would at last fulfil the hopes of the German Jews who had gone there in the 1840s, expecting to find the embodiment of Enlightenment ideals. Even before he founded the Ethical Culture Society, when he was still a professor at Cornell, Adler had developed an exalted view of American democracy, which, in tracing a direct line between the Jewish prophetic tradition and the American democratic ideal, attributed to the latter a religious significance. In his first set of Sunday-morning lectures, he declared: ‘To larger truths America is dedicated.’ America could, he argued, provide both political and spiritual liberty and so break the ‘spiritual fetters that load thy sons and daughters!’ ‘All over this land,’ he announced, ‘thousands are searching and struggling for the better, they know not what.’ It was his role, the role of the Ethical Culture Society and of the students trained in its school, to teach those thousands what, exactly, they were searching for and thereby to define and exemplify what Adler was fond of calling the ‘American ideal’.
Adler’s role as the spokesman for the spiritual importance of Americanisation received recognition and support at the highest level when, in 1908, he was appointed by President Roosevelt himself as Theodore Roosevelt Professor at the University of Berlin, where he gave a series of lectures on ‘The Foundation for Friendly Relations Between Germany and America’. In a book that was published some years later, he argued that America represented a ‘New Ideal’. ‘The American ideal,’ he declared, ‘is that of the uncommon quality latent in the common man.’
This was something that was to become a central part of Oppenheimer’s world view. If Oppenheimer seemed to later observers strangely untouched, for the most part, by the values of the Ethical Culture Society, with respect to America and what it represented, he was at one with Adler. His greatestlove was possibly that which he felt for his country. In his mind at least, the answer to the question about the nature of his identity was simple: he was not German and he was not Jewish, but he was, and was proud to be, American.
In this respect, Oppenheimer was a typical product of the Ethical Culture movement. Besides the patriotic focus in its publicity material, the Ethical Culture School did its best, on every available occasion, to present itself to parents and pupils as first and foremost an
American
school. Four times a year it held festivals in which the pupils would perform plays in front of the parents. These festivals did not include Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah or Passover, but rather Thanksgiving, Christmas, Patriots’ Day and a May festival. The first of these that Oppenheimer took part in was the Christmas Festival of 1911, in which the pupils of his year (the second grade) presented a play that drew on elements of Viking mythology – Fire Spirits, Frost Giants, Ice Spirits, and so on – to present the triumph of life over death. It ended with a rousing chorus of ‘Noël, Noël’.
During Oppenheimer’s first year at school he and his family moved into a new home. The apartment at West 94th Street was sold, and the family relocated to a much grander apartment that took up the whole eleventh floor at 155 Riverside Drive, a prestigious red-brick block on the Upper West Side right next to Riverside Park, with views of the Hudson River. In recent years 155 Riverside Drive has become famous as the home of the characters in the popular television situation comedy
Will & Grace
, who live on the ninth floor. The scriptwriters no doubt chose Riverside Drive for the same reasons as the Oppenheimer family: it is an impressive address, signalling elegance, wealth and membership of Manhattan’s educational and artistic elite. In 1912, it was where some prominent members of the fabulously wealthy Guggenheim family lived, including Benjamin Guggenheim, who, in April of that year, as a first-class
Adler’s role as the spokesman for the spiritual importance of Americanisation received recognition and support at the highest level when, in 1908, he was appointed by President Roosevelt himself as Theodore Roosevelt Professor at the University of Berlin, where he gave a series of lectures on ‘The Foundation for Friendly Relations Between Germany and America’. In a book that was published some years later, he argued that America represented a ‘New Ideal’. ‘The American ideal,’ he declared, ‘is that of the uncommon quality latent in the common man.’
This was something that was to become a central part of Oppenheimer’s world view. If Oppenheimer seemed to later observers strangely untouched, for the most part, by the values of the Ethical Culture Society, with respect to America and what it represented, he was at one with Adler. His greatestlove was possibly that which he felt for his country. In his mind at least, the answer to the question about the nature of his identity was simple: he was not German and he was not Jewish, but he was, and was proud to be, American.
In this respect, Oppenheimer was a typical product of the Ethical Culture movement. Besides the patriotic focus in its publicity material, the Ethical Culture School did its best, on every available occasion, to present itself to parents and pupils as first and foremost an
American
school. Four times a year it held festivals in which the pupils would perform plays in front of the parents. These festivals did not include Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah or Passover, but rather Thanksgiving, Christmas, Patriots’ Day and a May festival. The first of these that Oppenheimer took part in was the Christmas Festival of 1911, in which the pupils of his year (the second grade) presented a play that drew on elements of Viking mythology – Fire Spirits, Frost Giants, Ice Spirits, and so on – to present the triumph of life over death. It ended with a rousing chorus of ‘Noël, Noël’.
During Oppenheimer’s first year at school he and his family moved into a new home. The apartment at West 94th Street was sold, and the family relocated to a much grander apartment that took up the whole eleventh floor at 155 Riverside Drive, a prestigious red-brick block on the Upper West Side right next to Riverside Park, with views of the Hudson River. In recent years 155 Riverside Drive has become famous as the home of the characters in the popular television situation comedy
Will & Grace
, who live on the ninth floor. The scriptwriters no doubt chose Riverside Drive for the same reasons as the Oppenheimer family: it is an impressive address, signalling elegance, wealth and membership of Manhattan’s educational and artistic elite. In 1912, it was where some prominent members of the fabulously wealthy Guggenheim family lived, including Benjamin Guggenheim, who, in April of that year, as a first-class
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