Fritz Stern (1926–2016)

This book is about Gerson Bleichroeder, a top banker in Berlin in the period roughly 1865-1890, and especially his relationship with Bismarck. Stern rummaged about in several attics and read through piles of letters to discover all sorts of details that had been neglected for decades. He points out that Bleichroeder had been almost totally neglected by historians, and that Bismarck tended to be treated as one kind of cartoon character or another, rather than fleshed out with the complex nuances that actually his primary mode.

The main themes of the book are how finance and politics became intertwined in those years, and very much through the persons of Bleichroeder and Bismarck; and the fall and re-arising of anti-Semitism during those years, and again how these two characters played such important roles in that process too. And of course these themes are coupled. The new anti-Semitism saw Jews as powerful; Bleichroeder was proof.

Stern transposes the literary matrix: the letters each belong to a moment in time, and many, I expect, pulled in strands from many facets of the situation of that moment. Stern largely dedicates a chapter to each facet, revisiting the same stretch of time in each chapter while isolating one strand or another. Probably the key chapter for the anti-Semitism chapter is the one on Rumania. In 1978 anti-Semitism was in sufficient retreat that a treaty could be forced on Rumania that required them to emancipate their Jews. But within a few years, Rumania had shirked this duty and was never held accountable.

Sad to say, this book seems more relevant today than when it was published. Various economic difficulties plagued the working class in the 1870s and 1880s; the old aristocracy could unite with the craftsmen and shopkeepers against the liberals and capitalists, under the banner of anti-Semitism. Of course Stern had no need to dwell on the parallels with the 1930s. I imagine he would have been surprised to see those passions reignited in the 2016 time frame.

I am not so familiar with Bismarck's chancellorship and all the events during those years. This book doesn't really tell the big story. Occasionally Stern will take a few paragraphs to sketch some piece of it, but mostly we just see the grand march from the point of view of a few players. Indeed, Stern reminds us several times that in the middle of events, the players don't have that hindsight that we have many decades later. Personally I like to learn about the big things from the perspective of the small things. Other readers may get frustrated. It's not a book for everyone! But the rich detail here is really a treasure if you don't mind getting lost in the details!… (more)

The French political philosopher Raymond Aron once remarked to Fritz Stern that the twentieth century could have been Germany’s century.” This remark, which Stern mentions in the introduction to his book, creates a opening in which Stern examines reemerging themes like material strength, nationalism, militarism, and German culture all through the eyes of many of Einstein’s scientific coevals. In fact, from the biographical sketches that Stern produces here, he offers the uncontroversial opinion that Germany’s decline into moral nihilism under Nazi rule and the varying effects that had on the professional classes within Germany were some of the forces that prevented Germany from realizing its fullest potential. For this reason, the book is more than a little underwhelming.

The first half of the book contains a series of miniature Plutarch-like biographies of the immunologist Paul Ehrlich, physicist Max Planck, and the chemist Fritz Haber (the only major convert to Christian Stern mentions). Despite the title, some were much close to Einstein than others, but of the four, Einstein was the only one who never embraced militarism and who encouraged Zionism.

Later in the book, Stern offers a couple of essays which discuss Zionism and some of its earlier discussants, including Walther Rathenau and Chaim Weizmann, whose early faith in the movement would later develop into disappointment. Two more essays – “Travails of the New Germany” and “Lost Homelands” – explore broader themes in contemporary Germany historiography; these explore the tragic psychic cost of German reunification. There’s also a wonderfully polemical essay titled “The Goldhagen Controversy,” which argues against Daniel Goldhagen’s supposed thesis set forth in “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” that there was something in the German people themselves that drove them to orchestrate the Holocaust. (I use the word “supposed” here because I haven’t read his book and wouldn’t want to criticize it without doing so.)

I have previously read and reviewed Stern’s “The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of Germanic Ideology,” and thought it to be one of the better books that I read in 2012. While I’ve taught science and math, I read precious little of it for pleasure, but was immediately interested when I was Stern’s name. I don’t know what it is about this book, but he never seems as fascinated by his subjects here. He admits that he’s never had a formal background in science, even though most of his subjects are professional scientists. While it is always a historian’s task to remain as objective as possible, Stern seemed cold and sometimes even uninterested toward his subjects – and quite frankly, he rarely says anything about them that hasn’t been said before. If you’re really interested in science in early twentieth-century Germany from a biographical side, this might have something of interest to offer. Otherwise, this is going to be a lot of general history with which you’re probably already familiar.… (more)