TE23 Double Feature

Anne Weber

Fatherland

man they’re entertaining in their home. Some things must have been reported to them. Or maybe not. They suspect plenty. And yet they are friendly. Because they’re incapable of hatred and harshness? Because those few people in Germany, the descendants of their friends, are the only connection to the life they once had, their intellectual world and their language. Erich Gutkind’s mother, Elise Gutkind, born in Weinberg in 1942, died in Theresienstadt. That’s something I’ll find this out later, back in Normandy, on the internet. The Gutkinds , my father says, and in my mind that name Gutkind, which means good child, gets mixed up in a strange way with my image of this old couple of emigrants, friendly despite everything , and “Sideric Birth,” the title of Gutkind’s major work, an esoteric mysticist study. I don’t remember, if I ever did know, what sideric means, but I do know 170

the French word sidérant . It refers to extreme astonishment, a kind of numbness or stupor.

The Gutkinds. I remember a passage in a book I recently read by Karl Emil Franzos. It describes how in the 18th century, the Jews of Hungary, Galicia, and Bukovina had last names forced upon them. This took place in the reign of Joseph II – the same emperor who established a fortified town in Bohemia and in honor of his mother called it Theresienstadt. These names were often made up of German words combined, as is the case with Gutkind. The arbitrary imposition of names by imperial royal officers was intolerable to the Jews since they bore Hebrew names that were sacred to them. Furthermore, there was corruption: those who didn’t want to have an insulting name, who didn’t want to be called Galgenholz (gallows-wood), Blutsauger (blood-sucker), Thränenvergießer (tear-weeper) or Falscherhund (cheating dog) often had to pay a bribe. One passage of Franzos’ book that stayed with 171