'Mr Nossig's Latest Transformation'; or, Alfred Nossig as a Writer

A renaissance man?

Politician, lawyer, philosopher, community organizer, sociologist, demographer, publicist, journalist, art critic, sculptor, author of economic texts, advocate of eugenics, spy. And finally: writer. Alfred Nossig (1864–1943) was a prose writer, poet, dramatist, and librettist. Such a diversity of interests was to all intents and purposes unheard of among Polish Jewish intellectuals. Of course, a great many of them operated simultaneously in the political, social, and literary spheres, among them Apolinary Hartglas, Samuel Hirszhorn, David Malz, Adolf Stand, and in later years Jakub Appenszlak; however, the scale of their endeavours was unquestionably smaller than that of Nossig.

We know both a great deal and very little about Nossig. Although no monograph has yet been written about his achievements, two important articles have been devoted to him, and scholars have in turn been referring to them for several decades.¹ These articles are an excellent point of departure for assessing Alfred Nossig's versatility from the 1880s to the 1940s.

Because of the breadth and variety of the author's legacy, and because various scholars have analysed those of his works that lie on the borderline between politics, economics, and sociology, as well as those on the fine arts,² I shall focus simply on his literary output in Polish. I must also give one warning: I shall avoid discussion of Nossig's activities in the Warsaw ghetto, for Shmuel Almog and Michael Zylberberg provide detailed information on this period.³ Further comments on Nossig appear in a number of diaries and memoirs from the Holocaust years.⁴ In the testimony available to us, the figure of Nossig and his activities in the Judenrat have been presented in an exceptionally negative light. Suffice it to say that Janusz Korczak, who had quarrelled with him, described Nossig in a letter to an unidentified woman as an evil and malicious dwarf.⁵ Even leaving aside, however, the writer's difficult character,⁶ his collaboration with the Gestapo appears incontrovertible and has been suitably documented.

Nossig's life history has been established quite well. Described as exceptionally intelligent, he was considered as anything but run-of-the-mill, irrespective of whether those expressing an opinion were well disposed towards him or, like Roman Brandstaetter, were not: 'He had a glorious childhood. Exceptionally intelligent, possessing enormous knowledge and an infallible memory, he was generously endowed with a great many talents.'⁷ Adolf Stand,⁸ Theodor Zlocisti,⁹ and Ignacy Schiper¹⁰ expressed similar assessments. Nevertheless, his life was problematic for many of his contemporaries, for it eluded inclusion in any generally accepted category. Brought up in the spirit of the Jewish Enlightenment, he was a representative of the generation of Galician Jews who had grown up in a German world respecting the Habsburg monarchy.¹¹ We can link the first turning point in Nossig's biography with the gradual extension of socio-economic rights under Galician autonomy and with the accompanying powerful expansion of 'Polishness'. Unlike his father, who remained loyal to pro-Habsburg views, Alfred Nossig became fascinated with Polish Romanticism. We know that Adam Mickiewicz was his model of a poet, and at one time Nossig imitated his language. Nossig became a fervent advocate of Polish–Jewish unity, and called for Jews to assimilate to the culture of their 'fellow brothers' (współbraci), or at least to integrate with the Poles.

The end of the nineteenth century was not yet the time for relegating integrationist ideas to the dustbin of history. However, it could clearly be seen even then that in the new century a pro-Polish line would have to be reviewed by the Jews. Nossig was fully aware that enthusiasm for assimilation was slowly dying: 'The current assimilationist movement will undoubtedly exist and grow until a crisis occurs in the fortunes of the Jewish tribe … harbingers of which are the antisemitic endeavours that are also gaining ever more ground. [That is] the decisive moment after which we will no longer be able to deceive either ourselves or others...