Nothing was ever said at home about any religious creed. Neither of my
parents was in any way associated with the Jewish religion, and neither
of them ever went to the Synagogue. As in my maternal grandmother's
house all the Jewish laws about eating and drinking were observed, and
they had different plates and dishes for meat and butter and a special
service for Easter, orthodox Judaism, to me, seemed to be a collection
of old, whimsical, superstitious prejudices, which specially applied to
food. The poetry of it was a sealed book to me. At school, where I was
present at the religious instruction classes as an auditor only, I
always heard Judaism alluded to as merely a preliminary stage of
Christianity, and the Jews as the remnant of a people who, as a
punishment for slaying the Saviour of the world, had been scattered all
over the earth. The present-day Israelites were represented as people
who, urged by a stiff-necked wilfulness and obstinacy and almost
incomprehensible callousness, clung to the obsolete religious ideal of
the stern God in opposition to the God of Love.
When I attempted to think the matter out for myself, it annoyed me that
the Jews had not sided with Jesus, who yet so clearly betokened
progress within the religion that He widened and unintentionally
overthrew. The supernatural personality of Jesus did not seem credible
to me. The demand made by faith, namely, that reason should be
fettered, awakened a latent rebellious opposition, and this opposition
was fostered by my mother's steady rationalism, her unconditional
rejection of every miracle. When the time came for me to be confirmed,
in accordance with the law, I had advanced so far that I looked down on
what lay before me as a mere burdensome ceremony. The person of the
Rabbi only inspired me with distaste; his German pronunciation of
Danish was repulsive and ridiculous to me. The abominable Danish in
which the lesson-book was couched offended me, as I had naturally a
fine ear for Danish. Information about ancient Jewish customs and
festivals was of no interest to me, with my modern upbringing. The
confirmation, according to my mocking summary of the impression
produced by it, consisted mainly in the hiring of a tall silk hat from
the hat-maker, and the sending of it back next day, sanctified. The
silly custom was at that time prevalent for boys to wear silk hats for
the occasion, idiotic though they made them look. With these on their
heads, they went, after examination, up the steps to a balustrade where
a priest awaited, whispered a few affecting words in their ear about
their parents or grandparents, and laid his hand in blessing upon the
tall hat. When called upon to make my confession of faith with the
others, I certainly joined my first "yes," this touching a belief in a
God, to theirs, but remained silent at the question as to whether I
believed that God had revealed Himself to Moses and spoken by His
prophets. I did not believe it.
I was, for that matter, in a wavering frame of mind unable to arrive at
any clear understanding. What confused me was the unveracious manner in
which historical instruction, which was wholly theological, was given.
The History masters, for instance, told us that when Julian the
Apostate wanted to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, flames had shot out
of the earth, but they interpreted this as a miracle, expressing the
Divine will. If this were true--and I was unable to refute it then--God
had expressly taken part against Judaism and the Jews as a nation. The
nation, in that case, seemed to be really cursed by Him. Still,
Christianity fundamentally repelled me by its legends, its dogmatism,
and its church rites. The Virgin birth, the three persons in the
Trinity, and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in particular, seemed
to me to be remnants of the basest barbarism of antiquity.
Under these circumstances, my young soul, feeling the need of something
it could worship, fled from Asia's to Europe's divinities, from
Palestine to Hellas, and clung with vivid enthusiasm to the Greek world
of beauty and the legends of its Gods. From all the learned education I
had had, I only extracted this one thing: an enthusiasm for ancient
Hellas and her Gods; they were my Gods, as they had been those of
Julian. Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Eros and Aphrodite grew to be
powers that I believed in and rejoiced over in a very different sense
from any God revealed on Sinai or in Emmaus. They were near to me.
And under these circumstances the Antiquities Room at Charlottenburg,
where as a boy I had heard Höyen's lectures, grew to be a place that I
entered with reverence, and Thorwaldsen's Museum my Temple, imperfectly
though it reproduced the religious and heroic life and spirit of the
Greeks. But at that time I knew no other, better door to the world of
the Gods than the Museum offered, and Thorwaldsen and the Greeks, from
fourteen to fifteen, were in my mind merged in one. Thorwaldsen's
Museum was to me a brilliant illustration of Homer. There I found my
Church, my Gods, my soul's true native land.