The Contest

The contest between Mendelssohn and Jacobi, known as the Pantheismusstreit, proved to be anything but a display of knightly chivalry. The mutual distrust and antagonism that had been building up was evidently too deeply felt to be kept under control. The documentary sources now at our disposal clearly reveal the powerful emotions and motivations of the combatants on both sides.

We first turn our attention to Jacobi. He had promised to provide a more detailed answer to Mendelssohn's “Objections,” but he took his time about it. He entered into a lively correspondence with Hamann, whose meral support he needed after Herder's failure to endorse a “leap of faith” as the antidote to Spinozism. While vacationing in Hofgeismar Jacobi had read Hamann's Golgatha with great enthusiasm. He had been immediately struck by a passage that described Mendelssohn as “a circumcised fellow-believer in the spirit and essence of pagan, naturalistic, atheistic fanaticism, “ and suspected that Hamann might have got wind-through Herder-of his, Jacobi's, report on the conversations with Lessing. In Weimar, where he wound up his vacation, Jacobi found Herder and Goethe equally delighted with Hamann's spirited attack on Mendelssohn's Jerusalem. On October 18, 1784,Jacobi sent Hamann a package containing his report on Lessing, Mendelssohn's “Objections,” his letter to Hemsterhuis, and his correspondence with Herder. As he pointed out in a covering letter, he expected a great deal from Hamann's reaction to these documents, and he implored him: “Speak that I may see thee.“

It so happened that Jacobi did Hamann a great favor by sending him all this material. A friend of Mendelssohn's in Berlin had written to a friend of Hamann's in Königsberg complaining bitterly about the accusation of atheism made in the Golgatha, and Hamann was plagued by a sense of remorse at the rather drastic remark he had made (after some struggle against himself, as he admitted). He felt the need to probe the issue of atheism more deeply and also to study Spinoza. In this situation he gratefully accepted Jacobi's “confidence” as “a boon of Providence,” as “grist to his mill” and “oil to his lamp.” He was not sure that it would benefit Jacobi as much as it would him, or that he could add much to what had already been said by Herder.