The Song of Henry: the Gotha Conference

The beginning of the friendship between Adalbert Kehr and Joseph Konrad Josephson is easy to understand: they were both young men full of fiery dreams, immersed in dusty old books. Kehr, fresh from his studies in philology at the University of Marburg, found himself in a lonely government post at an old abbey in Silesia, a tedious clerkship which he enlivened by exploring the abbey's old library; Josephson, who was already beginning to introduce himself as Konrad Joseph, had just taken over his father's used book stall in Munich (he quickly moved the Judaica to a back room), and had hopes of making his shop the center of Munich's revolutionary community.

They met in Gotha in 1875, at the conference where the ADAV of Ferdinand Lasalle merged with the SDAP of Bebel and Liebknecht to become the the SAPD, Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, the soon-to-be outlawed ancestor of today's German Socialists.

The two young men had little to do with the actual business of the conference--Kehr had simply traveled on his own to Gotha, and Konrad Joseph's role was only slightly more official--he was the self-appointed representative of the tiny SDAP cell in Munich. Thrilled simply to be there, they watched the conference from the margins, where their friendship blossomed. They listened respectfully to the grizzled veterans of 1848, they argued about Stirner and Feuerbach, and they recapitulated, over many beers, the debates between the Eisenachers and the Lassaleans. One night, as the conference was drawing to a close, they staged a impromptu skit they called "The Love Life and Death of Ferdinand Lassale." Kehr, putting on a monocle and a debonair attitude, played Lassale, while Konrad Joseph, wrapping himself in a series of scarves, played several countesses and daughters of conservative diplomats, not to mention their husbands and fathers. The skit, performed in a beer-hall basement, was well-received by its audience, primarily a contingent of Marxist miners from Cologne. Their fiction ended, unlike history, with Lassale winning all his duels and deposing the aristocracy--only to die by the knife of a jealous mistress, in bed--a climactic moment in several ways.

After the skit, Kehr heard one of the miners remark to another that there was nothing he liked better than watching little Jews make fun of big Jews. Kehr had no idea what the fellow was talking about.

The next morning they both left Gotha, laughing about their hangovers, and promising to correspond.