The Spinoza Problem: a novelIn 1909, sixteen year old Alfred Rosenberg is called into his headmaster's office for making anti Semitic remarks. He is punished by having to memorise passages from the autobiography of Goethe and is stunned to discover that his idol was a great admirer of the seventeenth century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza himself was no stranger to punishment: accused of heresy, he was excommunicated from the Jewish community and banished from the only