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Jews, Culture and the Great WarYaakov WisePublished online: 24 Nov 2014.

To cite this article: Yaakov Wise (2014) Jews, Culture and the Great War, Jewish Quarterly, 61:3-4, 102-105, DOI:10.1080/0449010X.2014.978606

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Jewish Quarterly — Autumn / Winter 2014102

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as eventually would many young Jewish men from the United States.

For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. The great majority of people, within governments and outside, assumed their country would be victorious within months, and could not envision the possibility of a longer conflict. By the end of 1914, however, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and there was no final victory in sight for either the Allies or the Central Powers.

On the Western Front, the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium, combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition, which would continue, in Europe and other corners of the world, for the next four years. War was Germany’s reply to Britain’s request that she should respect the neutrality of Belgium, whose territories we were bound in honour and by treaty obligations to maintain inviolate.

British schoolchildren who study World War One are naturally taught about the terrible trench warfare on the Western Front and the war at sea between Britain and Germany. But for the Jews of Continental Europe, the fighting on the Eastern Front, between Tsarist Russia and the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, took place largely in the heartland of East European Jewry, in areas with a combined Jewish population of more than four million. From the autumn of 1914 to winter 1915, Russian forces advanced deep into Austrian Galicia and Bukovina, only to be expelled six months later following a German-Austrian counter-attack.

Red fangs have torn his faceGod’s blood is shed.He mourns from his lone placeHis children dead.'

Isaac Rosenberg, 1914

The Western world rightly commemorates this year as the centennial of the start of the ‘Great War’ of 1914-1918—“the war to end all wars.” What is sure

to be overlooked is the devastating effect the war had on the Jews of Eastern and Central Europe, then the heart and soul of Am Yisrael, the people of Israel. Now overshadowed by the events of 1933-1945, we often forget that the destruction of European Jewry and its 2,000 years-old culture and civilisation began on Shabbat Tisha B’Av 5674, 1st August 1914. The Nazi Holocaust merely completed the work that the Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Emperor of Austria-Hungary between them had begun. The Jewish communities and brilliant Jewish individuals destroyed in the war were never rebuilt or replaced. We, the survivors of the most terrible century in the history of the world, can only weep and mourn their loss.

On 1st August 1914, four days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, two more great European powers, Russia and Germany, declared war on each other. The same day, France ordered a general mobilization. The so-called ‘Great War’ that ensued would be one of unprecedented destruction and loss of life, resulting in the deaths of some 20 million soldiers and civilians, and the physical devastation of much of the European continent. At least 50,000 Jews would fight for Britain and its Empire, and over 120,000 for Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other side. Tens of thousands of Russian and French Jews would also serve, and be killed,

JEWS, CULtUrE aND tHE GrEat War

WaR

By Yaakov Wise

Siegfried Sassoon in 1915

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Inspired by the 1916 Russian victories, Romania entered the war on the Allied side in August of that year, attacking Austro-Hungarian forces in Transylvania. The Central Powers repulsed this invasion, and by December 1916, their troops occupied most of Romania. In July 1917, the Russian provisional government, installed following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II the previous March, tried to extend its hold over Galicia even further. This new Russian advance, halted by Germany on 10th July, was followed by a German counter-offensive. By October, German forces pushed Russian troops out of virtually all occupied Austrian territory, and took control of Russian territories as far east as Latvia.

This movement of armies back and forth across the main areas of Jewish settlement over a four-year period disrupted the lives of all the region’s inhabitants. For Jews, however, the disruption was compounded by wide-spread uncertainty concerning their sympathies in the conflict, sympathies that were in fact subject to many competing pressures whose relative degree of influence shifted constantly during the course of the war. The tsarist Russian government in particular profoundly suspected Jewish loyalties. Although the onset of fighting witnessed not only an outpouring of patriotic statements in the local Jewish press, and the enlistment of nearly 400,000 Jews in the Tsar’s armed forces (of whom some 80,000 served at the front during the 1914–1915 campaigns), Jews were quickly charged with treachery by some military leaders and right-wing politicians. On the other side, the Kaiser, Wilhelm II (a self-absorbed grandson of Queen Victoria), was equally suspicious of

‘his Jews’, even though many of them became highly decorated veterans.

Despite the war, many Jewish writers, artists, novelists, poets, actors and musicians continued to create great works; some about the war itself, and some, like the Russian master Boris Pasternak, completely ignoring it. A few, like the painter Marc Chagall (née Moishe Shisgal), briefly referred to the war in a few works and then reverted to creative surrealism and modern abstractionism. In contrast, the German painter Hermann Struck served with gallantry, was awarded the Iron Cross first class, and was promoted to officer for bravery. In 1917, he became the referent for Jewish affairs in the German Eastern Front High Command. Struck emigrated to Palestine in 1922, taught at Bezalel Academy, and helped establish the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Others, like the Czech-German authors Franz Kafka and Max Brod, were exempt from military service on medical grounds, and continued their work. Still, others escaped to America or Palestine to avoid being drafted. The Hebrew-language Habimah theatre was actually founded during the war in Moscow, where it gave its first performances. Soon after the 1917 revolution, Chagall was made a Regional Commissar for Art by Lenin, and founded one of Russia’s greatest art schools before leaving for his final exile in the west in the early 1920s.

In Britain, one of the most famous poets of the war is Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967). The son of a Jewish father (a scion of the famous Bagdad and Bombay merchants sometimes known as the ‘Rothschilds of the East’) and a Catholic mother, Sassoon was born in Kent and educated at Marlborough, and Clare College,

‘At least 50,000 Jews would fight for Britain and its Empire, and over 120,000 for Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other side’

Lovis Corinth's 1918 portrait of Hermann Struck Self-portrait of Isaac Rosenberg in 1915

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a r t adopt the red poppy as a symbol of the war and the immense human sacrifice it had demanded:

I snatched two poppies From the parapet’s ledge, Two bright red poppies That winked on the ledge. Behind my ear I stuck one through, One blood red poppy

Mark Gertler (1891-1939) was born in Spitalfields, the youngest child of Polish immigrants. From an early age, Gertler showed signs of a great talent for drawing. On leaving school in 1906, he enrolled in art classes at Regent Street Polytechnic. Unfortunately, due to his family’s poverty, he was forced to drop out after a year. In 1908, Gertler was placed third in a national art competition. This inspired him to apply for a scholarship from the Jewish Education Aid Society, and subsequently enrol at the Slade School of Art. In 1916, as the Great War dragged on, Gertler ended the relationship with his patron Edward Marsh due to his pacifism and conscientious objection (a senior civil servant, Marsh was private secretary to Winston Churchill, then the 1st Lord of the Admiralty, and patron to some of the war poets including Sassoon). His major war painting, "Merry-Go-Round", was created in the midst of the war and was described by D. H. Lawrence as “the best modern picture I have ever seen.”

On the other side of the battle lines were several excellent German-Jewish war poets. The most famous of these is Alfred Lichtenstein (1889-1914). He was born in Berlin into a middle class assimilated family, and entered law school, but made sure he had time for his first love, writing. He linked his university thesis to literature, concentrating on laws concerning theatrical production. The war began before he had completed his year of military service. His regiment (the Second Bavarian Infantry) was immediately sent to the Western Front. He was wounded in the attack on the Somme on 24th September 1914 (fighting against my grandfather Jacob Wise and his younger brother Reuben, who was killed the following month aged 19), and died of his wounds a few days later at the age of 25.

These Jewish writers, poets, painters, and their fellow creative artists in architecture, music, the theatre, and the early cinema, were in the forefront of modernism. Many were killed, some were mentally or physically damaged, others forced into exile in pre-state Palestine or America. The centre of Jewish creativity and culture was forever lost on the continent of Europe. It would move to the bi-polar locales of Israel and the USA. Let us remember what once was but will never be again.

Cambridge. He volunteered in August 1914. Disillusion set in slowly. Indeed he was the only English disillusioned First World War poet who made an effort to be politically effective.

As a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, Sassoon met and became a friend of the poet Robert Graves. He became wildly angry at the death of one of his friends and fought recklessly, unintentionally winning the Military Cross. He was wounded in the shoulder and later accidentally shot in the head by one of his own men. Exotic in the past, the Sassoons were now simply rich Jews—or, at least, this is how Sassoon felt his friend Robert Graves saw him. He himself had internalised enough conventional English antisemitism to describe his private income as “Semitic sovereigns,” and to remark on “awful conversations in Pullman carriages” by “Jew profiteers” in his war diaries. Furthermore, he was keen to distance himself during the war from the “awful Jews” in England, those who were the objects of Western antisemitism.

In Sassoon’s war diaries, one finds entries that clearly contras Jewish money with Christian spirituality:

Lieutenant X is a nasty, cheap thing. A cheap-gilt Jew. Why are such Jews born, when the soul of Jesus was so beautiful? He saw the flowers and the stars; but they see only greasy banknotes.

In his “Letter to Robert Graves” we find the following short refrain:

Yes, you can touch my Banker when you need him.Why keep a Jewish friend unless you bleed him?

At the other end of the social scale were the poet and artist Isaac Rosenberg and the painter Mark (née Marks) Gertler. Rosenberg (1890-1918) was born of poor immigrant parents in Bristol, educated in London’s East End and at the Slade School of Art after he earned enough from winning art competitions while training to be a glass engraver. Finding little work for such ‘luxuries’ and having no other income he volunteered and “took the king’s shilling” in October 1915. Private Rosenberg served with the 11th Battalion of The King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment. In June 1916, he was sent with his battalion to serve on the Western Front in France. He continued to write poetry while serving in the trenches. Having just finished night patrol, he was killed at dawn on 1st April 1918. His war poetry was increasingly admired and was later warmly praised by Sassoon.

Indeed, Rosenberg’s war poetry was highly influential in leading the Royal British Legion to WaR

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DOI: 10.1080/0449010X.2014.978606 © Yaacov Wise 2014

PRAYER BEFORE BATTLE

Alfred Lichtenstein, 1914

The troops are singing fervently, each for himself: God, protect me from misfortune,Father, Son and Holy Spirit,That no grenades strike me,That the bastards, our enemies,Do not catch me, do not shoot me,That I don't die like a dogFor the dear fatherland.Look, I would like to go on living,Milk cows, bang girlsAnd beat the bastard, Sepp,Get drunk oftenUntil my blessed death.

Look, I eagerly and gladly reciteSeven rosaries daily,If you, God, in your graceWould kill my friend Huber or Meier,And not me.But if the worst should come,Let me not be too badly wounded.Send me a slight leg wound,A small injury to the arm,So that I may return as a hero,With a story to tell.

Dr Yaakov Wise, a free-lance historian, journalist and broadcaster, is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester specialising in the history of Jewish orthodoxy in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Mark Gertler Merry-Go-Round

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