=
CONTENTS
Prologue
1 AMSTERDAM—APRIL 1656
2 REVAL, ESTONIA—MAY 3, 1910
3 AMSTERDAM—1656
4 ESTONIA—MAY 10, 1910
5 AMSTERDAM—1656
6 ESTONIA—1910
7 AMSTERDAM—1656
8 REVAL, ESTONIA—1917–1918
9 AMSTERDAM—1656
10 REVAL, ESTONIA—NOVEMBER 1918
11 AMSTERDAM—1656
12 ESTONIA—1918
13 AMSTERDAM—1656
14 MUNICH—1918–1919
15 AMSTERDAM—JULY 1656
16 MUNICH—1919
17 AMSTERDAM—1656
18 MUNICH—1919
19 AMSTERDAM—JULY 27, 1656
20 MUNICH—MARCH 1922
21 AMSTERDAM—JULY 27, 1656
22 BERLIN—1922
23 AMSTERDAM—JULY 27, 1656
24 BERLIN—1922
25 AMSTERDAM—1658
26 BERLIN—MARCH 26, 1923
27 RIJNSBURG—1662
28 FRIEDRICH’S OFFICE, OLIVAER PLATZ 3,
BERLIN—1925
29 RIJNSBURG AND AMSTERDAM—1662
30 BERLIN—1936
31 VOORBURG—DECEMBER 1666
32 BERLIN, THE NETHERLANDS—1939–1945
33 VOORBURG—DECEMBER 1666
Epilogue
==
CHAPTER TWENTY MUNICH—MARCH 1922
As the weeks passed Alfred changed his opinion about his assigned role. No longer onerous, it was
now a glorious opportunity, the perfect role for him to exert vast influence upon the fate of the
Fatherland. The party was still small, but Alfred knew it was the party of the future.
Hitler lived in a small apartment near the office and almost daily visited Eckart, who mentored his
protégé by sharpening his anti-Semitism, extending his political vision, and introducing him to
prominent right-wing Germans. Three years later Hitler would dedicate the second volume of Mein
Kampf to Dietrich Eckart, “that man who devoted his life to awakening our people in his writings, his
thoughts, his deeds.” Alfred, too, often saw Hitler, always in the late afternoon or evening, because
Hitler kept late hours and slept till noon. They talked and walked and visited galleries and museums.
There were two Hitlers. One was Hitler the ferocious orator, who electrified and mesmerized every
crowd he addressed. Alfred had never seen anything like it, and Anton Drexler and Dietrich Eckart
were ecstatic to have finally found the man to lead their party into the future. Alfred attended many of
the talks, and they were legion. With limitless energy Hitler spoke wherever he could find an
audience, on corners of busy boulevards, on crowded trams, and, mainly, in beer halls. His fame as a
speaker quickly spread, and his audiences grew—at times to over a thousand. Moreover, to make the
party more inclusive Hitler suggested changing the name from the German Workers Party to the
National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP).
Occasionally Alfred also gave speeches to party members that Hitler generally attended and always
applauded. “The thoughts were wunderbar,” Hitler would say. “But more fire, more fire.”
And then there was the other Hitler—the amiable Hitler, the relaxed, courteous Hitler who listened
to Alfred’s musings on history, on aesthetics, on German literature. “We think alike,” Hitler often
exclaimed, oblivious of the fact that it was Alfred who planted many of the seeds now sprouting in his
mind.
One day Hitler visited him in his new office at the Völkischer Beobachter (the People’s Observer) to
hand him an article on alcoholism he wished to publish. Earlier that year, the Nazi Party had
purchased the Thule Society newspaper, Münchener Beobachter, promptly rechristened it, and turned
it over to Dietrich Eckart, who closed his old newspaper and moved his entire staff to the new one.
Hitler waited as Alfred read over the article and was surprised when Alfred opened his desk drawer
and pulled out a draft of an article he, by sheer chance, was writing on alcoholism.
Quickly reading Alfred’s article, Hitler looked up and declared, “They are twins.”
“Yes, they’re so similar that I’ll withdraw my article,” Alfred replied.
“No, I insist not. Publish both. They’ll have greater impact if they’re both published in the same
issue.”
As Hitler assumed more executive power in the party, he decreed that all party speakers submit
their speeches to him before delivery. He later excused Alfred from that step—it was unnecessary, he
said, because their talks were so similar. But Alfred noticed some differences. For one thing, Hitler,
despite his limited formal education and the huge gaps in his knowledge, had extraordinary
self-confidence. Over and over again Hitler used words like “unshakeable,” implying total certainty of
his convictions and total commitment to never, under any circumstance, changing a single aspect of
his convictions. Alfred marveled as he listened to Herr Hitler. Where did that certainty come from?
Alfred would have sold his soul for such confidence and cringed with disgust as he observed himself
forever looking about for wisps of agreement and approval.
There was another difference too. Whereas Alfred often spoke of the necessity of “removing” Jews
from Europe, or “resettling” or “relocating” or “evicting” the Jews, Hitler used different language. He
spoke of “exterminating” or “eradicating” Jews, even of hanging all Jews from lampposts. But surely
that was a matter of rhetoric, of knowing how to galvanize audiences.
As the months passed, Alfred realized that he had underestimated Hitler. This was a man of
significant intelligence, an autodidact who voraciously scanned books, retained information, and had
a keen appreciation of art and Wagner’s music. Even so, without a systematic university education,
his knowledge base was uneven and contained yawning chasms of ignorance. Alfred did his best to
address them, but the task was challenging. Hitler’s pride was such that Alfred could never explicitly
tell him what to read. Instead he learned to tutor indirectly, for he had noted that whenever he spoke
of, say, Schiller, a few days later Hitler could discourse at length and with unshakable certainty about
Schiller’s dramatic works.
One spring morning that year, Dietrich Eckart approached the door of Alfred’s office, peered for a few
moments through the glass panel at his protégé busily editing a story, and then, shaking his head,
tapped on the glass and beckoned Alfred to follow him into his office. Inside he pointed to a chair.
“I have something to tell you—for Christ’s sake, Alfred, stop looking so worried. You’re doing fine.
I’m completely satisfied with your diligence. If anything I’d suggest a little less diligence, a few more
beers, and a lot more schmoozing. Too much work is not always a virtue. But that’s for another time.
Listen, you’re growing valuable to our party, and I want to accelerate your development. Would you
agree that editors who publish what they know about are advantaged?”
“Of course.” Alfred strained to keep a smile on his face but was uneasy about what was coming.
Eckart was entirely unpredictable.
“Have you visited much of Europe?”
“Very little.”
“How can you write about our enemies without seeing them with your own eyes? A good warrior
must stop sometimes to sharpen his weapons. Not true?”
“Without question,” Alfred agreed warily.
“Then go pack your bags. Your flight to Paris leaves in three hours.”
“Paris? Flight? Three hours?”
“Yes. Dimitri Popoff, one of the party’s major Russian donors, has an important business meeting
there. He is flying today with two associates and has agreed to raise funds from the White Russian
community there. He’s flying in one of the new Junker F 13s, which has room for four passengers. I
had planned to accompany him, but a few inconvenient chest pains yesterday have made that
impossible. My doctor and my wife forbid me to go. I want you to go in my place.”
“I’m sorry about your illness, Herr Eckart. But if the doctor is advising rest, I shouldn’t leave you
alone with the next two editions—”
“The doctor said nothing about rest. He is simply being cautious because he knows too little about
the effects of flying on this kind of condition. The editions are mostly written. I’ll take care of them.
Go to Paris.”
“What would you like me to do there?”
“I want you to accompany Herr Popoff as he meets with potential donors. If he wishes, you will
make some presentations to donors yourself. It’s time for you to learn how to talk to the rich. After
that you are to travel home slowly by train. Take a whole week or ten days. Be a free man. Travel
wherever you want and simply observe. See how our enemies feast off the Versailles Treaty. Take
notes. Everything you observe will be useful to the paper. By the way, Herr Popoff has also agreed to
supply you with ample French francs. You’ll need them. The deutschmark is nearly worthless abroad,
thanks to inflation. It’s nearly worthless here!”
“A loaf of bread costs more every day,” Alfred agreed.
“Exactly. And I’m writing a piece right now for the next issue about why we must once again
increase the price of the paper.”
On takeoff, Alfred gripped the arms of his seat and stared out the window as Munich grew smaller
by the second. Tickled by Alfred’s fright, Herr Popoff, his gold teeth gleaming, yelled over the roar of
the engines, “First time flying?” Alfred nodded and looked out the window, grateful that the noise
made further conversation with Herr Popoff and the other two passengers impossible. He thought of
Eckart’s comment about schmoozing . . . why was he so bad at easy conversation? Why so secretive?
Why didn’t he tell Eckart that he had once traveled to Switzerland with his aunt and that a few years
ago, just before the outbreak of the war, he and his fiancée, Hilda, had visited Paris. Perhaps he
simply wished to blot out his Baltic past and to be born again as a German citizen in the Fatherland.
No, no, no—he knew it ran deeper. Opening himself had always been threatening. That was precisely
why his two beer-hall conversations with Friedrich had been so extraordinary and so liberating. He
tried to delve deeper into himself but, as always, lost his way. I have to change . . . I’ll go to visit
Friedrich again.
The following day Herr Popoff relied on Alfred to discuss the party’s platform and to explain why
the party was the only one capable of stopping the Judeo-Bolshevists. A banker wearing a dazzling
diamond ring on his little finger said to Alfred, “I understand your official party name is now the
National Socialist German Workers party—the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei?”
“Yes.”
“Why such a lumpish and confusing name? ‘National’ implies ‘right,’ ‘socialist’ left, ‘German’
right, and ‘worker’ left! It’s impossible. How can your party be everything at once?”
“That’s exactly what Hitler wants, to be everything to all people—except Jews and Bolshevists of
course. We have a long-range plan. Our first task is to enter Parliament in great numbers over the next
few years.”
“Parliament? You believe the ignorant masses can rule?”
“No. But first we must achieve power. Our parliamentary democracy is fatally weakened by
incursions from the Bolshevists, and I promise you we will ultimately do away with this parliamentary
system altogether. Hitler has used these very words with me many times. And he has made the party
goals very clear with his new platform. I’ve brought copies of the new twenty-five-point program.”
At the end of their visits, Herr Popoff presented Alfred with a bulging envelope of French francs.
“Good work, Herr Rosenberg. These francs should see you through your European travels. Your
presentations were excellent, just as Herr Eckart assured me they would be. And in such fine Russian.
Beautiful Russian. Everyone was favorably impressed.”
A free week ahead of him! What a pleasure simply to wander wherever he wished. Eckart was
right—he had been working too hard. As he strolled through the streets of Paris, Alfred contrasted the
gaiety and opulence everywhere with the bleakness of Berlin and the poverty and agitation of Munich.
Paris showed few scars of war, its citizens seemed well-fed, restaurants were jammed, and yet France,
along with England and Belgium, continued to suck Germany’s life blood with draconian reparations
demands. Alfred decided to spend two days in Paris—the galleries and art dealers beckoned—and
then take the train north to Belgium and finally to Holland—Spinoza country. From there he would
take the long train ride home via Berlin, where he would drop in on Friedrich.
In Belgium, Alfred found Brussels not to his liking and detested the sight of the Belgian legislative
building, where Germany’s enemies never ceased formulating new methods of pillaging the
Fatherland. The following day he visited the German military cemetery at Ypres, where the Germans
had suffered such horrendous losses in the world war and where Hitler had served so courageously.
And then north to Amsterdam.
Alfred had no idea what he sought. He only knew that the Spinoza problem buzzed away in the
back of his mind. He remained intrigued by the Jew Spinoza. No, he said to himself, not intrigued; be
honest—you admire him—just as Goethe did. Alfred had never returned his library copy of Spinoza’s
Theological-Political Treatise and often read a few paragraphs of it in bed at night. He was a poor
sleeper; for some inexplicable reason he grew anxious as soon as he got into bed, and he seemed to
fight sleep. That was something else to talk about with Friedrich.
On the train he opened the Treatise to the page he had fallen asleep on the night before. Once
again he was impressed by how intrepid Spinoza was by daring to question religious authority in the
seventeenth century. Look at how he pointed out inconsistencies in the scriptures and the absurdity
of considering a document to be of divine origin when it was riddled with human errors. He was
especially tickled by passages in which Spinoza thumbed his nose at priests and rabbis who felt they
had a privileged vision into God’s meaning.
If it be blasphemy to assert that there are any errors in scripture, what name shall we apply to those
who foist onto it their own fancies, who degrade the sacred writers till they seem to write confused
nonsense?
And look how Spinoza, with a flick of his wrist, dispatched Jewish mystical zealots: “I have read
and known kabbalistic triflers, whose insanity provokes in me unceasing astonishment.”
What a paradox! A Jew both courageous and wise. How would Houston Stewart Chamberlain
respond to the Spinoza problem? Why not visit him in Bayreuth and ask him about the Spinoza
problem? Yes, I will do that—and I will ask Hitler to accompany me. After all, aren’t the two of us his
intellectual heirs? Most likely, Chamberlain will conclude that Spinoza was not Jewish. And he would
be right—how could Spinoza be a Jew? All that around-the-clock religious indoctrination, and still he
rejected the Jewish God and the Jewish people. Spinoza had soul wisdom—he must have non-Jewish
blood in him.
But thus far in his genealogical research he had found only that Spinoza’s father, Michael
D’Espinoza, had possibly come from Spain and immigrated to Portugal and then to Amsterdam in
the early seventeenth century. Still, his investigations had yielded unexpected, interesting results. Just
a week ago he had discovered that Queen Isabella, in the fifteenth century, proclaimed bloodstain
laws (limpiezas de sangre) that prevented converted Jews from holding influential positions in the
government and the military. She was wise enough to understand that the Jewish malignancy did not
emanate from religious ideation—it was in the blood itself. And she put it into law! Hats off to Queen
Isabella! He now revised his opinion of her. Previously, he had always connected her only with the
discovery of America—that cesspool of racial mixing.
Amsterdam seemed more congenial than Brussels, perhaps because of Dutch neutrality in the
world war. Joining a half-day tourist group but keeping to himself, Alfred cruised Amsterdam’s canals
and stopped to visit sites of interest. The last stop was at Jodenbreestraat, to visit the Great Sephardic
Synagogue, which was hideous and enormous, seating two thousand and exhibiting Jewish
mongrelization at its worst—such an amalgamation of Grecian pillars, arched Christian windows, and
Moorish wooden carvings. Alfred imagined Spinoza standing before the central platform as he was
cursed and damned by ignorant rabbis and then probably walking out secretly jubilant at his
liberation. But he had to erase this image only a few minutes later when he learned from his
guidebook that Spinoza had never set foot in this synagogue. It was built in 1675, about twenty years
after Spinoza’s excommunication, which, Alfred knew, would have prevented him from entering any
synagogue or, indeed, conversing with any Jew.
Across the street was a large Ashkenazi synagogue, darker, sturdier, and less pretentious. About a
block from both synagogues was the site of Spinoza’s birth. The house had been demolished long
ago and replaced by the massive Moses and Aaron Catholic Church. Alfred could hardly wait to tell
Hitler about this. It was an example of what both felt so keenly—that Judaism and Christianity were
two sides of the same coin. Alfred smiled as he recalled Hitler’s apt phrase—that amazing man had
such a way with words: “Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism—what difference does it make? They
are all part of the same religious swindle.”
The following morning he boarded a steam tram to Rijnsburg, the site of the Spinoza Museum.
Though it was only a two-hour journey, the long, hard wooden benches seating six made it seem far
longer. The stop closest to the small village of Rijnsburg was three kilometers from his destination,
which he reached by horse-drawn cart. The museum was a small brick house with the address “29”
and two plaques on the outside wall.
THE HOUSE OF SPINOZA
DOCTOR’S HOUSE FROM 1660
THE PHILOSOPHER B. DE SPINOZA LIVED HERE FROM 1660 TO 1663.
The second plaque read:
ALAS, IF ALL HUMANS WERE WISE
AND HAD MORE GOOD WILL
THE WORLD WOULD BE A PARADISE
NOW IT IS MOSTLY A HELL
Drivel, thought Alfred. Spinoza was surrounded by idiots. Walking around the building Alfred
discovered that half the house was the museum and half was inhabited by a village family who used a
separate entrance on the side. An old plow in the driveway suggested that they were probably farmers.
The museum door was so low that Alfred had to bow his head to enter. He then had to pay an
entrance fee to a shabbily dressed Jewish guard who seemed to have just awakened from a nap. The
guard was a sight to behold! He obviously hadn’t shaved for days, and sagging bags hung under his
bleary eyes.
Alfred was the sole visitor and looked about in disappointment. The entire museum consisted of
two small, eight-foot-by-ten-foot rooms, both with a small-paned window that looked out on an apple
orchard in the back. One room was of little interest, containing generic seventeenth-century
lens-grinding equipment, but the other, the one that excited Alfred, held Spinoza’s personal library in
a six-foot-long bookcase extending along the side wall and covered by glass panels badly in need of
washing. A thick red tasseled cord supported by four upright stands prevented close access to the
bookcase. The shelves were crammed with heavy volumes, most upright but the larger ones lying
horizontal, all bound with sturdy covers dating from the seventeenth century and earlier. Here was a
treasure, indeed. Alfred strained to count the titles—well over a hundred volumes. The guard, sitting
on a chair in the corner, peered over his newspaper and called out, “Honderd een en vijftig.”
“No Dutch. I speak only German and Russian,” replied Alfred, whereupon the guard instantly
switched to excellent German—“Ein hundert ein und funfzig”—and returned to his reading.
On the adjacent wall a small glass case displayed five first editions (1670) of the
Theological-Political Treatise—the very book Alfred carried in his small bag. Each edition was opened
to the title page, and as the legend explained in Dutch, French, English, and German, the publishers
adjudged this book so incendiary that neither the author nor the publishing company was identified.
Moreover, each of the five editions claimed to be published in a different city.
The guard beckoned Alfred to come to the desk and sign the guest register. After signing, Alfred
flipped through the pages scanning the names of other guests. The guard reached over, turned back a
few pages, pointed to the signature of Albert Einstein (dated November 2, 1920), and, tapping the
page, proudly said, “Nobel laureate for physics. A famous scientist. He spent almost a whole day
reading in this library and writing a poem to Spinoza. Look there,” he pointed to a small framed page
of paper hanging on the wall behind him. “It’s his handwriting—he made us a copy. It’s the first
stanza of his poem.”
Alfred stepped over and read:
How I love this noble man
More than I can say with words.
Still, I fear he remains alone
With his shining halo.
Alfred felt like throwing up. More drivel. A Jewish pseudo-scientist giving a Jewish halo to a man who
rejected all things Jewish. “Who runs this museum?” Alfred asked. “The Dutch government?”
“No, it’s a private museum.”
“Sponsored by? Who pays for it.”
“The Spinoza Association. Freemasons. Private Jewish donors. This man here paid for the house
and most of the library”—the guard flipped the pages of the huge guest register all the way to the
beginning and pointed to the first signature dated 1899: George Rosenthal.
“But Spinoza was not a Jew. He was excommunicated by the Jews.”
“Once a Jew, always a Jew. Why so many questions?”
“I’m a writer and the editor of a newspaper in Germany.”
The guard bent over to look closely at his signature. “Aha, Rosenberg? Bist an undzericker?”
“What are you speaking? I don’t understand.”
“Yiddish. I asked if you were Jewish.”
Alfred drew himself up. “Take a good look. Do I look Jewish?”
The guard looked him up and down. “Not distinguished enough,” he said, and sauntered back to
his chair.
Cursing under his breath, Alfred turned back to the bookcase and leaned over the guardian cord as
far as he could in order to read the titles of Spinoza’s books. A bit too far. He lost his balance and fell
heavily against the bookcase. The guard, sitting in his corner chair, threw down his newspaper and
rushed over to assure himself no damage had been done to the books. He said, “What are you doing?
Are you crazy? These books are priceless.”
“Trying to see the names of the books.”
“Why do you have to know?”
“I’m a philosopher. I want to see where he got his ideas.”
“Aha, first you’re a newspaper man, and now you’re a philosopher?”
“Both. I’m both a philosopher and a newspaper editor. Get it?”
The guard glared at him.
Alfred glared back at his drooping lips, the fat misshapen nose, the hair sprouting from unclean
fleshy ears. “That too hard to understand?”
“I understand a lot.”
“Do you understand Spinoza is an important philosopher? Why keep his books so distant? Why is
there no catalogue of the books displayed? Real museums are meant to display things, not conceal
them.”
“You’re not here to learn more about Spinoza. You’re here to destroy him. To prove he stole his
ideas.”
“If you knew anything at all about the world at large, you’d know that every philosopher is
influenced and inspired by other preceding philosophers. Kant influenced Hegel; Schopenhauer
influenced Nietzsche; Plato influenced everyone. It’s common knowledge that—”
“Influenced, inspired. That’s the point, the very point: you didn’t say ‘influenced.’ And you didn’t
say ‘inspired.’ Your exact words were ‘where he got his ideas from.’ That’s different.”
“Aha, Talmudic disputation is it? That’s what you people like to do. You know damned well what I
meant—”
“I know exactly what you meant.”
“Some museum. You let Einstein, one of yours, spend the whole day studying the library and keep
others three feet away.”
“I promise you Herr philosopher-editor Rosenberg—you win a Nobel Prize, and you can hug every
book in this library. The museum is now closing. Get out.”
Alfred had seen the face of hell: A Jewish guard with authority over an Aryan, Jews blocking access to
non-Jews, Jews imprisoning a great philosopher who despised Jews. He would never forget this day.
==
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BERLIN—1922
Berlin on the first day of spring was much as Alfred remembered it from his brief stay in the winter of
1919. Under a granite sky, with biting cold winds and continual light rain that never seemed to reach
the ground, dour shopkeepers swaddled in several layers of clothes sat in unheated shops. The Unter
den Linden was empty but guarded at every street corner by soldiers. Berlin was dangerous: violent
political demonstrations and assassinations of both Communists and Social Democrats were
everyday happenings.
At the end of their last meeting, four years earlier, Friedrich had written “Charité Hospital, Berlin”
on the note that Alfred had torn up and thrown away, only to return to the spot a few minutes later to
collect the scattered pieces. Approaching a guard, Alfred asked for directions to the hospital. He
inspected Alfred from shoes to crown and growled, “Your vote?”
Alfred, puzzled, asked, “What?”
“Who did you vote for?”
“Oh.” Alfred drew himself up. “I’ll tell you who I will vote for in future elections: Adolf Hitler and
the entire anti–Jewish-Bolshevist platform of the NSADP.”
“Don’t know any Hitler,” replied the soldier, “and never heard of the NSDAP. But I like the
platform. The Charité, huh—you can’t miss it—it’s the largest hospital in Berlin.” He pointed to a
street on his left. “Down that street, straight ahead.”
“Thank you much. And, sir, keep the name Hitler in mind. You’re going to be voting for Adolf
Hitler soon enough.”
The clerk in the receiving building recognized Friedrich Pfister’s name instantly. “Ah, yes, Herr Doctor
Pfister is a consultant in the out-patient department for nervous and mental disorders. Down the hall
to your right, out the door, and straight ahead to the next building over.”
So jammed was the reception area of the next building with young to middle-aged men still
wearing their grey military overcoats that Alfred needed fifteen minutes to push his way to the front
desk, where he finally caught the attention of the harried receptionist by smiling politely and
announcing, “Please, please, I’m a close friend of Doctor Pfister. I assure you he will want to see me.”
She looked straight into his eyes. Alfred was a handsome young man. “Your name?”
“Alfred Rosenberg.”
“As soon as he finishes his session I’ll tell him you’re out here.” Twenty minutes later, she gave
Alfred a warm smile and beckoned him to follow her to a large office. Wearing a band with a mirror
on his head, a white coat with pockets crammed with a flashlight, pen, ophthalmoscope, and wooden
tongue depressors, and a stethoscope, Friedrich awaited him.
“Alfred, what a surprise! A good surprise. I never thought to see you again. How are you? What’s
happened to you since we met in Estonia? What brings you to Berlin? Or do you live here? You can
see I’m a bit harried by my foolishly thrusting questions at you when I have no time to hear answers.
The clinic is packed, as always, but I’m finished by half past seven—will you be free then?”
“Totally free. I’m, uh, just passing through Berlin. I thought I’d take a chance on seeing you,” said
Alfred, silently admonishing himself, Why don’t you tell him the real reason you’re here?
“Good, good. Let’s have supper and a talk. I’d enjoy that.”
“I would as well.
“I’ll meet you at the receptionist’s desk at 7:30.”
Alfred spent the afternoon trudging through the city and comparing the tawdry Berlin streets with
the resplendent boulevards in Paris. When the chill was too great, he tarried in the warmest rooms of
the unheated museums. At 7 he returned to the hospital waiting room, now almost empty. Friedrich
arrived at exactly 7:30 and escorted Alfred to the doctor’s dining room, a large, windowless,
sauerkraut-scented room with many waiters scurrying about serving white-coated patrons. “You see,
Alfred, it’s like all of Germany: many tables, plenty of help, but little to eat.”
Supper at the hospital, invariably a cold meal, consisted of thin slices of bierwurst, leberwurst,
country Limburger cheese, cold boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut and pickles. Friedrich apologized.
“I’m sorry it’s the best I can offer. I hope you had a hot meal today?”
Alfred nodded, “Wursts on the train. They weren’t bad.”
“We can look forward to dessert. I’ve asked the cook for something special—his son is one of my
patients, and he often bakes treats for me. Now,” Friedrich sat back and exhaled, obviously
exhausted, “finally we can relax and talk. First, let me tell you about your brother. Eugen just wrote
asking if I had heard from you. We saw a good bit of one another in Berlin, but about six months ago
he moved to Brussels to take a good position at a Belgian bank. He continues to be in remission
from his consumption.”
“Oh, no,” Alfred moaned.
“What is it? Remission is good news.”
“Yes, of course. I was responding to ‘Brussels.’ If only I had known. I just spent a day there.”
“But how could you have known? All Germany is dislocated. Eugen wrote that he had no idea
where you were living. Or how. All I could tell him from our meeting in Reval is that you were hoping
to get to Germany. If you wish, I’ll serve as the intermediary and give both of you the other’s
address.”
“Yes, I want to write him.”
“I’ll get his address after dinner—it’s in my room. But what were you doing in Brussels?”
“The long or short version?”
“The long version. I’ve plenty of time.”
“But you must be tired. Haven’t you’ve been listening to people all day? When did you start this
morning?”
“Working since seven. But talking with patients is not the same as talking with you. You and Eugen
are all I have left from my life in Estonia—I was an only child, and as you may remember, my father
died just before we last met. My mother died two years ago. I treasure the past—perhaps to an
irrational degree. And I deeply regret our parting last time on bad terms—all because of my
thoughtlessness. So the long version, please.”
Alfred spoke willingly of his life during the past three years. No, it was more than willingness: a
warmth seeped through his bones as he spoke, a warmth emanating from sharing his life with
someone who truly wanted to hear of it. He spoke of his escape out of Reval on the last train to
Berlin, the cattle truck to Munich, the chance meeting with Dietrich Eckart, his job as a newspaper
editor, his joining the NSDAP, his impassioned relationship with Hitler. He spoke of major
achievements—writing The Trace of the Jew and, the previous year, publishing The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion caught Friedrich’s attention. Only a few weeks before, Friedrich
had heard about the document during a presentation by an eminent historian at the Berlin
Psychoanalytic Society on the topic of man’s eternal need for a scapegoat. He had learned that The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion was reputed to be a summary of speeches given at the 1897 First Zionist
Congress in Basel that reveal an international Jewish conspiracy to undermine Christian institutions,
bring about the Russian Revolution, and pave the way for Jewish world domination. The speaker at
the psychoanalytic conference said that the Protocols had recently been republished in its entirety by
an unscrupulous Munich newspaper, despite the fact that several major scholarly institutions had
demonstrated convincingly that the Protocols of Zion was a hoax. Had Alfred known that it was a hoax?
Friedrich wondered. Would he have published it nevertheless? But of this he spoke not a word. In his
intensive personal psychoanalysis for the past three years, Friedrich had learned how to listen and
learned, also, to think before he spoke.
“Eckart’s health is failing,” Alfred continued, turning to his ambitions. “I am saddened because he
has been a wonderful mentor, but at the same time I know his impending retirement will open the
path to my becoming editor in chief of the Nationalsozialistische Party newspaper, Völkischer
Beobachter. Hitler told me himself that I am obviously the best candidate. The paper is growing
robustly and is soon to become a daily. But even more I hope my editorial position, coupled with my
closeness to Hitler, will eventually lead to my playing a major role in the party.”
Alfred ended his account by sharing a big secret: “I am now planning a truly important book that I
will entitle The Myth of the Twentieth Century. I hope it will bring home to every thinking person the
magnitude of the Jewish threat to Western civilization. It will take many years to write, but eventually I
expect it to be the successor to Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s great work, The Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century. So that’s my story, up to 1923.”
“Alfred, I’m impressed with what you’ve accomplished in such a short time. But you haven’t
finished. Bring me up to the present. What about Brussels?”
“Ah, yes. I told you everything except what you inquired about!” Alfred then described in detail his
trip to Paris, Belgium, and Holland. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, he omitted any mention of
the visit to the Spinoza Museum in Rijnsburg.
“What a rich three years, Alfred! You must be proud of what you’ve accomplished. I am honored
that you’ve trusted me so. I have a hunch that you may not have shared this, especially your
aspirations, with anyone before. Right?”
“Right. You’re very right. I haven’t spoken so personally since we last talked. There’s something
about you, Friedrich, that encourages me to open up.” Alfred felt himself edging toward telling
Friedrich that he wanted to change some basic things about his personality, when the cook appeared
with generous helpings of warm Linzer Torte.
“Freshly baked for you and your guest, Dr. Pfister.”
“How kind of you, Herr Steiner. And your son, Hans? How is he this week?”
“His days are better, but the nightmares continue to be awful. Almost every night I hear him
screaming. His nightmares have become my nightmares.”
“The nightmares are normal for his condition. Have patience—they will fade, Herr Steiner. They
always do.”
“What’s wrong with his son?” asked Alfred after the cook departed.
“I can’t speak to you of any particular patient, Alfred—doctor’s code of confidentiality. But I can tell
you this: remember that crowd of men you saw in the waiting room? They are all, every single one,
afflicted with the same thing—shell shock. And it is so in every waiting room for nervous disorders in
every hospital in Germany. They all are suffering greatly: they’re irritable, unable to concentrate,
subject to terrible bouts of anxiety and depression. They never stop reliving their trauma. During the
day horrifying images intrude into their mind. During the night in nightmares they see their comrades
blown apart and their own deaths approaching. Though they feely lucky to have escaped death, they
all suffer from survivor guilt—guilt that they have survived while so many others perished. They
ruminate about what they could have done to save their fallen comrades, how they might have died in
their stead. Rather than feel proud, many feel like cowards. This is a gigantic problem, Alfred. I’m
speaking of a whole generation of German men afflicted. And of course, in addition to this there is
the grief of the families. We lost three million in the war, and almost every family in Germany lost a
son or a father.”
“And, all,” Alfred added immediately, “probably made so much worse by the tragedy of the satanic
Versailles Treaty, which made all their suffering pointless.”
Friedrich noted how adroitly Alfred swung the discussion toward his knowledge base of politics
but ignored that. “An interesting speculation, Alfred. To address it we’d need to know what is going
on in the waiting rooms of Paris and London military hospitals. You may be in a great position to
explore that question for your paper, and, frankly, I wish you would write about it. All the publicity we
can get will help. Germany needs to take this more seriously. We need more resources.”
“You have my word. I’ll write a story about it as soon as I return.”
As they both slowly enjoyed their linzer torte, Alfred turned to Friedrich. “So you’ve finished your
training now?”
“Yes, most of my formal training. But psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of
medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of
self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning. If you see anything about me that might help me
know more about myself, please do not hesitate to point it out.”
“I can’t possibly imagine that. What could I see? What could I tell you?”
“Anything you notice. Perhaps you might catch me looking at you in an odd way, or interrupting
you, or using an inapt word. Maybe I’ll misunderstand you or ask clumsy or irritating questions . . .
anything. I mean it, Alfred. I want to hear it.”
Alfred was speechless, almost destabilized. It had happened again. He had once more entered
Friedrich’s strange world, with radically different rules of discourse—a world he encountered
nowhere else.
“So,” Friedrich continued, “you said you were in Amsterdam and had to return to Munich. But
Berlin is not exactly on the way.”
Reaching into his overcoat pocket, Alfred pulled out Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. “A long
train ride was the perfect venue for reading this.” He held the book up to Friedrich. “I finished this on
the train. You were so right to suggest it to me.”
“I’m impressed, Alfred. You are a dedicated scholar. Not many like you around. Aside from
professional philosophers, very few people read Spinoza after their university days. I would have
thought that by now, with your new profession and all the shattering events in Europe, you’d have
forgotten all about old Benedictus. Tell me what you thought of the book?”
“Lucid, courageous, intelligent. It’s a devastating critique of Judaism and Christianity—or, as my
friend Hitler puts it, the ‘whole religious swindle.’ However, I do question Spinoza’s political views.
There is no doubt he is naïve in his support for democracy and individual freedom. Only look at
where those ideas have led us to in Germany today. He seems almost to be advocating an American
system, and we all know where America is heading—to a half-caste mulatto disaster of a country.”
Alfred paused, and both men took their last bites of the linzer torte, a true luxury in such lean
times.
“But tell me more about the Ethics,” he continued. “That was the book that offered Goethe so
much tranquility and vision, the book that he carried in his pocket for a year. Do you remember
offering to be my guide, to help me learn how to read it?”
“I remember, and the offer stands. I just hope I’m up to it, because I’ve been cramming my mind
with the small and big thoughts of my profession. I haven’t thought of Spinoza since I was with you.
Where to begin?” Friedrich closed his eyes. “I’m transporting myself back to university days and
listening to my philosophy professor’s lectures. I remember him saying that Spinoza was a towering
figure in intellectual history. That he was one lonely man who was excommunicated by the Jews,
whose books were banned by Christians, and who changed the world. He claimed that Spinoza
introduced the modern era, that the enlightenment and the rise of natural science all began with him.
Some consider Spinoza as the first Westerner to live openly without any religious affiliation. I
remember how your father publicly scorned the church. Eugen told me he refused to set foot in
church, even at Easter or Christmas. True?”
He looked Alfred in the eyes, and Alfred nodded, “True.”
“So in some real way your father was beholden to Spinoza. Before Spinoza, such an open
opposition toward religion would have been unthinkable. And you were perceptive in spotting his role
in the rise of democracy in America. The American Declaration of Independence was inspired by the
British philosopher John Locke, who was in turn inspired by Spinoza. Let’s see. What else? Ah, I
remember my philosophy professor particularly emphasizing Spinoza’s adherence to immanence.
You know what I mean by this?”
Alfred looked uncertain as he rotated his hands quizzically.
“It contrasts with ‘transcendence.’ It refers to the idea that this worldly existence is all there is, that
the laws of nature govern everything and that God is entirely equivalent to Nature. Spinoza’s denial of
any future life was monumentally important for the philosophy that followed, for it meant that all
ethics, all codes of life meaning and behavior must start with this world and this existence.” Friedrich
paused. “That’s about all that comes to mind . . . Oh yes, one last thing. My professor claimed that
Spinoza was the most intelligent man who ever walked the earth.”
“I understand that claim. Whether you agree with him or not, he is clearly brilliant. I’m certain that
Goethe and Hegel and all our great thinkers recognized this.”
And yet how could such thoughts have come from a Jew? Alfred started to add, but refrained. Perhaps
both men took care to avoid the topic that had led to such acrimony in their last meeting.
“So, Alfred, do you still have your copy of the Ethics?”
The cook stopped by the table and served tea.
“Are we keeping you?” Friedrich asked after looking around and discovering that he and Alfred
were the only diners left in the room.
“No, no, Dr. Pfister. A lot to do. I’ll be here for hours yet.”
After the cook left, Alfred said, “I still have my Ethics but haven’t opened it for years.”
Blowing on his tea and taking a sip, Friedrich turned back to Alfred. “I think now is the time to start
reading it. It is a difficult read. I took a yearlong course in it, and often in class we spent an entire
hour discussing one page. My advice is to go slow. It’s inexpressibly rich and addresses almost every
important aspect of philosophy—virtue, freedom, and determinism, the nature of God, good and evil,
personal identity, mind-body relationship. Perhaps only Plato’s Republic had such a wide scope.”
Friedrich looked around again at the empty restaurant. “Regardless of Herr Steiner’s polite
demurrals, I fear we’re keeping him here late. Let’s go to my room, and I can jog my memory by a
quick scan of my Spinoza notes and also get Eugen’s address for you.”
Friedrich’s room in the doctors’ dormitory was Spartan, containing only bookcase, desk, chair, and a
tidily made-up bed. Offering Alfred the chair, Friedrich handed him his copy of the Ethics to peruse
while he sat on the bed leafing through an old folder of notes. After ten minutes, he began: “So, a few
general comments. First—and this is important—do not be discouraged by the geometric style. I
don’t believe any reader has ever found this congenial. It resembles Euclid, with precise definitions,
axioms, propositions, proofs, and corollaries. It’s devilishly hard to read, and no one is certain why
he chose to write in this manner. I remembering your saying that you gave up trying because it
seemed impenetrable, but I urge you to stay with it. My professor doubts that Spinoza actually
thought in this manner but rather regarded this as a superior pedagogical device. Perhaps it seemed
the natural way of presenting his fundamental idea that nothing is contingent, that everything in
Nature is orderly, understandable, and necessitated by other causes to be exactly that which it is. Or
perhaps he wanted logic to reign, to make himself entirely invisible and let his conclusions be
defended by logic, not by recourse to rhetoric or authority, nor prejudged on the basis of his Jewish
background. He wanted the work to be judged as a mathematical text is judged—by the sheer logic of
his method.”
Friedrich took his book back from Alfred and flipped through the pages. “It’s divided into five
parts,” he pointed out. “‘On God,’ ‘On the Nature and Origin of the Mind,’ ‘On the Origin and Nature
of the Emotions,’ ‘On Human Bondage,’ ‘Of Human Freedom.’ It’s the fourth section, ‘On Human
Bondage,’ that interests me the most because it has the most relevance to my field. Earlier I said that
I’ve not thought of him since we last met, but as we talk, I realize now that’s not true. Quite
frequently, as I read or listen to psychiatry lectures or talk with patients, I ruminate about Spinoza’s
vastly unappreciated influence on my field of psychiatry. And the fifth part, ‘On the Power of the
Understanding, or Of Human Freedom,’ also has relevance to my work and should have interest for
you. This is the part that I imagine was the most beneficial for Goethe.”
“A couple of thoughts about the first two parts—” Friedrich glanced at his watch. “They are for me
the most difficult and most abstruse sections, and I’ve never been able to understand every concept.
The major point is that everything in the universe is a single eternal substance, Nature or God. And
never forget he uses the two terms interchangeably.”
“Mentions of ‘God’ litter every page?” asked Alfred. “I didn’t think he was a believer.”
“Lot of controversy about that. Many refer to him as a pantheist. My professor preferred to call him
a devious atheist, repeatedly using the term ‘God’ to encourage seventeenth-century readers to keep
reading. And to prevent both his books and his person from being consigned to flames. For sure he
is not using ‘God’ in the conventional sense. He rails against the naïveté of humans’ claim they are
made in God’s image. Somewhere, I think in his correspondence, he says that if triangles could think
they would create a triangular god. All anthropomorphic versions of God are just superstitious
inventions. To Spinoza, Nature and God are synonyms; you might say he naturalizes God.”
“So far I don’t hear anything about ethics.”
“You have to wait until parts four and five. First he establishes that we live in a deterministic world
loaded with obstacles to our well-being. Whatever occurs is a result of the unchanging laws of nature,
and we are part of nature, subject to these deterministic laws. Furthermore, nature is infinitely
complex. As he puts it, nature has an infinite number of modes or attributes, and we humans can
only apprehend two of them, thought and material essence.”
Alfred asked a few more questions about the Ethics, but Friedrich noted that he seemed to be
straining to keep the conversation going. Choosing his time carefully, Friedrich ventured an
observation. “Alfred, it is wonderful for me to remember and discuss Spinoza with you. But I want to
be sure I haven’t missed anything. As a therapist I’ve learned to pay attention to hunches that pass
through my mind, and I have a hunch about you.”
Alfred’s eyebrows raised. He waited expectantly.
“I have a hunch that you came to speak not only about Spinoza but also for some other reason.”
Tell him the truth, Alfred said to himself. Tell him about your tightness. About your inability to sleep.
About being unloved. About always being an outsider apart from, rather than a part of. But instead he
said, “No, it’s been great to see you, to catch up, to learn more about Spinoza—after all, how often
does one stumble upon a Spinoza tutor? What’s more, I have a good story for the paper. If you can
supply me with some medical reading on shell shock, I will write the story on the train ride to Munich
and put it in next week’s edition. I’ll send it to you.”
Friedrich walked over to his desk and rifled through several journals. “Here’s a good review in the
Journal of Nervous Diseases. Take the issue with you, and mail it back when you’re finished with it. And
here also is Eugen’s address.”
As Alfred slowly, somewhat reluctantly, started to rise, Friedrich decided to try one last
thing—another device he had learned from his own analyst and that he had often used with patients.
It rarely failed.
“Stay a moment, Alfred. I’ve one last question. Let me ask you to imagine something. Close your
eyes and imagine leaving me now. Imagine walking away from our talk, and then imagine sitting on
the long train ride to Munich. Let me know when your imagination is there.”
Alfred closed his eyes and soon nodded readiness.
“Now, here’s what I’d like you to do. Think back upon our talk tonight, and ask yourself these
questions: Do I have any regrets about my talk with Friedrich? Were there important issues I did not
raise?”
Alfred kept his eyes closed and, after a long silence, slowly nodded. “Well, there is one thing . . .”
==
23CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AMSTERDAM—JULY 27, 1656
Bento wheeled when he heard his name called and saw a disheveled, tearful Franco, who immediately
sank to his knees and bowed his head until his brow touched the pavement.
“Franco? What are you doing here? And what are you doing on the ground?”
“I have to see you, to warn you, to beg forgiveness. Please forgive me. Please allow me to explain.”
“Franco, stand up. It’s not safe for you to be seen talking to me. I’m heading to my house. Follow
at a distance, and then just come right in without knocking. But first be certain you’re not seen by
anyone.”
A few minutes later, in Bento’s study, Franco continued in a tremulous voice, “I just came from the
synagogue. The rabbis cursed you. Vicious—they were vicious. I could understand everything
because they translated into Portuguese—I never imagined they would be so vicious. They ordered
no one to speak to you or look at you or—”
“That’s why I told you it was unsafe to be seen with me.”
“You already knew? How could you? I just came from the synagogue. I ran out immediately after
the service.”
“I knew it was coming. It was fated.”
“But you’re a good man. You offered to help me. You did help me. And look what they’ve done to
you. Everything is my fault.” Franco fell to his knees again and took Bento’s hand and pressed it to
his forehead. “It’s a crucifixion, and I’m the Judas. I betrayed you.”
Bento extricated his hand and placed it on Franco’s head for a moment. “Please stand. I have
things to tell you. Above all, you must know it is not your fault. They were looking for an excuse.”
“No, there are things you do not know. It is time: I must confess. We betrayed you, Jacob and I. We
went to the parnassim, and Jacob told them everything you said to us. And I did nothing to stop him.
I just stood there as he talked and nodded my head. And each nod pounded a nail into your
crucifixion. But I had to. I had no choice . . . Believe me, I had no choice.”
“There is always choice, Franco.”
“That sounds good, but it is not true. Real life is more complex than that.”
Startled, Bento took a long look at Franco. This was a somewhat different Franco. “Why is it not
true?”
“What if you’re faced with only two choices, and both are deadly?”
“Deadly?”
Franco avoided Bento’s eyes. “Does the name Duarte Rodriguez mean anything to you?”
Bento nodded. “The man who tried to rob my family. The man who needed no rabbi’s
proclamation to hate me.”
“He is my uncle.”
“Yes, I know that, Franco. Rabbi Mortera told me yesterday.”
“Did he tell you that my uncle offered me two choices? If I agreed to betray you, he would rescue
me from Portugal, and then, after I had fulfilled my bargain, he would immediately send a ship to
Portugal to rescue my mother, my sister, and my cousin, Jacob’s mother. They are all in hiding and in
great danger from the Inquisition. If I refused, he would strand them in Portugal.”
“I understand. You made the correct choice. You saved your family.”
“Even so, that does not erase my shame. I am planning to go back to the parnassim the moment
my family is safe and confess that we provoked you into saying the things you said.”
“No, do not do that, Franco. The best thing you can give me now is silence.”
“Silence?”
“It is best for me, for all of us.”
“Why is it best? We did trick you into saying what you said.”
“But that is not true. I said what I said freely.”
“No, you’re being merciful to me, to assuage my pain. My guilt remains. It was all an act, all
planned. I sinned. I deceived you. I caused you great harm.”
“Franco, you did not deceive me. I knew you would bear witness against me. I deliberately spoke
rashly. I wanted you to testify. I’m the one who is guilty of deception.”
“You?”
“Yes, I took advantage of you. Worst of all, I did so even though I had an inkling that you and I
might be like-minded.”
“You understood right. But our like-mindedness compounds my guilt. When Jacob described your
views to the parnassim, I kept silent, whereas I should have shouted at the top of my lungs, ‘I agree
with Baruch Spinoza. His views are my views too.’”
“If you had done that, you would have had the worst of all worlds. Your uncle would retaliate, your
family would be imperiled, I would still have been excommunicated, and the parnassim would have
excommunicated you along with me.”
“Baruch Spinoza—”
“Please—Bento now. There is no longer a Baruch Spinoza.”
“All right, Bento. Bento Spinoza, you are an enigma. Nothing about today makes sense. Answer
one simple question: if you wanted to quit this community, why did you not just leave of your own
choice? Why bring such disgrace and catastrophe upon yourself? Why not just move away? Go
elsewhere?”
“Where? Do I look Dutch? A Jew cannot just disappear. And think of my brother and sister. Think
of how hard it would be to leave them and then keep deciding over and over again to stay away from
them. Better this way. And better, too, for my family. Now they no longer have to choose again and
again not to talk to their brother. The rabbi’s cherem decides for me and for them once and for all
time.”
“So you say it is better to hand your own fate to others. Better not to choose, but to force others to
make the choice for you? Did you not just say there was always a choice?”
Jolted, Bento looked again at this different Franco, a thoughtful, forthright Franco with no trace of
the shy, buffoonish Franco of their previous meetings. “There is much truth in what you say. How
came you to think in such ways?”
“My father, he who was burned by the Inquisition, was a wise man. Before he was forced to
convert, he was the main rabbi and advisor of our community. Even after we all became Christians,
the villagers continued to visit him to discuss serious life problems. I often sat by his side, and I
learned many things about guilt and shame and choice and grief.”
“You, the son of a wise rabbi? So in our meetings with Jacob, you concealed your knowledge and
your true thoughts. When I talked of the words of the Torah, you feigned ignorance.”
Franco lowered his head and nodded. “I acknowledge that I played a deceptive role. But, in truth, I
am ignorant of Jewish things. My father, in his wisdom and his love for me, desired that I not be
educated in our tradition. If we were to stay alive, we had to be Christians. He deliberately taught me
nothing of the Jewish language or customs because the cunning Inquisitors were so good at spotting
all traces of Jewish ideas.”
“And your outburst about the madness of religions? That, too, was pretense?”
“Not in any way! Yes, Jacob’s scheme was for me to voice great religious doubt in order to
encourage you to loosen your tongue. But that role was easy—no actor has ever been assigned an
easier part. In fact, Bento, it was a great relief to utter those words. I have always concealed my
feelings before. The more Christian dogma and stories of miracles I was forced to learn, the more I
realized how both the Christian and the Jewish faiths were based on childish, supernatural fantasies.
But I could never express this to my father. I could not wound him so. Then he was murdered for
hiding Torah pages that he believed contained the very words of God. And again I could say nothing.
Hearing your thoughts was so liberating that my sense of deception diminished, even though my
honest sharing with you was itself in the service of deception. A complex paradox.”
“I understand exactly. During our talk I, too, felt exhilarated at finally telling the truth about my
beliefs. Knowing that I was shocking Jacob did not deter me in the least. Quite the contrary—I
confess I rather enjoyed shocking him even though I was aware that dark consequences would
follow.”
They fell into silence. Bento’s anguished sense of absolute isolation after Manny, the baker’s son,
had shunned him began to fade. This meeting, this moment of honesty with Franco, touched and
warmed him. As was his wont, he did not linger long with feelings but shifted into the observer role
and examined his mind, noting especially the mellowness spreading through him. Even full
awareness of its fleeting nature did not deter its pleasantness. Ah, friendship! So this is the glue that
holds people together—this warmth, this loneliness-dispelling state of mind. Doubting so much,
fearing so much, revealing so little, he had sampled friendship far too rarely in his life.
Franco glanced at Bento’s packed bag and broke the silence. “You’re leaving today?”
Bento nodded.
“Going where? What will you do? How will you support yourself?”
“Hopefully I head toward an unencumbered life of contemplation. For the past year I’ve been
trained by a local lens maker to make lenses for spectacles and, of much greater interest to me,
optical instruments, both telescopes and microscopes. My needs are few, and I should be able to
support myself easily.”
“You’ll stay here in Amsterdam?”
“For the time being. At the home of Franciscus van den Enden, who operates a teaching academy
near the Singel. Eventually I may move to a smaller community, where I can pursue my own study in a
quieter setting.”
“You’ll be all alone? I imagine the stigma of excommunication will keep others at a distance?”
“On the contrary, it will be easier to live among Gentiles as an excommunicated Jew. Perhaps
especially as a permanently excommunicated Jew, rather than a renegade Jew who just wants Gentile
company.”
“So that’s another reason why you welcomed a cherem?”
“Yes, I admit that and something more: I plan eventually to write, and it may be that there is a
better chance the world at large will read the work of an excommunicated Jew than a member of the
Jewish community.”
“You know for sure?”
“Sheer speculation, but I’ve already developed relationships with several like-minded colleagues
who urge me to write down my thoughts.”
“These are Christians?”
“Yes, but a different kind of Christian from the fanatic Iberian Catholics you have met. They don’t
believe in the miracle of resurrection or drink the blood of Jesus during Mass or burn alive those who
think otherwise. These are liberal-minded Christians who call themselves Collegiants and think for
themselves without preachers or churches.”
“Then you’re planning to convert to be one of them?”
“Never. I plan to live a religious life without the interference of any religion. I believe that all
religions—Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, as well as Judaism—simply block our view of the core
religious truths. I hope for a world someday without religions, a world with a universal religion in
which all individuals use their reason to experience and to venerate God.”
“Does that mean you wish for the end of Judaism?”
“For the end of all traditions that interfere with one’s right to think for oneself.”
Franco fell silent for a few moments. “Bento, you’re so extreme it’s frightening. It takes my breath
away to imagine that, after surviving thousands of years, our tradition should perish.”
“We should cherish things because they are true, not because they are old. Old religions trap us by
insisting that if we forsake the tradition, we dishonor all past worshippers. And should one of our
ancestors have been martyred, then we are trapped even more because we feel honor-bound to
perpetuate the martyrs’ beliefs, even though we know them to be fraught with error and superstition.
Did you not intimate that you felt something of that as a result of your father’s martyrdom?”
“Yes—that I’d render his life meaningless if I negated the very thing he died for.”
“But would it not also be meaningless to dedicate your one and only life to a false and
superstitious system—a system that chooses only one people and excludes all other beings?”
“Bento Spinoza, you stretch my mind too far. Any farther and it will shatter. I have never dared to
think upon such things. I cannot imagine living without belonging to my community, my own group.
How is it so easy for you?”
“Easy? It is not easy, but it is easier if one’s dear ones are dead. My permanent excommunication
gives me the task now of refashioning my entire identity and learning to live without being Jewish or
Christian, or any other religion. Perhaps I shall be the first man of such a sort.”
“Be careful! It’s possible that your permanent excommunication will not be so permanent. In the
eyes of others you may not have the luxury of being a non-Jew. Baruch, what do you know about the
limpiezas de sangre?”
“The Iberian blood laws? Not very much, except that Spain implemented them to prevent
converted Jews from gaining too much power.”
“They began, my father told me, with Torquemada, the grand Inquisitor, who persuaded Queen
Isabella two hundred years ago that the Jewish stain remained in the blood despite conversion to
Christianity. Since Torquemada, himself, had Jewish ancestry four generations before, he drew the
line of the Blood Laws three generations back. Thus recent conversos, or even those two or three
generations old, remain under deep suspicion and are blocked from many careers—in the church,
military, many guilds, and civil service.”
“Patently false beliefs such as ‘three but not four generations’ obviously are invented to
convenience the inventor. Like the poor of the earth, false beliefs will always be with us, and their
persistence is out of my control. I strive now to care only about those things over which I do have
control.”
“Such as?”
“I think I have true control only over one thing: the progress of my understanding.”
“Bento, I have the strongest desire to say something to you that I know is impossible.”
“But not impossible to say?”
“I know it is impossible, but I want to come with you! You think great thoughts, and I know you
will think greater ones. I want to follow you, be your student, your servant, share in what you shall do,
be a copier of your manuscripts, make your life easier.”
Bento paused for a moment. He smiled, then shook his head.
“I find what you say pleasing, even enticing. Let me answer you from both the inside and from the
outside.”
“First the inside. Though I desire and insist upon a solitary life to pursue my meditations, I can
sense another part of me longing for intimacy. Sometimes I can slip into an inexpressibly intense
longing for the old feelings of being cradled and held by a loving family and that part of me—that
craving part—welcomes your wish and makes me want to embrace you and answer, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Simultaneously another part of me, my stronger and higher part, clamors for freedom. I ache that the
past is gone and will never return. I ache to think that all those who once cradled me are dead, and I
also hate this ache that shackles me and holds me back. I cannot affect past events, but I have
resolved to avoid future intense attachments. I shall never again wrap myself in my childish desire to
be cradled. You understand?”
“Yes, far too well.”
“That’s the inside. Now let me answer from the outside. I assume your word ‘impossible’ referred
to the impossibility of abandoning your family. If I were in your situation, I, too, would find it
impossible. It is difficult enough for me to abandon my younger brother. My sister has her own
family, and I worry less about her. But, Franco, it’s not just your family that prevents you joining me.
There are other obstacles. Only a few minutes ago, you told me you cannot imagine life without a
community. Yet my way is one of solitude and craves no community other than absolute absorption
into God. I will never marry. Even should I desire marriage, it would not be possible. As a solitary
oddity I may be able to live without a religious affiliation, but it is doubtful that even Holland, the
most tolerant country in the world, would allow a couple to live in that fashion and raise children
without religious membership. And my solitary life means no aunts or uncles or cousins, no family
holiday celebrations, no Passover meals, no Rosh Hashanah. Only solitude.”
“I understand, Bento. I understand I am more gregarious and perhaps more needy. I marvel at your
extraordinary self-sufficiency. You don’t seem to want or need anyone.”
“I’ve been told that so many times that I begin to believe it myself. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the
company of others—at this moment, Franco, I cherish our conversation. But you’re right, a social life
is not essential for me. Or at least not as essential as it seems for others. I remember how undone my
sister and brother would be when they weren’t invited to some event with their friends. That kind of
thing has never affected me in the least.”
“Yes,” Franco nodded, “it is true: I could not live in your fashion. It is indeed alien to me. But,
Bento, consider my other choice. Here I am a man who shares so many of your doubts and your
wishes to live without superstition, and yet I am fated to sit in synagogue praying to a God who does
not hear me, following foolish ritual, living as a hypocrite, embracing a meaningless life. Is that what
is left to me? Is that what life is all about? Won’t I be forced into a solitary life even in the midst of a
crowd?”
“No, Franco, it is not so bleak. I’ve been observing this community for a long time, and there will
be a way for you to live here. Conversos from Portugal and Spain pour into Amsterdam every day, and
many, it is true, fervently long to return to their ancestral Jewish roots. Since none have had a Jewish
education, they must start learning Hebrew and Jewish law as though they were children, and Rabbi
Mortera works day and night to bring them back home to Judaism. Many will emulate him and
become more religious than the rabbi, but, trust me, there will be others like you who, because of
their forced Christian conversion, are disenthralled with all religion and will join the Jewish
community with no religious fervor. You will find them if you look, Franco.”
“But still the pretense, the hypocrisy—”
“Let me tell you something of the ideas of Epicurus, a wise, ancient Greek thinker. He believed, as
any rational person must, that there is no world to come and that we should spend our only life as
peacefully and joyfully as possible. What is the purpose of life? His answer was that we should seek
ataraxia, which might be translated as ‘tranquility,’ or as ‘freedom from emotional distress.’ He
suggested that a wise man’s needs are few and easily satisfied, whereas people with implacable
cravings for power or wealth, perhaps like your uncle, never attain ataraxia because cravings breed.
The more you have, the more they have you. When you think of fashioning a life here, think of
attaining ataraxia. Embed yourself in the part of the community that creates the least stress for you.
Marry someone with sentiments similar to yours—you’ll find many conversos who, like you, will cling
to Judaism only for the comfort of belonging to a community. And if the rest of the community, a few
times a year, goes through the ritual of prayer, then pray with them knowing that you do so only for
the sake of ataraxia, for the sake of avoiding the turmoil and distress of nonparticipation.”
“Do you speak down to me, Bento? Is it that I should settle for ataraxia while you reach for
something higher? Or will you seek ataraxia as well?”
“A difficult question. I think—” Suddenly the church bells pealed. Bento stopped for a moment to
listen and to glance at his packed bag and then continued. “Alas, the time for reflection is short. I
must leave very soon, before the streets become too crowded. But quickly—I haven’t pointedly
chosen ataraxia as my goal but instead point myself toward the goal of perfecting my reason.
Perhaps, however, the goal is the same, though the method is different. Reason is leading me to the
extraordinary conclusion that everything in the world is one substance, which is Nature or, if you
wish, God, and that everything, with no exception, can be understood through the illumination of
natural law. As I gain more clarity about the nature of reality, I, on occasion, knowing I am but a ripple
on the surface of God, experience a state of joyousness or blessedness. Maybe that is my variant of
ataraxia. Perhaps Epicurus is right to advise us to aim for tranquility. But each person, according to
his external circumstances and his natural bent of mind and inner mental characteristics, must
pursue it in his own particular manner.”
The bells pealed again.
“Before we part, Franco. I have a last request of you.”
“Tell me. I am greatly in your debt.”
“My request is simply for silence. I have said things to you today that are but half-born thoughts. I
have much thinking ahead of me. Promise me that all we have said today is our secret. Secret from
the parnassim, from Jacob, from anyone, forever.”
“You have my promise to carry your secrets to the grave. My father, blessed be he, taught me
much about the sanctity of silence.”
“Now we must say good-bye to one another, Franco.”
“Wait one more moment, Bento Spinoza, for I too have a final request. You have just said that we
may have similar aims in life and similar doubts but each of us must take a different path. Thus, in a
fashion, we will live alternate lives heading toward the same goal. Perhaps, had fate and time just
slightly rotated and altered our external circumstances and temperament, you could have lived my
life, and I could have lived yours. Here’s my request: I want to know about your life from time to time,
even if it is only every year or two or three. And I want you to know my life as it unfolds. Thus we may
each see what could have been—the other life we could have led. Will you promise to remain in
contact with me? I don’t yet know the mechanism whereby this may happen. But will you let me know
of your life?”
“I want this no less than you, Franco. My mind is clear about the necessity of leaving my home,
but my heart wavers more than I expected, and I welcome your intriguing offer to view my alternative
life. I know two people who will always know my whereabouts, Franciscus van den Enden and a
friend, Simon de Vries, who lives on the Singel. I will find a way to communicate with you through
them by letter or through personal meetings. Now you must go. Be careful not to be seen.”
Franco opened the door, peered about him, and strode off. Bento took a last glance around his
home, moved his note to Gabriel to a chair near the entrance so that it would be more easily visible,
and, bag in hand, opened the door and stepped out into a new life.
==
24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BERLIN—1922
“Well . . . ,” Alfred hesitated. “There is one thing that I would regret not discussing with you, but . . .
hmm . . . I’m having trouble bringing it up. I’ve been unable to speak of it all evening.”
Friedrich waited patiently. Words from his supervisor, Karl Abraham, flashed into his mind: “In an
impasse, forget the content and focus instead on the resistance. You’ll find that you’ll learn even
more about your patient.” With that in mind, Friedrich began. “I think I can help, Alfred. Here’s my
suggestion. For the time being, just forget about what you were going to tell me, and, instead, let’s
explore all the obstacles to speaking it.”
“Obstacles?”
“Anything that gets in your way of talking to me. For example, what would be the repercussions of
your saying what you want to say?”
“Repercussions? Not sure what you mean.”
Friedrich was patient. He knew that resistance had to be approached tactfully and from all sides.
“Let me put it this way. You have something you desire to say but cannot. What negative things might
happen if you were to speak? Keep in mind that I’m a central part of this. You’re not trying to say
something in an empty room—you’re trying to say it to me. Right?”
A reluctant nod from Alfred. Friedrich continued, “So now try to imagine that you’ve just revealed
to me what’s on your mind. What’s your guess about how I would regard you?”
“I don’t know how you’d react. I guess I’d just be embarrassed.”
“But embarrassment always requires another person, and today that person is me, someone who’s
known you since you were a small child.” Friedrich was very proud of his gentle voice. Dr. Abraham’s
admonitions to stop charging at resistance like a raging bull had had their effect.
“Well”—Alfred took a breath and jumped in—“for one, you might feel I’m exploiting you for help.
I’m embarrassed by asking for your professional services for free. And also, it makes me feel like the
weak one and you the strong one.”
“That’s a great start, Alfred. Exactly what I meant. And now I can see your predicament. This must
seem so uneven to you. I wouldn’t like being so beholden to another, either. Then again, you’ve
already reciprocated by agreeing to run a newspaper story for me.”
“It’s not the same. You receive nothing personally.”
“I understand that. But tell me, do you believe I resent offering something to you?”
“I don’t know—you might. After all, your time is valuable. You do this for pay all day long.”
“And my response that you’re like family to me isn’t relevant either?”
“Right. I hear that as placating.”
“Tell me, how is it when we’re talking about Spinoza, about philosophy? I get the feeling you’re
more relaxed then.”
“Yes, that’s different. Even though you’re teaching me, I get the impression that philosophy talk is
enjoyable to you.”
“Yes, you’re correct about that. Whereas listening to you discussing yourself would not be
enjoyable to me?”
“I can’t imagine why on earth it would be.”
“Here’s a thought—just a sheer guess. Perhaps you have negative feelings about yourself and
think that if you opened up, I would also feel negatively about you?”
Alfred looked puzzled. “It’s possible I guess, but if so, it’s not the major factor. I just can’t imagine
myself taking that kind of interest in anyone else.”
“That sounds important, and I imagine it’s a risk to say that to me. Tell me, Alfred: is that close to
the very thing you would regret not bringing up today?”
Alfred smiled broadly. “My God! You are really good at this, Friedrich! Yes, more than close. It is
exactly the thing.”
“Say more.” Friedrich relaxed. He coasted in familiar waters now.
“Well, just before I left, my boss, Dietrich Eckart, called me into his office. He simply wanted to
talk about my trip to Paris, but I didn’t know that, and the first thing he did when I got to his office
was chide me for looking so worried. Then, after assuring me I was doing a good job, he said it would
be much better for me to be less diligent and do a bit more drinking and a lot more schmoozing.”
“And that statement hit home.”
“Yes, because it’s true—it has been said to me in one way or another many times. I say it to myself.
But I just cannot sit around with empty-headed people talking about nothing.”
A scene entered Friedrich’s mind: the time, twenty-five years earlier, when he had attempted
unsuccessfully to give Alfred a piggyback ride. At their last meeting he had described that to Alfred
and added, “You didn’t like to play.” The lifelong persistence of such traits fascinated Friedrich. What
a rare opportunity to study the genesis of personality formation! This might be a major professional
breakthrough. What other analyst had ever had the chance to analyze someone he knew as a child?
And what’s more, he had personally known the patient’s significant adults: Alfred’s father, brother,
and surrogate mother, his Aunt Cäcilie, even Alfred’s doctor. And he was familiar with the same
physical surroundings—Alfred’s home, playground—and they had gone to the same school and had
the same teachers. What a pity Alfred didn’t live in Berlin so that he could take him on for a full
psychoanalysis.
“And it was right then, right after Dietrich Eckart’s comment,” Alfred continued, “I decided to see
you. I knew he was right. Only a few days before I had overheard a conversation about me between a
couple of employees. They referred to me as the sphinx.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Mixed. They weren’t important, just cleaning and delivery people, and I usually pay no attention to
any opinions from their type. But in this instance they caught my attention because they were so right.
I am closed and tight, and I know I’ve got to change this part of myself if I’m to be successful in the
Nationalsozialist Party.”
“You said ‘mixed.’ What’s positive about being a sphinx?”
“Hmm, not sure, perhaps it is—”
“Wait, let’s stop for a minute, Alfred. I’ve gotten ahead of myself. This is unfair to you. I’m pelting
you with personal questions, and we really haven’t agreed upon what we’re doing here. Or, in the
technical language of my profession, we haven’t defined the frame of our relationship, have we?
Alfred seemed puzzled. “Frame?”
“Let’s just back up and establish an agreement about what we’re up to. I’m making the assumption
that you want to make changes in yourself by working in therapy. Is that right?”
“I’m not sure what work in therapy means.”
“It’s what you’ve been doing so well the last ten minutes: speaking honestly and openly about your
concerns.”
“I definitely want to make changes in myself. So, yes, I want therapy. And also I want to work with
you.”
“But, Alfred, change requires many, many meetings. Tonight we’re just having an introductory chat,
and I’m leaving tomorrow for a three-day psychoanalytic conference. I’m thinking of the future. Berlin
is a long way from Munich. Wouldn’t it make more sense to see a psychoanalyst in Munich whom
you could see more often? I can give you a good referral—”
Alfred vigorously shook his head. “No. No one else. I can’t possibly trust anyone else, certainly no
one in Munich. I have a belief, a very strong belief, that one day I’ll have a powerful position in this
country. I’ll have my enemies, and I could be ruined by anyone who knew my secrets. I know I’m safe
with you.”
“Yes, you are safe with me. Well, let’s think about our schedule—when might you visit Berlin
next?”
“I can’t be sure, but I know that the Völkischer Beobachter will become a daily shortly, and we’ll be
covering more national and international news. In the future I may be able to visit Berlin frequently,
and I hope I can see you for one or two sessions whenever I come.”
“I’ll always try to make time for you if you give me some advance notice. I want you to know I will
keep everything you say in complete and absolute confidence.”
“I’m sure you will. That’s of the utmost importance to me, and I was very reassured when you
declined to tell me anything personal about your patient, the cook’s son.”
“And rest assured I will never share your secrets, not even the fact that you are in therapy with me,
with anyone in the world, your brother included. Confidentiality is crucial in my field, and you have
my oath.”
Alfred patted himself over his heart and mouthed the words, “Thank you. Thank you much.”
“You know,” Friedrich said, “maybe you are right. I think our arrangement would work better if it
weren’t unequal. I think I should, starting next time, charge you the analytic standard fee. I’ll be sure it
is affordable for you. What do you think?”
“Perfect.”
“So, now, back to work. Let’s continue. A few minutes ago when we were talking about your being
called the sphinx, you said you had ‘mixed’ feelings. Now, I want you to free associate to ‘sphinx.’ By
that I mean you should try to let your thoughts about ‘sphinx’ freely enter into your mind and think
out loud. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Now?”
“Yes, just for a couple of minutes.”
“Sphinx . . . desert, huge, mysterious, powerful, enigmatic, keeps its own counsel . . .
dangerous—the sphinx strangled those who did not answer his riddle.” Alfred paused.
“Keep going.”
“Did you know that the Greek root meant ‘strangler,’ or one who squeezes? ‘Sphincter’ is related to
Sphinx—all the sphincters of the body squeezing . . . tight . . . tight-assed.”
“So,” Friedrich asked, “by ‘mixed’ you meant that you disliked being considered so silent and aloof
and tight-assed but that you liked being thought of as enigmatic, mysterious, powerful, threatening?”
“Yes, that’s right. Precisely right.”
“Then, perhaps the positive aspects—your pride in being powerful and mysterious, even
dangerous—will get in the way of schmoozing and being open. It means you have a
choice—schmooze and be an insider, or remain mysterious, dangerous, and an outsider.”
“I see what you’re getting at. It’s complex.”
“Alfred, weren’t you, as I recall, also an outsider in your youth?”
“Always a loner. Didn’t belong to any group.”
“But you also mentioned that you are very close to the party leader, Herr Hitler. That must feel
good. Tell me about that friendship.”
“I spend a great deal of time with him. We have coffee; we talk about politics and literature and
philosophy. We visit galleries, and one day last autumn we went to Marienplatz—you know it?”
“Yes, Munich’s main square.”
“Right. Amazing light there. We set up our easels and sketched together for hours. That day stands
out as one of my finest days. Our sketches were good; we complimented one another and discovered
similarities in our work. Both of us are strong on architectural details and weak on human figures. I
had always wondered if my inability to draw figures was symbolic and was relieved to see he had the
same limitations. It’s certainly not symbolic for Hitler—no one has better skills in relating to people.”
“Sounds enjoyable. Have you sketched with him again?”
“He’s never suggested it.”
“Tell me about other good times you’ve had with him.”
“The very best day in my life happened about three weeks ago. Hitler took me out shopping for a
desk for my new office. He had a purse stuffed with Swiss francs—I don’t know how he got them,
and I never pry. I prefer to let him tell me details at his own pace. He came into the Beobachter one
morning and said, ‘We’re going shopping. You can buy any desk you wish—and buy all the things
you want to put on the desk.’ And for the next two hours we went on a spree through the most
expensive furniture stores in Munich.”
“The best day of your life—that’s saying a lot. Tell me more.”
“Part of it was simply the thrill of the gift. Imagine someone taking you out and saying, ‘Buy any
desk you want. At any price.’ And then to have Hitler give me so much time and attention was really
bliss.”
“Why is he so important for you?”
“From a practical standpoint, he’s the party head now, and my newspaper is the party newspaper.
So he’s my real boss. But I don’t think you meant that.”
“No, I meant ‘important’ in a deeper personal sense.”
“Hard to put into words. Hitler just has that effect on you, on everybody.”
“Taking you out for a wonderful shopping spree. Sounds like something you’d have liked your
father to do.”
“You knew my father! Can you imagine him taking me out and offering me anything, even a piece
of candy? Yes, he lost his wife, and his health was terrible, and he had big money problems, but still I
got nothing, absolutely nothing from him.”
“Lots of feeling in those words.”
“A lifetime of feeling.”
“I knew him. And I know you got precious little fathering—and, of course, you never even knew
your mother.”
“Aunt Cäcilie did the best she could. I never blame her—she had her own children. Too many
shoulders to hug.”
“So perhaps some of your exhilaration about Hitler comes from getting, finally, some real
fathering. What’s his age?”
“Oh, he’s a few years older. He’s like no one I’ve ever met. He has come from nowhere, like me,
from an undistinguished, uneducated family. He was just a corporal in the war, though much
decorated. He has no financial means, no culture, no university education. But, even so, he
mesmerizes everyone. It’s not just me. People gather round him. Everyone seeks his company and
his counsel. Everyone senses he is a man of destiny, the pole star of Germany’s future.”
“So you feel privileged to be with him. Is your relationship progressing into a close friendship?”
“That’s just the point—it’s not progressing. Aside from the ‘desk day,’ Hitler doesn’t seek me out.
I think he likes me, but he doesn’t love me. He never asks to have meals with me. He is far closer to
others. I saw him last week in intimate discussions with Hermann Göring. Their heads were so close
together they were touching. They had just met, yet they laughed and joked and walked arm in arm,
and poked each other in the stomach as though they had known one another all their lives. Why
doesn’t that ever happen to me?”
“Your phrase, ‘He doesn’t love me’—think about that. Let your mind meander about that. Think
out loud.”
Alfred closed his eyes.
“I can’t quite hear you,” said Friedrich.
Alfred smiled. “Love. Someone to say, ‘I love you.’ I heard those words only once, with Hilda in
Paris before we married.”
“You’re married! Yes, I had almost forgotten. You rarely mention your wife.”
“I should say I was married. Guess I still am officially. Very short marriage in 1915. Hilda
Leesmann. We were together a couple of weeks in Paris, where she was studying to be a ballerina, and
at the most three to four months in Russia. Then she developed severe consumption.”
“How awful. Like your brother and mother and father. What happened then?”
“We’ve been out of touch for a long time. The last I heard, her family put her in a sanatorium in the
Black Forest. I’m not sure if she’s still alive. When you said, ‘how awful,’ I winced inside because I
don’t feel much about this. I never think of her. And I doubt she thinks of me. We became strangers. I
remember that one of the last things she said to me was that I had never inquired about her life, never
asked her how she spent her day.”
“So,” Friedrich said, looking at his watch, “we return full circle to the reason you contacted me. We
began with no schmoozing, no interest in others. Next we looked at the part of you that desires to be
sphinx-like. Then we returned to your yearning for love and attention from Hitler and how painful it is
to watch him favor others while you’re left on the outside watching. And then we spoke of your
distance from your wife. Let’s take a moment to look at closeness and distance right here with me.
You said you feel safe here?”
Alfred nodded.
“And what about your feelings toward me?
“Very safe. And very understood.”
“And you find yourself feeling close? Liking me?”
“Yes, both.”
“Therein lies our great discovery today. I think you do like me, and a major reason for that is that
I’m interested in you. I’m recalling your earlier comment that you don’t think you’re interested in
others. And yet people like people who are interested in them. That is the most important message I
have for you today. I’ll say it again: People like people who are interested in them.
“We did good, hard work today. It’s our first session, and you’re plunging right in. I’m sorry it has
to end, but it has been a long day, and my energy ebbs. I do hope you’ll come to see me again often. I
feel can help you.”
==
25CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AMSTERDAM—1658
Over the next year Spinoza—no longer Baruch but now and forever after known as Bento (or in his
written work, Benedictus)—maintained an odd nocturnal relationship with Franco. Almost every
night, as Bento lay in his four-poster bed in a small garret in van den Enden’s house, anxiously
awaiting sleep, Franco’s image entered his thoughts. So seamless and stealthy was his entrance that,
uncharacteristically, Bento never tried to understand why he so often brought Franco to mind.
But at no other time did Bento think of Franco. His waking hours were crammed with intellectual
endeavors that offered more joy than anything he had ever before experienced. Whenever he imagined
himself as a wizened old man reflecting upon his life, he knew that he would select these very days as
the best of days, these days of fellowship with van den Enden and the other students, mastering Latin
and Greek and savoring the great themes of the classical world—Democritus’s atomistic universe,
Plato’s Form of the Good, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, and the Stoic’s freedom from the passions.
His life was beautiful in its simplicity. Bento entirely agreed with Epicurus’s insistence that man’s
needs were few and easily satisfied. Needing only room and board, a few books, paper, and ink, he
could earn the necessary guilders by grinding lenses for spectacles only two days a week and by
teaching Hebrew to Collegiants who desired to read the scriptures in their original tongue.
The academy offered not only a vocation and a home but a social life—more, at times, than Bento
wished. He was meant to take dinner with the van den Enden family and the students boarding at the
academy but instead often chose to take a plate of bread and hard Dutch cheese and a candle to his
room to read. His absences at dinner disappointed Madame van den Enden, who found him an
enlivening conversationalist and tried, without success, to increase his sociability, even offering to
cook his favorite dishes and to avoid nonkosher foods. Bento assured her he was in no way
observant but was simply indifferent to food and quite content with the simplest fare—his bread,
cheese, and daily glass of ale followed by a smoke on his long-stemmed clay pipe.
Outside his classes he avoided socializing with fellow students aside from Dirk, soon to be off to
medical school and, of course, the precocious and adorable Clara Maria. Yet generally, after a short
period, he slipped away even from them, preferring the company of the two hundred weighty, musty
volumes in van den Enden’s library.
Aside from his interest in the fine paintings displayed in the shops of art dealers in the small
streets branching off of the town hall, Bento had little affinity for the arts and resisted van den
Enden’s attempts to increase his aesthetic sensibility in music, poetry, and narrative. But there was no
resisting the schoolmaster’s passionate devotion to the theater. Classical drama can be appreciated,
van den Enden insisted, only if read aloud, and Bento dutifully participated with the other students in
dramatized class readings, even though he was too self-conscious to speak his lines with sufficient
emotion. Generally twice a year van den Enden’s close friend, the director of the Amsterdam
Municipal Theater, permitted the academy to use its stage for major productions before a small
audience of parents and friends.
The production in the winter of 1658, over two years after the excommunication, was Eunuchus, by
Terence, with Bento assigned the role of Parmenu, a precocious slave. When he first looked over his
lines, he grinned as he came to this passage:
If you think that uncertain things can be made certain by reason, you’ll accomplish nothing more
than if you strived to go insane by sanity.
Bento knew that van den Enden’s wry sense of humor was undoubtedly at play when he assigned
him this role. He had been persistently chiding Bento for his hypertrophied rationalism that left no
space for aesthetic sensibility.
The public performance was splendid, the students played their roles with zest, the audience
laughed often and applauded long (though they understood little of the Latin dialogue), and in high
spirits Bento left the theater walking arm in arm with his two friends, Clara Maria (who had played
Thais, the courtesan) and Dirk (who had played Phaedria). Suddenly out of the shadows stepped a
frenzied, wild-eyed man brandishing a long butcher knife. Screaming in Portuguese, “Herege, herege!”
(“Heretic, heretic!”), he lunged at Bento and slashed him twice in the abdomen. Dirk grappled with
the attacker, knocking him to the ground, while Clara Maria rushed to Bento’s aid, cradling his head
in her arms. Of slight build, Dirk was no match for the attacker, who flung him off and quickly fled
into the darkness, knife in hand. Van den Enden, a former physician, rushed to examine Bento.
Noting the two gashes in the heavy black coat, he quickly unbuttoned it and saw that his shirt, also
slashed, was splotched with blood, but the wounds themselves were only skin deep.
In a state of shock, Bento, with the support of van den Enden and Dirk, was able to walk the three
blocks home and slowly make his way up the stairs to his room. With much gagging he swallowed a
valerian draught prepared by the schoolmaster physician. He stretched out and, with Clara Maria
sitting by his bed and holding his hand, soon lapsed into a deep twelve-hour sleep.
The following day disorder reigned in the household. Early in the morning municipal authorities
appeared at the door seeking information about the attacker, and later two servants arrived bearing
notes from outraged parents criticizing van den Enden not only for staging a scandalous play about
sexuality and transvestism but also for permitting a young woman (his daughter) to play a role—and
of a courtesan at that. The schoolmaster, however, remained remarkably placid—no, more than
placid—he was amused by the letters and chuckled at how tickled Terence would have been by these
outraged Calvinist parents. Soon his jocularity calmed the family, and the schoolmaster returned to
teaching his Greek and classics courses.
Upstairs in the garret, Bento remained racked with anxiety and could barely tolerate the gripping
pressure in his chest. Again and again he was assaulted by visions of the assault, the cries of
“Heretic!,” the gleaming knife, the pressure of the knife cutting through his coat, his fall to the ground
under the weight of the assailant. To calm himself, he called upon his customary weapon, the sword
of reason, but on this day it was no match for his terror.
Bento persisted. He tried to slow his breathing with long deliberate breaths and deliberately
conjured up the fearful image of his attacker’s face—heavily bearded, wide-eyed, and frothing like a
mad dog—and stared directly at him until the image dissolved. “Calm yourself,” he murmured.
“Think only of this moment. Waste no energy on what you cannot control. You cannot control the
past. You are frightened because you imagine this past event occurring now in the present. Your mind
creates the image. Your mind creates your feelings about the image. Focus only on controlling your
mind.”
But all these well-honed formulae that he had been compiling in his notebook did nothing to slow
his pounding heart. He continued attempting to soothe himself with reason: “Remember that
everything in Nature has a cause. You, Bento Spinoza, are an insignificant part of this vast causal
nexus. Think of the assassin’s long trajectory, the long chain of events that led inevitably to his
attack.” What events? Bento asked himself. Perhaps inflammatory speeches by the rabbi? Perhaps
some misery in the assailant’s past or present personal life? Upon all these thoughts Bento mused as
he paced back and forth in his room.
Then a soft knock sounded. Within a step of the door, he reached and opened it instantly, to find
Clara Maria and Dirk standing in the doorway, their hands touching, their fingers intertwined. They
instantly drew their hands apart and entered his room.
“Bento,” said a flustered Clara Maria. “Oh, you’re up and walking? Only an hour ago we knocked,
and when you didn’t open, we looked in, and you were so deep asleep.”
“Uh, yes, it’s good to see you up,” said Dirk. “They haven’t caught the maniac yet, but I had a good
look at him, and I’ll recognize him when they catch him. I hope they put him away for a long time.”
Bento said nothing.
Dirk pointed at Bento’s abdomen, “Let’s take a look at the wound. Van den Enden asked me to
check on it.” Dirk approached closer and signaled to Clara Maria to leave them.
But Bento instantly stepped back and shook his head. “No, no. I’m all right. Not just now. I’d
rather be alone for a while longer.”
“All right, we’ll be back in an hour.” Dirk and Clara Maria glanced quizzically at one another as they
left the room.
Now Bento felt even worse: those hands touching and pulling apart lest he see them—that
intimate glance between them. Only a few minutes ago these were his two closest friends. Only last
night Dirk had saved his life; only last night he had adored Clara Maria’s performance, enchanted by
her every movement, every flirtatious gesture of her lips and flutter of her eyelids. And suddenly now
he felt hatred toward both of them. He had been unable to thank Dirk or even utter his name or thank
Clara Maria for sitting with him last night.
“Slow down,” Bento murmured to himself. “Back away and look at yourself from a great distance.
Look at how your feelings whirl about in a frenzy—first love, now hate, now anger. How fickle, how
capricious are passions. Look at how you are tossed, first here, then there by the actions of others. If
you want to flourish, you must overcome your passions by anchoring your feelings to something
unchangeable, something eternally enduring.”
Another knock on the door. The same soft knock. Could it be her? Then her melodious voice,
“Bento, Bento, can I come in?”
Hope and passion stirred. Bento felt instantly buoyant and forgot all about the eternal and the
unchanging. Perhaps Clara Maria would be alone, changed, remorseful. Perhaps she would take his
hand again.
“Come in.”
Clara Maria entered alone holding a note in her hand. “Bento, a man gave me this for you. A
strange, agitated, rather short man with a heavy Portuguese accent who kept looking up and down the
street. I think he’s a Jew, and he’s waiting for an answer in front by the canal.”
Bento snatched the note from her extended hand, opened it, and read it quickly. Clara Maria
watched with much curiosity: never before had she seen Bento devour anything so ravenously. He
read it aloud to her, translating the Portuguese words into Dutch.
Bento, I’ve heard about last night. The whole congregation knows of it. I want to see you today. It’s
important. I’m standing close to your place in front of the red houseboat on the Singel. Can you come?
Franco
“Clara Maria,” Bento said, “he is a friend. My one remaining friend from my old life. I must go to
see him. I can make it down the stairs.”
“No, Papa said you must not climb stairs today. I’ll tell your friend to return in a day or two.”
“But he stresses ‘today.’ It must be related to last night. My wounds are merely scratches. I can do
it.”
“No, Papa placed you in my care. I forbid it. I’ll bring him up here. I’m sure Papa would approve.”
Bento nodded. “Thank you, but take care that the streets are clear—no one must see him enter. My
excommunication forbade any Jew to speak to me. He must not be seen visiting.”
Ten minutes later Clara Maria returned with Franco. “Bento, when shall I return to escort him out?”
Receiving no answer from the two men entirely absorbed in staring into one another’s eyes, she
discreetly departed. “I’ll be in the next room.”
At the sound of the door closing, Franco approached and clasped Bento firmly by the shoulders.
“Are you all right, Bento? She tells me you’re not wounded badly.”
“No, Franco, a couple of scratches here”—pointing to his belly—“but a very deep gash here,”
pointing to his head.
“It’s such a relief to see you.”
“For me, too. Here, let’s sit down.” He gestured toward the bed, where they sat while Franco
continued.
“At first news went through the congregation that you were dead, struck down by God. I went to
the synagogue, and the mood there was exultant—people were saying that God had heard their cries
and delivered his justice. I was beside myself with anguish, and it was only when I spoke to police
officials searching the neighborhood for the assassin that I learned you were wounded and, of course,
not by God but by a crazy Jew.”
“Who is he?”
“No one knows. Or at least, no one says they know. I’ve heard he is a Jew who has just arrived in
Amsterdam.”
“Yes, he’s Portuguese. He screamed ‘Herege’ when he attacked me.”
“l heard that his family was killed by the Inquisition. And perhaps he had a special grievance
against ex-Jews. Some ex-Jews in Spain and Portugal have become the Jews’ greatest enemies: priests
who gain rapid promotion by helping Inquisitors see through subterfuge.”
“So, now the causal network becomes clearer.”
“Causal network?”
“Franco, it is good to be with you again. I always like the way you stop me and ask for clarification.
I mean simply that everything has a cause.”
“Even this attack?”
“Yes, everything! All is subject to the laws of Nature, and it is possible, through our reason, to
grasp this chain of causality. I believe this is true not only for physical objects but for everything
human, and I am now embarking on the project of treating human actions, thoughts, and appetites
just as if they were a matter of lines, planes, and bodies.”
“Are you saying that we can know the cause of every thought, appetite, whim, dream?”
Bento nodded.
“Does that mean we can’t simply decide to have certain thoughts? I can’t decide to turn my head
one way and then another way? That we have no simple free choice?”
“I do mean exactly that. Man is a part of Nature and therefore subject to Nature’s causative
network. Nothing, including us, in Nature can simply choose capriciously to initiate some action.
There can be no separate dominion within a dominion.”
“No separate dominion in a dominion? I’m lost again.”
“Franco, it’s over a year since we last spoke, and here I am immediately talking philosophy instead
of finding out everything about your life.”
“No. Nothing is more important to me than to speak like this with you. I am like a man dying of
thirst coming upon an oasis. The rest can wait. Tell me about a dominion within a dominion.”
“I mean that since man in every way is a part of Nature, it is incorrect to think that man disturbs,
rather than follows, the order of Nature. It is incorrect to assume that he, or any entity in Nature, has
free will. Everything we do is determined by either outside or inside causes. Remember how I
demonstrated to you earlier that God, or Nature, did not choose the Jews?”
Franco nodded.
“So, too, is it true that God did not choose mankind to be special, to be outside of Nature’s laws.
That idea, I believe, has nothing to do with natural order but instead comes from our deep need to be
special, to be imperishable.”
“I think I’m grasping your meaning—it is a gigantic thought. No freedom of will? I’m skeptical. I
want to dispute it. You see, I think I’m free to decide to say, ‘I want to dispute it.’ Yet I have no
arguments to offer. By the next time we meet I’ll have thought of some. But you were talking about the
assassin and the causal network when I interrupted you. Please continue, Bento.”
“I think it is a law of Nature to respond to entire classes of things in the same way. This assassin,
probably maddened by grief for his family, heard that I was an ex-Jew and classified me with other
ex-Jews who harmed his family.”
“Your line of reasoning makes sense, but it must also include the influence of others who may
have encouraged him to do this.”
“Those ‘others’ are also subject to the causal network,” Bento said.
Franco paused, nodding his head. “You know what I think, Bento?”
Bento looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“I think this is a lifetime project.”
“In that we are in full agreement. And I am agreeable, most agreeable, to devote my life to this
project. But what were you going to say about the influence of others upon the assassin?”
“I believe the rabbis instigated this and shaped your assailant’s thoughts and actions. Rumors are
that he is now being hidden in the cellar of the synagogue. I believe the rabbis wanted your death to
serve as a warning to the congregation of the dangers of questioning rabbinical authority. I’m
planning to inform the police of where he might be hidden.”
“No, Franco. Do not do that. Think of the consequences. The cycle of grief, anger, revenge,
punishment, retribution will be endless and ultimately will engulf you and your family. Choose a
religious path.”
Franco looked startled. “Religious? How can you use the term ‘religious’?”
“I mean a moral path, a virtuous path. If you desire to change this cycle of anguish, you must meet
this assassin,” Bento said. “Comfort him, soothe his grief, try to enlighten him.”
Franco nodded slowly, sat silently as he digested Bento’s words, and then said, “Bento, let’s go
back to what you said earlier about your deep wound in your head. How serious is that wound?”
“To be honest, Franco, I am paralyzed by fear. My tight chest feels as if it were going to burst. I
can’t calm myself even though I’ve been working on it all morning.”
“Working how?”
“Just what I’ve been describing—reminding myself that everything has a cause and that what
happened necessarily happened.”
“What does ‘necessarily’ mean?”
“Given all the factors that have previously occurred, this incident had to occur. There was no
avoiding it. And one of the most important things I’ve learned is that it is unreasonable to try to
control things over which we have no control. This, I am convinced, is a true thought, yet the vision
of this attack returns to haunt me again and again.” Bento paused for a moment as his eyes lighted
upon his slashed coat. “Just now it’s occurred to me that the sight of that coat over there on the chair
may be aggravating the problem. A big mistake keeping it there. I must dispose of it entirely. For an
instant, I thought of offering it to you, but of course you cannot be seen with that coat. It was my
father’s coat and will be easily recognized.”
“I disagree. Getting it out of sight is a bad idea. Let me say to you what I heard my father say to
others in very similar situations. ‘Don’t dispose of it. Don’t close off part of your mind, but, rather, do
exactly the opposite.’ So, Bento, I suggest that you hang it always in plain view, somewhere you see it
at all times to remind you of the danger you face.”
“I can understand the wisdom of that advice. It requires much courage to follow it.”
“Bento, it is essential to keep that coat in view. I think you underestimate the danger of your
situation in the world now. Yesterday, you almost died. Surely you must fear death?”
Bento nodded his head. “Yes. Though I am working to overcome that fear.”
“How? Every man fears death.”
“Men fear it to different degrees. Some ancient philosophers I am reading have sought for ways to
soften death’s terror. Remember Epicurus? We once talked about him.”
Franco nodded. “Yes, the man who said the purpose of life was to live in a state of tranquility.
What was that term he used?”
“Ataraxia. Epicurus believed that the major disturber of ataraxia was our fear of death, and he
taught his students several powerful arguments to diminish it.”
“Such as?”
“His starting point is that there is no afterlife and that we have nothing to fear from the gods after
death. Then he said that death and life can never coexist. In other words: where life is, death is not,
and where death is, life is not.”
“That sounds logical, but I doubt it would offer calmness in the middle of the night when one
awakes from a nightmare about dying.”
“Epicurus has yet another argument, the symmetry argument, that may be stronger yet. It posits
that the state of nonbeing after death is identical to the state of nonbeing before birth. And though we
fear death, we have no dread when we think of that earlier, identical state. Therefore we have no
reason to fear death either.”
Franco inhaled deeply. “That catches my attention, Bento. You speak the truth. That argument has
calming power.”
“For an argument to have ‘calming power’ supports the idea that no things, in and of themselves,
are really good or bad, pleasant or fearsome. It is only your mind that makes them so. Think of that,
Franco—it is only your mind that makes them so. That idea has true power, and I am convinced it
offers the key to healing my wound. What I must do is to alter my mind’s reaction to last night’s
event. But I have not yet discovered how to do it.”
“I’m struck how you continue to philosophize even in the midst of your panic.”
“I have to see it as an opportunity for understanding. What can be more important than to learn
firsthand how to temper the fear of death? Just the other day I read a passage by a Roman
philosopher named Seneca, who said, ‘No dread dares to enter the heart that has purged itself of the
fear of death.’ In other words, once you conquer the fear of death, you also conquer all other fears.”
“I’m beginning to understand more about your fascination with your panic.”
“The problem grows clearer, but the solution is still concealed. I wonder if I fear death particularly
keenly now because I feel so full.”
“What?”
“I mean full in my mind. I have many undeveloped thoughts swirling in my mind, and I am
inexpressibly pained to think that those thoughts may die stillborn.”
“Then take care, Bento. Protect these thoughts. And protect yourself. Though you are on the path
of being a great teacher, you are, in some ways, very naïve. I think you possess so little rancor that
you underestimate its existence in others. Listen to me: you are in danger and must leave Amsterdam.
You must get out of the sight of the Jews, go into hiding, and do your thinking and writing secretly.”
“I think you have a fine teacher gestating inside of you. You give me good advice, Franco, and
soon, very soon, I shall follow it. But now it is your turn to tell me of your life.”
“Not quite yet. I have a thought that may help with your terror. I have a question: do you think
you’d be so wounded up here,” Franco pointed to his head, “if the assassin were just a plain crazy
man, not a Jew with a particular grievance toward you?”
Bento nodded his head. “A most excellent question.” He leaned back against the bed poster,
closed his eyes, and pondered it for several minutes. “I think I understand your point, and it is a most
insightful one. No, I’m sure if he were not a Jew, the wound in my mind would not be so grievous.”
“Ah,” said Franco, “and so that means—”
“It has to mean that my panic is not only about death. It has an additional component, linked to my
forced exile from the Jewish world.”
“I think so too. How painful is that exile right now? When last we talked, you expressed only relief
at leaving the world of superstition and much joy at the prospect of freedom.”
“Indeed. And that relief and joy are with me still, but only in my waking life. Now I live two lives.
During the day I am a new man who has shed his old skin, reads Latin and Greek, and thinks exciting,
free thoughts. But at night I am Baruch, a Jewish wanderer being comforted by my mother and sister,
being quizzed on the Talmud by the elders, and stumbling about in charred ruins of a synagogue. The
further I get from full waking consciousness, the more I circle back to my beginnings and clutch at
those phantoms of my childhood. And this may surprise you, Franco: Almost every night as I lie in
this bed awaiting sleep, you pay me a visit.”
“I hope I am a good guest.”
“Far better than you could ever imagine. I invite you in because you bring comfort to me. And you
are a good guest today. Even as we speak, I feel ataraxia seeping back into me. And something more
than ataraxia—you help me think. Your question about the assassin—how I would react if he were
not a Jew—helps me truly grasp the complexity of determinants. I know now I must look deeper at
antecedents and consider thoughts not fully conscious, nighttime as well as daytime thoughts. Thank
you for that.”
Franco smiled broadly and clasped Bento’s shoulder.
“And now, Franco, you must tell me about your life.”
“Much has happened, even though my life is less adventuresome than yours. My mother and
sister arrived a month after you left, and we found, with the help of the synagogue fund, a small flat
not far from your import store. I pass the store often and see Gabriel, who will nod but not speak to
me. I think it is because he knows, as does everyone, of my role in your cherem. He is married now
and lives with his wife’s family. I work in my uncle’s shipping business and help inventory his arriving
ships. I study hard and take Hebrew lessons several times a weeks with other immigrants. Learning
Hebrew is tedious but also exciting. It comforts me and offers a lifeline, a sense of continuity with my
father and his father and his father back for hundreds of years. That sense of continuity is immensely
stabilizing.
“Your brother-in-law, Samuel, is now a rabbi and teaches us four times a week. Other rabbis, even
Rabbi Mortera, take turns teaching the other days. I get the impression from comments of Samuel
that your sister, Rebekah, is well. What else?”
“And what of your cousin Jacob?”
“He has moved back to Rotterdam, and I rarely see him.”
“And the important question: are you content, Franco?”
“Yes, but a melancholy sort of contentment. Knowing you has shown me another facet of life, a life
of the mind that I do not fully experience. I am greatly comforted to know that you will be there and
continue to share your explorations with me. My world is smaller, and I can already see its future
contours. My mother and sister have selected my wife, a girl of sixteen from our village in Portugal,
and we shall marry in a few weeks. I approve of the selection—she is comely, pleasant, and brings a
smile to my face. She will make a good wife.”
“Will you be able to talk to her of all your interests?”
“I believe so. She, too, is starved for knowledge. Like most girls from our village, she doesn’t even
know how to read. I have begun her education.”
“Not too much education, I hope. There may be danger in that. But, tell me, is there talk of me in
the community?”
“Until this incident, I have heard none. It’s as though the community were ordered not only to
avoid you but also not to speak your name. I don’t hear it uttered, though of course I know nothing
about what is said behind closed doors. Perhaps it is only my imagination, but I do believe your spirit
floats about the community and influences much. For example, our Hebrew training sessions are
extraordinarily intense and permit no questioning whatsoever. It’s as though the rabbis were making
certain that another Spinoza will never be born.”
Bento bowed his head.
“Perhaps I should not have said that, Bento. I was unkind.”
“You can be unkind only by shielding me from the truth.”
A gentle knock at the door and then Clara Maria’s voice: “Bento.”
Bento opened the door.
“Bento, I must go out soon. How much longer will your friend stay?”
Bento glanced questioningly at Franco, who whispered that he had to leave shortly, for he had no
good reason to be absent from work. Bento replied, “Clara Maria, give us just a few more minutes,
please.”
“I’ll be waiting in the music room.” Clara Maria closed the door softly.
“Who is she, Bento?”
“The schoolmaster’s daughter and my teacher. She’s teaches me Latin and Greek also.”
“Your teacher? Impossible. How old is she?
“About sixteen. She started teaching me at thirteen. She is a prodigy. Quite unlike any other girl.”
“She seems to regard you with love and tenderness.”
“Yes, that is so, and I reciprocate those sentiments but . . .” Bento hesitated; he was not
accustomed to share his innermost feelings. “But today she has much aggravated my distress by
showing even more tenderness toward my friend and classmate.”
“Ah, jealousy. That can indeed be painful. I am so sorry, Bento. But last time did you not speak to
me of embracing a life of solitude and forsaking the idea of a mate? You seemed so committed or
perhaps resigned to a life alone.”
“Committed and resigned. I am absolutely committed to a life of the mind and know I can never
take on the responsibility of a family. And I also know that it is impossible legally to marry either
Christian or Jew. And Clara Maria is Catholic. A superstitious Catholic at that.”
“So you have difficulty giving up that which you really don’t want and cannot have?”
“Right! I like the way you drill directly to the heart of my absurdity.”
“And you say you love her? And your good friend whom she favors?”
“I had love for him as well, until today. He helped me move after the cherem; he saved my life last
night. He is a good man. And planning to be a physician.”
“But you want her to desire you rather than him, even though you know that would make all three
of you unhappy. “
“Yes, that is true.”
“And the greater the desire she has for you, the greater will be her despair at not having you.”
“Yes, that is undeniable.”
“But you love her, and you desire her happiness. And if she is in pain, you too will suffer?”
“Yes, yes, and yes. Everything you say is correct.”
“And one last question. You say she is a superstitious Catholic? And Catholics adore ritual and
miracles. How then does she relate to your ideas of God as Nature, to your rejection of ritual and
superstition?”
“I would never speak of those views with her.”
“Because she will reject them and perhaps reject you as well?”
Bento nodded. “Every word you say is true, Franco. I have strived so hard, given up so much to be
free, and now I’ve given up my freedom and become enthralled by Clara Maria. When I think of her, I
am quite incapable of thinking of other loftier thoughts. In this matter it is obvious that I am not my
own master but am enslaved by passion. Though reason shows me what is better, I am forced to
follow what is worse.”
“It’s a very old story, Bento. We have always been enslaved by love. How shall you liberate
yourself?”
“I can be free only if I absolutely sever my connections to sensual pleasure, wealth, and fame. If I
do not heed reason, I will remain a slave to passion.”
“Yet, Bento,” said Franco, standing and preparing to depart, “we know that reason is no match for
passion.”
“Yes. Only a stronger emotion can conquer an emotion. My task is clear: I must learn to turn
reason into a passion.”
“To turn reason into a passion,” whispered Franco as they walked toward the music room, where
Clara Maria waited. “A stupendous task. When next we meet I hope to hear of your progress.”
==
26CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BERLIN—MARCH 26, 1923
I find it difficult to get on with our Baltic families: they seem to possess some negative sort of
quality, and at the same time to assume an air of superiority, of being masters of everything, that
I have encountered nowhere else.
Adolf Hitler on Alfred Rosenberg
Dear Friedrich,
With regret, I must cancel my upcoming visit. Though this is the third time I’ve done so, please don’t
give up on me. I am entirely serious in my desire for consultation with you, but demands on my time
have sharply increased. Last week Hitler asked me to replace Dietrich Eckart as editor in chief of the
Völkischer Beobachter. Hitler and I are closer now—he is much pleased about my publication of The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A month ago, with the help of a generous donor, the VB became a
daily and now has a circulation of 33,000 (and, by the way, you can now find copies available on Berlin
newsstands).
Every day there is a new crisis to report. Every day the future of Germany seems to hang in the
balance. For example, at the moment we must decide how to cope with the French, who have invaded
the Ruhr in order to extract their criminal reparation payments. And every day spiraling inflation brings
our entire country to the edge of the precipice. Can you believe that a U.S. dollar, that only a year ago
was worth 400 marks, is worth 20,000 marks this morning? Can you believe employers in Munich are
beginning to pay workers three times a day? Is it also true in Berlin? The wife accompanies her husband
to work, and they are paid once in the morning, and then she runs to buy breakfast before prices rise. She
appears at noon to collect the pay (higher now) and must again rush to buy lunch—100,000 marks that
bought four wursts the day before now buys only three—and a third time, again at a higher rate, at the
end of the day, when the money is safe once the markets close until the morning stock exchange opens.
It’s a scandal, a tragedy.
And it will get worse. I believe this will be the greatest hyperinflation in history: all Germans will be
pauperized except, of course, the Jews, who, naturally, profit from this nightmare. Their company safes
bulge with gold and foreign currency.
My life as a publisher is so hectic I find it impossible to leave the office for lunch, much less board the
train for the ten-hour, 20-million-mark journey to Berlin. Please let me know if ever anything brings you
to Munich so we could meet here. I would be most grateful. Have you ever considered practicing in
Munich? I could help: think of all the free ads I could run for you.
Dr. Karl Abraham read the letter and handed it back to Friedrich. “And how do you plan to
respond?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to use my supervisory hour today to discuss it. You remember him? I
described my talk with him some months ago.”
“The publisher of The Protocols of Zion? How could I forget him?”
“I haven’t seen Herr Rosenberg since then. Just some letters. But here’s yesterday’s copy of his
paper, the Völkischer Beobachter. Just look at this headline:
CHILD ABUSE IN VIENNA BORDELLO:
MANY JEWS INVOLVED
Glancing at the headline, Dr. Abraham shook his head in disgust and asked, “And The
Protocols—have you read it?”
“Only extracts and a few discussions that label it a fraud.”
“An obvious fraud, but a dangerous one. And I have no doubt that your patient, Rosenberg, knew
that. Reliable Jewish scholars in my community tell me that the Protocols were concocted by a
disreputable Russian writer, Serge Nilus, who wished to persuade the tsar that the Jews were trying to
dominate Russia. After reading The Protocols, the tsar ordered a series of bloody pogroms.”
“So,” Friedrich said, “my question is how can I do therapy with a patient who commits such vile
acts? I know he is dangerous. How do I handle my countertransference?”
“I prefer to think of countertransference as the therapist’s neurotic response to the patient. In this
case, your feelings have a rational basis. The proper question becomes, ‘How do you work with
someone who is, by any objective standard, a repulsive, malignant person capable of much
destruction?’”
Friedrich considered his supervisor’s words. “Repulsive, malignant. Strong words.”
“You’re right, Dr. Pfister—those were my terms, not yours, and I believe you’re alluding, quite
correctly, to another issue—the countertransference of the supervisor—which may interfere with my
ability to teach you. Being a Jew makes it impossible for me personally to treat this lethal, anti-Semitic
individual, but let’s see if perhaps I can still be of use as a supervisor. Tell me more about your
feelings toward him.”
“Though I’m not Jewish, I’m personally offended by his anti-Semitism. After all, the people I am
closest to here are almost all Jews—my analyst, you, and most of the faculty of the institute.”
Friedrich picked up Alfred’s letter. “Look. He writes proudly of his career advancements, expecting
me to be pleased. Instead I feel increasingly offended and frightened for you, for all civilized
Germans. I think he’s evil. And his idol, this Hitler, may be the devil incarnate.”
“That’s one part. Yet there is another part of you that wants to continue seeing him. Why?”
“It’s what we discussed before—my intellectual interest in analyzing someone whose past I
shared. I’ve known his brother all my life; I knew Alfred as a young child.”
“But Dr. Pfister, it’s obvious that you’ll never be able to analyze him. The distance alone makes that
impossible. At best you’ll see him only for a few scattered sessions and never be able to do deep
archaeological work on his past.”
“Right. I have to let that idea go. There must be other reasons.”
“I remember your telling me about your sense of an annihilated past. There is only your good
friend, the brother. I’ve forgotten his name—”
“Eugen.”
“Yes, there remains only Eugen Rosenberg and to a much lesser extent, in that you were never
close to him, Eugen’s younger brother, Alfred. Your parents are dead, no siblings, you have no other
contacts with your early life—neither persons nor places. It seems to me that you’re trying to deny
aging or transience by searching for something imperishable. You’re dealing with that, I hope, in your
personal analysis?”
“Not yet. But your comments are helpful. I cannot stop time by clinging to Eugen or Alfred. Yes,
Dr. Abraham, you’re making it clear that seeing Alfred does nothing for my inner conflicts.”
“That is so important, Dr. Pfister, I will repeat it. Seeing Alfred Rosenberg can do nothing for your inner
conflicts. The place for that is in your own analysis. Right?”
Friedrich nodded, resigned.
“So I ask again—why do you want to see him?”
“I’m unsure. I agree that he is a dangerous man, a man who spreads hatred. Yet I still think of him
as the little boy next door rather than a man who is evil. I consider him misguided, not demonic. He
truly believes that racial nonsense, and his thoughts and actions follow in a perfectly consistent
manner from Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s premises. I don’t believe he is a psychopath, a sadist,
or a violent person. He’s rather timid in fact, almost cowardly and insecure. He relates poorly to
others, and is entirely given over to the hope of love from his leader, Hitler. But still, he seems aware
of his limitations and surprisingly ready to do some therapeutic work.”
“So, then, your goals in therapy are . . .”
“Perhaps I’m being naïve, but isn’t it true that if I can change him into a more moral person, then
he’ll do less mischief in the world? That has got to be better than doing nothing. Perhaps I can even
help him address the power and the irrationality of his anti-Semitism.”
“Ah, if you could successfully analyze anti-Semitism, you’d get the Nobel prize that has, so far,
eluded Freud’s grasp. You have ideas about how to approach that?”
“Not yet—it’s off in the distance, and certainly it’s my goal, not the patient’s goal.”
“And his goal? What does he want?”
“His explicit goal is to relate more effectively to Hitler and other party members. I would have to
smuggle in anything loftier than that.”
“Are you a good smuggler?”
“Just a novice, but I have an idea. I’ve mentioned to you that I’ve tutored him on Spinoza. Well, in
Part 4 of the Ethics—the section on overcoming the bondage of passion—there is a phrase that
caught my attention. Spinoza says that reason is no match for passion and what we must do is to
turn reason into a passion.”
“Hmm, interesting. How do you propose to do that?”
“I don’t have a precise method in mind. But I know that I must fertilize his curiosity about himself.
Doesn’t everyone have an intense interest in himself? Doesn’t everyone want to know everything
about himself? I know I do. I shall strive to inflame Alfred’s self-curiosity.”
“Interesting way of framing therapy, Dr. Pfister. An original way. Let’s hope he’ll cooperate, and I’ll
do what I can to be helpful in supervision. But I wonder if there’s not a flaw in your argument.”
“Which is?”
“Overgeneralization. Therapists are different. We’re odd ducks. Most other people don’t share our
passionate curiosity about the mind. So far, I hear that his goal is vastly different from yours: what he
wants is to make himself more lovable to his fellow Nazis. So keep in mind the danger that therapy
just might make things worse for all of us! Let me be more concrete. If you succeed in helping
Rosenberg change in a way that would make Hitler love him more, then you’ll have only made him
more efficiently evil.”
“I understand. My task is to help him embrace another, quite opposite goal—to understand and
diminish his desperate and irrational need for Hitler’s love.”
Dr. Abraham smiled at his young student. “Precisely. I love your enthusiasm, Friedrich. Who
knows? Maybe you can do this. Let’s search for some professional meetings in Munich you might
attend and have additional sessions with him there.”
————
Bayreuth—October 1923
Despite his work pressures, Alfred followed through on his plan to pay a visit to Houston Stewart
Chamberlain and easily persuaded Hitler to join him. Hitler, too, had been set afire by Chamberlain’s
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century and would claim, to the end of his life, that Chamberlain (along
with Dietrich Eckart and Richard Wagner) were his primary intellectual mentors.
Chamberlain lived in Bayreuth, in Wahnfried, Wagner’s massive old home, with his wife, Eva
(Wagner’s daughter), and Cosima, Wagner’s eighty-six-year-old widow. The hundred-and-fifty-mile
drive to Bayreuth was most pleasant for Alfred. It was his first trip in Hitler’s gleaming new Mercedes
and an opportunity to enjoy Hitler’s sole attention for several hours.
A servant greeted them and led them upstairs, where Chamberlain sat in a wheelchair, his legs
neatly covered by a blue and green tartan blanket, and stared out of the large window overlooking the
Wagner inner courtyard. Ailing from some mysterious nervous disorder that left him partially
paralyzed and unable to speak clearly, Chamberlain looked far older than his seventy years: his skin
was blotchy, his eyes vacant, half of his face distorted by spasm. Fixing his eyes on Hitler’s face,
Chamberlain nodded from time to time and appeared to comprehend Hitler’s words. He never
glanced at Rosenberg. Hitler leaned forward, his mouth close to Chamberlain’s ear, and said, “I
treasure your words in your great book, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century: ‘The Germanic race is
engaged in a mortal struggle with the Jews that is to be fought not only with cannon but with every
weapon of human life and society.’” Chamberlain nodded, and Hitler continued, “Herr Chamberlain, I
promise that I am the man who will wage that war for you,” and went on at great length to describe
his twenty-five-point program and his absolute unshakeable determination to have a Jew-free Europe.
Chamberlain nodded vigorously and from time to time croaked, “Yes, yes.”
Later, when Hitler left the room for a private audience with Cosima Wagner, Rosenberg was left
alone with Chamberlain and told him that at the age of sixteen he, like Hitler, had been enthralled by
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century and that he, too, owed an enduring debt to Chamberlain. Then,
leaning closer to Chamberlain’s ear, as Hitler had done, he confided, “I’m starting to write a book that
I hope will continue your work for the next century.” Perhaps Chamberlain smiled—his face was so
distorted that it was hard to tell. Alfred continued, “Your ideas and your words shall be everywhere in
my pages. I am just beginning. It will be a five-year project—there is so much to be done. I have,
however, just written a passage for the ending: ‘The sacred hours of the Germans will reappear when
the symbol of awakening—the flag with the swastika sign of resurgent life—has become the sole
prevailing creed of the Reich.’” Chamberlain grunted. Perhaps he said, “Yes, yes.”
Alfred sat back in his chair and looked about. Hitler was still nowhere to be seen. Alfred again bent
over to Chamberlain’s ear, “Dear teacher, I need your help with something. It’s the Spinoza problem.
Tell me how this Jew from Amsterdam could have written works so greatly revered by the greatest of
German thinkers, including the immortal Goethe. How could this be possible?” Chamberlain moved
his head in agitated fashion and uttered some garbled sounds of which Rosenberg could only
distinguish, “Ja, Ja.” Shortly afterward he slumped into a deep sleep.
On their drive home, the two men spoke little of Chamberlain, for Alfred had another agenda: to
persuade Hitler that the time had come for the party to act. Alfred reminded Hitler of the basic facts.
“Chaos envelops Germany,” Alfred said. “Inflation is veering out of control. Four months ago, a
dollar was worth 75,000 deutschmarks, while yesterday a dollar was worth 150 million marks.
Yesterday my corner grocer was charging 90 million deutschmarks for a pound of potatoes. And I
know for a fact that, shortly, the treasury printing presses will be rolling out 1-trillion-mark notes.”
Hitler nodded wearily. He had heard all this from Alfred several times.
“And look at all the coups cropping up all over,” Alfred continued. “The Communist putsch in
Saxony, the Reichswehr reserve putsch in East Prussia, the Kapp coup in Berlin, the Rhenish
separatists’ coup. But it’s Munich and all of Bavaria that’s the real powder keg ready to explode.
Munich is crammed with a host of right-wing parties opposing the government in Berlin, but, of
these, we are by far the strongest, the most powerful, and the best organized. It is our time! I’ve
stirred up the populace with article after article in our newspaper, readying them for a major action by
the party.”
Hitler still appeared uncertain. Alfred pressed him, “Your time has come. You must act now, or
you will lose your moment.”
When the car arrived at the office building of the Völkischer Beobachter, Hitler merely said, “Much
to think about, Rosenberg.”
A few days later Hitler visited Alfred at his office and with a big smile waved a letter he had just
received from Houston Stewart Chamberlain and read parts of it aloud:
Sept. 23, 1923
Most respected and dear Herr Hitler:
You have every right to be surprised at this intrusion, having seen with your own eyes how difficult it is
for me to speak. But I cannot resist the urge to address a few words to you.
I have been wondering why it was you of all people, you who are so extraordinary in awakening people
from sleep and humdrum routines, who recently gave me a longer and more refreshing sleep than I have
experienced since that fateful day in August 1914, when I was first struck down by this insidious sickness.
Now I believe I understand that it is precisely this that characterizes and defines your being: the true
awakener is at the same time the bestower of peace. . .
That you brought me peace is related very much to your eyes and hand gestures. Your eye works
almost as a hand: it grips and holds a person; and you have the singular quality of being able to focus
your words on one particular listener at any given moment. As for your hands, they are so expressive in
their movement that they rival your eyes. Such a man brings rest to a poor suffering spirit! Especially
when he is dedicated to the service of the Fatherland.
My faith in Germandom has never wavered for a moment, though my hopes had, I confess, reached a
low ebb. At one blow you have transformed the state of my soul. That Germany in its hour of greatest
need has given birth to a Hitler is proof of vitality; your actions offer further evidence, for a man’s
personality and actions belong together.
I was able to sleep without a care. Nothing caused me to awaken again. May God protect you!
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
“He must have recovered his speech and dictated it—a magnificent letter,” said Alfred as he
strained to conceal his envy. Then he quickly added, “And well deserved, Herr Hitler.”
“Now, let me give you some real news,” Hitler said. “Erich Ludendorff has joined forces with us!”
“Well done! Well done!” replied Alfred. Ludendorff was, to put it mildly, eccentric, but he was still
universally respected as the world war field marshal.
“He agrees with my idea of a putsch,” Hitler continued. “He agrees that we should combine forces
with other right-wing groups, even the monarchist groups and the Bavarian separatists, and storm
into the evening meeting on November 8, kidnap several Bavarian government officials, and force
them at gunpoint to accept me as their leader. The following day we will all march through the center
of the city to the war ministry and, with the help of the hostages and the reputation of Field Marshal
Ludendorff, win over the German army. And then we will emulate Mussolini’s march to Rome by
marching on to Red Berlin and bring down the German democratic government.”
“Excellent! We’re on our way.” Alfred was so joyful that he barely minded Hitler overlooking that
Alfred had suggested this very plan to him. He was used to having Hitler appropriate his ideas
without crediting him.
But everything went wrong. The putsch was a complete fiasco. On the evening of November 8,
Hitler and Alfred went together to the meeting of the coalition of right-wing parties. These parties had
never before conferred together, and the meeting grew so unruly that at one point Hitler had to jump
on a table and fire his pistol at the ceiling to establish order. The Nazis then kidnapped the delegates
of the Bavarian government to hold as hostages. However, thinking they had come over to the Nazi
view, the kidnappers failed to guard them properly, and the hostages escaped into the night.
Nonetheless, Hitler acceded to Ludendorff’s insistence that they proceed with their mass march in
the morning, with the hope of creating an uprising among the citizens. Ludendorff was certain that
neither the army nor the police would dare to fire upon him. Rosenberg rushed back to the office and
prepared the VB’s headlines calling for general revolt. Early in the morning of November 9, 1923, a
column of two thousand men, many of them armed, including Hitler and Rosenberg, began their
march to the center of Munich. In the front row were Hitler; Field Marshal Ludendorff, resplendent in
his full military uniform with his world war pickle helmet; Hermann Göring, the popular world war
ace wearing all his many war decorations; and Scheubner-Richter, who walked arm in arm with his
close friend Hitler. Rosenberg was in the second row directly behind Hitler. Rudolf Hess marched
behind Rosenberg, as did Putzi Hanfstaengl (the donor who had enabled the VB to become a daily
paper). A few rows back, Heinrich Himmler marched, carrying the Nazi Party flag.
As they reached an open square, a barricade of troops awaited them. Hitler yelled to the troops to
surrender. Instead they opened fire, and a three-minute firefight ensued during which the marchers
immediately disbanded. Sixteen Nazis and three troops were killed. Field Marshal Ludendorff
marched straight ahead unflinchingly to the barricade, pushed the rifles aside, and was greeted
politely by an officer who apologized for the necessity of taking him into protective custody. Göring
was wounded twice in the groin but crawled to safety and was taken to a kindly Jewish physician who
gave him excellent treatment, after which he was quickly driven out of the country. Scheubner-Richter,
who had locked arms with Hitler, was instantly killed and dragged Hitler to the ground, dislocating
his shoulder. A bodyguard, Ulrich Graf, fell on Hitler and took several bullets, saving Hitler’s life.
Though the man standing next to Alfred was killed, Alfred was unharmed and crawled to the
sidewalk away from the carnage and scampered into the crowd. He did not dare go home or to the
office—the government immediately closed the VB indefinitely and posted guards before the
newspaper offices. Ultimately Alfred persuaded an elderly woman to allow him to hide in her house
during the next few days, while at night he wandered through Munich trying to learn the fate of his
comrades. Hitler, in great pain, had crawled a few feet, was pulled into a waiting car, and,
accompanied by a party physician, was driven to the home of Putzi Hanfstaengl, where his shoulder
was treated and he was hidden in the attic. Just before he was arrested, he scribbled a note addressed
to Alfred and asked Frau Hanfstaengl to deliver it. She found Alfred the following day and handed him
the note, which he immediately ripped open and to his great surprise read:
DEAR ROSENBERG, LEAD THE MOVEMENT FROM NOW ON.
ADOLF HITLER
==
27CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RIJNSBURG—1662
Within a few days, Bento’s fear had subsided. Gone were the racing pulse, the tight chest, and the
intrusive visions of the assassin’s attack. And what a blessed relief to breathe easily and feel safe in
his skin! With some dispassion, he could even visualize the assassin’s face and, following Franco’s
suggestion, look at the slashed black overcoat hanging in plain sight on the wall of his room.
For weeks after the assassination attempt and Franco’s visit, he pondered the mechanisms of
overcoming terror. How had he recovered his equanimity? Was it not his improved understanding of
the causes motivating the assassin? Bento leaned toward that explanation—it felt robust; it felt
reasonable. Yet he was suspicious of his strong attachment to the power of understanding. After all, it
hadn’t helped him at first; it was only after Franco appeared that the idea gained purchase. The more
he thought about it, the clearer it was that Franco offered something essential to his recovery. Bento
knew he had been at his worst when Franco arrived and then, very quickly, began to improve. But
what precisely had Franco offered? Perhaps his major contribution was to have dissected the
ingredients of the terror and to have demonstrated that Bento was particularly unsettled by the fact
that his assassin was a Jew. In other words, the terror was augmented by his buried pain of separation
from his people. That might explain Franco’s healing power: not only had he helped the process of
reason, but, possibly even more importantly, he offered his sheer presence—his Jewish presence.
And Franco had also jolted Bento out of his tormented jealousy by confronting him with the
irrationality of yearning for something that he neither truly desired nor could possibly have. Bento
steadily regained his tranquility and before long reestablished his camaraderie with Clara Maria and
Dirk. Still, dark clouds gathered in his mind once again the day Clara Maria appeared wearing a pearl
necklace given to her by Dirk. The clouds became a major squall a few days afterward, when they
announced their engagement. But this time reason prevailed; Bento maintained his equilibrium and
refused to allow passions to rupture his relationships with his two good friends.
Even so, Bento clung to the tactile memory of Clara Maria holding his hand throughout that night
after the attack. And he recalled, too, the way Franco had clasped his shoulder and also how he and
his brother Gabriel had often held hands. But there would be no more touching for him, however
much his body yearned for it. Sometimes fantasies of touching and embracing Clara Maria or her
aunt Martha, whom he also found attractive, stole into his mind, but they were easily swept away.
Nighttime yearnings were another matter: he could lock no doors barring entry into his dreams, nor
could he stem the nocturnal flow of his seed often staining his bedclothes. All this, of course, he held
in the deepest vaults of silence, but were he to share it with Franco, he could predict the response: “It
has always been thus—sexual pressure is part of our creatureliness; it is the force that allows our
kind to persevere.”
Though Bento saw the wisdom of Franco’s advice to leave Amsterdam, he nonetheless lingered
there for several more months. His linguistic skills as well as his powers of logic resulted in many
Collegiants seeking his help with translation of Hebrew and Latin documents. Soon the Collegiants
had formed a philosophy club headed by his friend Simon de Vries that met regularly and often
discussed ideas formulated by Bento.
But this growing appreciative circle of acquaintances, so salutary for his self-esteem, also intruded
heavily into his time, making it difficult for him to attend fully to the thoughts burgeoning within him.
He spoke to Simon de Vries of his desire for a quieter life, and soon Simon, with the help of other
philosophy club members, identified a house in Rijnsburg where he could live. Rijnsburg, a small
community on the river Vliet forty kilometers from Amsterdam, was not only the center of the
Collegiant movement but conveniently close to the University of Leiden, where Bento, now proficient
in Latin, would be able to attend philosophy classes and enjoy the company of other scholars.
Bento found Rijnsburg much to his liking. The house was made of sturdy stone, with several
small-paned windows looking out to a well-tended apple orchard. On the entry wall was painted a
brief verse echoing the discontent of many Collegiants about the state of the world:
Alas! If all men were wise,
and benign as well
then the Earth would be Paradise
whereas now it is often a Hell!
Bento’s quarters consisted of two ground-floor rooms, one for his study, burgeoning library, and
four-poster bed; the other a smaller work room holding his lens-grinding equipment. Dr. Hooman, a
surgeon, lived with his wife in the other half of the house—a combined large kitchen and living room
and an upstairs bedroom, reached by a steep stairway.
Bento paid a small additional fee for supper, which he usually took with Dr. Hooman and his most
congenial wife. Sometimes, after his long days of solitary writing and lens grinding, he looked forward
to their company, but when he was particularly engrossed in an idea, he reverted to old habits and for
several days supped in his room, staring at the fecund apple trees in the rear orchard, while he
thought and wrote.
A year passed most agreeably. One September morning Bento awoke feeling out of sorts, listless,
and achy. Yet he decided to proceed with his plans to travel to Amsterdam to deliver some fine
telescope lenses to a client. Moreover, his friend Simon de Vries, the secretary of the Collegiant
Philosophy Club, had arranged for him to be present at a meeting for a discussion of the first part of
Bento’s new work. Bento pulled Simon’s most recent letter from his bag and reread it.
Most Honorable Friend—I await your arrival with impatience. I sometimes complain of my lot, in that
we are separated from each other by so long a distance. Happy, yes, most happy is Doctor Hooman,
abiding under the same roof with you, who can talk with you on the best of subjects, at dinner, at
supper, and during your walks. However, though I am far apart from you in body, you have been very
frequently present to my mind, especially in your writings, while I read and turn them over. But as they
are not all clear to the members of our club, for which reason we have begun a fresh series of meetings,
and we look forward to your explanation of difficult passages, so that we may be better able under your
guidance to defend the truth against those who are superstitiously religious and to withstand the attack
of the whole world.
Your most devoted,
S. J. DE VRIES
As he folded up the letter, Bento experienced both joy and uneasiness—joy at Simon’s good words
but suspiciousness of his own yearning for an admiring audience. Without doubt moving to
Rijnsburg was a wise decision. Wiser yet, he imagined, might be an even farther move from
Amsterdam.
He walked the short distance to Oegstgeest, where, for 21 stuivers, he boarded the morning
trekschuit, a horse-drawn barge that took passengers down the small trekvaart, the canal recently dug
that ran straight to Amsterdam. For a few stuivers more he could have sat in the cabin, but it was a
fine sunny day, and he sat on the deck and reread the beginning of his paper, “Treatise on the
Emendation of the Intellect,” to be discussed the following day by Simon’s philosophy club. He had
begun by describing his personal search for happiness.
After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile;
seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad,
except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be
some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the
exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and
attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
Next he described his inability to achieve his goal while still clutching his cultural beliefs that the
highest good consisted of riches, fame, and the sensual pleasures. These goods, he insisted, were
not good for one’s health. He carefully read his comments about the limitations of these three
worldly goods.
By sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme good were
actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when such pleasure
has been gratified it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled,
is disturbed and dulled.
In the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed, for fame is conceived as always good for its
own sake, and as the ultimate end to which all actions are directed. Further, the attainment of riches
and fame is not followed as in the case of sensual pleasures by repentance, but, the more we
acquire, the greater is our delight, and, consequently, the more are we incited to increase both the
one and the other; on the other hand, if our hopes happen to be frustrated, we are plunged into the
deepest sadness.
Fame has the further drawback that it compels its votaries to order their lives according to the
opinions of their fellow-men, shunning what they usually shun, and seeking what they usually seek.
Bento nodded, particularly satisfied with his description of the problem of fame. Now to the
remedy: he had expressed his difficulties letting go of a sure and accustomed good for something
uncertain. Then he had immediately tempered that idea by saying that, since he sought for a fixed
good, something unchangeable, it was clearly not uncertain in its nature but only in its attainment.
Though he was pleased with the progression of his arguments, he grew uncomfortable as he
continued to read. Perhaps he had said and revealed too much of himself in several passages:
I thus perceived that I was in a state of great peril, and I compelled myself to seek with all my
strength for a remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling with a deadly
disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled
to seek a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein.
He felt flushed as he read and began to murmur to himself. “This is not philosophy. This is far too
personal. What have I done? This is simply passionate argument intended to evoke emotions. I
resolve . . . no, more than resolve, I vow . . . that in the future, Bento Spinoza and his search, his
fears, his hopes, will be invisible. I write falsely if I cannot persuade readers entirely by the reason of
my arguments.”
He nodded as he continued reading passages describing how men have sacrificed all, even their
lives, in pursuit of riches, reputation, and indulgence in sensual pleasures. Now to introduce the
remedy in short strong passages.
(1) All these evils seem to have arisen from the fact that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly
dependent on the quality of the object which we love.
(2) When a thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it—no sadness be felt, no hatred,
in short no disturbances of the mind.
(3) All these arise from the love of what is perishable, such as the objects already mentioned.
(4) But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself
unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our
strength.
He could read no more. His head began to throb—he definitely did not feel himself today—and he
closed his eyes and dozed for what seemed a quarter of an hour. The first thing he saw when he
awakened was a tightly clustered group of twenty to thirty strolling next to the canal. Who were they?
Where were they going? He could not take his eyes off of them as the trekschuit neared and then
passed the group. At the next stop, still at least an hour’s walk to Simon de Vries’s home in
Amsterdam, where he would spend the night, he surprised himself by grabbing his bag, jumping off
the barge, and heading backward, toward the strolling group.
Soon he drew close enough to notice that the men, who were dressed in working-class Dutch garb,
all wore yarmulkes. Yes, without doubt, they were Jews, but Ashkenazi Jews, who would not recognize
him. He drew closer. The group had stopped at a clearing by the banks of the canal and gathered
about their leader, undoubtedly their rabbi, who began chanting at the very edge of the water. Bento
edged closer to the group to hear his words. One elderly woman, short and stocky, her shoulders
covered with heavy black cloth, eyed Bento for several minutes and then slowly approached him.
Bento looked at her wrinkled face, so kind, so maternal that he thought of his own mother. But no,
his mother had died at a younger age than he was now. This old woman would be her mother’s age.
She moved closer to him and said, “Bist an undzeriker?” (“Are you one of us?”).
Though Bento had picked up only small bits of Yiddish from his commercial dealings with
Ashkenazi Jews, he understood her question perfectly yet was unable to answer. Finally, shaking his
head, he whispered, “Sephardic.”
“Ah, ir zayt an undzeriker. Ot iz a matone fun Rifke.” (“Then you are one of us. Here, here is a gift
from Rifke.”) She reached into her apron pocket, handed him a sizeable chunk of fresh bread, and
pointed to the canal.
He nodded thanks, and as she walked away, Bento slapped his forehead and murmured to himself,
“Tashlich. Astounding . . . it’s Rosh Hashanah—how could I have forgotten?” He knew the
ceremony of Tashlich well. For centuries congregations of Jews had held a Rosh Hashanah service
near the banks of running water that ended by their throwing bread into the water. The words of the
scriptures came back to him: “The Lord will take us back in love; He will cover up our iniquities. You
will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
He edged closer to listen to the rabbi, who urged his congregation, the men clustered about him
and the women in an outer circle, to think of all their regrets of the past year, all their acts of
unkindness and their ignoble thoughts, their envy and pride and guilt, and told them to shed them, to
toss unworthy thoughts away just as they now threw away their bread. The rabbi tossed his bread into
the water, and immediately the others followed suit. Bento momentarily reached into the his pocket
where he had put his bread but pulled his hand back. He disliked participating in any ritual, and,
besides, he was a bystander and was too far from the canal. The rabbi chanted the prayers in Hebrew,
and Bento reflexively murmured the words with him. It was, all in all, a pleasing and most sensible
ceremony, and as the crowd turned back to walk to their synagogue, many nodded to him and said,
“Gut Yontef” (“Good holiday”). He reciprocated with a smile, “Gut Yontef dir” (“Good holiday to
you”). He liked their faces; they seemed like good people. Even though their appearance differed from
his own Sephardic community, still they resembled the people he had known as a child. Simple but
thoughtful. Serene and comfortable with one another. He missed them. Oh, he missed them.
As he walked to Simon’s house, nibbling Rifke’s bread, Bento pondered his experience. Obviously
he had underestimated the power of the past. Its stamp is indelible; it cannot be erased; it colors the
present and vastly influences feelings and actions. More clearly than ever before, he understood how
nonconscious thoughts and feelings are a part of the causative network. So many things became
clear: the healing power with which he imbued Franco, the strong sweet tug of the Tashlich
ceremony, even the extraordinary taste of Rifke’s bread that he chewed slowly as if to extract every
particle of flavor. What’s more, he knew for certain that his mind undoubtedly contained an unseen
calendar: though he had forgotten Rosh Hashanah, some part of his mind had remembered that
today marked the beginning of a new year. Perhaps it was this hidden knowledge that lay behind the
malaise that had plagued him the entire day. With this thought, his aches and his heaviness vanished.
His stride quickened as he headed toward Amsterdam and Simon de Vries.
==
28CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
FRIEDRICH’S OFFICE,
OLIVAER PLATZ 3, BERLIN—1925
For it is not you, gentlemen, who pass judgment on us. That judgment is spoken by the eternal
court of history . . . Pronounce us guilty a thousand times over: the goddess of the eternal court
of history will smile and tear to pieces the State Prosecutor’s submissions and the court’s
verdict; for she acquits us.
—Adolf Hitler, final lines of his 1924 Munich trial speech
On April 1, 1925, the VB had reappeared as a daily again. And who was reinstalled as editor, in
spite of all my pleadings and arguments?—Rosenberg, the insufferable, narrow-minded, mock
mythologist, the anti-Semitic half-Jew, who, I maintain to this day, did more harm to the
movement than any man except Goebbels.
—Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstaengl
Hitler’s note utterly astounded me. Here, Friedrich, I want you to see it with your own eyes. I carry it
in my wallet at all times. I now keep it in an envelope—it’s starting to fall apart.”
Friedrich took the packet gingerly, unfolded the envelope, and extracted the note.
DEAR ROSENBERG, LEAD THE MOVEMENT FROM NOW ON.
ADOLF HITLER
“So this was given to you just after the failed putsch—two years ago?”
“The day after. He wrote it on November 10, 1923.”
“Tell me more about your reaction.”
“As I say, stunned. I hadn’t a single clue he would select me to succeed him.”
“Keep going.”
Alfred shook his head. “I . . .” He choked up for a moment and then regained his composure and
blurted out: “I was jolted. Bewildered. How could it be? Hitler never spoke of my leading the party
before this note—and never spoke of it again after he wrote it!”
Hitler never spoke of it before or after. Friedrich tried to digest that odd thought but continued
focusing on Alfred’s emotions. His analytic training had made him more patient. He knew all would
unfold in time. “A lot of emotion in your voice, Alfred. It’s important to follow feelings. What comes
up for you?”
“Everything fell apart with the putsch. The party was dispersed. The leaders were either in jail, like
Hitler, or out of the country, like Göring, or in hiding, like me. The government outlawed the party
and permanently closed the Völkischer Beobachter. It reopened only a few months ago, and I’m back at
my old job.”
“I want to hear about all of this, but for the moment go back to your feelings about the note. Do
what we’ve done before: imagine the scene when you opened the note for the first time, and then say
whatever floats into your mind.”
Alfred closed his eyes and concentrated. “Pride. Great pride—he chose me, me above all the
rest—he passed his mantle to me. It meant everything. That’s why I carry it with me. I had no idea he
trusted me and valued me so much. What else? Great joy. It was perhaps the proudest moment of my
life. No, not perhaps, it was my proudest moment. I loved him so much for that. And then . . . and
then . . .”
“And then what, Alfred? Don’t stop.”
“And then it all turned to shit! That note. Everything! My greatest joy turned into the greatest . . .
the greatest pestilence of my life.”
“From joy to pestilence. Fill me in on the transformation.” Friedrich knew his comments were
unnecessary. Alfred was bursting to talk.
“It would take all my time today to answer in detail, so much has happened.” Alfred looked at his
watch.
“I know you can’t tell me everything about the last three years, but I’ll need at least some brief
overview if I’m to really understand your distress.”
Alfred looked at the high ceiling of Friedrich’s spacious office and gathered his thoughts. “How to
put it? In essence that note gave me an impossible task. I was asked to lead a sorry cadre of
venomous men all scheming for power, all with personal agendas, each one set on defeating me.
Each one shallow and stupid, each one threatened by my superior intelligence and entirely unable to
comprehend my words. Each profoundly ignorant of the principles the party stood for.”
“And Hitler? He asked you to lead the party. No support from him?”
“Hitler? He has been entirely bewildering and has made my life more difficult. You’ve not followed
the drama of our party?”
“Sorry, but I’m not keeping up with political events. I continue to be consumed by new
developments in my field and by all the patients calling upon me—mostly ex-soldiers. Besides, it’s
best I hear everything from your perspective.”
“I’ll summarize. As you probably know, in 1923 we tried to persuade the leaders of the Bavarian
government to join us in a march on Berlin patterned on Mussolini’s march on Rome. But our putsch
was an utter fiasco. In everyone’s view it could not have been worse. It was poorly planned and poorly
executed and disintegrated at the first sign of resistance. When Hitler wrote that note to me, he was
hiding in Putzi Hanfstaengl’s attic, facing imminent arrest and possible deportation. When Frau
Hanfstaengl delivered the note, she described what had happened. Three cars of policemen came to
the house, and Hitler grew frenzied and waved his pistol, saying he would shoot himself before he let
those swine take him. Fortunately, her husband had taught her jujitsu, and Hitler, with his injured
shoulder, was no match for her. Frau Hanfstaengl wrestled the gun from his hands and threw it into a
huge two-hundred-kilo barrel of flour. After quickly scribbling a note to me, Hitler went meekly to jail.
Everyone thought his career was over. Hitler was finished—he was a national laughing stock.
“Or so it seemed. But it was at this lowest point that his true genius emerged. He turned the fiasco
into pure gold. I’ll be honest: he has treated me like shit. I’m devastated by what he did to me, and yet
at this moment I am more convinced than ever that he is a man of destiny.”
“Explain that to me, Alfred.”
“His moment of redemption came at the trial. There, all the other putsch participants meekly
pleaded not guilty to the charges of treason. Some were given light sentences—for example, Hess got
seven months. Some, like the untouchable Field Marshal Ludendorff, were found not guilty and freed
immediately. But Hitler alone insisted on pleading guilty to treason and at his trial entranced the
judges, the spectators, the reporters from every major newspaper in Germany with a four-hour
miraculous speech. It was his greatest moment—a moment that made him a hero to all Germans.
Surely you know of this?”
“Yes. All the papers reported on the trial, but I’ve never actually read the speech.”
“Unlike all the other weaklings pleading not guilty, he proclaimed his guilt again and again. ‘If,’ he
said, ‘overthrowing this government of November criminals, who stabbed the valiant German army in
the back, is high treason, then I am guilty. If wanting to restore the glorious majesty of our German
nation is treason, then I am guilty.’ If wanting to restore the honor of the German army is treason,
then I am guilty. The judges were so moved, they congratulated him, shook his hand, and wanted to
acquit him, but they could not: he insisted on pleading guilty to treason. In the end, they sentenced
him to five years in the minimum security prison at Landsberg but assured him of an early pardon.
And, thus, in one extraordinary afternoon, he suddenly went from being a small-time politician and
laughing stock to a universally admired national figure.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed his name is now known to all. Thanks for filling me in. There’s something
sticking in my mind I’d like to return to—your strong term ‘pestilence.’ What happened between you
and Adolf Hitler?”
“What didn’t happen? The most recent thing—the real reason I’m here—is that he publicly
humiliated me. He had one of his major tantrums, and in a rage he viciously accused me of
incompetence, disloyalty, and all the crimes in the calendar. Don’t ask me for more details. I have
blotted it out and remember only fragments, the way one remembers a flitting nightmare. It has been
two weeks, and I still haven’t recovered.”
“I see how shaken you are. What prompted this rage?”
“Party politics. I decided to run some candidates in the 1924 parliamentary elections. Clearly our
future is in that direction. The disastrous putsch proved that we had no choice but to enter the
parliamentary system. Our party was in tatters and would have dissolved entirely otherwise. Since the
NSDAP was outlawed, I proposed that our members join forces with a different party, led by Field
Marshal Ludendorff. I discussed this at length with Hitler in one of my many visits to the Landsberg
prison. For weeks he refused to make a decision but finally granted me the authority to decide. That’s
like him—he’ll rarely make a decision on policy, leaving it instead to his subordinates to battle it out.
I made the choice, and we did well in the election. Later, however, when Ludendorff attempted to
marginalize him, Hitler publicly denounced my decision and proclaimed that no one could speak for
him—thus withdrawing all authority from me.”
“It sounds as though his rage at you is displaced anger—that is, it was misdirected and flowed
from other sources, especially the prospect of losing his power.”
“Yes, yes, Friedrich. Exactly. Hitler is preoccupied now with one thing and one thing only—his
position as leader. Nothing else, certainly not our basic principles, matters as much. Ever since he
was pardoned after thirteen months in Landsberg, he has changed. He has developed a faraway look,
as though he sees what others cannot, as though he is above and beyond terrestrial matters. And he
now absolutely insists on everyone calling him ‘Führer’—nothing else. He’s grown inexpressibly
distant with me.”
“I remember your talking during our last meeting about how you felt he stayed distant from you,
how chagrined you were when you witnessed him being more intimate with others—was it Göring
you talked about?”
“Yes, exactly. But it’s far more extensive now. In public he holds himself back from everyone. And
this lout, Göring, is a big part of the problem. Not only is he unctuous, divisive, and abusive to me,
but his open drug addiction is a disgrace. I’m told that in public meetings he takes out his bottle of
pills every hour and gulps a handful. I tried to throw him out of the party but could not obtain Hitler’s
agreement. In fact, Göring is the other major reason I’m here today. Though he is still out of the
country, I’ve heard from good sources that Göring is spreading the vicious rumor that Hitler
deliberately chose me to lead the party in his absence because he knew I was the most unsuitable
candidate imaginable. In other words, I’d be so inept that Hitler’s own position and power would be
unthreatened. I don’t know what to do. I’m ready to jump out of my skin.” Alfred sank back into his
chair, hands over his eyes. “I need your help. I keep imagining talking to you.”
“What do you imagine my saying or doing?”
“There I draw a blank. I never get that far.”
“Try to imagine my speaking to you in a manner that would relieve your pain. Tell me, what would
be the perfect thing for me to say?” This was one of Friedrich’s favorite ploys, as it always led to
deeper investigation of the therapist-patient relationship. Not today.
“I can’t, I can’t do it. I need to hear from you.”
Seeing that Alfred was too agitated to do much reflection, Friedrich offered support as best he
could. “Alfred, here’s what I’ve been thinking as you spoke. First, I feel the weight of your burden.
This is a horror story. It’s as though you’re in a viper’s nest and you’re dealt with unfairly and
viciously by everyone. And though I’m listening hard, I haven’t heard any affirmation from any
source.”
Alfred exhaled loudly. “You already understand. I knew you would. No one else validates anything I
do. I made the correct decision about the election, and the Führer now pursues exactly the same path
I proposed. But never, never do I ever hear praise.”
“From no one in your life?”
“There’s praise from my wife, Hedwig—I remarried recently—but her praise isn’t important. Only
Hitler’s words count.”
“Let me ask you something, Alfred. This abuse you’re getting, the vicious rumors, Hitler’s
demeaning tirade, the total lack of appreciation—why do you put up with it? What keeps you locked
in, asking for more? Why aren’t you taking better care of yourself?”
Alfred shook his head as though he had been expecting this query. “I dislike sounding banal but I
have to live. I need the money. What else can I do? I’m well-known as a radical journalist, and there
are no other work opportunities. My professional training as an architect won’t find me work. Did I
ever tell you my dissertation project was designing a crematorium?”
When Friedrich shook his head, Alfred continued, “Well, I’m afraid that in Catholic Bavaria no one
is clamoring to build more crematoriums. No, I have no other work options.”
“But to yoke yourself to Hitler and to put up with such abuse and allow your whole self-esteem to
soar or plunge depending upon his mood is not a good recipe for stability or well-being. Why does
his love for you mean so very much?”
“That’s not the way I look at it. It’s not just his love I seek; it’s his facilitation. My raison d’être is
race purification. I know in my heart this is my life work. If I want Germany to rise again, if I want a
Jew-free Germany and a Jew-free Europe, then I must remain with Hitler. Only through him can I bring
these things to pass.”
Friedrich glanced at the clock. There was still ample time, for they had scheduled a double session
and another double session tomorrow. “Alfred, I have a thought about Hitler’s change in behavior
toward you. I think it’s linked to his change in demeanor, his assumption of a visionary posture. It
seems he is trying to re-create himself, to become larger than life. And I think he wishes to distance
himself from all those who knew him when he was simply an ordinary human being. Perhaps that lies
behind his detaching himself from you.”
Alfred pondered that thought. “I hadn’t quite put it that way. But I think there is much truth to what
you’re saying. He has a new in-group, and all of us in the out-group have to work hard to catch his
ear. With the single exception of Göring, he’s excluded the entire old guard. There’s one particularly
malignant newcomer, Joseph Goebbels, who I believe is going to be the Mephisto of our once upright
movement. I can’t stand him, and the feeling is fully reciprocated. Right now, Goebbels is the editor
of a Nazi daily in Berlin, and soon he’ll be managing all Nazi elections. And there is another insider:
Rudolf Hess. He’s been around for a while and commanded an SA division in the putsch. But still he
came into Hitler’s life much later than I. He was in a nearby cell in Landsberg and visited Hitler daily.
Since he had been planning to go into his father’s business, Hess had training as a stenographer and
began taking dictation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. I admit I envied Hess. I’d gladly have gone to jail if I
could have met with Hitler daily. They finished the first volume in prison, and I believe Hess did a lot
of the editing—much of it very badly. Here I am, the party’s leading intellectual and best writer by
far—you’d think he would have asked me to edit it. I could have improved it so much. For sure I
would have cut several passages that he now openly regrets having written—the crackpot section on
syphilis for sure. But not once did he ask.”
“Why didn’t he ask?”
“I’ve got some good hunches that I can’t share with anyone else but you. For one thing, I think he
knew I would not have been an impartial editor because of all the ideas he’d purloined from me. You
see, before he went to jail, I was the official party philosopher. In fact, some of the leftist papers
regularly published such statements as “Hitler is Rosenberg’s mouthpiece” or “Hitler commands
what Rosenberg wills.” This vexed him no end, and now he wants to make it crystal clear that he is
the sole author of party ideology and that I had no role in this work. In Mein Kampf he is quite explicit
about this. I’ve memorized this line: ‘Within long spans of human progress it may occasionally
happen that the practical politician and political philosopher are one.’ He wants to be regarded as this
rare kind of leader.”
Alfred leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment.
“You look more relaxed, Alfred.”
“It helps to talk to you.”
“Shall we explore that. How do I help?”
“You give me new ways to look at what’s happened to me. It’s a relief to talk an intelligent fellow
being. I am surrounded by such mediocrity.”
“It’s as though this place, this manner of talking offers some respite from your isolation. Right?”
Alfred nodded.
“Yes,” Friedrich continued, “and I’m glad to offer that. But it’s not enough. I wonder if there is
some way I can offer you something more substantial than relief. Something deeper and more
enduring.”
“I’m all for that. But how?”
“Let me try. I’ll start with a question. There is a lot of negative feeling coming toward you from
Hitler and from many others. My question is: what role do you play in this?”
“I’ve already addressed that. Over and over again, I am resented because of my superior
intelligence. I have a complex mind, and most people cannot follow the intricacies of my thought. It’s
not my fault, but people feel intimidated by me. As a result of not being able to fully comprehend my
ideas, many feel stupid and then lash out at me as though it were my fault.”
“No, that’s not quite what I’m after. I’m really trying to get at the question of ‘What do you want to
change about yourself?’ Because that is what I try to do—help my patients change. Your answer that
your problem stems from your superior mind leads us to a dead end because naturally you don’t
want to want to sacrifice any of your superior mind. No one would want that.”
“I’m lost, Friedrich.”
“What I mean is that therapy consists of change, and I’m trying to help you sort out what you want
to change in yourself. If you say that your problems are due entirely to others, then I don’t have any
therapeutic leverage other than simply soothing you and helping you learn to tolerate abuse or
suggesting you find other associates.” Friedrich tried another tact that almost always was fruitful.
“Here, let me put it this way—what percentage of the problems you’re facing are caused by others? Is
it 20 or 50 or 70 or 90 percent?”
“There is no way to measure that.”
“Of course, but I don’t expect accuracy; I simply want your wildest estimate. Humor me on this,
Alfred.”
“All right, let’s say 90 percent.”
“Good. And that means that 10 percent of these aggravating events that upset you so are your
responsibility. That can give us some direction. You and I need to explore that 10 percent and see if
we can understand and then change it. Are you with me, Alfred?”
“I’m getting that strange light-headed feeling I’ve gotten each time I’ve spoken to you.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The process of change often feels destabilizing. So back to
work. Let’s examine that 10 percent. I want to know about what role you play in others treating you so
abusively.”
“I’ve already covered that. I told you it was the envy of the common man for the one with soaring
imagination and intellect.”
“People mistreating you because of your superiority belongs to the 90 percent category. Let’s stay
focused on the 10 percent—your part of it. You say you are excluded, disliked, the victim of rumors.
What do you do to bring that about?”
“I’ve done my best to persuade Hitler to get rid of the chaff, the small minds—the Görings, the
Streichers, the Himmlers, the Röhms—but to no avail.”
“But Alfred, you speak of the superiority of the Aryan bloodline, and yet these very men will, if
Hitler prevails, become the Aryan rulers. How can that be if they are part of the Aryan bloodline?
Surely they must have some strengths, some virtues?”
“They need education and enlightenment. The book I’m working on will provide the education that
our future Aryan leaders will require. If Hitler will only back me, I can elevate and purify their
thinking.”
Friedrich felt dazed. How could he have so greatly underestimated the strength of Alfred’s
resistance? He tried again. “The last time we met, Alfred, you spoke of how others in your office
referred to you as the ‘sphinx’ and also how Dietrich Eckart’s criticism had persuaded you to make
some significant changes in yourself. Remember?”
“Past history. That saga and the influence of Dietrich Eckart are over. He died several months ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. A big loss for you?”
“It’s mixed. I owe much to him, but our relationship deteriorated when Hitler decided Eckart was
too ill and too weak to continue as editor in chief of the VB, and appointed me in his stead. It was not
my fault, but Eckart blamed me for it. Though I tried my best, I could not persuade him that I didn’t
scheme against him. Only as he approached death did his rancor toward me lessen. At my last visit
he beckoned me to come close to his bed and whispered in my ear, ‘Follow Hitler. He will dance. But
remember it is I who called the tune.’ After his death Hitler called him the ‘pole star’ of the Nazi
movement. But, as with me, Hitler never credited him with teaching him anything specific.”
Friedrich’s energy ebbed, but he kept trying. “Let’s go back to the point I was trying to make. When
you worked for Eckart, you told me you wanted to make changes in yourself, to be less of a sphinx, to
schmooze—”
“That was then. Now I have no intention of weakening myself to curry the favor of inferior minds.
In fact, I now find that thought repugnant. That very idea is a microcosm of the great issue we as a
nation must face: the weak are not equal to the strong. If the strong lessen their will and power, if they
forsake their destiny as rulers, or pollute their bloodline through intermarriage, then they undermine
the true greatness of the Volk.”
“Alfred, you see the world only in terms of strong or weak. Surely there are other ways to view—”
“All of history,” Alfred interrupted, his voice stronger, “is a saga of the strong and the weak. Let me
speak frankly. The task of strong men like Hitler, like me, and like you, Friedrich, is to enhance the
flourishing of the superior Aryan race. You suggest seeing history in ‘other ways.’ You are referring,
no doubt, to the ways of the church that attempt to free us from blood ties and create the sovereign
individual who is nothing but an abstraction lacking polarity or potency? All notions of equality are
fantasies and contrary to nature.”
Friedrich was seeing a different Alfred today—Alfred Rosenberg the Nazi ideologue, the
propagandist, the speaker at mass Nazi rallies. He didn’t like what he saw but, as though by reflex,
persevered in his role. “I recall that the very first time we spoke as adults, you said that you took great
pleasure in a philosophic conversation. You told me that you had had no opportunities for that in
years.”
“That is certainly true. Still is.”
“So, can I proffer some philosophic questions about your comments?”
“I welcome it.”
“All that you’ve been arguing this morning rests on a basic assumption: that the Aryan race is
superior and that great and drastic efforts should be made to increase the purity of that race.
Correct?”
“Go on.”
“My question is, simply, What is your evidence? I have no doubt that every other race, if asked,
would proclaim its own superiority.”
“Evidence? Look around at the great Germans. Use your eyes, your ears. Listen to Beethoven,
Bach, Brahms, Wagner. Read Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Look at our cities, our
architecture, and look at the great civilizations our Aryan forebears launched that ultimately crumbled
after pollution by inferior Semitic blood.”
“I believe you’re citing Houston Stewart Chamberlain. I’ve now read some of his work and frankly
am unimpressed with his evidence, which consists of little more than claiming to see occasional
blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryans in paintings of Egyptian or Indian or Roman court figures. This is not
evidence. The historians I’ve consulted say Chamberlain simply invented the history that would
support his original claims. Please, Alfred, give me some substantial evidence for your premises. Give
me evidence that Kant or Hegel or Schopenhauer would respect.”
“Evidence, you say? My blood feelings are my evidence. We true Aryans trust our passions, and we
know how to harness them to regain our rightful place as rulers.”
“I hear passion, but I still hear no evidence. In my field we search for causes of strong passions.
Let me tell you of a theory in psychiatry that seems most relevant to our discussion. Alfred Adler, a
Viennese physician, has written much about the universal feelings of inferiority that accrue simply as
a result of growing up as a human and experiencing a prolonged period in which we feel helpless,
weak, and dependent. There are many who find this sense of inferiority intolerable and compensate
by developing a superiority complex, which is simply the other side of the same coin. Alfred, I believe
that dynamic may be at play in you. We talked about your unhappiness as a child, at not being at
home anywhere, of being unpopular and striving to attain success partly in order to ‘show them’—do
you remember?”
No response from Alfred, who sat staring at him. Friedrich continued, “I believe you’re making the
same error as the Jews, who for two millennia have thought of themselves as a superior people, as
God’s chosen people. You and I agreed that Spinoza demolished that argument, and I have no doubt
that, if he were alive, the power of his logic would demolish your Aryan argument as well.”
“I warned you about entering this Jewish field. What does psychoanalysis know about race and
blood and soul? I warned you, and now I fear that you’ve already been corrupted.”
“And I told you that this knowledge and this method are too good and too powerful to be the sole
property of Jews. I and my colleagues have used the principles of this field to offer enormous help to
legions of wounded Aryans. And you’re wounded too, Alfred, but, despite your own wishes, you will
not allow me to help you.”
“And I thought I was dealing with an Übermensch. How much was I mistaken!” Alfred stood,
extracted an envelope of deutschmarks from his pocket, placed it with great precision on the corner
of Friedrich’s desk, and strode toward the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at the same time,” Friedrich called after him.
“Not tomorrow,” Alfred called from the vestibule, “and not ever! And I’ll make sure these Jew
thoughts will leave Europe along with the Jews.”
