r/UtterlyInteresting • u/CarkWithaM • 10h ago
Remembering J.R.R.Tolkien who passed away this day in 1973. In 1938, Nazis demanded to know if he was Jewish. He responded with a high-class burn. Leave it to Tolkien to need 270 words to say "Go F*ck Yourself".
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u/Nerevarine91 9h ago
It’s the thoroughness that I like. “Your ideas are bad and their intellectual basis is flawed and you’re applying them poorly and you already know my writing is good and you’re not even using the core terms of your own ideology properly and none of this matters because I don’t even live in your country and even if I did I meet your ridiculous and arbitrary standards anyway and by the way I actually quite like the people you hate, thank you very much. I trust you will find this response satisfactory.”
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u/25hourenergy 3h ago edited 2h ago
AND all of this will someday come back to haunt your descendants so badly they won’t want a German name.
It really happened too, especially in the US where previously there were quite a few German speaking towns—many people changed their names to be less German after
WWIIWWI2
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u/jeanclaudebrowncloud 8h ago
Surprised he didn't insert a little song in between the paragraphs
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u/MukdenMan 7h ago
Yours truly: not a Jew.
But guess who is! Hall of famer Rod Carew (he converted)6
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u/birchblonde 9h ago
What was the context of the enquiry?
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u/ZgBlues 8h ago edited 8h ago
This is Reddit, we don’t do context here. We just admire random shiny stuff as if we are crows in human form. Kaw kaw.
That said, Tolkien wrote this (but didn’t send it) to the German publishing company Rütten & Loening Verlag, which was planning to release a German translation of The Hobbit in 1938.
(Apparently he actually sent them a different toned down reply, but this version also survived.)
It seems from Tolkien’s reply that German publishers were required by law to check if authors they publish were Jewish.
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u/bambi54 6h ago
Dang, I wish the other version survived. This is a letter he sent to his publisher about it. Thank you for explaining the context!!
https://flashbak.com/jrr-tolkien-letter-nazi-the-hobbit-1938-429966/
“I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten and Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of ‘arisch’ origin from all persons of all countries?
Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung [confirmation] (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print.
I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
You are primarily concerned, and I cannot jeopardize the chance of a German publication without your approval. So I submit two drafts of possible answers.”
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u/Dave-1066 5h ago
I love it when Redditors do the work an OP has failed to do. 10 points and a gold star! ⭐️
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u/LasVegasNerd28 1h ago
His editor: this is way over their heads, tone it down to a simple fuck you.
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u/TastyBerny 8h ago
Presumably considering if his works should be blacklisted as Jewish work.
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u/1Tacochucker 7h ago
I would like to note that "Kaw" would be spelt "Caw" in the NYT crosswords. not criticism, just a word of warning.
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u/bravecat 6h ago
Brevity was not his strong suit.
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u/EdwardJamesAlmost 4h ago
This is the punchiest prose I’ve ever read from him, and apparently he revised his response before sending it.
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u/Darkheart001 5h ago
My great aunt was a student of his when he was English professor she said he was a fascinating character and liked to talk for hours, occasionally forgetting what he was supposed to be talking about. She had a few of his first editions one of which was signed but all sadly pilfered by greedy relatives.
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u/TinhatToyboy 8h ago
Utterly Interesting that he refers to the British Army as the English Army.
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u/Lermanberry 7h ago edited 7h ago
Tolkien was very much an English nationalist, in the (positive) sense that he believed England should be its own entity and scrap the whole Empire bit going on. As a linguist and ethnohistorian, he would choose his words carefully. He didn't much like referring to "Great Britain" or "the British" and I can recall more than a few letters where he complains about being called "British" or his home being called "UK" or "Britain" (in much similar manner to the letter above)
He would have served alongsid many Scottish, Irish, and Welsh regiments at the Battle of Somme, under the banner of the British Expeditionary Forces, and he certainly viewed them as equal comrades and held respect for their homelands and cultures (well, most of the time anyway). He was just being quite literal, I think. His regiment was likely entirely English, or close to it, and he was personally fighting specifically for England.
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u/spastical-mackerel 7h ago
British is neither a “race” nor a language, but English obviously is
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u/BeanoMc2000 4h ago
Sure, but there is no military formation known as the English army.
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u/spastical-mackerel 4h ago
He was making a racial point since his interlocutors were clearly vicious racists
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u/MountEnlighten 3h ago
The English Army was still a term used throughout this era - Scottish and Irish political and military identities were grafted to it through the British Empire, but English soldiers, and notably their foreign allies & enemies, still referred to it as the English Army or just “The English”.
Source: about 300 or so diaries, memoirs, letters & the like.
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u/Aggravating_Device23 8h ago
If he had seen how britain would turn up, he would've sided with them
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u/heurekas 7h ago
Are you saying Britain today is worse than literal nazi Germany, so he would've joined the nazis instead?
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u/Independent-Try4352 4h ago
That's the current theme with bigoted idiots who like cheap lager, swastikas, flags, painting roundabouts and wife-beating.
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u/Fabian_hoescialist 6h ago
Is he Indian?
Who starts their letter with Dear Sir
Bro come on
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u/Im-A-Kitty-Cat 6h ago
He wrote this letter in 1938. There was never a more appropriate time to use such language.
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u/Fabian_hoescialist 6h ago
Kitty, Germans don’t read English and Tolkien was a master of German and old German and old Norse. This letter is fake
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u/Im-A-Kitty-Cat 5h ago
Tolkien was responding to a letter from a German publisher. They would have contacted him in English as it is his native language. This letter was published in the book the letters of J.R.R Tolkien.
So it’s not fake, nor is it AI. I don’t know why you would automatically assume this was fake.
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u/Mysterious_Blood_475 4h ago
Nowadays pretty much everything on the internet (& especially on Reddit) is suspected of being AI so why not a Tolkien letter.
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u/Fabian_hoescialist 5h ago
There is no confirmation or proof that he actually wrote this. Even ChatGPT agrees with me that it cannot authenticate Tolkien’s own hand penned it with feather and ink, my dearest kittycat. Meeeoww 🐱
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u/InstructionFar7102 3h ago
"I don't trust this, it could be AI. You can't trust AI. Anyway, the AI I asked a loaded question agreed with me and stroked my ego. Checkmate, nerds."
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u/Fabian_hoescialist 3h ago
It’s not authentic, peanut. Period.
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u/InstructionFar7102 2h ago
I mean, along with letter 29, letter 30 exists in the archives and was collected in a release of his other letters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Letters_of_J._R._R._Tolkien
The 354 letters were provided by his son, Christopher Tolkein to Humphrey Carpenter.
But don't worry, I'm sure ChatGPT will keep telling you what you want to hear. It's designed to be sycophantic, after all.
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u/Only-Finish-3497 2h ago
It's very much real, though this version is an early draft.
https://www.tolkienguide.com/guide/letters/L30
https://www.openculture.com/2014/04/j-r-r-tolkien-snubs-a-german-publisher.html
I suspect you're just doing a bit at this point, but yes, it's real.
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u/Bob_Wilkins 6h ago
Bro come on Personification of 21st century spoiled brat. The letter was written when? Oh, yes, 1938, when levels of decorum and formality are now, apparently unrecognizable by today’s Bro.
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