A Homeless Patriot: Fritz Mauthner’s Search for a Homeland in Language

This paper investigates the political dimension of Fritz Mauthner’s writings in respect to his language critique and his ambivalent relationship to Judaism. Its aim is to oppose the common understanding of Mauthner as a German-nationalist. For doing so, Mauthner’s relation to Judaism is contextualised within his philosophical views on patriotism, mother-tongue, and the formation of social communities. By suggesting an anti-nationalist interpretation of his philosophy, it is argued that participation in a certain linguistic practice can explain what it means to belong to a certain community according to Mauthner. The paper discusses to what extent Mauthner’s writings can be interpreted as anti-nationalist and concludes that he is too contradictory to be understood distinctively as a nationalist or an anti-nationalist.