Imaginary Interview by Corinna Heumann

Moses Hess was born in Bonn in 1812. In 1875, he died in Paris as a French citizen. In Bonn he studied philosophy. While still a student, he and friends founded the world-famous Rheinische Zeitung. Unfortunately, the Prussian censorship authorities prove to be intellectually out of touch. He leaves the country. Together with his partner and later editor of his texts, Sybille Pesch, he travels via Brussels to Paris. There, he works as a journalist, among others for an American newspaper as well as for his revolutionary utopias. Well integrated, some of his friends already live in Paris. They help the young couple to find their way around the city of over one million inhabitants, on Rue Vaneau, Rive Gauche.

Before we start the interview, some technical problems regarding accessibility have to be cleared up. Moses decides in favor of the transstyxic cable to Olympus. Underworld and the darknet seem too obscure to him.

What drives you, Moses?

I want to improve the collective existence. I’m driven by the misery I see everywhere and never come to terms with. I abhor physical violence. Ideas are important to me. So is their implementation. I would perhaps describe myself as a musing optimist. I am, so to speak, a rather serious, Rhenish bon vivant with an eternal love for Sybille and for the Age of Reason, as well as a passion for liberty. I have worked really hard for it. I will go to the barricades again at any time, in Paris. But in my case, unfortunately, that has been a while ago. After my death, my wonderful Sybille publishes the writings, pays the publisher herself, although we really have almost nothing. She distributes them. Otherwise I would have fallen into oblivion already at that time.

Are you bored in the realm of Olympic eternities

On the one hand, I think a lot about my illusions, those of my friends, and ask myself if they were our downfall. We really had a great time together. We acted in solidarity, full of inspiration and very much alive. I miss all that very much, although I see little progress in general. On the other hand, I have always been fascinated by technological advancement. I remember well when the first transatlantic cable was laid. It works! Suddenly we know what’s happening in America in real time. Technology is incredibly exciting. We imagine how it can be used to help industrial workers out of their misery. How to connect them internationally so they can support each other across national borders. Think of the improvements of the living conditions that can be implemented that way.

I just wonder sometimes who really benefits from the internet, algorithms, and eventually AI? Inequality is growing again. The new technologies seem to benefit those who have the power, the money or both and want to increase it at any cost, even at the cost of abolishing the hard-won democratic rule of law. The rest of the population just seem to go wild on social media or kill themselves altogether. On the other hand, in the digital age, everyone could become famous. Everything endures. Forever. That is interesting.

Can we learn from history?

Please do not get me wrong, I do not claim that one could learn anything from history, from us. I can’t even discuss past earthly controversies with the worst enemies I’ve had in my lifetime. They don’t want any dialogue. They have holed up in the darkest corner of Hades. What they are doing there, nobody knows. Stagnation and indifference are the worst.

Everything passes, except the past

As for me, rethinking history is interesting. What you can make of history. Spinoza particularly inspires me. He is my constant life companion. Then, the French Revolution. Try to imagine what the concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity meant for us. Think about how to further develop these in the context of a European idea of supranationality.

Could you share your perspective on the relationship between time and eternity with us?

I’m concerned with the HOW, that is, how the social, aesthetic, creative, and ethical aspects manifest themselves in a constructive exchange worldwide across all societies and classes. It’s about universal values and their validity to all people. Under what conditions do they have a positive impact on human nature in the real world? How can we credibly promote them? It is necessary to stand up for ethical values, especially now at the beginning of the 21st century. We should invest in this effort. Otherwise, we will lose and forget all about them. Each century has to reinvent itself. In the digital age, fundamental human qualities such as the capacity of moral behaviour cannot be marketed solely for some elitist amusement.

How does this HOW work?

To do that, you indeed need a kind of toolbox. It includes education, knowledge of how to categorize various notions, perhaps some constructive imagination, and the ability for peaceful human understanding. It’s not always just about personal experiences.

(Henry Heine and Louis Boerne conversing appear out of the blue by)

L.B. – You sound like a member of the Academy of Sciences.

H.H. – There are not only natural objects whose experiences are accessible to everyone. The historical, political, and moral sciences should be as positivistic as the physical and physiological sciences.

L.B. – However, they are different approaches, and they must be considered separately.

H.H. – The human sphere can be distinguished from the sphere of natural science, but it cannot be separated. The same laws of origin and development apply to both.

L.B. – They can be considered at most analogously; they are never identical.”

H.H. – General laws are the same in all areas of life. Everything is born from something; everything, in its own way, reaches a state of full development, unless the environment or environments necessary for its creation and changes are missing; this can happen in the social world just as in the natural world. However, the larger the sphere of life, the less likely this danger is. The higher the sphere of life, the more diverse its transformations, and the longer and more laborious its development. These are principles that apply to all areas of life.

L.B. – These are general statements. How would you apply them to our topic?

(Interrupted conversation and static on the line)

H.H. – You don’t continue by repeating what has become commonplace. Each century has its own tasks. Precisely because of their inadequacies, the achievements of the past century led to setbacks, to relapses into skepticism and religious illusions that were believed to be forever destroyed. – Make the effort to follow the path of modern science -.

L.B. – How does modern science differ from the science of the last century?

H.H. – The 18th century was in a hurry to eliminate the unbearable abuses of the old regime. It neither had the time nor the intellectual disposition to deal with details. It had a mania for generalizations. The assumption that all people are equal and that the moral, intellectual, and economic development of human society is thus anticipated is undoubtedly a beautiful feeling that also forms the bright side of the great historical religions. An ideal is set up to console people in their actual misery and encourage them to noble deeds. But these idealistic anticipations do not change the facts. The revolutionaries of the past century fought against old illusions but replaced them with new ones. The facts, which are always brutal, soon destroyed their illusions. This resulted in many disastrous reactions. Today, one must face these facts, address them, and delve into the details of natural and social problems. This is what characterizes the science of the 19th century.

L.B. – Humans always have the need to create an ideal for themselves. If you take away the moral idea, they fall back into religious illusions. Or imagine that the poor, when they believe that they are inevitably subjected to misery throughout their entire historical development, console themselves with the thought that their descendants will one day be happier than they are?

H.H. – That is a matter of how each person finds comfort. It’s a personal matter. Science has nothing to do with it.

(Henry Heine and Louis Boerne depart)

Did they not notice you?

No! They didn’t even see that I’m currently connected to the earthly realm. They are completely absorbed in their conversation, for all eternity, without any time restrictions. It’s quite fascinating. Nobody on Earth notices.

Can personal matters be strictly separated from science?

That’s a good question that I can’t answer. I’m just thinking about algorithms. Even these can’t be strictly separated from the personalities and ethical values of their programmers. It’s always about their creators. It’s always about humans and their responsibility.

Do you know the following quote from Kleist?

“I carry a heart within me, like a northern land carries the seed of a southern fruit. It sprouts and sprouts, but it cannot ripen.”

Yes, of course. He wrote this phrase on July 29, 1801, in Paris. Later in Berlin, he shot his beloved and himself shortly before I was born. For some time, we’ve been discussing our experiences in Paris and debating the outsider’s view on Germany. Kleist was enthusiastic about a united Germany against Napoleon at that time. I, on the other hand, raised the question from my own experience on how to protect Jews worldwide from discrimination and give them shelter from these terrible pogroms . I believe that only a strong and independent Jewish nation can assure this. My ideas and efforts to confront the immense exploitation and suffering of laborers, and their children play a significant role in this. My utopia is a humane world of peaceful understanding. No exploitation, but equal opportunities! No war, but cooperation for the well-being of all! Theodor Herzl was thrilled. Industrial agriculture is developed in the desert in collaboration with the residents of Palestine. Although agriculture was invented in this region, the idea of surplus production is not considered necessary for a long time. Unfortunately, I only learn in the afterlife that the State of Israel was founded in 1948, and I can hardly believe this happy outcome. This joy almost drove me insane and made me overlook that the establishment of the state is historically inseparable from the most terrible crimes of humanity, the Shoah. Meanwhile, the residents of my hometown tend to overlook me, despite the fact that I’m the one who delved into these thoughts on the Israeli nation for the first time and published them. I wonder whether this is because, in Germany in general, people tend to overlook things or because they are not really pushing digitalization in my old hometown. Education is kind of underfunded as well. Sometimes I think of Günderrode: “That’s why it seems to me as if I were lying in the coffin, and my two selves are staring at each other in amazement.”

Today the coffin of Moses Hess is buried in the Heroes’ Cemetatry at Kibbutz Kinneret on the Sea of Galilee. He was exhumed by the Israeli government in 1961 and reburied with a state ceremony. Moses Hess is thus a permanent member of the pantheon of Israel’s state founders.

This imaginary interview was inspired by the research of Edmund Silberner on Moses Hess, who provided the dialogue d’outre tombe between Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne. It is an excerpt from a text by Moses Hess. The interview was also inspired by Christa Wolf’s « No Place on Earth. Nowhere » and by Wolfgang Deuling, who above all introduced me to Moses Hess.