Dr. Max Salzberg, Summary of the autobiographical novel Auf dunkler Bahn. Die Geschichte meines Lebens [“On a Dark Path. The Story of my Life”], around 1950.
author: Max Salzberg
source date: ca. 1950
language: eng
availability: Max Salzberg, Auf dunkler Bahn [“On a Dark Path]. Summary, attached to a letter to Dr. Eugen Kokon, Verlag der Frankfurter Hefte, Hamburg State Archives, 622-1/214_30., 622-1/214_30 Salzberg.

“Auf dunkler Bahn” [“On a Dark Path”], an autobiographical novel. The path was short: At the age of 20, it was abruptly interrupted by the narrator’s blindness. There were still bright and colorful experiences, but the darkness shrouded them or erased them. The narrator’s father wanted to make up to his son, Matthias, for what had been neglected in himself, wanted to make him a great Talmudic scholar. He spared no sacrifice, but failed because of the educational method and the exceptional laws under which Jews lived under in Tsarist Russia. From the age of five to the age of twelve, Matthias was educated, as was the custom, in the cheder (schoolroom) by a wide variety of teachers (rabbis). He sat for ten to twelve hours a day with many children of different ages crammed into the small room. The lessons consisted only of reading Hebrew. Translations from the Bible and prayers. The imaginative child suffered. The father changed teachers, but the teaching method remained the same. The fact that Matthias did not suffer any damage to his abilities and his soul he owed to the influence of a motherly neighbor, the daughter of a Protestant pastor who was married to a Jewish doctor. She breathed into him love for a world that he did not yet understand and for which he longed; this longing continued to have an effect on him. After her death, he secretly tried to gain admission to grammar school, which at that time was accessible to only a few wealthy Jews. The attempt failed, and once again he languished in the cheder under the rabbi’s thumb. A clash with one of these “pedagogues” brought freedom from the cheder. Then came the talmud schools. These included the free meals, every day provided by a different citizen, even by people who had nothing themselves and joined in out of shame. Matthias was under the influence of his older brother, who belonged to the Workers’ Association[^1], laying down that any unearned gift was to be regarded as begging. Matthias worked and starved

[^1: General Jewish Workers’ Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (Allgemeiner Jüdischer Arbeiterbund in Litauen)]

2. a lot. An accident left him with an eye condition. Penniless, without counsel, he made his way to Prussia, in the context of which the illegal crossing of the closely guarded Russian border aggravated his ailment. In Königsberg[^2] he fell into the hands of an unsuitable doctor, and the condition was not cured. During his stay in the clinic, he devoted himself to helping a deaf person that had gone blind shortly before come to terms with his misfortune. This activity showed him the way to the future; he wanted to become a doctor. After several months, he returned to his home town. This time saw the conflict occur that broke him: His parents’ poverty forced him to earn money, so he became a rabbi (teacher) in a small Jewish congregation. There he came into contact with other people, with merchants who had connections abroad. Despite his weakened eyesight and twelve hours of work, he prepared for his high school final exam but could not let go of his earlier preoccupation with the talmud either. Another accident caused him to go completely blind and destroyed his life plan. The autobiographical element only provides the outer framework for the milieu of that time, for the description of the hardship of his tribe under the Tsarist regime. The book contains a wealth of fates and characters as they are involved not only in the struggle for their bare existence, but also in the struggle against inhibiting tradition and lack of culture. The grievances are castigated mercilessly, nothing is glossed over, nothing excused: objectivity prevails. The novel offers the key to understanding these people and why, in the rest of the world, they are at the forefront of every movement, every struggle for freedom and culture.

[^2: today Kaliningrad in Russia]