First published in German in 1986, this newly translated novel begins with an insightful introduction by Hofmann’s son, Michael Hofmann (himself a well-known poet and translator). The rest of the book surrounds the death-bound fate of a Jew who was displaced to a small German town at the onset of Nazi hysteria in the early 1930s.
Gert Hofmann tells this horrific story from the perspective of Hans, an empathetic German boy whose physician father cares for Herr Veilchenfeld, the provincial town’s recently arrived philosopher — a professor removed from his university, we surmise, because of his ethnicity. Our Philosopher describes Herr Veilchenfeld’s physical and spiritual wasting away — the draining of his Jewish soul — as he becomes the object, and ultimately the victim, of the town’s unhinged racial hysteria.
Students of European Jewish cultural history will recognize Herr Veilchenfeld (whose name translates as “field of violets”) as a familiar archetype: he is a polymath immersed in high culture and high-level ideas, a musician, and an artist (indeed, Hans is inspired to take drawing lessons with him). Hans observes that Herr Veilchenfeld “seems to be carried away by his feelings.” At a dinner one evening, Hans notes with astonishment the philosopher’s tears: “Herr Veilchenfeld is actually sitting there and crying into his soup!”
These tears seem to reflect a number of emotions: Herr Veilchenfeld is grateful for the dinner invitation in light of his profound loneliness, but he’s also fearful of what’s to come. Like the many German Jews in the early 1930s who waited for an ominous knock on the door, Herr Veilchenfeld has made sure that his bags are packed and “standing in the corridor.” As a result of Hofmann’s matter-of-fact, understated tone, we feel palpably the trauma of vanishing. Little Hans recalls his mentor’s self-mocking observation about losing weight: “‘Yes, there is less and less of me,’ Herr Veilchenfeld often says and smiles and tugs at his coat. ‘Soon I will surely disappear completely … ’” In this respect, Hofmann’s philosopher stands in for all Jews on the threshold of extinction.
Herr Veilchenfeld’s gesture ultimately proves prophetic: he becomes the object of hysterical mob violence, public humiliation, and abject degradation. In despair and fear, Herr Veilchenfeld locks himself in his rooms, no longer sustained by his volumes of cherished books. “Twilight lay over everything, even at midday,” Hans observes. “The books lying in the darkness are especially eerie.” And when the mob finally arrives, they tear up the books, unleashing their Jew hatred in an uncanny forecast of Kristallnacht.
In the end, Herr Veilchenfeld loses his identity as a German citizen. His passport is shredded, and, in the brutal words of a town administrator, he’s forever banished “from our national community.” “Disappear,” the administrator commands, “or I will have you and your ridiculous bag forcibly removed from this building, which you have infested long enough.”
Our Philosopher offers an inside account of an insidious, emergent Nazism. In light of the open antisemitism of the present, the memory of the virulent German Jewish past feels sadly and profoundly alive.
Donald Weber writes about Jewish American literature and popular culture. He divides his time between Brooklyn and Mohegan Lake, NY.
