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PARTISAN REVIEW
within which a small minority continued to speak German and rule
the institutions of the nation. The Prague German community, cut
off by
hauteur
from the German population of the Sudeten and from
the Czech majority, continued as a class of rulers by rank and
wealth. It became increasingly narrow-minded, denying to itself not
only what was Czech but what was cosmopolitan and international
within the German realm, rejecting the whole German tradition
from Goethe to Thomas Mann. It became in Pavel Eisner's phrase
"a Ghetto in matters of language and culture."
Who then was the Prague-Jew, speaking German, educated in
German language and culture, distant from the religious institutions
that surrounded him with their shards and memories, anxious to
join himself to the dominant culture and the ruling elite? The Ger–
man-Jew in Prague, the Prague-Jew become German, the ancient
Jew who had preceded the Czech, become Czech, fallen away from
the Czech to become German, was rejected but now was tied inexor–
ably to the German.
The Prague German-speaking Jew was, in the period before
World War I, industrialist, bank official, doctor, lawyer, university
professor; he was wholesale merchant and import-export trader; he
controlled fashion and the dissemination of fabrics and furniture.
The Jews of the German ruling class were principals and controllers,
but the workers were Czechs, and the real power was in the hands of
the German Christians. The Jew raised his children with Czech ser–
vants, chauffeurs, cooks, and nurses. The Jew's table was supplied
by Czech grocers, provisioners, butchers; his clothes were mended
and patched by their labor. All that was menial and indispensable
was supplied by the Czechs and from the Czech nurse the child
learned the rudiments of his language, speaking it as a foreign
tongue, a language suitable for domestics and tradespeople. The
young German-Jew was fed by a Czech maid and led to his school
by her threatening hand, but he was also seduced by her and later
found her charms available for purchase, for she was the streetwalker
he followed, and his cafe haunts always admitted the Czech pros–
titute as one of its permanent recreations. The universities in the city
were rigidly divided between Czech and German, and German-Jews
attended the latter, sharing only occasional contact with the facilities
of its neighbor. The German-Jew went to the
gymnasium,
read Ger–
man books, the daily newspapers (predominantly edited, but not
owned, by Jews), attended German theaters and art galleries . But
the German-Christian enclave - the minority within the minority-
