51 pages • 1-hour read
The Hare With Amber Eyes
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, religious discrimination, and death.
The Jewish Diaspora and the Fragility of Assimilation
Throughout The Hare with Amber Eyes, the author exposes how wealth and cultural refinement could never fully shield his Jewish ancestors from antisemitism. By tracing the rise and fall of the Ephrussis from their banking empire in 19th-century Europe to their forced displacement under Nazi persecution, de Waal explores how exile and loss shaped his ancestors’ lives as much as belonging and success. His narrative highlights the illusion of security that wealth and social integration promise, and how quickly cosmopolitan ideals can dissolve in the face of political violence and hatred.
The Ephrussi family’s story began triumphantly, as they expanded from their humble wheat trading origins in Odessa to become one of the 19th century’s most powerful Jewish banking dynasties. Their grand residences (the Hôtel Ephrussi in Paris and the Palais Ephrussi in Vienna) reflected both affluence and cultural integration. Meanwhile, the family embraced the cosmopolitan ideals of the age, obscuring their Russian roots as they raised children fluent in European languages and changed the spelling of their name. Another way they demonstrated their allegiance to their new nations was through financial investment, such as Viktor’s purchase of Austrian war bonds. However, de Waal shows that this assimilation was conditional and fragile. The Ephrussis’ wealth bought entry into elite society, but not permanence within it. Beneath the surface of European liberalism ran an undercurrent of antisemitism that later defined their fate.
While conducting his research, de Waal observes, “It looks as if I am going to spend another winter reading about anti-Semitism” (155), highlighting the common thread in the fates of both the French and the Austrian Ephrussis. The anti-Jewish backlash stemming from the Dreyfus Affair destroyed Charles Ephrussi’s status as a patron of the arts in Paris. Meanwhile, the Anschluss of 1938 shattered the illusion of safety and belonging for Viktor and his family in Vienna. De Waal emphasizes the impermanence of wealth and the hollowness of assimilation as the Nazis seized power in Austria and confiscated everything the Ephrussis owned. Summarizing these events, the author states, “There [was] no longer a Palais Ephrussi and there [was] no longer an Ephrussi Bank in Vienna. The Ephrussi family [had] been cleansed from the city” (300). The observation underscores the wholesale erasure of the Ephrussis from Austria’s social and cultural elite.
In addition, de Waal’s reconstruction of his family’s history reveals the erosion of European cosmopolitanism itself. Before the wars, cities like Paris and Vienna embodied a vision of culture built on pluralism and exchange, in which Jewish intellectuals and bankers played crucial roles. However, the Ephrussi family’s decline reflects a Europe that turned violently inward, forcing the exile and dispersion of many Jewish people. The author’s compulsion to tell the story of his ancestors illustrates a need to piece together a history fragmented by persecution. The Ephrussi family’s story illustrates how easily systemic prejudice and discrimination can strip away the trappings of belonging. Nevertheless, the memoir is a testament to the persistence of Jewish life in the face of erasure. By depicting how generations of his family, dispersed across the world, survived and even thrived, de Waal highlights their resilient strength.
Objects as Vessels of Memory and Continuity
In The Hare with Amber Eyes, de Waal presents objects as capable of absorbing the physical touch, emotions, and histories of those who handle them. This concept is evident in the collection of Japanese netsuke, which are a tangible thread linking generations of the Ephrussi family. The author suggests that the Japanese carvings are imbued with their former owners’ private experiences and with larger historical events. Through the symbolic endurance of the netsuke, the memoir demonstrates how objects can preserve history across time.
By tracing the journey of the netsuke from late 19th-century Paris onward, de Waal highlights how the miniature carvings pass from owner to owner, preserving each generation’s experiences. Charles Ephrussi’s acquisition of the netsuke during la belle époque (the beautiful age) in Paris is a lasting reminder of his engagement with the avant-garde artistic milieu of the era, including Japonisme, the European enthusiasm for Japanese art. Recounting how Charles’s social circle included Impressionist artists like Renoir and Manet, de Waal suggests that such famous painters likely handled the family’s netsuke. The book thus presents touch as a medium through which history inscribes itself onto objects. Furthermore, the memoir depicts the handling of the Japanese carvings as playing a key role in Charles’s affair with Louise Cahen d’Anvers. De Waal’s assertion that “the collection records their love-affair, their own secret history of touch” (65) suggests that the netsuke became a material archive, bearing witness to the lovers’ illicit bond.
When the netsuke passed to Charles’s cousin Viktor and his wife Emmy in Vienna, they moved from the realm of connoisseurship to the intimacy of domestic life. In Emmy’s dressing room, the netsuke were displayed in their vitrine, and the Ephrussi children took them out of the vitrine and played with them. This tactile interaction infuses the objects with another layer of familial memory and continuity while emphasizing both the netsuke and vitrines as significant symbols. When the Nazis later seized Viktor and Emmy’s possessions, the survival of the netsuke made them silent witnesses to the family’s dispossession, embodying the traces of a family otherwise erased from history.
Upon inheriting the netsuke from his great-uncle Iggie, de Waal feels the weight of their former owners’ touches as both an inheritance and an obligation. The carvings become a touchstone, drawing the author closer to ancestors he was only vaguely aware of from Iggie’s anecdotes. Additionally, they compel him to reconstruct his ancestors’ lives more fully. Writing The Hare with Amber Eyes becomes his act of uncovering and preserving generations of the Ephrussi family’s memories. Meanwhile, his children’s handling of the netsuke maintains their continuity into the future.
Ultimately, the memoir reveals how objects are silent witnesses to human experience, carrying the emotional residue of those who have interacted with them. Through the netsuke, de Waal demonstrates that art endures not only as aesthetic expression but also as an archive of lived history. The miniature carvings’ journey through luxury, exile, and rediscovery shows how material items can preserve stories against the forces of loss.
Art and Collecting as Identity-Making Practices
The memoir presents creating and collecting art as an expression of individuality. As a potter whose craft is grounded in the handmade, de Waal approaches the story of his family’s art collection as a meditation on how objects shape and reflect who people are. Through the evolving role of the netsuke and the contrasting worlds of Charles Ephrussi’s Parisian salons and the opulent Palais Ephrussi in Vienna, de Waal shows that collecting is both a form of creative self-expression and a negotiation with cultural power.
Charles Ephrussi embodied art collecting as an act of personal expression and intellectual freedom. His acquisition of Impressionist paintings and Japanese art objects, including the netsuke, was both intimate and aesthetic. In acquiring these works of art before they became fashionable in late 19th-century Paris, Charles identified himself as both discerning and avant-garde. His passion for art set him apart in the finance-focused Ephrussi family. For Charles, art collecting became an authentic way of articulating his identity in a world that resisted his inclusion. Significantly, his eventual decision to give up the practice, gifting his netsuke collection to his cousin Viktor, corresponded with his ostracization in Parisian cultural circles due to the rise of antisemitism.
When the netsuke moved to Vienna, the meaning of collecting shifted from personal expression to social display. The Palais Ephrussi’s profusion of marble and gold ornamentation embodied Viktor von Ephrussi’s attempt to assimilate into the Austrian aristocracy, emphasizing the book’s use of gold as a motif. Art functioned less as a reflection of individual sensibility and more as a statement of legitimacy, visually asserting that the Austrian Ephrussis were as cultured, refined, and European as their peers. However, amid this ostentatious grandeur, the netsuke represented authenticity and self-expression as the von Ephrussi children played with them and inspired Emmy to invent stories about them. This intimate domestic scenario contrasts sharply with the impersonal spectacle of the Palais, emphasizing that identity finds expression in the tactile and personal rather than in public display. De Waal presents the Nazi looting of Palais Ephrussi’s art collection as a means of erasing the family’s identity. The cataloguing, seizure, and redistribution of these objects were attempts to obliterate not only the Ephrussis’ wealth but also their cultural and historical presence. Art that once symbolized belonging was transformed into evidence of exclusion. However, the family’s retention of the netsuke ensured that one of the most meaningful fragments of their lives survives.
De Waal’s assertion that “some objects do seem to retain the pulse of their making” (20) underscores his belief that the artworks bear traces of the artist’s identity. Just as his own pottery reveals the imprint of his hands and his own distinctive process, the netsuke are imbued with aspects of their creators. His observation that many of the carvings “are witty and ribald and slyly comic” (78) conveys the humor and playfulness of their makers. Furthermore, the miniature animals that the artisan Tomokazu carved illustrate his close attention to the natural world centuries after their creation. Ultimately, the memoir argues that art is a meaningful form of self-definition that endures beyond the lives of its makers and collectors.
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