Bernhard Mayer: Interesting Contemporaries, Kartoniert / Broschiert

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Each time he visits London he learns something new about the political situation from Kropotkin: "As long as this reactionary Germany exists in the center of Europe, we can't make one step of progress in Russia." Though already a weIl-to-do businessman, he continues to participate in his union, supports many Russian immigrants and is threatened by bomb-carrying anarchists. At the turn of the century he meets Lord Herbert Samuel, Dr. Decroly and Leonhard Frank. In 1912 he takes the whole family on a trip to Egypt. In the literary society he helps found in Brussels the 'Art Society', he meets, among others, the authors Thomas Mann, Frank Wedekind and Werner Sombart, of whom he latter makes: "One of the worst impressions on me... " (p. 199). Friendships develop with Gustav Landauer and Leonhard Ragaz. A trip to Spain reminds him not least of all of the earlier persecution of the Jews; it became clear to hirn then that Germany was consciously steering a course toward war. During a congress of the Socialist International in Brussels, he is favorably impressed by Jean Jaures: "One felt the tension that weighed heavily on everyone: the imminent coming of an unavoidable catastrophe." (p. 202) In Brussels the Mayers now find themselves to be Germans in a "hostile atmosphere." Taking flight, he and other men are imprisoned in Bruges for four days, but he finally reaches Berlin: "My conviction that Germany had begun the war and would also lose it was as solid as a rock." His firm meanwhile develops into one of the largest and leading businesses in the furrier trade, and 1914 is a record-breaking year. Bernhard Mayer' s stay in Berlin is used to make intensive contacts with Gustave Landauer, whom he to invites visit Switzerland in 1916. Through him he also meets Julius Bab, Margarete Susman and Martin Buber, who at first irritates him so much with a patriotic speech that he never wants to see him again; despite this inauspicious beginning, a friendship later develops, and Buber is often a guest at Ascona and in Zurich. (p. 209) The war and Jewish attitudes show Bernhard Mayer the shocking extent to which the patriotic assimilation of the Jews had progressed: "My fellow believers feIt themselves almost without exception to be Germans firstly and only secondly Jews." During the First World War he often meets with Ludwig Rubiner, Leonhard Frank, Else Lasker-Schüler and Rene Schickeie, as weIl as with the painters Jawlensky, Marianne Werefkin and Arthur SegaI.