Herzl’s Tannhäuser

— J. Chr. de Vries

Beglückt darf nun dich, o Heimath, ich schauen.
— Richard Wagner, Tannhäuser, Akt III

Introduction

Right now the media are overflowing with information, misinformation, opinions, insults hurled back and forth — because of the war between Hamas and Israel. Gaza has been practically wiped off the map, the Israeli hostages still haven’t all been returned, and the Palestinian population is being starved.

Whether this has anything to do with what follows, I don’t know. But yesterday I stumbled on an obscure text by Taunis Haas in the bundle he sent me almost two years ago, just before his self-chosen death. [See: The Fateful One.] Until now I hadn’t really gotten around to going through all the material, but yesterday something pulled me back to it. The text is wildly speculative, and I’ll admit I hesitated before deciding to publish it. Then again, it was written long before the tragedy in Gaza, so it isn’t meant as a political statement. If anything, it shows how tangled the whole Middle Eastern question really is. Still, I can see why Haas withdrew it at the time. He never found a shred of evidence for his hypothesis. That, I should add, is apart from the other texts that once appeared on his website.

This piece is from 2011 — the very year Haas took his site offline, taking this text down with it. Was it perhaps the main reason for shutting it all down? We’ll never know; we can’t ask him anymore. Maybe his being German had something to do with it. Even today, anything said about the State of Israel is a touchy subject in Germany. The slightest criticism of Israel is enough to bring accusations of antisemitism.

— § —

Herzl’s Tannhäuser — by Taunis Haas

From 1933 a policy was carried out in Nazi Germany to stimulate the departure of Jews to Palestine, the Judenemigration. Thus the so-called Ha’avara-Abkommen was established, an agreement between the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland and the German Ministry of Economic Affairs. Through this agreement, German Jews could emigrate to Palestine while retaining part of their assets. This was necessary because of the British requirement that immigrants must have sufficient financial means. Between 1933 and 1939 some fifty to sixty thousand Jews made use of this agreement. The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought it to an end.

In 1937 Adolf Eichmann left together with Herbert Hagen for Haifa, in the British-controlled part of Palestine. Both did this on behalf of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), a division of the SS (Schutzstaffel). Hagen was his superior. They had to establish contact with Zionists about the emigration of German Jews to Palestine. The British did not allow this contact, since their papers were not in order. Eichmann and Hagen traveled on to Cairo, where they spoke with Feivel Polkes, a representative of the Haganah, a Zionist Jewish paramilitary organization. This did not lead to an agreement. It is very doubtful whether Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, knew about this. The leader of the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, possibly did, but there is no evidence.

In 1938 Eichmann was put in charge of the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Vienna, which he had set up himself, a bureaucratic apparatus working for the “rapid and total removal of Jews from Austria” through (forced) emigration. This led, among other things, to the so-called Madagascar Plan.

In 1939 there was a deportation plan to remove Jews via Madagascar. In 1938 Eichmann had sent a commission to Madagascar to investigate the possibilities. Madagascar was under French administration. The real plan was to make the island into a German colony. When Germany had occupied part of France, the rest of the country was governed by the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis. The plan was never carried out, because the Vichy government refused to cooperate, fearing they would lose the colony to Germany. Besides, it turned out to be practically impossible, since the British navy dominated the seas there. Large-scale transport could not be realized. After Japan entered the war, the Allies invaded the island, to prevent the French government from establishing a Japanese naval base there. Gradually the contours began to appear of what would finally be called the Endlösung, the total annihilation of the Jews. The first gas chambers came into use at the end of 1941.

— § —

With the Endlösung the plan to remove Jews from Germany and German-controlled countries with the help of Zionists came to an end. The rest of this terrible history is known. But that Judenemigration still needs further elaboration.

There is an intriguing hypothesis thinkable in this matter, and it begins with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, the movement within the Jewish community that strove for a Jewish state, ‘Zion’. The strange thing in this matter is Herzl’s admiration for Richard Wagner, a magnificent composer, inventor of the so-called Gesamtkunstwerk, art that unites various artistic disciplines within one total work.

The downside of Wagner is his antisemitism, especially expressed in a notorious text, Das Judenthum in der Musik, from 1850. It seems to me plausible that Herzl knew this text, or at least knew of its existence, but I have found no direct proof. In any case not in his diaries. It did not stop his adoration.

Especially the opera Tannhäuser was for Herzl not only extremely attractive, but even essential. He attended many performances. This opera has as an important theme the tension between sensual, earthly love and sacred, religious love. Tannhäuser is a singer, an artist who is on the one hand drawn to adventure, and on the other to religious and rational contemplation. He experiences sensual love with Venus, sacred love with Elisabeth. He leaves the latter and surrenders himself to the former, in the Venusberg. When later he meets Elisabeth again during the singing contest at her court, he praises the sensual love of Venus, and everyone understands that he has betrayed Elisabeth. Elisabeth prevents him from being sentenced to death, in exchange for penance. Tannhäuser makes a pilgrimage to Rome to obtain absolution from the Pope. The Pope refuses and condemns him for eternity. Through Elisabeth he nevertheless receives forgiveness and his soul is saved. They of course both die, as is fitting in an opera.

The similarity between himself and Tannhäuser did not escape Herzl: both went to Rome to appeal to the Pope. Tannhäuser for his penance, Herzl for help in founding his Zion. In both cases the appeal was rejected.

In his diaries Herzl makes a reference to both subjects: “The Exodus under the leadership of Moses has the same relation to [our] project as the fasting of Hans Sachs has to a Wagner opera. I am prepared for everything: complaining for the fleshpots of Egypt, dancing around the Golden Calf, and also [acceptance of] the ingratitude of those to whom we are most indebted.”

Also, two days earlier, after seeing the opera once more, he refers to his dream of the new Jewish State:

“Evening: the opera ‘Tannhäuser’. We too shall have such splendid theatres — the gentlemen in evening dress, the ladies dressed as sumptuously as possible. Yes, I want to make use of the Jewish love of luxury, alongside all other means. This once again set me thinking about the phenomenon of the crowd. There they sat for hours, packed together, motionless, physically uncomfortable — and for what? For something intangible, something Hirsch does not understand: for sounds! for music and images! I too shall have solemn processional marches composed for great festive occasions.”

In the second paragraph of Das Judenthum in der Musik there is an intriguing sentence: “In a purely political sense we have never truly come into conflict with the Jews; we even granted them the founding of a Kingdom of Jerusalem, and had rather to regret in this respect that Herr von Rothschild was too clever ever to allow himself to be crowned King of the Jews — while he preferred, as is well known, to remain ‘the Jew of kings’.” This sentence gives the impression that there had indeed been some talk of founding a Jewish State, because of the use of the past tense.

In the expanded version of 1869 Wagner — this time under his own name, not that of Karl Freigedank — added another passage about Rothschild: “If through the Jews money has come to dominate, they have also ruled us with the most unnatural product of the modern spirit: journalism. […] Rothschild, the richest and at the same time the most independent man of this age, is also the master of public opinion.” Apparently the first quote was a form of biting irony, but one that nevertheless stands in mysterious relation to the much later attempt (1895) by Herzl to enlist the Rothschild family in his Zionist project. Both Baron Albert de Rothschild in Vienna and Baron Edmond de Rothschild in Paris rejected Herzl’s plan [“I give no money to dreams. I support colonists, not politicians.”]. In his diary Herzl writes: “With Rothschild I have no chance, unless I force him. He must see that he stands before the choice: to lead Zionism, or to disappear.”

The question of Wagner versus Herzl raises the issue whether for Herzl the idea of a Jewish State had already been put forward earlier. That was indeed the case, namely by Leon Pinsker in his text Autoemancipation, Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen, and by Moses Hess in his Rom und Jerusalem. Pinsker’s text is from 1882, Hess’s from 1862 — both still decades later than Wagner’s text from 1850. It is therefore unlikely that Wagner had read of the idea of a Jewish State somewhere else. The suggestion of it — ironic or not — probably sprang from Wagner’s own brain.

Both the question of Wagner versus Herzl and that of the Judenemigration versus the Endlösung are full of contradictions. At the same time, in both (as already suggested above) a tempting hypothesis can be discovered: The antisemite Wagner is the inventor of Zionism. Even if Wagner’s suggestion was meant ironically, Herzl may still have taken it seriously, and perhaps even regarded it as a challenge. For Herzl the growing antisemitism in Europe was above all the main reason to propose a Jewish State, an argument we also read in the texts of Hess and Pinsker. The elaboration of this idea of a state has different emphases in these authors, but the similarities are considerable. Herzl only read Hess’s text in 1901, so after he had already written his Judenstaat — at least, that is what he writes in his diaries: “What a lofty, noble spirit! Everything we have tried is already in his book. Only troublesome is his Hegelian terminology. Splendid the Spinozist-Jewish and national sentiment. Since Spinoza Judaism has not produced a greater spirit than this forgotten faded Moses Hess!” And further on: “I would not have written Der Judenstaat had I known Hess’s Rom und Jerusalem earlier.” But fact remains: Wagner did not know these texts.

From 1933 to 1941 Adolf Eichmann worked on the so-called Judenemigration, the stimulated or forced emigration of Jews from Germany and the countries occupied by the Nazis. What is remarkable, and at the same time miserable, about this effort is that he sought, and partly found, support for it among the Zionists — they found parallel interests, which in the end stranded in the political chaos of the time.

That these mutual interests could not be realized is just as horrifying a fact as the plans themselves. On the one hand one might think: what if they had succeeded — would the Holocaust not have taken place? But on the other hand: at what terrible price?

In an interview Günter Gaus conducted with Hannah Arendt in 1964, Gaus at one point refers to her Lessing Lecture [1959], in which she speaks of a form of warm humanity that arises within a people living in exile. In the 1940s Arendt was not an advocate of forming a nation-state (on the West European model) such as Zionism envisaged. “The Zionists run the risk of repeating the mistakes of the European nation-states of the nineteenth century, which led to chauvinism and hostility. Only a bi-national solution, guaranteeing equal rights for Arabs and Jews, can secure peace.” — [Zionism Reconsidered (1944)]

In the Lessing Lecture she says: “We pay dearly for that freedom, and we must realize that this form of humanity will not survive liberation for even five minutes.” In the interview with Gaus, however, she replies that it is pointless (or perhaps even impossible?) to turn back the history of the founding of the Jewish State in order to regain that humanity and solidarity of exile. For however warm and necessary, it is not automatically sustainable within a (handed-down?) political structure — for that freedom and political reality one pays a price: “You have to pay a price for that freedom, but I cannot say that I gladly pay it.” I wonder, by the way, whether by that “freedom” she does not actually mean “banal” freedom…

— § —

Heil, Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Herbert Hagen, Haifa, Ha’avara-Abkommen, Haganah, Herzl, Hess, Heinrich, Heimat, Holocaust, Hannah, Hamas, 88… Haas! Ha! It takes little effort to find names, notions, or ideas that in one way or another correspond with each other — but to establish consistent causalities, that is another matter entirely. The beauty that such a construction produces is without doubt seductive and strangely compelling. But often it seems too beautiful to be true. The question is: does the possibility also exist that something is too ugly to be true?

— § —

Postscript

By ‘Heinrich’, Haas is referring to Heinrich von Ofterdingen, another name for Tannhäuser. The final list of names, to my mind, reveals Haas’ inability to arrive at a measured conclusion; he had come to an impasse. He was apparently aware of this, given the word count of his last paragraph: 88. The number that refers to ‘Heil Hitler’ — the letter H being the eighth in the alphabet — and often used by neo-Nazis as a symbol. With this particular number Haas breaks through his frequently, almost manically employed count of 273 words for paragraphs or blocks of text [In the original text — JCdV]. It is without doubt a mixture of irony and black humor.

I find his hypothesis speculative and obscure, but at the same time too tempting to ignore. As I mentioned earlier, this may have been the reason he withdrew the text, and perhaps even his entire website. As if he had failed in everything. ‘All or nothing’ could very well be considered Haas’ personal motto. My concern here is not with a psychological analysis, but with the construction he had in mind for his text. Was that in fact a hopeless enterprise?

I believe he neglected one possible plot line — consciously or unconsciously, I cannot say, nor can I determine that now. I derive this line from a certain element of Jewish Messianism, as it appears in the Kabbalistic tradition: the formula of the as_not. Giorgio Agamben discusses this theme in his book The Time That Remains (2005). We find the formula in the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians [1 Cor. 7:29–32]:

But this I say, brethern, time contracted itself, the rest is, that even those having wives may be as not [hōs mē] having, and those weeping as not weeping, and those rejoicing as not rejoicing, and those buying as not possessing, and those using the world as not using it up. For passing away is the figure of this world. But I wish you to be without concern.

“Weeping as not weeping” should not be read in the sense of “weeping as if not-weeping”, but as “weeping as_not weeping.” It is not a comparison between weeping and not-weeping. The as_not [in Greek: hōs mē] is a messianic formula in which weeping is suspended [solved] in its opposite, because time contracts, dissolves, or comes to rest. The ‘time that remains’ does not, in the messianic conception, refer to ‘the end of time’, i.e. what happens then, as in the Christian view, but rather to the end of time itself; time ‘coming to rest’.

Let us attempt to apply this formula to the opposition between Jewish Diaspora and Zion. As Haas points out in his text, Hannah Arendt in her Lessing Lecture of 1959 and her interview with Günter Gaus insists that this opposition is of an existential nature. The transition from exile to the nation-state changes that nature fundamentally; the ‘freedom’ of the nation-state comes at a price. The price paid is the loss of a warm inner solidarity, which “is forfeited within five minutes of attaining that freedom.” This solidarity is specific, for it is nourished by the condition of living as (relative) outsiders.

The political structure of the nation-state produces freedom at the cost of that specific solidarity. The question now is whether this price is paid only by Zionist Jews (those living in that state), or also by Jews who chose to remain in the diaspora, as outsiders. The global Jewish population was estimated in 2024 at just under 16 million, with Israeli Jews numbering about 7 million, roughly 45 percent of the total.

If all Jews pay this price, then the following messianic as_not formula applies: Jews shall be as_not Jews. The specific inner Jewish solidarity would be suspended in its opposite, namely in the nineteenth-century praxis of the nation-state. If only Zionist Jews pay the price, then mutatis mutandis the same holds for Israeli Jews. In this latter case, an additional as_not may be conceivable: Diaspora Jews shall be as_not Zionist Jews. In all these instances the Jewish State remains the central figure.

The next question presses itself upon us: What could the consequences be for this nation-state, particularly in light of the current developments in Gaza? To answer this question, we must first ask another: Is it possible to formulate an as_not in relation to the very idea of the Jewish State? For instance: the Jewish State as_not Nation-State?

Since 1947, with UN Resolution 181, various proposals for a so-called ‘two-state solution’ have been advanced — that is history, which I will not rehearse here. But is it conceivable that the as_not of the nation-state could dissolve into a viable, modern bi-national form?

— J. Chr. de Vries, Bonnemort, 18 August 2025