0:00:04 > 0:00:08This is the story of an immense leap of faith,
0:00:08 > 0:00:11made on a promise of equality and toleration.
0:00:12 > 0:00:17It would carry the Jews of Europe from the certainties of tradition...
0:00:18 > 0:00:22..and from the ghettos enforced by ancient prejudice,
0:00:22 > 0:00:25and expose them to the opportunities
0:00:25 > 0:00:29and to the threats of freedom in a world transformed
0:00:29 > 0:00:33by revolution, technology, mass culture and nationalism.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46It would begin in a world of aristocratic libraries,
0:00:46 > 0:00:48temples of learning.
0:00:48 > 0:00:52It would culminate in a world of metropolitan magnificence,
0:00:52 > 0:00:55department stores, palaces of plenty,
0:00:55 > 0:00:58concert halls, capitals of culture.
0:01:04 > 0:01:06From the ghetto to the salon,
0:01:06 > 0:01:09from the hallowed past to the promised future,
0:01:09 > 0:01:13this was one of the greatest human journeys
0:01:13 > 0:01:16in the shortest space of time ever made.
0:01:22 > 0:01:25And the consequences would be world-changing
0:01:25 > 0:01:28as hopes, born on the pages of books,
0:01:28 > 0:01:32died in the flames of hatred and destruction.
0:01:36 > 0:01:41It was in the 18th century that the world of Gentile learning,
0:01:41 > 0:01:44and the world of the Jews finally came face to face,
0:01:44 > 0:01:48finally came to engage with each other.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51The philosophers of the Enlightenment held that everyone,
0:01:51 > 0:01:55Jews included, guided by the light of reason,
0:01:55 > 0:02:00could sweep away the inherited prejudices of centuries.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03So they made the Jews a special bargain -
0:02:03 > 0:02:06come out of your mental ghetto,
0:02:06 > 0:02:11expose yourself to modern languages, to learning, to science,
0:02:11 > 0:02:15and then you will become useful members of society.
0:02:15 > 0:02:18And when that happens, we will embrace you
0:02:18 > 0:02:24fully and legally in civil rights, and you will become something new.
0:02:24 > 0:02:30You'll become a citizen who happens to practise the Jewish faith.
0:02:30 > 0:02:33Well, it was a noble idea.
0:02:33 > 0:02:35For that matter, it still is.
0:02:35 > 0:02:38The question is, would it work?
0:03:26 > 0:03:31Embracing the new was never going to be easy for the Jews.
0:03:31 > 0:03:34They had survived long centuries of exile and persecution
0:03:34 > 0:03:37by cleaving to their traditions.
0:03:37 > 0:03:42Any challenge to those traditions seemed to threaten survival itself.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53Baruch Spinoza, a 23-year-old merchant and precocious thinker
0:03:53 > 0:03:57from a religious family, posed just such a challenge,
0:03:57 > 0:04:03which is why, in 1656, in the synagogue on the Houtgracht Canal,
0:04:03 > 0:04:07he was cast out of Amsterdam's community of Jews.
0:04:10 > 0:04:16"We ban, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza
0:04:16 > 0:04:18"with the consent of God,
0:04:18 > 0:04:23"cursed be he by day, and cursed be he by night.
0:04:24 > 0:04:29"Cursed be he when he lies down, and cursed be he when he rises up.
0:04:31 > 0:04:34"The Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven,
0:04:34 > 0:04:38"and the Lord shall separate him unto evil.
0:04:40 > 0:04:45"None shall contact him by mouth, or by writing,
0:04:45 > 0:04:48"nor stay under the same roof as him,
0:04:48 > 0:04:50"nor read anything he wrote."
0:04:52 > 0:04:57In the eyes of the Amsterdam community, Spinoza was a heretic,
0:04:57 > 0:05:01undermining through soulless logic and wild speculation
0:05:01 > 0:05:04Jewish faith and Jewish identity.
0:05:05 > 0:05:09Miracles were myths, the soul was not immortal,
0:05:09 > 0:05:13the Bible was the work of men, not God.
0:05:16 > 0:05:19"The revelation of God can only be established
0:05:19 > 0:05:23"by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles,
0:05:23 > 0:05:25"or, in other words, ignorance."
0:05:30 > 0:05:34It wasn't just the Jews whom Spinoza risked outraging.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37The Protestant Dutch, who had given the Jews a refuge
0:05:37 > 0:05:40following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal,
0:05:40 > 0:05:43identified with the biblical children of Israel,
0:05:43 > 0:05:48founded their faith on the Old as well as the New Testament.
0:05:48 > 0:05:53Spinoza's attack on Jewish tradition was an attack on Christianity, too.
0:05:54 > 0:05:57And a threat to the new Jerusalem
0:05:57 > 0:06:00the Jews had been allowed to build in Amsterdam.
0:06:02 > 0:06:05Was what Spinoza said so shocking?
0:06:05 > 0:06:09Well, it was shocking enough for him to be accused of atheism
0:06:09 > 0:06:11by both Jews and Christians,
0:06:11 > 0:06:15but Spinoza was no atheist.
0:06:15 > 0:06:17He believed in God, all right,
0:06:17 > 0:06:20but it wasn't the God of the Hebrew Bible.
0:06:23 > 0:06:27No, Spinoza's God was nothing less,
0:06:27 > 0:06:33but nothing more, than the whole of created nature itself.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38The logical end of Spinoza's reasoning was toleration.
0:06:38 > 0:06:43Still a challenge in some parts of the world now, explosive then,
0:06:43 > 0:06:47because under a God identical with all of nature,
0:06:47 > 0:06:50no one religion could claim a monopoly of wisdom.
0:06:51 > 0:06:54All very well, but it robbed the Jews,
0:06:54 > 0:06:56not just here in Amsterdam of course,
0:06:56 > 0:07:00but everywhere, of their own special identity,
0:07:00 > 0:07:02their sense of divine election,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05their sense of being the chosen people.
0:07:05 > 0:07:08It was that character that had sustained the Jews
0:07:08 > 0:07:12through generations of difficulty, hardship and calamity,
0:07:12 > 0:07:14and what was this God,
0:07:14 > 0:07:18who was also nature, of Spinoza's, offering instead?
0:07:18 > 0:07:22Well, in Spinoza's mind it was offering to bring the Jews
0:07:22 > 0:07:24together with the rest of humanity -
0:07:24 > 0:07:28Jews, Christians, and anyone else for that matter, who could share
0:07:28 > 0:07:30the same common space -
0:07:30 > 0:07:35and Spinoza thought, what was not to like about that?
0:07:42 > 0:07:45Spinoza challenged Jew and Gentile alike
0:07:45 > 0:07:47with his philosophy of toleration.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52Two generations after his death, that challenge was taken up here,
0:07:52 > 0:07:56in the Prussian capital of Berlin.
0:07:57 > 0:08:00Berlin then was enclosed by a city wall.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04Inside, some 2,000 privileged and protected Jews
0:08:04 > 0:08:05were permitted to live.
0:08:05 > 0:08:10Elsewhere in Prussia, they were confined to provincial towns,
0:08:10 > 0:08:14inward looking, closed off from the Gentile world around them.
0:08:16 > 0:08:18But then a young Jewish scholar,
0:08:18 > 0:08:21his first name weighty with historical significance,
0:08:21 > 0:08:25walked to Berlin, following his religious teacher.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29Moses Mendelssohn, unprotected, unprivileged,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33he somehow made it into a city world rich with new possibilities.
0:08:36 > 0:08:42In 1743, the lad, Moses Mendelssohn, barely out of his Bar Mitzvah,
0:08:42 > 0:08:47stood before one of these heavily guarded city gates in old Berlin,
0:08:47 > 0:08:50on the brink of a great cultural adventure
0:08:50 > 0:08:52that would transform not just his life,
0:08:52 > 0:08:56but all of the relationships and encounters
0:08:56 > 0:08:58between Jews and Gentiles.
0:08:58 > 0:09:03Of this mighty destiny he could have had very little inkling.
0:09:03 > 0:09:07He had lived all of his young life amidst religious Jews like himself.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11He spoke just two languages - Judeo-German,
0:09:11 > 0:09:15otherwise known as Yiddish, in his daily rounds,
0:09:15 > 0:09:19and Hebrew in the synagogue, in prayers and studies.
0:09:19 > 0:09:20He would end his life
0:09:20 > 0:09:23as the embodiment of the Jewish Enlightenment,
0:09:23 > 0:09:27able to speak and write, and read every language you could think of -
0:09:27 > 0:09:30French, English, Latin and Greek.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33He didn't know what was in store for him,
0:09:33 > 0:09:37but it was an extraordinary opening,
0:09:37 > 0:09:39not just in these city gates,
0:09:39 > 0:09:45but the entire history of the Jews and those who met them.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50Mendelssohn may have come to Berlin to pursue his religious studies,
0:09:50 > 0:09:53but soon he was reaching well beyond the Talmud,
0:09:53 > 0:09:57exploring new worlds of secular knowledge,
0:09:57 > 0:09:59dipping into dangerous Spinoza.
0:09:59 > 0:10:02He wasn't trying to escape his Judaism, though.
0:10:02 > 0:10:06He would live, marry and raise six children, all within the faith.
0:10:11 > 0:10:15At the Jewish Museum in Berlin there is something that captures
0:10:15 > 0:10:21his ideal of vigorous new growth, deeply rooted in long tradition.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24It's a masterpiece of synagogue art,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27made from Mendelssohn's wife's own wedding dress.
0:10:30 > 0:10:32This is a Torah ark curtain
0:10:32 > 0:10:34which was given to the Berlin Jewish community
0:10:34 > 0:10:36by Moses Mendelssohn and his wife, Fromet.
0:10:36 > 0:10:41And both their names are on it, and it was dedicated by them.
0:10:41 > 0:10:43And what I think is particularly special about them,
0:10:43 > 0:10:46- the names are in parallel, that seems like equality.- Yeah.
0:10:46 > 0:10:48Yeah, that is a very Enlightenment thing.
0:10:50 > 0:10:53'Spinoza would have loved this.
0:10:53 > 0:10:56'If you had to make something that says "God is nature",
0:10:56 > 0:10:58'this is surely it.'
0:11:00 > 0:11:03- What's particularly unusual here is that you actually have...- Flowers.
0:11:03 > 0:11:05..the flowers and the grass and it's all alive
0:11:05 > 0:11:07- and it's a real landscape.- Yes.
0:11:07 > 0:11:09- Yes.- That's very, very unusual. - Yeah, it is, isn't it?
0:11:09 > 0:11:13And that the flowers, you can actually tell which kind of flowers
0:11:13 > 0:11:15- they are, that you can find. - What have we got?
0:11:15 > 0:11:17We've got roses and we've got lilies.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21- We have carnations. - HaSharon. We have carnations.
0:11:21 > 0:11:23And we have... Goodness, those beautiful blue flowers.
0:11:23 > 0:11:26This whole sense of botanising
0:11:26 > 0:11:28being part of the 18th-century mind,
0:11:28 > 0:11:31that you catalogue the wonders of nature
0:11:31 > 0:11:33and you can have two views about that.
0:11:33 > 0:11:36You can have the kind of non-religious view
0:11:36 > 0:11:38that nature is its own thing.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42Or you can have the view that nature is absolutely proof,
0:11:42 > 0:11:45not just of God's existence, but of His genius.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48So a sense, actually, of the deep past
0:11:48 > 0:11:52made beautiful by the possibility of a flowering present
0:11:52 > 0:11:54is all in the object.
0:12:00 > 0:12:02Nourished by the ideas of the Enlightenment,
0:12:02 > 0:12:05there were other flowers that bloomed for Mendelssohn -
0:12:05 > 0:12:10close and enduring friendships made with non-Jewish writers.
0:12:10 > 0:12:13It seems so obvious, so easy now, sharing culture,
0:12:13 > 0:12:16without being asked to sacrifice your identity,
0:12:16 > 0:12:18but then it was almost incredible.
0:12:24 > 0:12:29His closest friend was the poet and playwright, Gotthold Lessing.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31They played chess together, walked in their gardens,
0:12:31 > 0:12:33Mendelssohn even came round for dinner,
0:12:33 > 0:12:35bringing his own kosher food.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43Lessing honoured their friendship in his play, Nathan The Wise.
0:12:43 > 0:12:48Nathan, a Jew, expresses in a few resonant words
0:12:48 > 0:12:51the high hopes of the Enlightenment promise.
0:12:54 > 0:12:58It is enough to be "ein Mensch", a man.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03And the man who had been the inspiration for Nathan
0:13:03 > 0:13:07wanted other Jews to share in that promise.
0:13:09 > 0:13:15He began to think about the problem, the issue, of language.
0:13:15 > 0:13:19You could not be an aspiring 18th-century philosopher
0:13:19 > 0:13:24and not think about the relationship between language and identity.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27That was at the heart of a great deal of the discussion
0:13:27 > 0:13:29of which he was part.
0:13:29 > 0:13:33And the relationship between the language of the Torah, Hebrew,
0:13:33 > 0:13:35and the language of his adopted country,
0:13:35 > 0:13:41the language he knew his children would grow up speaking, German.
0:13:41 > 0:13:45Hebrew, he thought, in some way, while magnificent and noble,
0:13:45 > 0:13:50had actually been lost in esoteric debates in the Talmud.
0:13:50 > 0:13:56And if these young Jews, who were simultaneously Prussians and Jews,
0:13:56 > 0:14:01were going to feel the Bible and the Torah as a living thing,
0:14:01 > 0:14:04they were going to need to read it in the new language, too.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07But, and this is the crucial point,
0:14:07 > 0:14:12the only translations into German available at that time
0:14:12 > 0:14:17were essentially the achievements of Christian Bible scholars.
0:14:20 > 0:14:25So it needed a Jew somehow to actually translate
0:14:25 > 0:14:30that supple Hebrew into a German which faithfully reflected
0:14:30 > 0:14:32its richness and strength.
0:14:32 > 0:14:36And there was only one person who could do that - himself.
0:14:36 > 0:14:38So he gets to work.
0:14:38 > 0:14:42And here it is, right from the beginning,
0:14:42 > 0:14:46the Book Of Genesis, the beginning of the beginning.
0:14:46 > 0:14:50And it is extraordinary to read, on one side of the page the Hebrew,
0:14:50 > 0:14:53very familiar to all of us who went to Hebrew school,
0:14:53 > 0:14:57and the other side, incredibly unfamiliar to me, in Hebrew letters,
0:14:57 > 0:15:00this is the halfway house, exactly the same verse.
0:15:00 > 0:15:02How does the Bible begin?
0:15:02 > 0:15:05All of you out there will know this, won't you?
0:15:05 > 0:15:08Possibly not in Hebrew. Here is how the Hebrew sounds.
0:15:08 > 0:15:10HE READS IN HEBREW, THEN ENGLISH "In the beginning,
0:15:10 > 0:15:12"God created
0:15:12 > 0:15:14"the heavens
0:15:14 > 0:15:17"the earth."
0:15:17 > 0:15:21And moving my eye over to the difficult bit, in German,
0:15:21 > 0:15:27where it says, "Im Anfang schuf Gott..."
0:15:27 > 0:15:30"At the beginning, God created
0:15:30 > 0:15:33"die Himmel - the heavens,
0:15:33 > 0:15:37um..." und Erde - and the earth."
0:15:37 > 0:15:40And I am stumbling over it, because it is so difficult for me.
0:15:40 > 0:15:44I can see him really thinking about exactly how the Hebrew letters
0:15:44 > 0:15:47would perfectly fit the German.
0:15:48 > 0:15:52And there is something deeply moving in its linguistic
0:15:52 > 0:15:57and cultural optimism about this, seeing German alongside Hebrew,
0:15:57 > 0:16:01as though they were naturally kindred spirits to each other.
0:16:07 > 0:16:11Mendelssohn's Bible was the bridge over which generations of Jews
0:16:11 > 0:16:14would cross from the Jewish world to the German world,
0:16:14 > 0:16:17from the religious to the secular.
0:16:17 > 0:16:21They could read Isaiah in the morning and Goethe in the afternoon.
0:16:25 > 0:16:29But Mendelssohn expected them to cross that bridge as Jews,
0:16:29 > 0:16:30and to stay that way.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33"Adapt yourselves to the morals and constitution
0:16:33 > 0:16:37"of the land to which you've been removed," he advised,
0:16:37 > 0:16:40"but hold fast to the religion of your fathers."
0:16:42 > 0:16:45To his friend, Gotthold Lessing,
0:16:45 > 0:16:49Moses Mendelssohn was simply "ein Mensch", a man,
0:16:49 > 0:16:54but growing fame as scholar and philosopher made him a prize
0:16:54 > 0:16:57for those who believed intellectual enlightenment was simply
0:16:57 > 0:17:03the first step towards the ultimate enlightenment of Christianity.
0:17:03 > 0:17:06Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater
0:17:06 > 0:17:09publicly challenged Mendelssohn,
0:17:09 > 0:17:14"To do what wisdom, the love of truth and honesty must bid him."
0:17:15 > 0:17:19In other words, to convert to Christianity.
0:17:21 > 0:17:23But Mendelssohn replied,
0:17:23 > 0:17:27"I declare myself a Jew, I shall always be a Jew."
0:17:29 > 0:17:34The prophet of the Jewish Enlightenment died in 1786.
0:17:42 > 0:17:45For Mendelssohn's children and grandchildren,
0:17:45 > 0:17:47things would be very different.
0:17:49 > 0:17:53In 1789, revolution came to France
0:17:53 > 0:17:57and, soon after, revolutionary armies began marching through Europe
0:17:57 > 0:17:59tearing down ghetto walls
0:17:59 > 0:18:03in the name of "liberte, egalite and fraternite".
0:18:06 > 0:18:08It was assumed that the Jews would happily shrug off
0:18:08 > 0:18:10their separate identity
0:18:10 > 0:18:14in exchange for something they'd never enjoyed before -
0:18:14 > 0:18:15equal citizenship.
0:18:19 > 0:18:21Some did, some didn't,
0:18:21 > 0:18:23but when the Emperor Napoleon was finally defeated,
0:18:23 > 0:18:26it was assumed, just as mistakenly,
0:18:26 > 0:18:30that every Jew must have been a dangerous Bonapartist.
0:18:30 > 0:18:34So those new-won liberties were constantly threatened,
0:18:34 > 0:18:36pushed back, reversed.
0:18:39 > 0:18:44For Moses Mendelssohn's children, the road to Jewish emancipation
0:18:44 > 0:18:47now seemed clogged with barriers.
0:18:47 > 0:18:53Now they had to prove that a Jew could also be a good German.
0:19:06 > 0:19:11One of Moses's children, Abraham, was a banker.
0:19:12 > 0:19:14He and his wife, Lea,
0:19:14 > 0:19:17threw themselves headlong into German culture.
0:19:17 > 0:19:20Judaism took a back seat.
0:19:27 > 0:19:32And their road into German acceptance would be through music.
0:19:33 > 0:19:38Their children, Felix and Fanny, both became prodigies.
0:19:50 > 0:19:54'Music critic Norman Lebrecht is in no doubt
0:19:54 > 0:19:56'about their formidable talent.'
0:19:56 > 0:19:59They both have a prodigious gift.
0:19:59 > 0:20:00At the age of ten,
0:20:00 > 0:20:01Mendelssohn was writing music
0:20:01 > 0:20:02that was far in advance
0:20:02 > 0:20:04of anything that had been seen...
0:20:04 > 0:20:06Of anything that Mozart was doing at that age.
0:20:06 > 0:20:08This boy was an absolute whizz!
0:20:08 > 0:20:11He's the grandson of the great philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn,
0:20:11 > 0:20:15the first who actually creates a dialogue between Jews and Christians
0:20:15 > 0:20:18in Western Europe, who marks the beginning of the thaw,
0:20:18 > 0:20:21and now, suddenly, his grandson is the new Mozart.
0:20:21 > 0:20:23So there are huge hopes for him,
0:20:23 > 0:20:27and now suddenly people are talking and recognising that Jews make music.
0:20:29 > 0:20:33He becomes the favourite composer of the establishment.
0:20:33 > 0:20:37In England, he becomes close, very close, personally,
0:20:37 > 0:20:39to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
0:20:39 > 0:20:41- And Prince Albert?- Yes.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46'The Queen's diary entry on first meeting him was,
0:20:46 > 0:20:50'"He is short, dark and Jewish-looking."
0:20:50 > 0:20:55'But appearances were deceptive - in fact, Felix was a Christian.
0:20:55 > 0:20:57'When he was just seven years old,
0:20:57 > 0:21:00'his father, Abraham, had had him baptised,
0:21:00 > 0:21:04'hoping to ensure his future prospects.
0:21:04 > 0:21:08'But perhaps Felix Mendelssohn's conversion was never complete.
0:21:13 > 0:21:17This is a composer who is living in the age of Romantic nationalism,
0:21:17 > 0:21:19where everybody is looking for a label
0:21:19 > 0:21:20and everybody is keen on identity.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24Mendelssohn never refers to his Jewish background.
0:21:24 > 0:21:26Mendelssohn is in denial.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29But, when it comes to his most famous work...
0:21:30 > 0:21:32..there is a Jewish imprint on it.
0:21:32 > 0:21:36- Take a look at the Violin Concerto In E Minor...- Yeah.
0:21:36 > 0:21:38..and tell me why that is not a Jewish work.
0:21:46 > 0:21:48It's exploding, it's coming...
0:21:48 > 0:21:53It is coming out of...out of the composer and out of the violin.
0:21:53 > 0:21:56It can't... It's an unstoppable force.
0:22:00 > 0:22:02It's so over-the-top.
0:22:02 > 0:22:06it speaks of suppressed emotions and suppressed ideas,
0:22:06 > 0:22:09and...and a suppressed society
0:22:09 > 0:22:11and a suppressed identity, in Mendelssohn's case.
0:22:14 > 0:22:17When it actually comes to the performance,
0:22:17 > 0:22:18Mendelssohn can't conduct it.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22He goes into a hissy fit - he's not feeling well.
0:22:22 > 0:22:24- He leaves it to someone else. - That's so Jewish!
0:22:24 > 0:22:26- He sort of says...- Exactly.
0:22:26 > 0:22:28- .."I've got a headache."- Exactly.
0:22:28 > 0:22:30- "My arm won't move!" - "I can't do it. I can't,
0:22:30 > 0:22:33"can't do it - it's too personal, it's too close to me."
0:22:37 > 0:22:42So did success require a baptismal sprinkle?
0:22:42 > 0:22:45The story of another Berlin family suggests not.
0:22:46 > 0:22:49The Beers were just as self-confident and ambitious
0:22:49 > 0:22:51as the Mendelssohns,
0:22:51 > 0:22:55but they wouldn't abandon Judaism to make it in German culture,
0:22:55 > 0:22:58instead, they would bring it into the modern world.
0:23:01 > 0:23:04Judah Beer had made his fortune in the sugar business.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08But it was the voluptuous, raven-haired Amalia
0:23:08 > 0:23:09who ruled the clan.
0:23:09 > 0:23:12Her childhood name, after all, had been "Mulka", the queen,
0:23:12 > 0:23:15and her pedigree was as close to royalty
0:23:15 > 0:23:17as you could get among the Jews -
0:23:17 > 0:23:20learned rabbis and bankers.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24Queen Amalia stayed true to both by being socially dazzling
0:23:24 > 0:23:26and resolutely religious.
0:23:27 > 0:23:31She opened the doors of her elegant salon at Villa Beer
0:23:31 > 0:23:33to the cream of Berlin society -
0:23:33 > 0:23:36scientists and poets who vied with each other
0:23:36 > 0:23:38for the privilege of sipping chocolate
0:23:38 > 0:23:42and polishing their witticisms in her regal presence.
0:23:43 > 0:23:46And at the same time, she and her husband led a campaign
0:23:46 > 0:23:51among German Jews for a modern, enlightened brand of Judaism.
0:23:55 > 0:24:00Leading by example, they built a synagogue inside their own home,
0:24:00 > 0:24:03with services held in German as well as Hebrew
0:24:03 > 0:24:05and, shock, an organ...
0:24:07 > 0:24:08..a choir!
0:24:09 > 0:24:13CHORAL MUSIC AND CHOIR SINGING
0:24:13 > 0:24:17We all think of Jews and music in the same sentence,
0:24:17 > 0:24:22but even though music did become the royal road for Jews
0:24:22 > 0:24:26into the heart of German culture, it was a little surprising.
0:24:26 > 0:24:30Singing, much less instrumental music, was really not
0:24:30 > 0:24:33part of the world of the community or the synagogue,
0:24:33 > 0:24:39but upwardly mobile Jews took to music like ducks to water.
0:24:39 > 0:24:42So music was always going to be very important
0:24:42 > 0:24:45to an ambitious family like the Beers.
0:24:45 > 0:24:50If the first generation was all about the raw power of money,
0:24:50 > 0:24:55for the second, what was crucial was the display of cultural refinement
0:24:55 > 0:24:58in an elegant salon like this.
0:24:58 > 0:25:01And the third generation was always
0:25:01 > 0:25:04going to be about cultural performance.
0:25:04 > 0:25:09And there was no performer more dazzling than the nine-year-old son
0:25:09 > 0:25:13of Judah and Amalia Beer, little Jacob, who at that tender age
0:25:13 > 0:25:17managed to pull off such a sensational performance
0:25:17 > 0:25:20of Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto,
0:25:20 > 0:25:24that it wowed Jews and Gentiles alike.
0:25:24 > 0:25:29Now, that little boy was going to grow up to be Giacomo Meyerbeer.
0:25:29 > 0:25:34And this is Giacomo's travelling piano.
0:25:34 > 0:25:37He was not only the man who was going to reinvent
0:25:37 > 0:25:38the entire form of opera,
0:25:38 > 0:25:43he would also become an international superstar,
0:25:43 > 0:25:44a celebrity.
0:25:44 > 0:25:46And for such a superstar,
0:25:46 > 0:25:51it was always going to be a case of, "Have piano, will travel".
0:25:56 > 0:25:58And so, Jacob travelled.
0:25:58 > 0:26:02In 1816, he left Berlin for Italy to study opera,
0:26:02 > 0:26:06and it was there he changed his first name to Giacomo.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13'But while he Italianised at one end, he Judaised at the other,
0:26:13 > 0:26:18'adding his grandfather's first name, Meyer, to his surname,
0:26:18 > 0:26:22'emerging as Giacomo Meyerbeer.
0:26:28 > 0:26:31'He could have returned to Berlin and made a musical career there.
0:26:31 > 0:26:34'But if you wanted to make it big time,
0:26:34 > 0:26:36'there was only one place for that...
0:26:38 > 0:26:39'..Paris.'
0:26:44 > 0:26:481831 - they are packing them through the turnstiles
0:26:48 > 0:26:50here in the Paris Opera House.
0:26:50 > 0:26:52And what are they coming to see? They are coming to see
0:26:52 > 0:26:55an opera called Robert The Devil,
0:26:55 > 0:26:59by somebody called Meyerbeer, but his first name is Giacomo.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02Well, does he think he's Rossini or something?
0:27:02 > 0:27:07He's a Jew, we know he's no Donizetti, no Rossini, no Bellini.
0:27:07 > 0:27:10So what's he doing with this Robert The Devil thing?
0:27:10 > 0:27:13Answer - medieval Renaissance extravaganza.
0:27:17 > 0:27:20Orgiastic nuns rising from the tomb
0:27:20 > 0:27:23to do "ooh-er" things with their shrouds.
0:27:24 > 0:27:30A tormented hero on the rim of hell, and rather liking it.
0:27:30 > 0:27:32OPERA PLAYS - "Robert The Devil"
0:27:47 > 0:27:51It's Les Mis in chain mail.
0:27:51 > 0:27:53It's spectacle, it's colossal production numbers,
0:27:53 > 0:27:56it's tonic for the turnstiles.
0:27:58 > 0:28:05And it seems to presage an entirely new phase in the history of opera.
0:28:05 > 0:28:09This is, in every sense, grand opera, big opera.
0:28:09 > 0:28:12No, it is not Mozart, it is not Beethoven.
0:28:12 > 0:28:15HE LAUGHS
0:28:15 > 0:28:19But if you think of it in terms of fantastic entertainment,
0:28:19 > 0:28:23taking all those things which got the voltage whirring
0:28:23 > 0:28:27and stirring in the minds of people in the 1830s -
0:28:27 > 0:28:31ruins, the Christian soul, heaven and hell -
0:28:31 > 0:28:34then this was absolutely perfect.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37The public, Paris, all of Europe
0:28:37 > 0:28:41could not get enough of Giacomo Meyerbeer.
0:28:41 > 0:28:45From now on, in opera, he was the man.
0:28:45 > 0:28:48OPERATIC SINGING
0:29:01 > 0:29:05But despite his international fame, and despite his appointment
0:29:05 > 0:29:09as musical director to the Prussian Court, Meyerbeer discovered
0:29:09 > 0:29:13there were still some places where the "King of Opera" still smelled
0:29:13 > 0:29:18a bit too much of chicken soup to be asked to the tables of society.
0:29:23 > 0:29:28As he noted in his diaries in 1847, "It's the same old story.
0:29:28 > 0:29:30"The ambassador held a dinner tonight,
0:29:30 > 0:29:33"and invited all the Prussians, but not me."
0:29:37 > 0:29:42Successful Jews had to deal with snubs of this kind all the time.
0:29:42 > 0:29:44However high they climbed, there were always those
0:29:44 > 0:29:49who thought they could see the gabardine inside the frock coat.
0:29:49 > 0:29:52But, for Meyerbeer, there was something much more menacing
0:29:52 > 0:29:55than a dinner invitation that never came.
0:30:02 > 0:30:03In 1850,
0:30:03 > 0:30:08when Meyerbeer was very much still king of the opera in Paris,
0:30:08 > 0:30:11an essay of extraordinary violence appeared,
0:30:11 > 0:30:15which, although it didn't personally name him,
0:30:15 > 0:30:18made it very clear that he indeed was the target.
0:30:18 > 0:30:21And the reason was there in its title,
0:30:21 > 0:30:26because it was called Das Judenthum In Der Musik, Jewishness In Music.
0:30:26 > 0:30:28And what that Jewishness was,
0:30:28 > 0:30:32according to its particularly hostile author,
0:30:32 > 0:30:38was the corruption of high art by sordid commercial popularity.
0:30:38 > 0:30:41That author was Richard Wagner.
0:30:41 > 0:30:47What made his onslaught on Meyerbeer and the other Jews in music
0:30:47 > 0:30:51so ferocious and almost psychotic
0:30:51 > 0:30:56was that Meyerbeer had been Wagner's patron.
0:30:56 > 0:30:58He was biting the hand that fed him.
0:30:58 > 0:31:02Ten years before Das Judenthum In Der Musik appeared,
0:31:02 > 0:31:07it was Meyerbeer who read Wagner's early opera Rienzi,
0:31:07 > 0:31:10Meyerbeer who had written a letter of recommendation,
0:31:10 > 0:31:14Meyerbeer who had enabled the opera to be performed
0:31:14 > 0:31:17both in Paris and back in Germany.
0:31:17 > 0:31:23And at that time, Wagner could not possibly have been more obsequious.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26"I must work so I will be worthy of you,"
0:31:26 > 0:31:29Wagner wrote cringingly to Meyerbeer.
0:31:29 > 0:31:32"I am your property," he even said.
0:31:32 > 0:31:36Ten years on, when he had a little fame and just a little money,
0:31:36 > 0:31:41Wagner was already thinking, as is clear, in a very different way.
0:31:44 > 0:31:49"The Jew speaks the language of a nation in whose midst he dwells,
0:31:49 > 0:31:51"but he speaks always as an alien.
0:31:54 > 0:31:58"The Jew has stood outside the pale of any such community,
0:31:58 > 0:32:03"stood solitary with his Jehovah, in a splintered, soil-less stock.
0:32:05 > 0:32:07"In his art,
0:32:07 > 0:32:11"the Jew truly cannot make a poem of his words,
0:32:11 > 0:32:15"an artwork of his doings."
0:32:16 > 0:32:19At this point, for him,
0:32:19 > 0:32:24art was all about the spiritual depth of nationhood.
0:32:24 > 0:32:27It was about tribe, about race,
0:32:27 > 0:32:29about myth, about blood,
0:32:29 > 0:32:32about territory, about soil.
0:32:32 > 0:32:37And how could the Jews know anything about that?
0:32:37 > 0:32:40They who were wanderers, they who had no country.
0:32:52 > 0:32:56Wagner's poisonous tract sounded an ominous note
0:32:56 > 0:32:59for the fate of the great Enlightenment hope
0:32:59 > 0:33:02of toleration and sweet reason.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06That has always been an urban hope,
0:33:06 > 0:33:10the place where ancient suspicions would melt into city life.
0:33:10 > 0:33:13Metropolitan Jews now dressed like everyone else,
0:33:13 > 0:33:15shopped like everyone else,
0:33:15 > 0:33:18applauded in the concert halls with everyone else.
0:33:18 > 0:33:22The promise had been realised.
0:33:22 > 0:33:26But then, with Wagner providing the seductive mood music,
0:33:26 > 0:33:32German culture took an unexpected turn away from that urban future,
0:33:32 > 0:33:34back towards the dark shadows
0:33:34 > 0:33:39of a mythical Christian Teutonic past where Jews had no place.
0:33:40 > 0:33:43'There are always going to be those who fear the future.
0:33:43 > 0:33:46'The more the Jews became identified with that future,
0:33:46 > 0:33:51'the more danger they would run if its progress stalled.'
0:33:54 > 0:33:56You can see what fed the paranoia.
0:33:56 > 0:33:59German Jews had made the greatest leap
0:33:59 > 0:34:03that any minority has experienced in modern history.
0:34:07 > 0:34:12By 1870, Berlin, home to a mere 3,000 Jews
0:34:12 > 0:34:14in Moses Mendelssohn's time,
0:34:14 > 0:34:18now had 36,000 Jewish citizens.
0:34:24 > 0:34:28An educational revolution was under way -
0:34:28 > 0:34:31Mendelssohn's dream realised more completely
0:34:31 > 0:34:33than he could ever have imagined.
0:34:37 > 0:34:40Jewish children were four times more likely
0:34:40 > 0:34:43to go to high school than Gentiles.
0:34:43 > 0:34:45And those children would go on
0:34:45 > 0:34:49to become captains of the new industries -
0:34:49 > 0:34:52shipping, chemicals, electricity,
0:34:52 > 0:34:55mass-circulation newspapers and publishing -
0:34:55 > 0:35:00and masters of the professions - law, medicine and science.
0:35:01 > 0:35:04They had good reason to believe
0:35:04 > 0:35:08that the prejudice against them was a dying vestige of the past.
0:35:08 > 0:35:09They were patriots,
0:35:09 > 0:35:14their destinies closely entwined with the destiny of the new Germany.
0:35:15 > 0:35:19And they expressed their confidence the way Jews always did...
0:35:20 > 0:35:23..by building a synagogue.
0:35:25 > 0:35:28A really big synagogue!
0:35:28 > 0:35:323,000 could get inside this one on the Oranienburger Strasse,
0:35:32 > 0:35:34the New Synagogue,
0:35:34 > 0:35:37but it was a big synagogue for a big year
0:35:37 > 0:35:40in German and Jewish history, 1866.
0:35:40 > 0:35:44Just three months before this gorgeous monster opened,
0:35:44 > 0:35:47the Prussians had defeated the Austrians
0:35:47 > 0:35:50to ensure that the drive for German unification
0:35:50 > 0:35:53was now going to be led by Prussia.
0:35:53 > 0:35:55And from Berlin,
0:35:55 > 0:35:57from what had already become a city
0:35:57 > 0:36:01in which the Jews had an immense part to play.
0:36:01 > 0:36:02So it was natural then
0:36:02 > 0:36:06that Otto von Bismarck himself, the Chancellor,
0:36:06 > 0:36:09who had managed to win the war through the help of money
0:36:09 > 0:36:13loaned from his personal banker, the Jew Gerson Bleichroder,
0:36:13 > 0:36:18was actually here in attendance with all the Jewish good and the great.
0:36:18 > 0:36:20So those two big moments,
0:36:20 > 0:36:24those two histories converged
0:36:24 > 0:36:27at the inauguration of the New Synagogue
0:36:27 > 0:36:30in September 1866.
0:36:30 > 0:36:34The new Germany had taken a bet on the loyalty of the Jews,
0:36:34 > 0:36:39and the Jews had certainly thrown their lot with German power.
0:36:39 > 0:36:42It was a marriage that seemed to be made in heaven,
0:36:42 > 0:36:45between modernising Jewish history
0:36:45 > 0:36:49and the power of the new Germany.
0:36:49 > 0:36:51Not a cloud on the horizon,
0:36:51 > 0:36:53not yet, anyway.
0:36:56 > 0:36:59And in France, the story was the same.
0:36:59 > 0:37:02Only a dyed-in-the-wool Jewish pessimist
0:37:02 > 0:37:04could have worried about cloudy skies here.
0:37:07 > 0:37:09Like their German cousins,
0:37:09 > 0:37:11French Jews had made a place for themselves
0:37:11 > 0:37:14at the heart of urban prosperity.
0:37:19 > 0:37:21And most successful were the Rothschilds,
0:37:21 > 0:37:23the Paris branch of a dynasty
0:37:23 > 0:37:26that had begun in the Frankfurt ghetto.
0:37:28 > 0:37:30I wonder how many of the commuters
0:37:30 > 0:37:33who come and go every day here in the Gare du Nord
0:37:33 > 0:37:37know that it was a project of the French Rothschild family.
0:37:37 > 0:37:42We usually think of the Rothschilds as masters of international finance,
0:37:42 > 0:37:45supporting government debts and sometimes wars.
0:37:45 > 0:37:48But, especially here in France,
0:37:48 > 0:37:52there was a strongly practical side to their enterprises too.
0:37:52 > 0:37:56Baron James, the great patriarch of the French Rothschilds,
0:37:56 > 0:37:59thought of himself above all as a patriotic Frenchman,
0:37:59 > 0:38:04invested, in both the emotional and the financial sense,
0:38:04 > 0:38:08in the modernisation of classical France
0:38:08 > 0:38:12into an industrial superpower that could compete on equal terms
0:38:12 > 0:38:13with Britain and Germany.
0:38:13 > 0:38:16So railways were very important to him.
0:38:16 > 0:38:20This station connected the other industrial pulses
0:38:20 > 0:38:21of northern Europe,
0:38:21 > 0:38:25particularly Belgium and Germany.
0:38:25 > 0:38:27Now, the Rothschilds were not in this for charity.
0:38:27 > 0:38:31They made a packet of money out of the railways,
0:38:31 > 0:38:36and that opened them to a certain amount of resentment and envy.
0:38:36 > 0:38:38But one has to say about France,
0:38:38 > 0:38:42the tide of anti-Semitism hadn't yet crashed on the Rothschilds
0:38:42 > 0:38:45and the other great Jewish families.
0:38:45 > 0:38:48Really, in the middle of 19th century,
0:38:48 > 0:38:52they were embedded in the project to modernise France.
0:38:52 > 0:38:57They were as strong as one of Baron James's iron rails.
0:38:58 > 0:39:03'The Rothschilds could afford to ignore anti-Semitic growling.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06'They moved into an urban palace on the Rue de Monceau
0:39:06 > 0:39:08'and filled it with great art.
0:39:08 > 0:39:12'And where the Rothschilds went, other wealthy Jews followed.
0:39:14 > 0:39:18'Among those Monceau families was a great Sephardi dynasty,
0:39:18 > 0:39:20'the Camondos.
0:39:20 > 0:39:22'They had come all the way from Istanbul,
0:39:22 > 0:39:26'where the patriarch, Abraham, had created a banking fortune.
0:39:29 > 0:39:31'They spoke Judaeo-Spanish at home,
0:39:31 > 0:39:34'but Abraham's grandsons, Nissim and Abraham Junior,
0:39:34 > 0:39:37'had been educated in French
0:39:37 > 0:39:40'and were drawn irresistibly to French culture.
0:39:40 > 0:39:44'So they moved their bank and its fortune to Paris,
0:39:44 > 0:39:47'and their splendour to the Rue de Monceau.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52'There, they went completely native.
0:39:52 > 0:39:54'Their Monceau mansion owed nothing
0:39:54 > 0:39:57'to the rich culture of Ottoman Turkey -
0:39:57 > 0:40:00'not a Turkish rug in sight.
0:40:01 > 0:40:04'The Camondos had committed themselves heart and soul
0:40:04 > 0:40:06'to being French.
0:40:06 > 0:40:09'They took the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man at face value,
0:40:09 > 0:40:13'and assumed it included their rights too.'
0:40:17 > 0:40:21It looks here, doesn't it, as though they have been here for generations,
0:40:21 > 0:40:24urban aristocrats in Paris,
0:40:24 > 0:40:28but in fact, the Camondos were Johnny-come-latelys.
0:40:28 > 0:40:31They only came here in 1869.
0:40:31 > 0:40:36But in some sense, the family always felt they belonged to France.
0:40:36 > 0:40:39It's been said of them that they thought of France
0:40:39 > 0:40:41as their Promised Land,
0:40:41 > 0:40:45and Paris as their Jerusalem. And there was a good reason for this.
0:40:45 > 0:40:47They saw in France a place, after all,
0:40:47 > 0:40:52where Jews had been emancipated for the first time in Europe,
0:40:52 > 0:40:56a place where Jews could prosper and thrive
0:40:56 > 0:40:58at the heart of high society.
0:40:58 > 0:41:03And once they did come here in the 1870s, they built themselves,
0:41:03 > 0:41:05along with all the other great Jewish families
0:41:05 > 0:41:08on this street in the Rue de Monceau,
0:41:08 > 0:41:12a place of sumptuous refinement.
0:41:12 > 0:41:13They began to collect the furniture,
0:41:13 > 0:41:17they began to become great connoisseurs of fine art.
0:41:17 > 0:41:22And the hope was that they'd somehow settle into this world
0:41:22 > 0:41:26as a natural piece of the period of the Belle Epoque.
0:41:26 > 0:41:28And to a large extent, they did,
0:41:28 > 0:41:32but in some ways also their timing was really awful,
0:41:32 > 0:41:36because it was exactly at the time when this house was going up,
0:41:36 > 0:41:41when they were filling it with their extraordinary artistic collection,
0:41:41 > 0:41:43that French nationalism was changing,
0:41:43 > 0:41:47from a broader, more cosmopolitan character,
0:41:47 > 0:41:51to something narrower, more strident and more visceral.
0:41:51 > 0:41:56And to those who embodied this narrower, more tribal view
0:41:56 > 0:41:58of what it meant to be French,
0:41:58 > 0:42:01the Camondos were not an admirable,
0:42:01 > 0:42:06magnificent instance of everything that French culture could do.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10They were simply Jews with a lot of money.
0:42:14 > 0:42:17Defeated nations are dangerous nations,
0:42:17 > 0:42:19prone to paranoia,
0:42:19 > 0:42:21and that's exactly what happened
0:42:21 > 0:42:26when France was defeated by Prussia in the war of 1870.
0:42:30 > 0:42:34The war was followed by a global stock market crash,
0:42:34 > 0:42:38and the financial panic triggered an outbreak of anti-Semitism.
0:42:40 > 0:42:43All the medieval cliches
0:42:43 > 0:42:48about blood-sucking Jewish moneylenders resurfaced.
0:42:50 > 0:42:54The witch's brew of modern anti-Semitism coagulated
0:42:54 > 0:42:58around the demonic figure of the Jewish banker,
0:42:58 > 0:43:00locked in his vaults,
0:43:00 > 0:43:06undertaking machinations that might control the European economy.
0:43:06 > 0:43:08Now, of course,
0:43:08 > 0:43:11there were, in fact, Quaker bankers,
0:43:11 > 0:43:12Presbyterian bankers,
0:43:12 > 0:43:17to say nothing of the Catholic bankers to His Holiness the Pope.
0:43:17 > 0:43:21But somehow, as global capitalism became wired
0:43:21 > 0:43:25to speculative businesses like mining and railways,
0:43:25 > 0:43:29and the booms and busts of the world of finance became sharper,
0:43:29 > 0:43:32those who were the victims of the crashes
0:43:32 > 0:43:35thought that their predicament had to have come about
0:43:35 > 0:43:40because there were certain people in the financial world
0:43:40 > 0:43:43whose loyalty was to each other,
0:43:43 > 0:43:47rather than the nations in which they happened to reside.
0:43:47 > 0:43:53And who, I wonder, could those certain people be, except the Jews?
0:43:55 > 0:43:59'The term anti-Semitism itself was an attempt
0:43:59 > 0:44:03'to make Jew hatred appear rational and even scientific.
0:44:03 > 0:44:06'Anti-Semites held that Jews were bound to each other,
0:44:06 > 0:44:08'not by their adopted countries,
0:44:08 > 0:44:11'but what lay beneath their skin,
0:44:11 > 0:44:13'their Jewish blood.
0:44:14 > 0:44:18'The runaway bestseller in late 19th-century France
0:44:18 > 0:44:21'was also the most vitriolic -
0:44:21 > 0:44:24'Edouard Drumont's La France Juive,
0:44:24 > 0:44:26'Jewish France.
0:44:27 > 0:44:30'So when it was revealed in 1894
0:44:30 > 0:44:34'that someone had been passing military secrets to the Germans,
0:44:34 > 0:44:38'that someone, of course, had to be a Jew.
0:44:40 > 0:44:44'34-year-old army captain Alfred Dreyfus
0:44:44 > 0:44:47'was a model of Jewish-French achievement.
0:44:47 > 0:44:51'His family had been pedlars in rural Alsace.
0:44:52 > 0:44:55'Dreyfus had risen through the ranks of the French army,
0:44:55 > 0:45:00'which, uniquely at that time, allowed Jews to serve as officers.
0:45:01 > 0:45:05'But his dreams of service and advancement were shattered
0:45:05 > 0:45:10'when he was accused of sending military secrets to the Germans.
0:45:10 > 0:45:13'Dreyfus was a victim of convenience.
0:45:13 > 0:45:17'The handwriting evidence on which he was convicted was bogus,
0:45:17 > 0:45:21'the identity of the real traitor covered up.
0:45:24 > 0:45:26'Dreyfus's public degradation,
0:45:26 > 0:45:29'which took place here at the military academy in Paris,
0:45:29 > 0:45:32'brought to the surface anti-Jewish hatred,
0:45:32 > 0:45:36'in speeches and in print, of the most primitive kind.'
0:45:38 > 0:45:42"His face is grey, flattened and base,
0:45:42 > 0:45:45"showing no sign of remorse,
0:45:45 > 0:45:48"a wreck from the ghetto."
0:45:53 > 0:45:57Parisians have always loved a good public spectacle -
0:45:57 > 0:46:00ugly punishments as well as joyous moments.
0:46:00 > 0:46:04So the humiliation of the Jewish officer
0:46:04 > 0:46:07was bound to be a crowd pleaser.
0:46:07 > 0:46:14Almost 20,000 people packed themselves into this great courtyard
0:46:14 > 0:46:16ready to shout, "Death to the Jew!
0:46:16 > 0:46:18"Traitor! Judas!"
0:46:18 > 0:46:23as the sorry figure of Dreyfus was marched in
0:46:23 > 0:46:27promptly at nine o'clock in the morning.
0:46:27 > 0:46:31He must have felt a terrible sense of turmoil.
0:46:31 > 0:46:33The Ecole Militaire, after all,
0:46:33 > 0:46:37was the place which stood most for the honour and glory
0:46:37 > 0:46:39of France's military past,
0:46:39 > 0:46:44the place which must have meant most to him in his life.
0:46:44 > 0:46:49And here he was, right in the dead centre,
0:46:49 > 0:46:54ready for this formal, ceremonious degradation.
0:46:54 > 0:46:59At the critical point, he stood absolutely stock-still.
0:46:59 > 0:47:03The commanding officer read out loud to him,
0:47:03 > 0:47:08"You are no longer worthy of bearing the arms of France."
0:47:08 > 0:47:11And then the really tortuous stuff began.
0:47:11 > 0:47:16His epaulettes and buttons were ripped from his uniform,
0:47:16 > 0:47:19a sword which had been shaved through
0:47:19 > 0:47:22so that there would be no comical mishaps
0:47:22 > 0:47:26was broken over the knee of the officer.
0:47:26 > 0:47:30There was the sorry figure at the centre of it all,
0:47:30 > 0:47:34and then he did something, maybe for the first time in his life,
0:47:34 > 0:47:36that broke the rules.
0:47:36 > 0:47:39He was supposed to remain silent while the mob howled.
0:47:39 > 0:47:41But Dreyfus did not.
0:47:41 > 0:47:45He said, "An innocent man is being degraded,
0:47:45 > 0:47:47"an innocent man is being dishonoured."
0:47:47 > 0:47:49And then the most tragic things
0:47:49 > 0:47:52that could have come out of his mouth,
0:47:52 > 0:47:55"Vive La France!" - long live France.
0:47:55 > 0:47:59"Vive L'Armee!" - long live the army.
0:47:59 > 0:48:01And then he stepped over the debris
0:48:01 > 0:48:05of what was not just his own personal career,
0:48:05 > 0:48:08but the debris of a noble dream,
0:48:08 > 0:48:13the possibility of being a patriotic citizen,
0:48:13 > 0:48:16Frenchman and a Jew.
0:48:22 > 0:48:26More was at stake than just Dreyfus's personal tragedy.
0:48:26 > 0:48:30Whether the Jew was a traitor or was the victim of atrocious prejudice
0:48:30 > 0:48:35became the touchstone for the entire fate of democratic justice.
0:48:35 > 0:48:40And there were other, equally troubling questions.
0:48:41 > 0:48:45Not everybody in the crowd at the Ecole Militaire that January day
0:48:45 > 0:48:48was baying for Dreyfus's blood.
0:48:48 > 0:48:50There were some among them
0:48:50 > 0:48:54who were acutely moved by his plight, his torment,
0:48:54 > 0:48:57and that was because they were themselves Jews.
0:48:57 > 0:49:00And one of those Jews was a young journalist from Vienna,
0:49:00 > 0:49:04Theodor Herzl, acutely conscious
0:49:04 > 0:49:07that perhaps the assimilation route
0:49:07 > 0:49:11of being a Jew in modern Europe was never going to work out.
0:49:11 > 0:49:13Something snapped in Herzl
0:49:13 > 0:49:18as that sword was broken over the officer's knee.
0:49:18 > 0:49:23Something which told Herzl there had to be another future,
0:49:23 > 0:49:27another way for Jews to survive in the modern world.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33Weeks after the degradation,
0:49:33 > 0:49:37Herzl left France and returned to Vienna, sunk into a deep pessimism.
0:49:46 > 0:49:50'As a boy, young Theodor Herzl had been taught to believe
0:49:50 > 0:49:53'the axiom of the Jewish Enlightenment -
0:49:53 > 0:49:56'that a wholehearted commitment to secular society
0:49:56 > 0:49:59'would sweep away all the old prejudices.'
0:50:01 > 0:50:05All his life, Herzl had abided by the conventions -
0:50:05 > 0:50:09don't make too big a deal of your Jewishness,
0:50:09 > 0:50:11and Vienna will open its arms to you,
0:50:11 > 0:50:15embrace you, give you a career or a reputation.
0:50:15 > 0:50:17In Herzl's case, that of a lawyer
0:50:17 > 0:50:21who was also an aspiring author, a journalist, a playwright.
0:50:21 > 0:50:25But now, in the middle of the 1890s,
0:50:25 > 0:50:27Vienna was becoming a very different place.
0:50:27 > 0:50:32Anti-Semitism was a toxin at the centre of municipal politics.
0:50:32 > 0:50:35The mayor, very popular Karl Lueger,
0:50:35 > 0:50:38was an intensely demagogic anti-Semite.
0:50:38 > 0:50:44Vienna regularly sent anti-Semitic deputies to the parliament.
0:50:44 > 0:50:48So Herzl was having a profound change of heart.
0:50:48 > 0:50:50He was coming to the conclusion
0:50:50 > 0:50:53that anti-Semitism could not be cured or defeated,
0:50:53 > 0:50:55you just had to get out of the way of it.
0:50:55 > 0:50:57And the problem for the Jews
0:50:57 > 0:51:01was that they were a nation without a home.
0:51:01 > 0:51:05So, in 1895, he wrote his little book,
0:51:05 > 0:51:08a booklet, really, called Der Judenstaat -
0:51:08 > 0:51:11The Jewish State - and this is what he said in it.
0:51:11 > 0:51:15"We have sincerely tried everywhere
0:51:15 > 0:51:18"to merge with the nations in which we live,
0:51:18 > 0:51:23"seeking just to preserve the faith, the religion, of our fathers.
0:51:23 > 0:51:26"But this has not been allowed to us.
0:51:26 > 0:51:30"It's been in vain that we've tried to enhance the fame
0:51:30 > 0:51:33"of our countries in arts and sciences.
0:51:33 > 0:51:36"It's in vain that we've tried to increase
0:51:36 > 0:51:37"its wealth by commerce and trade.
0:51:37 > 0:51:41"We are still, in the place where we've lived for centuries,
0:51:41 > 0:51:46"decried as aliens, and often by people who were not even here
0:51:46 > 0:51:51"when the sighs of our fathers had been heard for centuries."
0:51:51 > 0:51:54Now thus was born Zionism.
0:51:56 > 0:51:58Now Zionism has become a heavily-loaded term,
0:51:58 > 0:52:01for some people even a tragically-loaded term,
0:52:01 > 0:52:02but not for me.
0:52:02 > 0:52:05I'm a Zionist, I'm quite unapologetic about it,
0:52:05 > 0:52:07because it comes down to this -
0:52:07 > 0:52:13was Herzl, who had a sense of a catastrophic event
0:52:13 > 0:52:16just around the corner, telling the truth, or wasn't he,
0:52:16 > 0:52:19about whether it was possible still
0:52:19 > 0:52:23to live the Enlightenment dream here in the German world?
0:52:23 > 0:52:26Of course he was.
0:52:26 > 0:52:30With that knowledge, with that sense of the Jews having
0:52:30 > 0:52:33never had the power of their own national home,
0:52:33 > 0:52:38how could you not be a Zionist?
0:52:44 > 0:52:49But not everyone was ready to give up on the Enlightenment dream.
0:52:49 > 0:52:50Many still believed
0:52:50 > 0:52:54that anti-Semitism belonged to a rotten, decadent past,
0:52:54 > 0:52:56not to the future.
0:52:56 > 0:53:00And in the new, fearless modern world that was being created
0:53:00 > 0:53:03in music, art and architecture, Jews would march side by side
0:53:03 > 0:53:08with their brothers and sisters, in the cultural revolution.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14One of the most fearless modernists
0:53:14 > 0:53:17was the Jewish-born Austrian composer and painter,
0:53:17 > 0:53:19Arnold Schoenberg,
0:53:19 > 0:53:23who, in the early 20th century, changed the very nature of music.
0:53:24 > 0:53:29Working in Vienna and later Berlin, he abandoned tonality -
0:53:29 > 0:53:30the system of notes
0:53:30 > 0:53:34that had sustained Western music for 500 years.
0:53:37 > 0:53:41Schoenberg counted many non-Jewish thinkers and artists
0:53:41 > 0:53:45among his friends, among them, Wassily Kandinsky,
0:53:45 > 0:53:47who was also ripping up the rule book
0:53:47 > 0:53:49with his abstract art.
0:53:50 > 0:53:54Like Felix Mendelssohn, Schoenberg had converted to Christianity,
0:53:54 > 0:53:56hoping that it would immunise him
0:53:56 > 0:53:59from the growing virus of anti-Semitism in Germany.
0:54:01 > 0:54:04It didn't.
0:54:04 > 0:54:08Even the love between modernist comrades could be tainted.
0:54:08 > 0:54:13In 1923, Schoenberg discovered that Kandinsky had been sounding off
0:54:13 > 0:54:15about the so-called "Jewish problem".
0:54:21 > 0:54:24Kandinsky hastened to assure Schoenberg
0:54:24 > 0:54:26he didn't mean him - goodness, no!
0:54:26 > 0:54:30Schoenberg would be an exception, of course, to the Jewish question,
0:54:30 > 0:54:35and Schoenberg said, "I do not want to be an exception,"
0:54:35 > 0:54:40and wrote a long, impassioned letter to Kandinsky in which he said this.
0:54:40 > 0:54:45"The events of the past year have forced on me a lesson
0:54:45 > 0:54:49"and it's one I will never forget." What was that lesson?
0:54:49 > 0:54:55Well, it was that, "I am no German, I am no European."
0:54:55 > 0:54:58"Ja, vielleicht kaum ein Mensch bin.
0:54:58 > 0:55:02"Perhaps I'm not even a man,
0:55:02 > 0:55:06"since Europeans seem to prefer the worst of their race to me.
0:55:06 > 0:55:10"Ich Jude bin.
0:55:10 > 0:55:12"I am a Jew."
0:55:14 > 0:55:20When the Nazis came to power ten years later, they agreed with him,
0:55:20 > 0:55:25forcing him out of his job at the Berlin Music Academy.
0:55:25 > 0:55:29Germany was now over for Arnold Schoenberg.
0:55:29 > 0:55:31He left for America via Paris...
0:55:33 > 0:55:37..and there he stepped towards another light.
0:55:40 > 0:55:45This story of a great leap of faith began in a synagogue,
0:55:45 > 0:55:49when a Jew was cast out by his own people.
0:55:49 > 0:55:53It ends in another synagogue, rather differently.
0:55:56 > 0:55:59On 24th July, 1933,
0:55:59 > 0:56:02Arnold Schoenberg stood here
0:56:02 > 0:56:05in the synagogue on the Rue Copernic in Paris,
0:56:05 > 0:56:11seeking formal readmission to the community of Jews and Judaism.
0:56:11 > 0:56:14The date could hardly be more significant.
0:56:14 > 0:56:17For more than a decade, he had been predicting
0:56:17 > 0:56:20that if Hitler and the Nazis ever came to power,
0:56:20 > 0:56:24it would not just be the great experiment in cultural modernism,
0:56:24 > 0:56:28which had begun perhaps since Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn,
0:56:28 > 0:56:32which would be a casualty, but the entirety of Jews
0:56:32 > 0:56:36that would be engulfed in something utterly catastrophic.
0:56:36 > 0:56:39He knew that what had begun with words
0:56:39 > 0:56:42would end with terrifying violence.
0:56:42 > 0:56:46He'd long been devoted to themes Jewish.
0:56:46 > 0:56:51He was in the middle of what was an unfinished opera, Moses And Aaron,
0:56:51 > 0:56:56and now he stood there absolutely committed to this identity.
0:56:56 > 0:57:00He'd become an ardent Zionist, and above all, he wanted,
0:57:00 > 0:57:04right from this minute, to alert the world
0:57:04 > 0:57:08to the extermination which he thought was about to happen.
0:57:08 > 0:57:11Indeed, of course, he was so prescient.
0:57:11 > 0:57:15That great dream of being Jewish and a cultural adventurer
0:57:15 > 0:57:20was about to disappear into the smoke of the crematoria.
0:57:29 > 0:57:34'Was it all a delusion, then, right from the start?
0:57:34 > 0:57:36'I don't know.
0:57:36 > 0:57:41'I like to think I would've been optimistic with Moses Mendelssohn
0:57:41 > 0:57:45'and realistic with Theodor Herzl.
0:57:45 > 0:57:49'I like to think that the humanity of the Enlightenment idea
0:57:49 > 0:57:56'was not entirely cancelled out by the inhumanity of its incineration.
0:57:56 > 0:58:01'To declare anything else is to declare victory for the murderers.
0:58:04 > 0:58:10'I do know I grieve endlessly for those here in Berlin,
0:58:10 > 0:58:15'and all over Europe, who innocently imagined they could be Jews
0:58:15 > 0:58:19'and citizens of their own countries, and who, to the end,
0:58:19 > 0:58:22'could not imagine the evil that would turn their books
0:58:22 > 0:58:25'and their bodies into ash.'
0:58:54 > 0:58:59Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd