XV. THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY.

Having, as a figure of popular faith, gathered to him all related elements of mould and decay, and found fit extinction in the Newcastle “fossil” just mentioned, Ahasuerus rises for new wanderings as a poetic ideal.

The Germans were the first to deal seriously with our legend, and their literature of the Wandering Jew is indicated in this chapter. The subject attracted the unhappy Daniel Friedrich Schubart during his imprisonment. Carlyle, in the notes to his Life of Schiller, says the idea of making old Joannes a temporibus, the ‘Wandering,’ or, as Schubart’s countrymen denominate him, the ‘Eternal Jew,’ into a novel hero was a mighty favourite with him. “In this antique cordwainer, as on a raft at anchor in the stream of time, he would survey the changes and wonders of two thousand years: the Roman and the Arab were to figure there, the Crusader and the Circumnavigator, the Eremite and the Thebaid, and the Pope of Rome. Joannes himself, the Man existing out of Time and Space—Joannes, the unresting and undying—was to be a deeply tragic personage. Schubart warmed himself with this idea, and talked about it in his cups, to the astonishment of simple souls. He even wrote a certain rhapsody connected with it, which is published in his poems. But here he rested; and the project of the Wandering Jew, which Goethe likewise meditated in his youth, is still unexecuted. Goethe turned to other objects, and poor Schubart was surprised by death in the midst of his schemes, on the 10th of October, 1791.” But the project, as we shall see, is not unexecuted.

Schubart’s Rhapsody appeared in his “Poems, Frankfort, 1787.”⁠[39] His Ahasuerus has retired into the wild solitudes of Mount Carmel. There he is seen, with frantic laughter, casting away the dry skulls of his relatives, which break to pieces, crying, “That is my father! Those are my wives! these my children! They could die, but I—outcast—cannot die!” And again, “Jerusalem fell; I crushed the babe, I rushed into the flames, cursed the Roman!—Rome fell, whole nations perished, and—I remained!” He tries to kill himself in different ways, but in vain. He feels pain acutely, but has to endure every variety of it, even to the agonies of the moment of death, without this moment ever arriving. The snake bites him, the dragon tortures, the burning forest blisters him. He says to himself, “Under my feet the mine exploded and threw me high into the air; senseless I fell down, and found myself roasted amidst blood, and brains, and bones.” He is obliged to carry on a corpse-like body, infirm, smelling of the grave; and through thousands of years he must see, like a yawning monster, an everlasting sameness. The rhapsody brings the Wanderer to a peaceful end. Ahasuerus throws himself down from the top of Carmel into the abyss, “and night covers his bushy eyelids. An angel carries him into a recess in the rocks. ‘There mayest thou sleep now,’ says the angel; ‘sleep, Ahasuerus, sleep soundly! God’s anger does not last for ever.’”

In 1807 appeared the ballad of The Eternal Jew, by Aloys Schreiber. The torture of this Ahasuerus consists in his not being able to enjoy life and nature, open to all other men, on account of his restlessness. He cannot drink the water of the fountain, he cannot rest in the shade of a tree, he cannot break a flower to enjoy its smell, for which he longs; he must start, he must wander. In this he differs from Schubart’s Ahasuerus, who had long been weary of life. Being continually obliged to renounce everything, he at last becomes timid, shy; he flies all men and hurries on heedlessly. Finally he observes a crucifix by the wayside; about to rush on, an impulse brings him to his knees, imploring the Crucified for forgiveness. Christ answers him from the cross, “Whoever has failed may repent; and none who loves and believes in me shall need to shun my countenance.” The Wanderer is found dead, kneeling before the cross.

Wilhelm Müller, in his Wanderlieder (published in his works, 1830) has a poem on “The Eternal Jew,” which pictures the desolation and loneliness that torture a life satiated to disgust, longing for rest and death. It is pervaded by melancholy. “Although I have seen everything I am never allowed to rest!” All around him has an end: the river in the ocean, the eagle on the Alps, the cloud in the falling rain, and also “to the tired wanderer a certain limit has been fixed. What, does he complain of his day’s misery?—before night death will have taken him home.” The end of the poem is a wish of the poor Wanderer that those who have finished their earthly pilgrimage might, ere they go to sleep for ever, ask of God one hour’s rest for him.

Nikolaus Lenau has treated the subject in a similar manner. The scenery of his poem, Ahasuerus, the Eternal Jew, is a lonely heath. In a distant meadow shepherds are seen surrounding and weeping over the corpse of a beloved youth. Whilst they are thus standing a Wanderer passes that way: his hair is grey, his countenance pale, cold, deeply wrinkled; his beard long and white, his fiery eyes in dark sockets. He walks on to the bier, and calls out, with mingled mockery and mournfulness, “Suppress your ungrateful tears; his rest is good; oh yes, his rest is good! Though fools like you complain, his heart is still; while mine beats on by night and day, in restless longing to find its sabbath in the grave!” The Wanderer utters the philosophy of Schopenhauer, explaining that the earth is only the lie of Paradise, that it is always the same old delusion of Time—all flowering to its destruction: a philosophy which terminates in a marriage with Madness, personified in Lenau himself.

Meanwhile, says the poem, the shepherds cover the coffin. Suddenly the stranger gets sight of the crucifix on the lid of the coffin. He is frightened, and tears come to his eyes. Now the Lenau-Schopenhauer turns out to be Ahasuerus. He tells the story of his life in the usual form of the myth. He tells the different kinds of death he had vainly sought. Then he wanders on, on—on; above his head you hear the whizzing of the birds; a long shadow walks behind him; the shepherds tremble and make the sign of the cross.

Although Adalbert von Chamisso was by birth French, his life and culture were German; his mixed origin is shown in his subjective poem, the “New Ahasuerus” (1836), where the Wanderer is simply a lover whose mistress has married another! This rejected lover compares himself to Ahasuerus, who cannot die or rest until the Day of Judgment, while the faithless lady represents the fallen city of Jerusalem. Ahasuerus says, “Time stands still before me; the age of man is as one moment, and the moments ages. Every hundred years I come once more to Jerusalem, mourning over its cold ashes, trying to put the ruins in their old place again, but nobody takes notice of me; evermore I come to the same thing—a grave!” Ahasuerus is “the son of sorrow turned into stone.”

The poem of A. W. Schlegel, “The Eternal Jew,” follows the old myth, with nothing new. His Ahasuerus, on account of his unbelief, wanders through the world as a solace for all those who are miserable, until the reappearance of Christ releases him.

Julius Mosen is the first who treated the subject in a fuller and more independent way. His “Ahasuerus” (1838) is an epic. In the notes it is stated that the myth belongs to the poet’s earliest recollections, the supposed Wandering Jew having passed through his birthplace, and that a shepherd had spoken to him. The poem carries this idea out with poetical realism. Mosen’s idea of the myth is human nature imprisoned by an earthly existence. Ahasuerus symbolises the spirit of Tradition embodied in an individual being, who, at first in unconscious obstinacy, but at length deliberately, opposes himself to the God of Christendom. Mosen gives his Ahasuerus from the first a human trait. His deceased wife has left him two beautiful children, Eve and Reuben. A young Roman prince, living at Jerusalem, likes these children, and he wishes to take them with him to Rome. He applies to Pilate, who orders Ahasuerus to part with the children. The father in his desperation implores the assistance of Jesus, the new prophet. He will believe in him and his new doctrine, if he can save his children. Jesus will not grant such private wishes, but goes on to prophesy the fall of Jerusalem. Upon this Ahasuerus tears his clothes into pieces, and in pain and wrath accuses Jesus of falsehood and imposture: “Thou art our God? And yet to save thou hast no power! If man or God, thou hast deceived the people!” When the Roman prince comes to fetch the children, Ahasuerus has slain them. In his despair he becomes more and more a disbeliever. What, he asks himself, did Israel commit to become so wretched? “Through its piety it has been led to misery. Why, then, does man crowd after this haughty God? I will cast off his memory; death to this Nazarene, to God, to everything!” In this excitement Ahasuerus scornfully forbids Jesus to rest at his door when he asks that favour. Jesus pronounces his sentence in these words, “Thou shalt live without rest thy immortality upon earth!”

The Archangel Michael appears and gives Ahasuerus a hope that mercy may be obtained at three different times of trial. The trials follow. Ahasuerus has married again and has once more two children, Eve and Reuben. Rome declares war against Judea, Titus surrounds Jerusalem; Ahasuerus is full of resentment against God, who declines to help, and in his anger sets the temple on fire. During the conflagration, with his children at his side, he enters the flames, which do not touch him. Eve’s lover, Matthias, who has become a Christian, for that reason rejected by Ahasuerus, serves in the Roman army and comes rushing through the flames to save his beloved. Ahasuerus bids him welcome as a suitor, and pushes him into the flames. His children shriek with terror, and Ahasuerus throws them both after him, crying, “Here, heartless God! now thou canst rejoice!”

The first trial thus passes without redemption for Ahasuerus, and the second comes. Ahasuerus, having tried all possible ways of suicide, at last addresses Death with an appeal for pity. Death replies that he has orders to pass him by until he shall believe in God. Ahasuerus refuses. He is once more father of two beautiful children, Leah and Reuben. He enjoys the purest happiness, when all at once, in a thunderstorm, the God of the Jews appears to renew the old league with him against Christ. Ahasuerus consents, and is sent to Julian the Apostate as the great adversary of Christendom. Ahasuerus arrives there in the very moment when the wounded Julian, under a night-vision of Christ, begins to doubt his pagan faith. Ahasuerus gains him back to his former antagonism, and obtains permission to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. But during the building, a dispute breaks out among the workmen. All order is gone, the work is interrupted; one looks at another in amazement, when suddenly a prophet announces that for the reconstruction of the temple, the God of Judea and the God of the Christians were contending; and that the latter could only be made to yield if the blood of two innocent children should soak the ground. Ahasuerus offers his own children. Before the sacrifice is finished, Christ invisibly takes the children to Himself. Then the earth is rent asunder; flames dart out and consume the new building.

The second trial having passed without saving Ahasuerus, twice a murderer of his own children, the third trial advances. In this Death passes, with souls that have found repose, before Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus is in mortal agony; his soul has nearly departed, but one point still remains, which no effort of his will can destroy. This point begins to assume a shape, a form once more. It is the same point of life which goes through all organic nature, and nowhere admits of destruction or state of rest. So our Wanderer, too, is once more filled with the wish to live. Again the God of Judea animates him to struggle against the doctrine of Christ. Again he follows his advice. He is now sent to Arabia, where Mohammed leads on the nations against the Cross. Ahasuerus allies himself with Mohammed to conquer Jerusalem; he calls his people together, but they will not hear him, they have only stones to throw at him who suffered so much for their sake. Then, with tears in his eyes, Ahasuerus leaves them for ever, and bestows henceforth his love upon Humanity.

Mosen’s Ahasuerus thus becomes a hero of Humanity, and his aims rise high above his first purpose. He is at the head of Mohammed’s warriors, driving away the defenders of the Holy Sepulchre, menacing death to all who approach it. All fly away; two children only remain—his own. Ahasuerus embraces them, and rejoices to have found them at last. Then Mohammed reminds him that he has sworn death to whomsoever should approach the sepulchre. Ahasuerus now cries out in his grief. For the third time he falls under the curse of his disbelief. He calls for some one to slay him, and the third trial so releases him of his vow. Arrows dart through the air: the children fall; he, too, sinks down, to awake once more for fulfilment of his real mission. “One thing has been ended; another begins, that neither time nor dark eternity can end. Loosed from Him and His mercy, henceforth I begin a long struggle until I have saved mankind from Him.” Ahasuerus declares an everlasting war against Christ, “in the name of all forces and powers, all sighs, all sorrows, shed tears and blood, broken spirits and crushed hearts.” Christ accepts the combat: “Thou facest Me, Thought against Thought. Wrestle on and on, until at last, the circle ended, the Day of Judgment shall decide!”

There the poem ends, or rather, as Helbig remarks, “does not end;” the end is put off to the day of the last Judgment. The struggle now only begins, never to end, between Ahasuerus and Christ, between Humanity and Christendom, between Earth and Heaven.

Ludwig Köhler, too, makes the Wanderer a type of human tendency. His New Ahasuerus (1845) is a prophet of freedom. The sufferer he has derided says to him: “March on then for eternities, until veracity has found its residence on earth, filling it with purest brightness! until a golden Dawn as of springtide breaks, and Liberty awakes the light now hidden in night!” Often the Wanderer thinks this morning has come, and exults in his hope of rest; but his joy, his hopes are vain. Napoleon crushes the French Revolution, “the Burschenschaft” leads to the errors of Sand; the rebellious Greeks are betrayed, and so on. Everywhere is oppression of conscience and thought. Ahasuerus despairs, and complains that he cannot die, when suddenly Jesus addresses him with a rebuke: he tells Ahasuerus that he is unworthy of the longed-for liberty, so long as he has not mastered self and sacrificed his egotism. “Thy grave, not humanity, was thine aim, so thou hast striven in vain. Liberty shall be aim, not instrument to thee. Whilst thou wert complaining of Destiny, it went its way, and Liberty began its heavenly progression. ’Tis no dream and delusion; ere thou thinkest, it sunders hell and displays its light. The world gets free. Already in the vale a stir is heard. Its reign is near!” With this vision of hope for the future the poet leaves us.

Franz Horn (1818) published in Fouqué’s Frauentaschenbuch his novel “The Eternal Jew.” His Ahasuerus is a rich Jew in Jerusalem, who only believes in Christ’s external mission. He thinks that Jesus, though for the time full of humility, will rule with a commanding sceptre when clad in purple, and by his healing power will extirpate disease and death from the earth. In this he is disappointed: Jesus is laughed at, despised, ill-treated, and endures all unresistingly. Mistaken in his dearest hopes, Ahasuerus conceives a deep hate against Jesus. So, when the latter, fallen under the burthen of his cross, asks for a moment’s rest at his door, Ahasuerus drives him on without compassion. Then Christ rises, and says: “Well, receive then what thou wishest; live, live on, as never man before; die not till thou hast become worthy to die!”

And so it came: all around him died; everything became strange to him; only the sky above him remained the same. He comes to understand that Christ by his death has sealed death, and that he (Ahasuerus) by his life has to represent the insufficiency and misery of mere life. He moves on with aimless strides, his form as of iron, his visage weather-beaten like lichened stone, a nameless grief upon his features. The scene of the novel is laid at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Ahasuerus has saved a young count in the tumult of battle, and afterwards, by telling him the story of his life, converts him from the blasphemy and despair into which he had fallen by the sudden death of his family—a misfortune attributed to the appearance of Ahasuerus.

From this novel, August Klingemann (1827) took the subject of his tragedy, Ahasuerus. The Wanderer was a favourite character with the distinguished actor Ludwig Devrient. With Klingemann the myth signifies purification by suffering in order to obtain an imperishable liberty. Christ appears as the mediator between natural and supernatural things, and points the wandering man to his coming empire. The hero of Klingemann’s drama is the murderer of Gustavus Adolphus, the Count of Werth, a fanatical Catholic, who, in disguise of a Protestant, has assassinated the champion of Protestantism. The deed weighs heavily on his soul, drives him to melancholy and despair, and he finally drowns his conscience in Atheism. The son of Gustavus Adolphus enters his family as a visitor; and in his presence, and that of his family, the guilty Count speaks of the deed with abhorrence. Only one person knows of his guilt—the mysterious man who saved him out of the battle. To get rid of him the assassin challenges him; but his lance breaks on the breast of the stranger—for it is Ahasuerus, he who has blasphemed his Lord, like the now atheistical Count of Werth. The curse upon him is that which strikes the Denier of God. Ahasuerus, after the fruitless combat, reveals to the count his story, and his longing to die, imploring him no longer to blaspheme God. The Count after this discovery acknowledges the existence of God, and confesses his murder of Gustavus Adolphus. He then kills himself, and so finds rest; but Ahasuerus wanders on—on!

Theodor Oelkers has treated the subject in a novel, Princess Mary of Oldenhoff, or the Wandering Jew, (Leipzig, 1848). Oelkers adds a curse upon Ahasuerus: in order to reconcile Christ he must sacrifice what is dearest to him, but his sacrifices are always ineffectual. He takes from time to time a wife, he has children; he survives each wife, slays his children; he is driven to do this by necessity, while conscious that the offerings will be in vain. He has the fearful gift of reading the future: foresees all that shall happen to himself and his beloved ones. In bitterness of heart he says: “Let men see in me how vain is their hope for divine love and mercy!” But at length he finds reason to hope for release at a very distant period. “I am only,” he says, “condemned in Time: Eternity belongs to me, as it belongs to all when Time shall end. Then shall I be free to move about in endless regions, breathing the air of heaven; then the partial tyranny of Grace shall be dethroned; Justice will occupy the throne, sharing it with her sister, Love.”

Oelkers thinks that before this time comes there will also appear a Wandering Moslem and a Wandering Christian.

Levin Schücking, too, brings our hero before us in an episode, full of imagination, called “The Three Suitors” which belongs to his novel The Peasant Prince, 1851. In the hotel of “The Three Moors,” at Augsburg, during the twelve nights after Christmas in the year 1700, three strangers met together. One was a weary half-decayed Jew, with a long dirty gown, who next morning changes into a handsome young Armenian Prince, Isaac Laquedam. The second was the Dutch admiral Van der Decken, who arrives in a carriage with four horses. The third was his Excellency the Master of Chase en chef, Herr von Rodenstein, with a large suite. These individuals have a rendezvous in this inn every hundred years, and pass one year together in revelling, after which they disappear. They lose their human form and wander as spectres, one over the earth, one over the sea, the third in the air, as the Eternal Jew, the Flying Dutchman, the Wild Huntsman; all in bond and service of Satan, except for this one year, wherein he has no power over them. Whenever one century is passed, Ahasuerus-Laquedam is seized by a burning fever, after which his body resumes the appearance it had when he raised his hand against Jesus.

All three do a great deal of mischief during that year in quiet Augsburg, especially in the hearts of the young women. Among these is one distinguished by great beauty, but also by her haughtiness and disdain towards the male sex. All three try to win her proud and frosty heart, which unfortunately has been chained to an ugly, paralytic husband. She once says to them that she is not proud of her beauty, but that she would take a pride in standing a danger or conquering a difficulty of which, centuries later, the world would say, a man would have been unable to subdue it.

The handsome Armenian prince takes her at her word and invites her to follow him one whole year: she promises it, and gives him as pledge of her word a ring. The two others obtain similar promises. At the end of the year she accompanies the Armenian. Suddenly she sees his youth disappear, a musty smell comes from him, and a third shadow walks at their side. “Who are you,” she cries aghast. “I am Ahasuerus!” She tries to fly, but Ahasuerus holds her with an iron hand. In her despair she sells her soul to the third shadow (the Devil) who promises her deliverance. But first, she has to keep her word to the Rodensteiner. With him, the Wild Huntsman, she rides through the air, and from aloft beholds the depravity of human life. From what she has seen, and from the wild ride, her soul and body are tormented, she is unable to go any farther, and again implores deliverance of the Devil. Already the Flying Dutchman has come to claim fulfilment of her promise to him. The Devil agrees to save her if she will pledge him, besides her own, the soul of her child.

“No, never my child, never!” the tortured woman cries; she prefers another year’s ride, over the sea. “Take her, she longs still for a third trial,” says the laughing Devil to the Dutchman; but he replies: “The trial was great enough, she is released. Her force was superior to that of a man. A man would not have spared the soul of his child more than he did his own.” She wakes to find her child sleeping sweetly in its cradle; she finds also the three rings; but from the dream of a night her beautiful hair was grey.

Joseph von Zedlitz, an Austrian poet, in his Wanderings of Ahasuerus (1844), transfers the end of the Jew’s life to the Golden Age, when the reign of eternal Peace has begun. Ahasuerus has long been buried on Golgotha, when an angel awakes him, and bids him wander until Noah’s white dove, the messenger of peace, comes back, bringing peace on earth and songs of joy, dispersing all wrath and hatred, uniting the nations under the sceptre of Humanity. Ahasuerus, lying in his grave, half-dreaming, sees history pass before his eyes; he awaits the time that shall come. Whenever he thinks this moment has arrived, he rises from his grave, and wanders about to see the world. It seems to him that the Golden Age is near, when the Roman Empire sinks and the star of Christendom rises; when the cherub’s song of peace strikes his ear, he begins his pilgrimage. He expected to find peace, but he finds ruins, ashes, death. He meets Attila’s wild bands on his way. When Ahasuerus, 1300 years later, rises once more, he finds another Attila, who wants to bend a whole world under his sceptre. Terror-stricken, Ahasuerus cries: “Who can say Attila will not return a third time?” and returning to his grave, he asks: “Jehovah, how long must I still sleep?”

Hans Christian Andersen’s Ahasuerus is the angel of Doubt, who comes upon earth to live with men, whom he resembles, for like them he denies and doubts. He is born on earth at the same moment with Jesus, and now, as a human being, bears the name Ahasuerus. As a man he grows wiser and better, like his fellow-men, whose increasing perfection will, in many thousands of years, lead them to heaven. Then Ahasuerus too will return.

After this Prologue Ahasuerus is seen as a Jewish shoemaker; he is at the same time a favourite narrator of the stories of the Bible. Merry children, as well as serious Pharisees, come to his workshop, and listen to his words. He becomes conceited, and complains that he is only a shoemaker, and not allowed to sit among the Scribes. Among his auditors is young Veronica, who is enchanted with the new prophet from Nazareth, who had just made his appearance. Ahasuerus counts Jesus amongst the false prophets; he also regards him as the cause of the death of his mother and sister, who had been slain by the agents of Herod. But when he hears Jesus preach in the desert, he changes his mind, and shares the admiration of Veronica. Now, he thinks, the days of splendour will come, according to the prophets, and the reign of David in all its magnificence. Judas, the friend of Ahasuerus, and the enthusiastic disciple of Jesus, is the first to doubt him. He thinks Jesus does not show enough energy in his proceedings, calls him a loiterer; at length decides to test whether he is really the Messias. If so, legions of angels will certainly assist him at his call; if not, he may perish. Judas betrays Jesus, in order to give him an opportunity to show his power—an idea suggested by Goethe. The hope of Judas is not realised. Jesus consents to be made a prisoner. “Man he was, and not Messiah!” says Ahasuerus, turning apostate; “how could I imagine that the son of a carpenter was a prophet? He feels the cold, suffers hunger, thirst, needs sleep.”

After the usual scene on the way to Golgotha, a voice from above says to the disbelieving Ahasuerus: “Ahasuerus, Ahasuerus! thou art the type of mankind; thou disputest and deniest God himself. Ye are all alike; so thou mayest wander until we shall meet once again!”

It is not real Atheism, but a rigid Judaism that will not surrender to what the author deems the unfolding purposes of God, which appears in this Ahasuerus.

The first person whom Ahasuerus meets in his wanderings is Barabbas, who lives as an hermit in Lebanon, repenting his sins. He has already been mentioned in the poem as a profligate who only knows the god of his senses; but the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, which he has witnessed, have converted him. He receives his friend with the words, “Blessed be Jesus Christ.” Ahasuerus answers with a curse. Full of wrath, not believing in the resurrection, he takes his leave of Barabbas. He trusts in the strength of Israel, but soon after he is told of Jerusalem’s fall. He travels to Rome, where Domitian is persecuting the Christians. He rejoices when he sees the burning pyres and the Christian martyrs. He stands at the side of executioners who torture some Christians. Among these is Veronica. He cannot convert her, and tries therefore to slay her. He does not succeed in so saving her from torture, but is suspected and (apparently) killed by the executioners. Ahasuerus awakes to find beside him the dead Veronica, and many other bodies of martyred Christians. He starts forth in terror to flee the kingdom of the Crucified, which he sees consisting only of “graves laden with the smell of Pestilence.”

Having passed through distant parts of the world, Ahasuerus, at the end of three centuries, returns to Rome. He finds that the doctrine of Christ has conquered heathendom. The Emperor and his people are kneeling with Christ’s name on their lips. “The spirit of Jehovah has left the earth; his people is lost in this world-chaos. The old is all dead; the new is vain and empty! Jehovah! my breast is Thy temple, the last in this ruined world!”

Ahasuerus passes the Alps. The Huns sweep by. He inspires Attila to attack Rome and crush Christendom. But he—he wanders on, farther on, to the region of the Northern Light. On his return he finds thick in the forests the symbols of Christ; he finds Christ now worshipped in Gaul, and in Rome the first Pope. Compelled now to believe in the power of the Christian faith, he yet persists in his belief that a still greater God will come, the true Messiah promised to Israel. The poet then describes the small communities of Jews, with their quiet and secret worship, still awaiting their Messiah. Some think he has come in the person of Mohammed, and to him Ahasuerus now goes. He advances with him to Jerusalem; there he is about to set the temple on fire, when Veronica appears and prevents him. He journeys on. In Rome Charlemagne has been made emperor; the Jews have become slaves of the Christians. The hate of this inflexible believer in Jehovah increases. By a vast leap the poet brings Ahasuerus to Canossa, where, full of astonishment, he sees the emperor, barefooted and in tears, standing before the Vicar of Christ. Before such evidence of the Majesty of Christendom, Ahasuerus, too, stands with bended head. He cannot escape this new kingdom, for he is in the closed yard of the world which it fills. “The emperor stood for nights; my nights are millenniums!”

And now for the first time the idea rises in him that he is not only the Opposing Jew, but that he represents everything earthly in conflict with the divine.

The time of the Crusades comes. From all parts of the world the nations rush to Jerusalem, where once the altar of Jehovah stood. They are impelled by many selfish motives: no single thought or aim unites the warriors, and so they struggle in vain. Ahasuerus now learns to doubt the progress of mankind. In vain a master-builder beside his work instructs him that in the structure of the world God is the builder. “He does not die; each century is a stone block added to the rest: so mankind gradually ascends.” “But,” Ahasuerus says, “often the work stands still.” “It does,” answers the stonemason, “but only to gather new strength.” To this Ahasuerus answers that all the blood that has been shed in the Crusades was of no use to Europe; but the guildmaster replies that they formed a vast step in human progress, because they brought the different nations closer together, and brought “liberty” into the world. Many knights sold their estates, which passed into the hands of the commons; the supremacy of nobles was destroyed, new life sprang up in sciences and art. Then suddenly the cry of battle rings through the air, robber knights menace the peaceful citizens; the tocsin sounds; the workmen rush to the battlefield; the building stops. Full of mockery and derision at this new retrogradation in place of the vaunted human evolution, Ahasuerus walks on.

The errors of the age, the doings in the convents, the excesses of the Hussites, the mad demeanour of King Wenceslas, only increase Ahasuerus’ disbelief in the progress of mankind. An angel leads him to Mayence, where Gutenberg’s printing-press is seen. Ahasuerus does not believe in the importance of this invention. He also thinks Columbus a fool, but, nevertheless, follows him to the deep whirlpools of the sea, which he hopes will swallow him. But Columbus is spared by the waves, he reaches land—the New World is discovered. There the god of the primeval forest complains like Ahasuerus, because he has been roused from his rest and deep silence and is dragged into the history of men. The all-pervading Spirit of the Universe addresses him, “Oh, might the discovery of this new hemisphere come also to thee, that thou mightst see the divine wisdom, take comfort, and know that in the future of Humanity there shall be One people, One mind, Unity and Reason!”

Amid the New World, and with this vision over it, Ahasuerus gains Belief. He now sees that “it was the ruin of Israel, once as rich a land as America, to reject the New, which comes from God.” In human evolution the Old always denies the New: “God is born, crucified, and—lives.” The wave of each century brings the accumulated treasures of the Past nearer to the shores of Perfection.

Then Ahasuerus stretches out his hands towards the endless Ocean, and in the chaos of his mind he begins to understand what once he was and what has become of him. In his own life he sees the progress of mankind, and so the wings grow that bring him back to Heaven. But the time has not yet come, only a day of Eternity has elapsed; and Andersen’s Muse tells us in the last words of her song that “the myth of Ahasuerus is only an echo of the endless tide of Time; a better Scald will come and tell the meaning of that other pilgrimage.”

Heller imitates Andersen in his poem, The Wanderings of Ahasuerus. In his introduction he says that Ahasuerus shall lead us through all nations to the modern world: from God becoming human to Humanity becoming God. In the first edition (1865) the poet did not bring his theme to its end. But in a later edition (1868) he continued his work, and leads his hero on to the days of Goethe. The conception and execution of his poem are exactly like those of Andersen, but Heller presents more historical details, and his ideas and suggestions are full of interest. His Ahasuerus is an adversary of Jesus, as one who does not comprehend his high mission and his own doctrine. A wealthy shoemaker, his workshop full of workmen, he is ugly and deformed; his wife, however, is beautiful. He is an old schoolfellow of the new prophet, who in former days has often been protected by him when people asked him tauntingly his father’s name. Ahasuerus’s own son bears the name of Jesus. But now Ahasuerus calls Jesus an adventurer, who had always been a favourite of women, on account of his fine looks. He says Jesus has learned the black art in Egypt, which enables him to win the multitude with miracles; that he misleads poor fishermen to leave their work and homes; that he poisons the pure fountain of the Bible, deriving from it that he is the Son of Man. He, Ahasuerus, will unmask this dangerous impostor. So, when he is told by some children that a fine-looking man much like Jesus has sat down to take some rest at his door, he scornfully bids him move on, and not bring a curse upon his house by touching his threshold. Peter intervenes, but Ahasuerus laughs at him. Then Jesus rising, he answers, “Unhappy man! the feelings that so violently move thy heart come from a misled but believing mind. Sincere as is thy anger, even now thy heart is kind. If thou couldst only understand me, no one would shed his blood for me like thou. The time will come when thou shalt know me. Until the day when all the world shall have accepted Christianity thou shalt wander through the earth with thy people, spared by Death. Nations shall come and go, but ye shall remain until the day of the last trumpet.”

Ahasuerus re-enters his house speechless. On the day of the Passover, Saul comes to him, and is told what happened. He declares Jesus one of those fanatics who rise everywhere and disappear like meteors; the streets of Rome are crowded with them. “Men,” says Saul, “are bending under the burthen of their sins and long for forgiveness, which they do not find in their Ancient Law. Love, the only thing that brings release, must be delivered from the chains of the old institutions.” Unconsciously, Saul is already of the new belief, and is soon after formally converted. Peter and James try to convert Ahasuerus also, but they succeed only in engaging him to hear Saul, now Paul, who preaches in Athens of Christ’s resurrection. Ahasuerus finds out that this doctrine is not in the Scriptures: Paul must be deceived. He returns to Jerusalem, in his old disbelief. Jerusalem is conquered, destroyed; Ahasuerus joins in the combat; at length all whom he has loved are buried, he leaves the ancient city in ruins: his wanderings begin.

We find him again, with other fugitive Jews, in a cavern, gathered about an old Rabbi. They mourn for Jerusalem, but their master reminds them of the Law; he exhorts them to adhere firmly to that—it is stronger than that of Christ’s apostles, which is sealed only by a man, not by God. As Jewish apostles they go forth into the world. The war begins between Paganism, Christianity, and Judaism. Ahasuerus tries to win over the pagans, to bring back those that turn apostate. The wild movements and anomalies of the world gradually lead Ahasuerus to the hope of a kingdom not of this world. He is now seen longing for Jesus; he flies the noisy world and arrives at the Lake of Tiberias. There Christ appears to him, and Ahasuerus implores forgiveness. He has already lost something of his rigid Jewish faith. When Constantine has become a Christian, and when Rome falls, he believes that his new idea will be realised: but no, straightway begin the disputes of Christian sects. Ahasuerus turns his back on the contending Gnostics, Simonians, Arians, and the rest, and comes to the desert, where he finds Anthony, the hermit. Anthony has delivered himself from the world and its controversies to find peace amid nature. They exchange their experiences and thoughts. Ahasuerus acknowledges that Christ’s doctrine has spread a kingdom of love over the earth, but that his great work has been degraded to a mere fable. “I did not find the kingdom of God, but of men. Here I will rest until some Angel wakes me from my dream to begin once more my earthly pilgrimage.” Anthony has the same faith; he will struggle on patiently and imitate the life that was so full of suffering and love. Henceforth the two live together in a long brotherhood.

This was the end of Heller’s first edition. In the second he enlarged and transformed the entire poem. He separates the whole in three different wanderings. He calls the first, which we have already described, Ahasuerus’s Error of Faith; the second, Picture of the Universe; the third, Humanity. During his first pilgrimage, Ahasuerus moves still in the restricted horizon of a Pharisee, but he loses much of that in his intellectual intercourse with Anthony. In his second pilgrimage, although the whole scene of history lies open before him, he persists still in his hope of a coming Messias. At last he doubts that his hope will ever be realised; he frees himself from his rigid belief. The discovery of the New World, the invention of typography, and the Reformation, he now regards as contributing to a free evolution of mankind, leading to the only true religion: Humanity. Ahasuerus, like Faust, sees in this the high destiny of mankind. History unfolds itself before Man; he moves after it, observing, investigating, looking forward to the fulfilment of his desire. The movement of mankind over the Old World goes on; new gods replace the old; contrasts of all kinds meet together—nowhere is room for God’s empire of peace. Mohammed, too, is not the right prophet. Under Charlemagne and Leo the empire of God’s majesty on earth is founded, but this is not the real empire of God for which Ahasuerus looks. Besides, it does not prove to be everlasting. Priesthood, to which all nations blindly submit, degenerates; whilst in Germany, under the Saxon emperors strong conventional worldly power arises. Then a new Messias seems to appear in Hildebrand, this monk so possessed of worldly wisdom; but his empire is only maintained by the strong reins of obedience, not by love. The Crusades do not satisfy Ahasuerus. New persons come before us, one forming a contrast to the other. Jehuda Levita, who praises the sublime inheritance of Adam against the “original sin” of Christendom; then the pious buffoon, Francis d’Assisi, contrasting with Tannhäuser, whom Ahasuerus meets in Rome, and whose longing for the fresh and natural world of his heathen land, amid the helpless ossification of the Christian priesthood, he can well understand; Dante, who tries at least to harmonise the contrasts in poetry; Rienzi, a political fool, who makes a step backwards into the old Roman time; Huss, who, a second saviour, a martyr of the old pure Christian doctrine, expires on the pyre.

Then Ahasuerus begins to doubt of the duration of God’s empire. When he sees how Christ is always vanquished, and has now been crucified so often, a deep melancholy overcomes him; he longs for death, he is disgusted with seeing the world any longer. Then Faust appears to him, his congenial brother; Faust, the realist, who enjoys the life and liberty given to him, who, though a true friend of Christendom, does not join the theological disputes, but with a happy mind prefers the fresh hearts of the people to the musty churches with their endless supplications. With Faust’s appearance a change of mind comes over Ahasuerus. Both have still a third mythical brother, the Spaniard, Don Juan. Ahasuerus, the first-born, is continually occupied with the highest problems; he takes no notice of life, and awaits the day when his faith will be one with that of Jesus. In sharp contrast with this, the Spaniard enjoys life and its pleasures, with all his natural enthusiasm. Between these two, as a mediator, stands Faust, susceptible of high and noble things as of the pleasures of the world. He opens Ahasuerus’ heart to the love of humanity; he teaches his dim eyes to look around him in the world; he shows him all the productions of industry and art. In his house he shows him the wonders and first performances of typography; he leads him to magnificent Florence, residence of the Medicis; and, escaping the Spanish Inquisition, they voyage with Columbus to America. Ahasuerus, who until now thought the earth to be miserable and small, wishes to remain on it.

In the third part of the poem, Ahasuerus leaves the New World and returns to the Old, to follow there the evolution of human thought. He goes to Rome, and rejoices to see the flourishing state of sciences and arts; he finds there the great master, Raphael, who exalts Christianity into Humanity. There also he meets Luther, who, beholding the corruptions of the Church, conceives the idea of the Reformation.

Robert Hamerling is the last German poet who has paid his respects to our myth. The hero of his poem, Ahasuerus in Rome (1867), however, is Nero, and not Ahasuerus. The latter is only, as by Klingemann and Horn, a kind of Nemesis in the piece, a supernatural power intervening in human actions. He presents a sharp contrast with Nero, who resembles Faust in his immense love of life, whilst Ahasuerus has come to Rome longing for death. He intends to accomplish Nero’s fate, for in spite of their different natures, their mission is the same; both are fulfilling and advancing the evolution of mankind. Especially in a place where the decayed past struggles with new forms of life, history needs such Titans of destruction as Nero, in order to hasten the crisis of events and advance human progress. Ahasuerus therefore makes Nero his unconscious instrument; he pushes him on and on in his monstrous attempts. The supposed god, who can only operate by destruction, Ahasuerus treats as the indestructible, and by this very faith prepares the way of Nero’s humiliation. Ahasuerus animates Nero to burn Rome, and swings the first torch; but he comes himself unharmed out of the flames, spared by the fire, to show Nero that there is still something on earth which to destroy is beyond his power; something like a phœnix rising out of ashes—the immortal humanity. For a moment Nero thinks himself equal to this new adversary. “I, too,” he cries, “am indestructible: life in me is firmly anchored: nothing can ever change me! I am I! I cope with you: our combat will show if my intellectual indestructibility balances not thy bodily indestructibility!”

Ahasuerus accepts the combat with the certainty that the hour of death has come for Nero. It arrives in the curse of satiety and disgust which overcomes Nero. He has enjoyed the pleasures of earth, and Olympus; they have no more for him; only one thing further remains for him—Hades. By force of magic he summons the dead; his own victims start up before him, and, smitten with horror, he falls. Now, forsaken by his favourites and subjects, Nero escapes at the hand of the only one remaining—a devoted German—under the secret guidance of Ahasuerus, into the catacombs. He there finds a congregation of Christians, his mortal enemies. He offers his head to their revenge, and is told that they do not know such a sensation, that their hearts obey the law of love, a law which did not exist for him, because he did not feel anything above him, whither he could look with a longing eye. For the first time Nero finds a God who, instead of being worshipped and feared is beloved. He also understands that not pleasure but pain saves the world, and cries: “I see that the ever-creating womb of the human Mind is not exhausted! The outworn world falls to dust: the human heart ever brings it forth anew.” Thus Nero pronounces the inner secret of the Ahasuerus-myth (according to this poem). And although unable to submit to the new doctrine, he consecrates himself to the god of the infernal world, exchanging his longing for life with the ardent longing for death, according to Ahasuerus’ prophecy. Ahasuerus himself appears in the hour of his adversary’s death among the Christians, and the poet, in an original conception, makes him assume towards the end of his poem a gigantic shape.

According to this, Ahasuerus, who once despised Jesus, was already on earth since time immemorial. For he is the first-born of the unborn, the first of the created beings; he is the first child of man, the first rebel, Cain, the murderer of his brother. Ahasuerus first brought Death into the world, who now at the same time rewards and punishes him by sparing him.

It is greatly to be regretted that the great brain which carried the legend of Faust to such noble fruit did not fulfil its design of giving poetic expression to that of the Wandering Jew. In his Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe has sketched the design of this unwritten poem. A clever shoemaker with whom he once lodged in Dresden was to be a model for Ahasuerus. The shoemaker of Jerusalem was to be a character; in his open workshop he talks with passers-by, and, after the Socratic fashion, touches up everyone in his own way. Even Pharisees and Sadducees like to talk with him, and Jesus with his disciples often stop there. The shoemaker is a firm secularist, but he feels a special affection for Jesus, whom he tries to persuade to give up his visions, and leave off drawing people away from their work into the wilderness. Jesus, on the other hand, tries to persuade his friend to his way of thinking. When Jesus has become a public character, Ahasuerus warns him that tumult will follow, and that he (Jesus) will have to place himself at the head of a party. Finally, when things have gone their course, Judas rushes into the shoemaker’s shop, in despair, declaring that in endeavouring to hasten his master’s triumph he had only ruined him. Ahasuerus is in great excitement about his friend, and when he sees him passing his door reminds him of his warnings. Jesus does not answer, but just then the loving Veronica covers his face with a napkin, on which, as she raises it, Ahasuerus sees depicted the features of Christ, not as a sufferer, but transfigured and radiant. As he turns he hears the words: ‘Over the earth shalt thou wander till thou shalt once more see me in this form!’ When the shoemaker comes to himself he finds that everyone has gone to the execution. Through the empty streets he moves, and begins his wanderings.

The way in which Goethe would have dealt with the theme is indicated by the fact he elsewhere mentions, that he had meant to bring Ahasuerus to a meeting with Spinoza. It will be seen, however, in this chapter, that a number of the best pens which have dealt with this subject have been spiritually moved by Goethe.