Georg Letham
Ernst Weiss
Georg Letham
PHYSICIAN AND MURDERER
Translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg
archipelago books
English translation copyright © 2010 Joel Rotenberg
Georg Letham. Arzt und Mörder © Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Wien 1931
First Archipelago Books Editions 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without prior written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weiss, Ernst, 1882–1940.
[Georg Letham. Arzt und Mörder. English]
Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer / by Ernst Weiss ;
translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-9800330-3-8
I. Rotenberg, Joel. II. Title.
PT2647.E52G413 2009 833'.912–dc22
2008048790
Archipelago Books
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Jacket art: Folkwang-Auriga-Verlag
This publication was made possible with support from Lannan Foundation,
The National Endowment for the Arts,
and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Georg Letham
PHYSICIAN AND MURDERER
Contents
FOREWORD
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
Whether we appear as defendant or as witness, we unfinished human beings are not spared the trials of this even more unfinished world. Cruelty and futility are what we meet with, and during our brief existence we see them ad nauseam. No one can avoid this first philosophy. Constant hardship for the individual who battles in vain in the grim war of all against all; in this best-ordered of all possible worlds, pain, affliction of mind, inconceivable physical suffering, together with an idiotic waste of the energy and means given by nature. Who could make sense of it?
To make some sense of the world, to gain knowledge–this is what one tries to do every day of one’s life, without success. So what is a thinking man with any strength of will going to strive for, if not fleeting pleasure? And what can this pleasure be, if not a delirium that, to be replicated, requires greater quantities of deliriant each time? But if increasingly violent efforts are needed simply in order to make life bearable, the moment will soon come when one will violate the law of the polity and of human solidarity and recklessly infringe upon the rights of others. And, very naturally, those others will try to protect themselves and stop the violator from doing what he is doing.
The profound, truly disastrous disorder and futility of nature and the world–what in the scientific realm we call the pathological, in the moral realm the criminal–these are constant, they will always be with us no matter what the future brings. Even after the most terrible catastrophes have happened, nature and society will still gaze at us with the same expression of mindless, animal earnestness. But it is only the thinking man who must watch all this with awareness and understanding, and that is why he is to be pitied. Find a place for yourself! But how? Nations are as mindless as individuals. Pitch in, contribute what you can! Help out! Try to change things! Change? But where to begin? If only it were possible to help. But in nine hundred ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, the individual will not be strong enough. If only one could at least believe in a transcendent order, find a big idea to hang on to, call it Jesus Christ or love of country or–science!
Beauty, peace, harmony–all this, too, is no more than a delirium. Only wealth and knowledge give the individual a bit of a foothold.
Too weak to be of help and lost to faith from childhood; given over to all the antisocial urges of his heart (the original sin?); never understood by his fellows and thus always profoundly alone; tugged this way and that by internal contradictions, like a malaria patient who sweats and shivers as he oscillates between subnormal and supranormal temperatures; with scientific ideas in his mind, but no hope in his heart, a heart that ages year by year yet never grows up; with a human life on his conscience, but no real conscience among his contradictory and self-canceling character traits–is all that my self? No, only part of it.
Yes, to give an account of such a life–not just some of it, but all of it–this might be a task for the modern novel.
That I have not only passed through my life but am also attempting to give an account of it–is this not already a great deal? Such an attempt requires strength and clarity of mind, more strength and clarity of mind, perhaps, than I can credit myself with. Already I feel the difficulties of a coherent confession and work of art that will move and enlighten. My greatest fear is that I will not be understood, and fail for that reason.
If only I can convey all I have gone through! That is everything. I will try. Let it be an experiment. My last, perhaps.
It will not be easy. I am the protagonist who both acts and is acted upon. Scientist and criminal.
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