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*    File:  19-1-95.TXT                   Dateilänge:  10 KB    *
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*    Autor: Ruth Dudley Edwards, London - England               *
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*    Titel: Sir Victor Gollancz                                 *
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*    Erschienen in:  WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES, Diskette 1/1995      *
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*  Edwards, Ruth Dudley (1995) Sir Victor Gollancz; in:         *
*  Wittgenstein Studies 1/95, File: 19-1-95; hrsg. von          *
*  K.-O. Apel, F. Börncke, N. Garver, B. McGuinness, P. Hacker, *
*  R. Haller, W. Lütterfelds, G. Meggle, C. Nyíri, K. Puhl,     *
*  Th. Rentsch, A. Roser, J.G.F. Rothhaupt, J. Schulte,         *
*  U. Steinvorth, P. Stekeler-Weithofer, W. Vossenkuhl          *
*  (3 1/2'' Diskette) ISSN 0943-5727                            *
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Victor Gollancz was born in London on 9 April 1893 into a family of
Polish origin with a long rabbinical heritage. Two uncles, Hermann and
Israel, were knighted for academic achievements. The unquestioning
Jewish orthodoxy and political conservatism of Alex Gollancz, a
jeweller, roused his son to life-long rebellion. After St. Paul's
School, from 1912-14, Gollancz was a classics scholar of New College,
Oxford; his army service consisted mainly of a period of secondment to
Repton School (1916-18) from which he was dismissed for stirring up
political dissension among staff and pupils.

When he entered publishing in 1921 with Benn Brothers Ltd, Gollancz
had already found his vocation as a political educator. In 1923 he
became managing director of a new general publishing company, Ernest
Benn Ltd, but personality clashes with Sir Ernest Benn led him to
leave in 1927 to set up Victor Gollancz Ltd. Within a few years
Gollancz's combinations of talents had made him the most exciting
general publisher in London. He had remarkable drive, energy and
belief in his own judgement, he delighted in shocking the publishing
establishment, he was a shrewd businessman and he made authors believe
in his commitment to their work. Soon he was able to begin the
political publishing which he saw as the chief raison d'etre of his
firm. The Liberal of youth and early adulthood had become a socialist
and in 1936 he founded the Left Book Club (LBC).

Run with Gollancz's usual energy and flair for improvisation, the LBC
- subsidised by the firm - quickly became an important political force
in the movement for a Popular Front against Fascism. By April 1939 its
membership was almost 60,000 and 15 million leaflets had been
distributed under its auspices. Communists were vitally important in
the organisation of the LBC and Gollancz - though never a party member
and instinctively anti-totalitarian - was led to compromise with them
to an extent that he later regretted over the political slant of the
club's publications. With the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939 the
membership split and the LBC began a decline that eventually led to
its demise in 1948.

During the Second World War Gollancz's main energies were devoted to
trying to bring about reconciliation within the ranks of the left in
order to assist the war effort, and working with The National Campaign
for Rescue from Nazi Terror to secure government help for victims of
Nazi persecution. Overwork and emotional distress led to a long and
serious nervous breakdown in 1943.

Towards the end of the war, Gollancz dedicated himself to combating
the view that all Germans were guilty. When Buchenwald was liberated
in the spring of 1945, the outraged Allied press and public demanded
that Germans should be collectively punished. Pointing out that
Buchenwald hat contained many gentile Germans, in WHAT BUCHENWALD
REALLY MEANS, a pamphlet written in April 1945, Gollancz made the case
for the innocence of millions of German civilians. As well as
outraging many English people by denouncing them as morally more
guilty than the Germans if they had no tried to save the Jews, he also
enraged the Jews by announcing that the Christian message was morally
superior to that of the New Testament.

Gollancz participated vigorously in the ensuing press controversies,
and condemned INTER ALIA the expulsion from Czechoslovakia of the
Sudeten Germans and the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. His pamphlet
of September 1945, THE NEW MORALITY, alleged that British inhumanity
showed that the war had been morally lost.

Although he stirred many consciences, for he wrote powerfully and
convincingly, the self-righteousness of his tone and the airy manner
in which he - who had not lost any of his family - forgave the Nazis,
was deeply offensive to victims. And, as Wittgenstein pointed out, he
alienated many potential supporters by his self-indulgence style.
Gollancz's brusque response to Wittgenstein was not simply because he
had probably never heard of him, but because he was so emotionally
immature that he always deeply resented criticism. But with all his
failings, Gollancz was a brilliant organiser and inspirer. SAVE EUROPE
NOW, which he launched in September 1945, effectively exerted pressure
on the government to be more generous in its treatment of Germany,
raised substantial sums of money for relief and organised the sending
of tens of thousands of food and clothes parcels to Germany. Gollancz
produced speeches, articles, letters, pamphlets and books in support,
including EUROPE AND GERMANY; TODAY AND TOMORROW, THREATENED VALUES,
IN DARKEST GERMANY, GERMANY REVISITED and ON RECONCILIATION. Honours
bestowed on him in gratitude by German institutions included an
honorary doctorate from the University of Frankfurt, the Goethe medal
for Distinguished Service in the Cultural Field from Frankfurt, the
Peace Prize of the West German Book Trade, the Grand Cross of the
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. There were even a
few Victor Gollancz Strassen. (At home, in 1965, he was given a
knighthood.)

Later causes seemed to Jews often to have been deliberately selected
to annoy them. A convinced Judaeo-Christian (though a member of no
religious group), Gollancz gave much assistance to Christian Action
and with the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and the Arabs, he
founded the Jewish Society for Human Service to help Arabs suffering
from the effects of war. In 1961 - to a chorus of approval in the
Christian religious and enraged condemnation from the Jewish - he
published a pamphlet, THE CASE OF ADOLF EICHMANN, calling on Israel to
forgive and release Eichmann, whom, he alleged, probably did not have
sufficient free will to be considered 'guilty' of his sins.

During the 1950s Gollancz became a convinced pacifist; his main and
successful crusade was to have capital punishment abolished. For the
rest of his life he continued to take an interest in and assist a wide
range of charitable and progressive causes, notably including prison
reform and nuclear disarmament. Throughout his life, he gave
generously disillusioned with politics - he spent more and more time
on writing and on is lifelong passion for serious music. He remained
at the head of his firm until he suffered a stroke in autumn 1966. He
died on 8 February 1967.