Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.197 January 12, 1997 1) Mauscheln (Joachim Neugroschel) 2) Mauscheln (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Mauscheln (Michael Steinlauf) 4) Mauscheln (Kees Booy) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 22:24:33 -0500 (EST) From: achim1@cris.com Subject: Mauscheln [Regarding Neyekh Zide's post Vol 6.195]: The most useful and useless use of "mauscheln"--in English I'd call it "to yiddle"--was in Freud's book _The Joke_ (Der Witz). While this short opus is a wonderful study of freedom--far beyond what Freud thought he was doing--it makes the stupidest remarks about Jewish humor. Regaling the reader with one silly and often vicious "Jewish" joke after another, Freud never quite realizes that these uncharacteristically short jokes aren't by Jews, they're by Jew-baiting Germans _about_ Jews--and calling them "Jewish" humor is on the level of describing a blackface minstrel show as a product of African-American culture. In German literature, Jews generally yiddle (mauscheln) if the author dislikes Jews (Raabe), but if he likes them then his Jewish characters speak a spotless and flawless German (Jean Paul Richter). German-language fiction does have a few sympathetic Jewish characters who yiddle, but they are usually peripheral to the plot and quite stereotypical--even if in a positive way (Doeblin). Thomas Mann, in some of his early stories, like Blood of the Valsungs, presents ugly Jewish characters (modeled after his wife's family), who nevertheless speak pure German. Arthur Schnitzler, a Viennese Jew (who introduced stream of consciousness into German literature), usually treated his East European Jewish characters with sympathy and without condescension, attacking the anti-Semitism that put Ostjuden on a lower level than German Jews (at that time "German" also referred to German-speaking Austrians). Thus in his most famous novella "Fraeulein Else" the title character is identified sub rosa as a highly assimilated closet Jew ("No one can tell because I've got blonde hair, but sometimes you can tell with Mama because of the way she speaks" (a hint that the mother yiddels--"mauschelt"). And Stefan Zweig, another Viennese Jew, actually wrote a story about a Russian-Polish Jew, "Book Mendel" (Der Buechermendel), in which the main character is a positively treated stereotype. Kafka never used the word "Jew" in any of his fiction, but his short story, "A Report to an Academy", which was first published in Martin Buber's magazine _Der Jude_, allegorizes the assimilation of the Jew from less than human (the ape's gibberish symbolizes "mauscheln" ) to human, i.e. speaking correct German. And Paul Celan, a German-speaking Jewish poet from Czernowitz, wrote one short story, "Conversation in the Mountains", in which two Jews yiddel their way through a surrealistic parable that tells us more about the author's stormy and violent relationship to his own Jewishness and to Jews. When the Swiss German playwright, Max Frisch, a Protestant, used a Polish Jew in his drama _They're Singing Again_ (Jetzt singen sie wieder), he avoided the entire issue of "yiddling" by having someone translate the character's lines into Yiddish within the German body of the play--rather than use an unrealistic pure German for the character or "insulting" him by having him speak with a Yiddish accent. The issue of "mauscheln" in German culture is hopelessly complicated, and I'd rather not get into the "Mauscheljuden" in Germany plays and movies during the Fascist Era. The most embarrassing example of "mauscheln" is a mindless development in today's German culture: practically every German writer feels obliged to present a Yiddish word or two in every book--just to show how tolerant he is. He'll say something like, "there's a wonderful Yiddish word that fits this situation"--and he then uses a word that is neither phonologically nor semantically viable in Yiddish, and is really a twisted German word. In other words: "mauscheln" is in. Joachim Neugroschel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 Jan 97 22:38 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Mauscheln As for Gilman on the subject, one should read his _Jewish Self Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Secret Language of the Jews_. It's not confined to a discussion of Kafka. According to Kluge _Etymologisches Woerterbuch_, _Mauschel_ as a pejorative for Jew, first appeared in the 1695. He cites from 1622, the use of _mauscheln_ 'to speak like a Jew'. As its etymology, he offers the name Mousche, Mausche (= Yiddish _Moyshe_) which had, for a long time been a disparaging term for the Jewish tradesman. Note that the late Nicolai Slonimsky, in his Dictionary of Musical Invective, cites an early 20th century review of a Mahler composition as _mauscheln_. In his overview of "Yiddish Studies in the 17th century", Max Weinreich cites as follows from Johann Christof Wagenseil's _Belehrung des juedisch-teutschen Red- und Schreibart_, Koenigsberg 1699, which may actually be a source for Kluge's etymology (I retain the line breaks in the Weinreich article, I think, and thus probably in the original.): "Auf gleiche Weise nennen Sie [i.e.the Jews] ein kleines Kind Moses benahmt Moschele und weilen dieser Nahm unter den Juden sehr gemein glauben die unberichteten Christen welche dafuer Mauschel aussprechen ein jeder Jud heisse Mauschel oder das Mauschel und ein Jud ein Ding sey." Translation more or less (Joachim/anyone, please feel free to amend): "In like manner they [i.e. the Jews] name a small child whose name is Moses Mo(y)shele and since this name is very common among the Jews the uneducated Christians believe that every Jew is called Mauschel [=Moyshl] or The Mauschel and that a Jew is a thing" [object?] Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:22:44 -0500 (EST) From: yivo3@metgate.metro.org Subject: Mauscheln aka zydlaczenie With respect to Noyekh Zide's query in the Polish world, there's been a bit of work done in recent years. A good place to start is Maria Brzezina, "Polszczyzna Zydow" (The Polish of Jews) (Krakow, 1986). This 600-page volume makes use of written sources from the turn of the century, revealing a highly-developed genre of popular Polish literature comparable to the Uncle Remus tales in America. The Polish word for talking like a Jew is "zydlaczenie." In the interwar period in Poland, there was a widespread genre of jokes, sketches, monologues of varying levels of skill and taste, some created by well known poets such as Julian Tuwim and Antoni Slonimski (both of Jewish origin) based on zydlaczenie. The genre was known as szmonces (shmontses). Teyku. Michael Steinlauf 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 02:14:48 +0100 (MET) From: booybrcl@worldonline.nl Subject: Mauscheln Some remarks of a layman, an outsider: In the first years of this century J.L.Voorzanger and J.E.Polak collected yiddish words as used in the Netherlands. They also mention 'maushelen' as a word for speaking yiddish, speaking as Jews do. They explicitely declare that this word is only used in Germany and consider it as related to the german word 'maeuschele', a diminutive of 'mausheh'. In Germany 'mauscheln' is not only used for speaking yiddish, but also in a more adverse way: 'speaking indistinctly', and, even worse, in the sense of 'to traffic', 'to huckster'. Mauschel as a noun is used mocking: 'yid, kike, sheenie'. I must add that this is what the dictionary declares, I very often visited Germany and never heard it there. In the dutch language, which is often close to German, Mauschel or mauscheln is not known. However, I met the name 'Mauschel' once in a dutch zionist-journal of 1916. There it was used to indicate jewish 'Selbsthass' and there was a reference to Theodor Herzl. The biography of Herzl, written in german by Alex Bein, ( I do not know about a translation into english) refers to an essay written by Herzl after the congress in Basel in 1897 and probably published in 'Die Welt'. This essay is called "Mauschel" and it described a Jew who does not care in any way about honour, honour of the Jews. He is an antizionist, he sneers, he scoffs, he slanders. Must we conclude that 'mauschel and mauscheln' are use in two ways, one, just simply in the meaning of a Jew, of speaking yiddish and the other meaning, an adverse one, used by not-Jews to emphasize supposed bad properties of the Jew, but also used by Jews to express jewish Selbsthass ? Kees Booy ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.197