594; idem, “Jüdische Schriftstellerinnen – wieder entdeckt: Nahida Ruth Lazarus, das jüdische Weib,” Medaon 6, no. 11 (2012): 1–8.

48. Lazarus and Leicht, Moritz Lazarus’ Lebenserinnerungen.

49. M. Lazarus, Sprüche von Lazarus (Leipzig: E. H. Mayer, 1899); Nahida Ruth Lazarus, “Wie Steinthal und Lazarus Brüder wurden. Ein biographisches Fragment,” Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur 3, (1900): 149–166; idem, Ein deutscher Professor; M. Lazarus, Aus meiner Jugend. Autobiographie, ed. Nahida Lazarus (Frankfurt a. M.: J. Kaufmann, 1913).

50. Ulrich Sieg, “Der Preis des Bildungsstrebens: Jüdische Geisteswissenschaftler im Kaiserreich,” in Juden, Bürger, Deutsche: Zur Geschichte von Vielfalt und Differenz 1800–1933, ed. Andreas Gotzmann, Rainer Liedtke and Till van Rahden (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 67–95, here 70.

51. ‘Denn der Begriff der Humanität schon im einfachsten Sinn fordert und betrifft das Verhalten des Menschen zu seinem Nebenmenschen als einem im letzten Grund gleichwerthen, der Entwicklung zur Größe der Humanität fähigen, verpflichteten und berechtigten. Wird nun die Humanität als Bestimmung der Menschheit genommen, so ist der tiefste Sinn derselben, dass jeder Einzelne und jede stufenweise Gesammtheit zu jedem anderen Einzelnen und jeder anderen Gemeinschaft Humanität üben, das heißt jenes brüderliche Verhältniss haben soll, so dass für die höchste Gesammtheit sich eine Einheit des Handelns und Wollen ergiebt.’ – ARC. Ms. Var. 298 02 60.4, p. 3.

52. Lazarus, Was heißt national?, 93. For an intensive discussion of this text see Berek, Moritz Lazarus, 409–433; Stoetzler, State, Nation, Jews; idem, ‘Liberale Kritik’; Ulrich Sieg, “Bekenntnis zu nationalen und universalen Werten: Jüdische Philosophen im deutschen Kaiserreich,” Historische Zeitschrift 263, no. 3 (1996): 609–639.

53. M. Lazarus, “Die Sonntagsfeier. Eine Vision,” Nord und Süd. Eine deutsche Monatsschrift 37, no. 109 (1886): 70–87.

54. Lazarus/Köhnke, Grundzüge der Völkerpsychologie.

55. https://portal.juedische-geschichte-online.net, a joint project of the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien in Potsdam and the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden in Hamburg, funded by the DFG.

56. Lead: Gerald Hartung.

57. https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de.

58. https://www.archivportal-d.de.

59. https://www.zvdd.de.

60. https://kalliope-verbund.info.