SOURCE: "Adalbert Stifter and Judaism," in The Menorah Journal, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, Autumn, 1948, pp. 327-38.

In the following essay, Urzidil comments on Stifter's portrayal of the Jewish protagonist of "Adibas."

Until Stifter's "Abdias" appeared about a hundred years ago no German writer had made any attempt towards an appreciative rendering of Jewish character and fate. Poets had naturally chosen subjects from the Old Testament, and the wisdom of the Scriptures was reflected in many a German poem and legend and story. But almost no attention had been paid to the fate of the Jew in the Galuth; no enlightenment was offered on living Jewish qualities and their causes.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Nathan der Weise (1779) can hardly be considered an attempt of that kind, though its hero is a high-minded Jew who hails cosmopolitanism and urges a world religion for all mankind. Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's story Die...