Carteggio d'autunno tedesco. Uno scambio di lettere tra Gershom Scholem e Nicolaus Sombart a proposito di Carl Schmitt e d'altro.

The article presents the context, immediate and remote, of a yet unpublished correspondence, here edited for the first time, between Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) and Nicolaus Sombart (1923-2008). The latter, son of the famous Werner Sombart, met Scholem probably in the autumn of 1981, when he was at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin. The exchange of letters which took place immediately after that meeting concerns the intellectual and moral figure of Carl Schmitt, a sort of step-father for Sombart, his anti-Semitic tirades and the special relationship between Jews and Germans (or rather between Jewish and Non-Jewish Germans). A point of detail, mentioned by Sombart in an unpublished article he sent to Scholem on that occasion, focuses on the alleged Jewishness of Dr. Ernst Schweninger, Bismarck’s personal physician. The commentary offers an occasion to reflect on Sombart’s relation with the figure of his father and on the impact of the Schmittian categories “friendship-enmity” in an age of turmoil.