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p. 42) went on to discuss Christians who became anti-Semitic. On this, he concluded: “It is no little matter, however, for a Christian to hate or despise or to wish to treat degradingly the race from which sprung his God and the Immaculate Mother of his God. That is why the bitter zeal of anti-Semitism always turns in the end into a bitter zeal against Christianity itself.”
159. This sympathy of Freud’s for Christianity in the closing passages of Moses and Monotheism has already been observed by Roazen (1975) and Bergmann (1976/1982); also see Lifton (1982, p. 152). 160. S. Freud (1939, S.E., 23, p. 136). 161. In many ways, Freud’s attitude toward anti-Semitism can be seen as a consequence of his ambivalence toward Christianity—an ambivalence that characterized Heinrich Heine as well. Here is Heine’s remarkably prophetic understanding of the effects of the collapse of Christianity on the German people, written In 1834-1835, a full 100 years before the effects of the collapse were obvious: The German revolution will not prove any milder or gentler because it was preceded by the “Critique” of Kant, by the “Transcendental Idealism” of Fichte, or even by the “philosophy of nature.” These doctrines served to develop revolutionary forces that only await their time to break forth and to fill the world with terror and admiration. …The philosopher of nature will be terrible in this, that he has allied himself with the primitive powers of nature, that he can conjure up the demonical forces of the Old German pantheism; and having done so, there is aroused in him that ancient German eagerness for battle which engaged in combat, not for the sake of destroying, not even for the sake of victory, but merely for the sake of the combat itself. Christianity—and this is its fairest merit—subdued to a certain extent the brutal warrior-ardour of the Germans, but it could not entirely quench it, and when the cross, that restraining talisman, falls to pieces, then will break out again the ferocity of the old combatants, the frantic berserker rage, whereof Northern poets have said and sung so much. The Talisman has become rotten, and the day will come when it will pitifully crumble into dust. The old stone gods will then arise from the forgotten ruins and wipe from their eyes the dust of centuries, and Thor with his giant hammer will rise again, and he will shatter the Gothic cathedrals. When ye hear the trampling of feet and the clashing of arms, ye neighbors’ children, ye French, be on your guard…. German thunder is true German character: it is not very nimble, and rumbles along somewhat slowly. But come it will, and when ye hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then know that at last the German thunderbolt has fallen. (Quoted by H. R. Trevor-Roper in the introduction to Grunfeld, 1979, p. 15). 162. S. Freud (1937b, C.P., 5, pp. 358-371). 163. See, for example, Kanzer & Blum (1967, pp. 117-118). 164. S. Freud (1937b, C.P., 5, p. 358). 165. Origins (p. 336). 166. S. Freud (1937b, C.P., 5, p. 359). 167, S. Freud (1937b, C.P, 5, p. 359). 168. S. Freud (1937b, C.P., 5, p. 359). 169. S. Freud & Jung (1974, p. 508). 170. S. Freud (1918, C.P., 3, p. 541). 171. S. Freud & Jung (1974, p. 495). 172. S. Freud (1913, S.E., 13, p. 36). |