1939: Schopenhauer's Cheap Pride

Arthur Schopenhauer
By Johann Schäfer - Frankfurt am Main
University Library, Public Domain.

    There's this thing that happens, where I come up with an idea that I think is just dandy, smart, and incisive, and then I find out someone else came up with it long before I did.  [Big, gusty sigh]

    A few weeks ago, I rewrote the third chapter of Biscuit, and, in an attempt to understand why the Germans supported Hitler, I wrote the following scene between my Grandma Roma, great-grandmother, and great-aunt:

    There was a lull, and then her sister asked with quiet befuddlement, “I don’t understand what the Germans see in him. He’s a sweaty little man with a tiny mustache and a bad haircut that flops into his face.  And he shrieks up on that stage like he is having an apoplexy.  In his letters, has Kuba ever said anything about why people like Hitler?” 

    Roma nodded.  “Jake says it’s because Hitler offers them cheap pride at a time when… how did he put it? Oh. Yes. When they were jobless and starving for empty dignity.”

    “Cheap pride?” Lola asked.

    “You know how people naturally take pride in things they work hard for?” When Roma saw that her mother and sister understood where she was going, she continued. “Well, what if you have nothing like that? No job, nothing to work for, nothing to point to that’s worthy?”

    Teofila put it together first. “Hitler gave them something easy to be proud of, didn’t he? Maybe the only thing in their life for which they never had to struggle.”

    “Yes, Mama,” Roma answered. “You don’t need any personal accomplishments, nor even useful skills.  All you have to do is be born Aryan.”

    Lola finished the idea. “And if you weren’t born Aryan, well then, tough luck.”

    The women were quiet for a long time.

 

    I was really proud of my cheap pride concept.  Germany had been harshly punished for WW1, and the Great Depression hadn't helped matters. Between the reparations and the mass joblessness due to the depression, the people were desperate for something to believe in.  I have always felt that the Treaty of Versailles, which pinned the fault for WW1 on Germany, is what led to the rise of Hitler and the cause of WW2.

    Then, today, the following quote by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer came across my Facebook feed:

“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; pride in his own nation suggests he has no qualities of his own for which he can be proud, otherwise he would not reach for what he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen.  He who possesses significant personal merits will see clearly the ways in which his own nation falls short, since its failings will be constantly before his eyes. But that poor beggar who has nothing in the world for which he can be proud, as a last resort, latches onto pride in the nation to which he belongs, and is ready and glad to defend tooth and nail, all of the nation's errors and follies, thus reimbursing himself for his own lack of accomplishments."

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860

    Well, okay, then.   Looks like I didn't come up with the idea first; Schopenhauer did, more than 100 years before I was born. [Another big, gusty sigh].  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, though. The Ecclesiastes principle states that "there is nothing new under the sun," and Mark Twain might have said, "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope."   While I might not have come up with the idea first, this does tell me that human nature doesn't really change.

1939: Teofila's Brooch

Source: DropofDifference. Used with permission.

 My great-grandparents on my mother's side lived in a very similar manner. They also owned vast amounts of land, which was cultivated by tenants.

--Liliane Lubinski McCullar, 1955

    I grew up hearing stories of my great-grandparents, who had been very wealthy, but lost nearly everything (I think) during the depression that followed the stock market crash of 1929, and what remained was confiscated after Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939.  But there is family lore about my great-grandmother Teofila's brooch, a bit of inherited wealth that she held onto as long as she could. Supposedly, it had two big diamonds and many small diamonds.  

    Anyway, her son Jakub was a brilliant student, a mathematical prodigy, and he wanted to study physics and engineering, but wasn't allowed to study at the University of Poland due to the racist numerus clausus policies implemented across the nation.  But Teofila's husband, my great-grandfather Isak, was opposed to Jake leaving Poland. She didn't agree, and to fund their son's travel and living expenses for his studies at the University of Brussels, Teofila sold one of the big diamonds without her husband's knowledge.  

   When Isak found out that his own wife had given Uncle Jake the means to leave, Isak got so angry that he hurled a big ring of keys across the room, smashing a bunch of glassware in the process.  My grandma was present; Roma was their youngest child, and she would have been about 12 years old at the time. Grandma told us later that she had never seen her father act with such violence before. She (understandably) found it pretty scary.

    Then, around 1928, when Uncle Jake wanted to get an advanced degree from a school in the United States, she sold the second big diamond to send him to America. That's why he was able to ride out the war in the United States (he became a citizen in 1942) while the rest of the family was trapped in occupied Europe.

    We know what happened to only one of the smaller diamonds. It wound up in my Grandma Roma's possession, and she brought it with her to the United States in 1947, and wore it on a ring. I don't know for sure when her mother gave her the diamond, but I think perhaps it was during Roma's last visit to Teofila in Łódź in late August 1939, just days before the invasion of Poland.  We don't know what happened to the rest of the small stones. Did she give them to Roma, who was pregnant at the time? Or did she use them to buy safety for herself, her husband, and her oldest daughter, Lola?  Or were they just confiscated by the Nazis?

    Anyway, I do my best written descriptions when I can SEE the item I'm describing, and in this case, I imagined a glammed-up snowman (or figure 8) surrounded with diamonds like an aura, and that struck me as being quite ugly.  I also had no idea what jewelry styles from the 1800s even looked like, so I did some internet searches ("vintage brooch two big gemstones surrounded by small gemstones") for a piece of vintage jewelry to use as a model for Teofila's brooch, because the sparkly snowman design just wasn't doing it for me.  I eventually stumbled on the one in the picture in an Etsy listing.  It's massive, about 3.5" (8 cm) tall and 2.6" (6.5 cm) wide, and it is almost certainly much larger than Teofila's actual brooch, as the remaining small diamond was much smaller than the ones shown.   

Source: DropofDifference. Used with permission.

    The Etsy listing describes it as an antique setting from the 19th century (Georgian/Victorian), a sterling silver and quartz brooch. You can see more pictures here (many thanks to Marie from DropofDifference for granting me permission to use her photos).

    I imagine Teofila would have sold the bottom diamond first (because she could have the entire dangling part removed, and it would still be a nice brooch) to send Jake to Belgium, then the big central diamond to send him to the United States.  I like to think my great-grandfather changed his mind about the wisdom of his son leaving Poland. Isak and Teofila Najfeld died in 1942, but I imagine they were glad that at least one of their children was somewhere safe.