Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

THE EXILE 47

It is not a question of whether you agree with me. This is simply how I feel. I feel for all the members of the circle as you said you felt for me. They can do what they like, but those three days remain, and the circle remains and [| remain—eyen if I am the only one. But it is sad—and Buber is really the worst one, because he is the strongest of the unfaithful ones, and he stands behind Landauer.'8

Van Eeden’s dismay was occasioned by a proposal from Landauer and Buber that a separate ‘Bund’ be formed of the continental members. The Dutchman called it the “Berliner-Tageblatt-plan.” However, by September 1915 he was heartened to receive a letter from Gutkind promising his continued commitment to the original grouping. He wrote to Borel:

How much more powerful love is than reason. I too hold fast to the circle with ‘loving firmness’ and am certainly inclined to embrace Rang as well as Gutkind. My sharp pain originated from Landauer’s letter, which quite simply meant lack of faith. And it is my opinion that Buber is the real schismatic. He is so cold, so self-sufficient, so arrogant. Will they ever come back? Everything is possible . . . I will inform everyone in the circle and everyone who came into consideration (that means also Rathenau and Rolland) in quite a simple businesslike way that Landauer and Buber do not want to have anything to do with the circle any longer, and that Landauer made a call for a new ‘Bund’ and invited Norlind, Bjerre, Borel, van Eeden and Rolland to it... That Gutkind, Rang, Borel, van Eeden will hold fast to the original circle and will not let go of it... .”!9

In fact the Blut-bund as an identifiable group was never to meet again. As the years of war continued the personal tensions between the members occasioned by the hostilities, coupled with the serious problems of communication in a continent torn by war, caused the association to break up. Individual members were to continue to correspond with each other, but each went on to pursue their own separate ways.

Van Eeden, a disillusioned and disappointed man, eventually joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1922. He died at Bussum on June 16th 1932. Gutkind emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1933 where he taught at the New School and at the College of the City of New York. He died in Chatauqua, New York on August 26th 1965, just two months after Martin Buber died at the age of 87 in Jerusalem.

Not all the members of the Blut-bund died peacefully in their beds however. Rathenau was assassinated in 1922. Gustav Landauer was murdered in 1919. In 1916 he had told an associate who asked him why he remained so passive during a time of great tension and stress: