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pamphlet, even S. Freud, who had called the deceased Weininger an extremely gifted young man, could not overlook the well-documented fact that Weininger’s central idea—bisexuality—was not original with him, but had first occurred to a certain Herr Fliess. And so Albrecht Amsel opened the book all unsuspecting and read in Weininger who in a footnote had introduced himself as a Jew: The Jew has no soul. The Jew does not sing. The Jew does not engage in sports. The Jew must surmount the Jewishness within him… And Albrecht Amsel surmounted by singing in the church choir, by not only founding the Bohnsack Athletic Club reg. 1905, but also by coming out for the squad in appropriate attire, by doing his part on the horse and horizontal bar, by high jumping, broad jumping, participating in relay races, and finally, despite opposition—here again a founder and pioneer—by introducing schlagball, a relatively new sport, in the territory to the right and left of all three mouths of the Vistula.
    Like the villagers of the Island, Brauksel, who is recording these matters to the best of his ability, would know nothing of the town of Preussisch-Stargard and Eduard Amsel’s tailor grandfather, if Lottchen Amsel, née Tiede, had kept silence. Many years after the fatal day in Verdun she opened her mouth.
    Young Amsel, of whom we shall be speaking, though with interruptions, from now on, had hastened from the city to his mother’s deathbed and she, who was succumbing to diabetes, had whispered feverishly in his ear: “Ah, son. Forgive your poor mother. Amsel, you never knew him but he was your very own father, was one of the circumcised as they say. I only hope they don’t catch you now the laws are so strict.”
    At the time of the strict laws—which, however, were not yet in force in the Danzig Free State—Eduard Amsel inherited the business, the property, and the house with everything in it, including a shelf of books: The Kings of Prussia, Prussia’s Great Men, Frederick the Great, Count Schlieffen, The Battle of Leuthen, Frederick and Katte, Frederick the Great and La Barbarina, and Otto Weininger’s extraordinary book which Amsel henceforth kept about him, whereas the other books were gradually lost. In his own way he read in it, he even read the marginal notes which his singing, athletic father had jotted down. He saved the book down through hard times, and it is thanks to him that the book is now lying on Brauxel’s desk, where it can be consulted today and at all times: Weininger has grafted quite a few ideas onto the present writer. The scarecrow is created in man’s image.

ELEVENTH MORNING SHIFT
    Brauschel’s hair is growing. As he writes or manages the mine, it grows. As he dines, walks, slumbers, breathes, or holds his breath, as the morning shift is lowered, the night shift raised, and sparrows inaugurate the day, it grows. In fact, while with cold fingers the barber shortens Brauksel’s hair at his request because the year is drawing to a close, it grows back under his scissors. One day Brauksel, like Weininger, will be dead, but his hair, toenails, and fingernails will survive him for a time—just as this handbook on the construction of effective scarecrows will be read long after the writer has gone out of existence.
    Yesterday mention was made of strict laws. But at the present point in our story, which is just beginning, the laws are still mild, they do not punish Amsel’s origin in any way; Lottchen Amsel, née Tiede, knows nothing about the horrors of diabetes; “naturally” Albrecht Amsel was not a Jew; Eduard Amsel is also a good Protestant and has his mother’s quickly growing reddish-blond hair; plump, already in possession of all his freckles, he spends his time amid drying fishnets and his favorite way of viewing the world is: filtered through fishnets; small wonder that the world soon takes on for him a net-like pattern, obstructed by beanpoles.
    Scarecrows! Here it is contended that at