Dr. Ellen Hellmann: Social Engineer

by

Bernard Sachs

Ellen Hellmann has most striking and arresting physical appearance. I have known her on and off for something like twenty-five years, and it has not become less striking and arresting. So much so, that you have to write about it before going into her other attributes---or it will impede you, like a ball and chain around your writing wrist. There is a “largeness” about her which has nothing to do with physical measurements. The look on her countenance seems to lie midway between “Keep off the grass” notice and an iron curtain. And for a moment you wonder---now why am I wasting my time trying to get a human angle out of this refractory material? But that is largely the physical side of her. In this case, the face is not the window to the soul. For after a while of mumbling anf fumbling, you find yourself in accord with her personality, and she’s giving away plenty---of her personality. Ellen is, in fact, human, all too human. An aesthetic Epsteinian assonance, all on a platter, or a figure who might have stepped out of Greek tragedy or the Nordic myths, she could carry a name like Clytemnestra or Sengenhydd and get away with it.

In a memorable profile of the late Dr. Henry Sonnabend, written as an obituary for Jewish Affairs, Ellen also tells something about herself---as one inevitably does when doing portraits of others. I am wondering how much I have blurted about myself. This is what she wrote of Sonnabend: “He loved people, all people, and needed that popularity which is an expression of the love of people and, in fact, found existence without overt expression of social approval nigh intolerable . . . He found it almost impossible to refuse an invitation to address a meeting, to write an article, to help in the work of a new group . . . “ Place the above before a mirror, and you will get reflected the symmetrically opposite lineaments---and they are Ellen’s. She does not love all people for the sake of gaining popularity or to win social approval. And she is not prepared to indulge in activities which do not fit into the pattern of her work, for the sake of winning approval. This is not said in disparagement of Dr, Sonnabend, for whom I had a very high regard. His is a special case. But what I have said is an aid to the delineation of Ellen. She has freed herself of cant, and it has given to her positive make-up a touch of harshness. That is why quite a number find her hard and cutting edge a shade dismaying. But Ellen is just not prepared to reorder her soul to fit more easily into popular convention. To me it does not altogether seem natural to be so ruthlessly straight forward. Life being what it is, the veneer of simulation and dissimulation can be helpful in the transaction of human affairs. Ellen’s face belies her total personality in one other important respect. For it gives a total impression of ennui, and her speaking voice is inclined to be languid. From which you would not conclude that she is a human dynamo, energetic and precise.

But to get away from superficial appearance---she is, after all, not a mannequin, though one of the best dressed women in town, I am told, and with a figure capable of showing her dresses off to good advantage. She has too many facets to her to be fitted into the compass of a single category---or a newspaper article, for that matter, even if you read between the lines. But I don’t think I am far wrong in labeling her a Social Engineer---with the proviso that it is no more than a label. It seems to describe the way she has dispassionately applied herself to the removing of kinks and twists from organized society---that is, everything that flies in the face of truth and the rational. If her approach to social problems is ruthlessly dispassionate, that is not to deny her compassion---far from it. When she read Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, she was moved to tears, and immediately sat down to write to tell him of the deep impact its underlying compassion had made on her. Yes, she has compassion in full measure---or why should she drive herself so hard to try and bring order and reason into the bedlam that is the South African social scene? There are simpler ways of breaking your neck. Ellen, with so many material amenities available to her, has various avenues of escape. This compassion is the initial impulse which set her going. It is there. But not something that she pulls out of the drawer every other day, like a woman a love letter, to dote on sentimentally. Sentiment is alien to her, for it impedes the thrust of the dynamo. To her, the only ultimate purpose discernible in the whole tangled skein of mankind’s endeavours is to raise the quality of human lives. Let Ellen herself speak on the racial problems bedeviling this land of ours, to the solving of which she is applying herself so assiduously:
        “Recent visits to the locations have imbued me again with a
         consciousness of the pricelessness of that capital---a capital of
         goodwill, of confidence, of trust on the part of the non-
         European. But that capital is being dissipated . . . I am tired of
         sophisticated arguments. I am weary of the appeals to self-
         interest. We have had enough of both past decades and they
         seem to have availed not at all. I have watched developments in
         this beloved land which have brought me, as many others, near
         despair. But in the face of the potential goodwill that still exists,
         of the co-operation that could still be enlisted, I wonder again if
         there is not still time to invest the capital that lies to hand: to rid
         ourselves of that obsessive fear of the non-European; to
         understand that this Western (not white) civilisation upon
         which South Africa is based, the values and principles of which
         underlie our life, can and must be imparted to the other four-
         fifths of our population; to realise that, if we do not succeed in
        passing our heritage on to them, that heritage itself is in utmost
        peril . . . We are set on the path which leads towards an
        industrial society. We can still secure co-operation in the
        building of this society. But if this society is to be a hopeful one,
        then the time is now to shape a more hopeful pattern.”
When the ideas of Ellen Hellman replace the ideas of Hendrik Verwoed, South Africa will be well on the way to the sunlit uplands. We shall have to wait a while.

Ellen studied anthropology with distinction at the Rand [Afrikaans] University under Mrs. A. W. Hoerlé, the most important formative influence in her life. For it was through Mrs. Hoerlé that those convictions which are basic to her whole outlook were developed---her profound belief that the similarities between all human beings are greater than their differences; her acceptance of the importance of the moulding influence of environment; her realisation of the infinite plasticity and malleability of human material. She became a member of the Joint Council of Europeans and Africans and began to devote herself to the bringing of more harmony into the relations between Black and White, mainly through the S. A. Institute of Race Relations, of which she is an important pillar. A job from which she derived great satisfaction---and for very good reason---was her editing of the Handbook on Race Relations, a comprehensive volume on our racial affairs published by Oxford University Press. And she has a number of other penetrating sociological works to her credit.

Ellen speaks with the utmost candour on the Jewish question. It was only with the rise of Hitler that she became fully conscious of her Jewishness. During this period she was very active in communal and Zionist affairs. With the disappearance of Hitler and his brand of virulent political anti-Semitism, she has more or less reverted to her original position---almost, but not quite. One does not live through the Hitler epoch without its leaving some indelible memory. Besides, she is greatly impressed with Israel---with the ebullience of the Israelis, and particularly with the social planfulness that permeates the life of the country and which makes a special appeal to her as a sociologist. But it is clear that the main theme and preoccupation of her life is the Colour question. All else is hardly a secondary motif---“The Jew must become merged, both in regard to the major areas of behavior and identity of civic and social interests, with the people among whom he lives. Any other approach appears to me as isolationist, hampering the integration of the Jew which remains, despite obstacles to its fulfillment, the over-all aim of a free society.”

As to the ultimate future of the Jew in the Diaspora, her position is very much that of Arthur Koestler’s: Israel will become the citadel of Jewry, and assimilationism will with the years erode away most of what is left of Jewishness in the Diaspora.

“Is this good or desirable?” I asked. Her answer, in so many words, was that the question of its being good or bad does not arise because it is inevitable---like the autumn, with ripeness and falling leaves. And there isn’t much you can do about approaching autumn, except shrug your shoulders. But that is too emotional a gesture for Ellen---her shoulders remained static. It was Spinoza who said that “Man must not laugh or weep, but understand”---excellent guidance for a sociologist, and Ellen has made of it a compass to steer by through the shoals of mankind’s foibles and follies. Ellen Hellman is one of the most capable women I know around this part of the world---if by this term is meant the harmonisation of intellect and its application to the world of affairs, where men and women live and hope.

From: Bernard Sachs, South African Personalities and Places, Kayor Publishers, Johannesburg, 1959.