Weinberg: The Secret German Life of a Jewish Last Name

For the first twenty-three years of my life or so, I had no idea what my last name meant, and I certainly didn’t know that it was a German word. And if I’d never begun learning German, I might still not be privy to this fascinating piece of information. In fact, after I’d learned my first 500 German words, I quickly realized that nearly all of my childhood Jewish friends had these funny German words as last names. Schwartz, Goldstein, Steinberg, Weissman, Stern, Nussbaum, Goldberg. I’m a little disturbed when I think of how many still haven’t been informed that their last names are the most German of all German words.

I never really liked the sound of my last name—not as a child, not as a teenager, not even as an adult. Too often had my friends ridiculed me by speaking out my name in an extended manner and nasally tone—Weeeiiiinbeeerrrg! And so, I was relieved when I discovered later in life that my name is actually a word that one connects with nature, with Provence, with Dionysian festivals. Still, this realization came too late. How much more confident, charming, daredevilish, and lordly I would be if I’d grown up with the last name “Vineyard” instead of “Weinberg.”

It isn’t exactly a coincidence that American Jews generally don’t know that at some point the German language slithered its way into their last names. In the 20th century, Germany went to war against the entire world—twice! Accordingly, Germany left a bad taste in the mouths of Americans—particularly Jewish Americans—which continues until this day, albeit with less pungency. Beethoven’s anthem that “Alle Menschen werden Brüder” (all people will be brothers) and Angela Merkel’s cry of “Wir schaffen das!” (we can do it!) have still not yet sufficed to neutralize the taste. We did not read a single German author in school. In college, my Jewish friends studied abroad in nearly every European country—Spain, Italy, France, England, Scotland—but never Germany. Growing up, my parents refused to own a German car, and if it so happened that one of my friends’ parents had one, my dad occasionally made a comment under his breath.

And so, when I decided to do my PhD in German, it hardly rolled off the tongue when my friends and extended family and most of all my parents’ friends asked me what I’d been up to. I consoled myself with the thought that at least my grandparents hadn’t lived long enough to witness my enrollment.

Now, it’s not like anyone assaulted me when I told them about my doctoral studies. To be honest, they remained relatively neutral, sometimes even seeming interested. But I’m not naïve. I knew what lay behind those cold eyes and steely smiles. They said: “Sounds interesting!” But they thought: “You decided of your own free will to study the language of the people who murdered six million of us?” They said: “What’s your area of specialization?” But they thought: “How can you look in the mirror?” They said: “You should come sometime for Shabbos dinner!” But surely they thought: “I wonder how many times he’s read Mein Kampf.”

To avoid condemnation, I first tried to avoid the word “German.” If people asked me what I was doing these days, I said “getting my PhD.” If they followed up and asked in which subject, I simply said “literature.” If they asked what kind of literature, I said “European.” Only if they followed up again with “which country?” did I finally cough up the unwort.

This approach tended to backfire, as it caused people to think that I was hiding something—which, in fact, I was. So, I developed a new strategy. Instead of saying I was doing my PhD in German, I said I was doing it in German-Jewish studies. Yet, this tactic bred a new round of unwanted questions. What does Judaism have to do with Germany? I explained that there were many world-famous German Jews, some of whom you have even heard of, like Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud, and Franz Kafka. I thought Einstein was Swiss. And wasn’t Freud Austrian? Kafka was from Czechoslovakia! Right, but they all wrote in German, I answered. They don’t speak German in Czechoslovakia!

Instead of saying I was doing my PhD in German, I said I was doing it in German-Jewish studies.

Once the schande had been silently acknowledged by both sides, the conversation took its course. That’s when my interlocutor often found the opportunity to hurl a few passive-aggressive barbs at Germany. But German is such an ugly language. They always sound so angry! They think this way about German because they’ve only experienced it via documentaries on the Nazis. Indeed, Hitler was always yelling.

In fact, German is rather soft, even melodic. True, German can sound a bit rough, particularly when it is early in the morning, and from my bed I overhear the conversation of two construction workers on the street outside about how to best drill a hole into the sidewalk. But if a German reads aloud the description of falling snow in Adalbert Stifter’s Bergkristall, it is as though an angel from heaven has descended upon us. I kept these thoughts to myself, however.

The worst one was—is—when they say: Do you think the Holocaust will happen again? Because I think it will.

What?

History repeats itself, they say, with more self-confidence than Nostradamus. All of the warning signs are there.

I shake my head. Germany might be moving to the far right, but not even Alice Weidel is talking about taking back the Sudetenland. I don’t get it. Do these soothsayers really think that three Jewish hipsters, who escaped from the “fascism” of Israel for the “green pastures” of Berlin, will be yanked out of a craft beer pub in Kreuzberg and then dragged past a vegan cupcake shop and an iPhone screen repair stand on the way to a newly renovated Dachau?

It is, however, only a matter of time, maybe in a generation, maybe two, before the mark of Cain—now just a scab—will have entirely disappeared from the German forehead. After all, France is today associated with baguettes first, berets second, and the warmongering of Napoleon one-hundred-and-seventy-third. Perhaps then will little Benjie discover, far earlier than I could have, that his last name actually means “sugar mountain.”

Steven Weinberg holds a PhD in German literature and a JD, and lives in Berlin, where he works at the Centrum Judaicum. He is completing a memoir, “A Jew is Back in Germany,” and hosted the podcast “The Schrift: Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Times.”