The Invention of Deviance: How Wilhelmine Jews Became Opponents of Ennoblement

Abstract

If the question comes to German Jewry and ennoblement, two aspects seem to be worth mentioning in particular. First of all there were a small number of ennoblements, such as that of the Berlin banker Gerson (von) Bleichröder, ennobled in 1872, which Fritz Stern, in his biography of Bismarck and Bleichröder, depicted as a great exception.1 One other Prussian of Jewish belief had already received a patent of nobility in 1867: Abraham (Freiherr von) Oppenheim of Cologne.2 Lastly, Maximilian (Freiherr von) Goldschmidt(-Rothschild) of Frankfurt am Main received his von in 1903 and was made a baron in 1907.3 Altogether, therefore, there were exactly three Jewish families who were ennobled in Prussia before and up to the end of the monarchy in 1918. Second, one frequently reads of German-Jewish bankers and entrepreneurs who refused Prussian titles of nobility, for example “Rudolf Mosse [who] refused a patent of nobility,...