The lion and the star: Gentile-Jewish relations in three Hessian communities, 1919-1945

Abstract

The Lion and Star: Gentile-Jewish Relations in Three Hessian Communities, 1919-1945Jewish history is sprinkled with examples of intense assimilation, perhaps beginning with Babylonian captivity and including interaction between Jews and non-Jews in Spain before 1492. None of them seems to rival of Germans and Jews in modern era. German Jews themselves touted their identification as Germans. Non-Jews like Gotthold Lessing and even Goethe wrote and spoke about their colleagues of the Mosaic persuasion, and that identification has come under considerable scrutiny by historians, fascinated by irony of that presumed bond occurring in country that produced Holocaust. In The Lion and Star: Gentile-Jewish Relations in Three Hessian Communities, 1919-1945, Jonathan C. Friedman joins German historians known as Alltaghistoriker, historians of everyday life, and focuses a microscopic look on relationships between Jews and non-Jews in German communities of Frankfurt am Main, Giesen, and Geisenheim, symbolized by Hessian heraldic lion. He judiciously incorporates traditional archival sources, memoirs, church and synagogue records, a plethora of secondary works, and what appear to be carefully selected oral histories (he is an historian on staff of Survivors of Shoah Foundation). Friedman at his best provides an intimate and sensitive analysis of varieties of Jewish life in those three places.There is no mystery to major motif of book: non-Jewish indifference and apathy allowed antisemitism and then genocide to take their courses and facilitated their growth into increasingly violent measures. Friedman traces socio-economic and demographic history of Jews of three cities from 1919 to end of World War II, finding that German-Jewish history conforms to a rhythm composed of German-Jewish belief in realization of their socio-cultural acceptance by German non-Jews, followed by gradual and reluctant realization that Germans had essentially ignored them as antisemitism increased. Friedman reviews literature on German-Jewish identity and so-called symbiosis between Deutschtum and Judentum. The failure to break that pattern during Weimar Republic established basis for popular acquiescence to an increasingly vindictive and violent antisemitism. That palpable apathy seemed to be a critical component needed to activate decision for Final Solution, annihilation of Jews of Europe.At start of each chapter Friedman offers a synoptic assessment of literature on particular questions he raises. His discussion of vicissitudes of Jewish life during Weimar Republic includes an account of history of that tragic epoch and events that determined courses of Jewish lives. His comparative analysis of three communities reveals that Frankfurt, with second largest Jewish population in Germany, more readily tended to adopt antisemitic rhetoric and behaviors and more rigorously enforced racist laws. Geisenheim seems to have had least rancorous population and remained most liberal of three. Relationships between Jews and non-Jews remained essentially shallow, in main, not out of deep-seated antisemitism, but from a lack of interest. In end, Friedman argues, Nazi success derived in part from their ability to exploit first widespread indifference and then deeply disturbing popular unrest accompanying Great Depression and its antisemitic backlash.As he completes chapter on history of anti-Jewish politics, Friedman states clearly his position on historical determinism in German history: it is clear that National Socialism emerged in context of a particular time and place. Drawing upon socio-political works, he concludes that Nazism attracted Germans in Hessen for a variety of reasons, one of which may have been antisemitism. Contributing factors to rise of Nazi electoral success, then, included Depression, unemployment, and pervasive diffidence among a Gentile populace who cared essentially not at all for plight of their Jewish neighbors. …