Enemy in The Country: Satires & Novellas is the first English translation of this fictional book by Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing (1872-1933), who was assassinated by the Nazis during their rise to power. The collection of short stories, satires, novella, and poem is unique in Lessing’s writings. Set during the 1923-1925 French occupation of the Ruhr, they are powerful warnings, 10 years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor, on the dangers of threatening a prostrate post-war Germany with reparations and occupation. The volume was translated by award-winning author and translator Peter C. Appelbaum, who also translated Lessing’s famous 1930 book Jewish Self-Hate.
Theodor Lessing was a German Jewish philosopher. He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic on Jewish self-hatred, a book which he wrote in 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler came to power, in which he tried to explain the phenomenon of Jewish intellectuals who incited antisemitism against the Jewish people and who regarded Judaism as the source of evil in the world.
On the night of 30 August 1933, he was assassinated by Sudeten German Nazi sympathizers. Lessing was shot through a window of the villa where he lived. His assassins were German Nazis from Sudetenland, Rudolf Max Eckert, Rudolf Zischka and Karl Hönl. They fled to Nazi Germany after the assassination. His assassination by the Nazis was the first political murder of an opponent to the Nazi regime outside of Germany, and caused worldwide indignation.
Lessing's philosophical views were influenced by Nietzsche and Afrikan Spir. According to Theodore Ziolkowski in Lessing's Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen (History as Giving Meaning to the Meaningless), "writing in the tradition of Nietzsche, argued that history, having no objective validity, amounts to a mythic construct imposed on an unknowable reality, in order to give its some semblance of meaning."
Author of many books, translated into a number of languages, the books written about Lessing continue to grow each year.
Translator and Editor Peter C. Appelbaum, M.D., Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Pathology, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. After more than four decades in infectious disease research, Dr. Appelbaum is spend-
ing his retirement years writing and translating books on modern-day Jewish military history. Most recently, he translated and edited Theodor Lessing’s Jewish Self-Hate (Berghahan, 2021). He is the author of Loyalty Betrayed and Loyal Sons (Vallentine-Mitchell, 2014) and, together with James Scott, has translated an anthology of war essays and poems by Kurt Tucholsky (Prayer after the Slaughter, Berlinica, 2015) and Broken Carousel: German Jewish Soldier-Poets of the Great War (Stone Tower Books, 2017). He is also the translator/editor of Jewish Tales of the Great War (Stone Tower Books, 2017). Dr. Appelbaum has also translated 170 ENEMIES IN OUR COUNTRY, Avidgor Hameiri’s Of Human Carnage—Odessa 1918–1920 (Black Widow Press and Stone Tower Press, 2020), The Great Madness (Black Widow Press and Stone Tower Press, 2021), Voyage into Savage Europe (Academic Studies Press, 2020), and Hell on Earth by Avigdor Hameiri into English from the original Hebrew for the first time (Wayne State University Press, fall, 2017). For that work, he was the recipient of the TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Hebrew-English Translation for 2019.
Theodor Lessing was a German Jewish philosopher. He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic on Jewish self-hatred, a book which he wrote in 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler came to power, in which he tried to explain the phenomenon of Jewish intellectuals who incited antisemitism against the Jewish people and who regarded Judaism as the source of evil in the world.
On the night of 30 August 1933, he was assassinated by Sudeten German Nazi sympathizers. Lessing was shot through a window of the villa where he lived. His assassins were German Nazis from Sudetenland, Rudolf Max Eckert, Rudolf Zischka and Karl Hönl. They fled to Nazi Germany after the assassination. His assassination by the Nazis was the first political murder of an opponent to the Nazi regime outside of Germany, and caused worldwide indignation.
Lessing's philosophical views were influenced by Nietzsche and Afrikan Spir. According to Theodore Ziolkowski in Lessing's Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen (History as Giving Meaning to the Meaningless), "writing in the tradition of Nietzsche, argued that history, having no objective validity, amounts to a mythic construct imposed on an unknowable reality, in order to give its some semblance of meaning."
Author of many books, translated into a number of languages, the books written about Lessing continue to grow each year.
Translator and Editor Peter C. Appelbaum, M.D., Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Pathology, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. After more than four decades in infectious disease research, Dr. Appelbaum is spend-
ing his retirement years writing and translating books on modern-day Jewish military history. Most recently, he translated and edited Theodor Lessing’s Jewish Self-Hate (Berghahan, 2021). He is the author of Loyalty Betrayed and Loyal Sons (Vallentine-Mitchell, 2014) and, together with James Scott, has translated an anthology of war essays and poems by Kurt Tucholsky (Prayer after the Slaughter, Berlinica, 2015) and Broken Carousel: German Jewish Soldier-Poets of the Great War (Stone Tower Books, 2017). He is also the translator/editor of Jewish Tales of the Great War (Stone Tower Books, 2017). Dr. Appelbaum has also translated 170 ENEMIES IN OUR COUNTRY, Avidgor Hameiri’s Of Human Carnage—Odessa 1918–1920 (Black Widow Press and Stone Tower Press, 2020), The Great Madness (Black Widow Press and Stone Tower Press, 2021), Voyage into Savage Europe (Academic Studies Press, 2020), and Hell on Earth by Avigdor Hameiri into English from the original Hebrew for the first time (Wayne State University Press, fall, 2017). For that work, he was the recipient of the TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Hebrew-English Translation for 2019.
