Introduction: German-Jewish Agency in Times of Crisis, 1914–1938

Abstract

Any research in the field of modern German-Jewish history faces a historiographical problem: the Holocaust is arguably the core element of this history, and because of its magnitude and enormity everything that happened beforehand seems to be leading up to it in one way or another. The Holocaust, so to speak, transforms its pre-history into a teleological history of decline. And as much as it is possible to be aware of this problem, it is impossible to escape it entirely.1 In a much broader sense, namely for Jewish history in general, this problem had already been raised by Salo Baron in 1963. In a seminal article, he criticized what he called the ‘lachrymose conception of Jewish history’, in which Jewish suffering was overemphasized and other aspects of Jewish history were neglected.2 If this is a problem for Jewish history in general, it is even more so for German-Jewish history in particular, which has become even more acute as a result of the Holocaust.