The Mismeasure of the Jew

Abstract

PETER ALAN STEINWEIS. Studying Jew: Scholarly Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. 203.RICHARD T. GRAY. About Face: German Physiognomic Thought from Lavater to Auschwitz. Kritik. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004. Pp. Ivi + 453.MICHAEL MACK. German Idealism and Jew: Inner Anti-Semaism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 229.THOMAS MITTMANN. Vom Gunstling zum Urfeindder Juden: DL· antisemitische Nietzsche-Rezeption in Deutschland bis zum Ende des Natbnalzosialismus. Epistemata. Reihe Philosophie 403 Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2006. Pp. 248.The study of Jew in every era has been important historiographie focus since rise of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth-century Europe, and for obvious reason: for a small, disliked minority, it is matter of life and death how majority conceives, constructs, and projects Jews and Judaism. If this formulation seems histrionic, I urge reader to examine any of four books under consideration here, or simply to glance at catalogue of Deadly Medicine, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit currently making rounds in American cities. At least as early as Heinrich Graetz (1817-91) Jewish scholars noted way prominent non-Jews treated Jews and evaluated them accordingly. Many early works of Wissenschaft des Judentums wore this concern visibly, bearing titles like The Elephant and Jewish Question or Dead White European Male and Jews. Often, these works were little more than tabulations of pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish utterances, without clear methodology, and replete with overly optimistic assessments. Works such as Hans Leibeschuetz's Das Judentum in deutschen Geschoehtjbitd, which successfully situated construction of Jew in overall Weltanschauung (in Leibeschuetz's case, discipline of history), were exception until very recently. It is thus a measure of maturation of Wissenschaft dea Judentums in general, as well as specific topics under discussion, that renders books under review worthwhile.Alan Steinweis's Studying Jew is elegant book that delivers exactly what it promises: story of corruption, misuse, and outright betrayal of four scholarly disciplines (race science, religious studies, history, and sociology) in Nazi era by its own practitioners. Steinweis pays appropriate tribute to first major study to document complicity of academics in Final Solution, Max Weinreich's Hitler's Professors (1946), but adds new dimensions and much nuance to what Steinweis rightly characterizes as angry book. For Steinweis, Nazi era Judenforschung has little to offer in sense of explaining Jews or Judaism, but much to offer in understanding construction of an ideology of exclusion and domination (p. 5). Steinweis's opening chapter situates world of Judenforschung in three contexts: first, as example of Hitler's so-called rational anti-Semitism; second, as example of multifarious production of anti-Semitic intellectual climate; and third, as institutional entity epitomized, but not limited to, Walter Franks 's Reich Institute. This chapter orients reader to current scholarship and also to ultimately limited role of academics in Nazi system. In era of overaggrandized academic claims, it is praiseworthy that Steinweis goes no further than his evidence. Rejecting a view of these scholars as the guiding forces of extermination, as some have done, Steinweis reminds us that his subjects were not principal policy makers. In Nazi Germany, that role belonged to state and party elites.The first substantive chapter, appropriately enough, covers race science. Steinweis begins his chapter with a deft synopsis of Czech writer Jiri Weils 's novel Mendelssohn Is on Roof and follows it with elegant unfolding of development of racial thinking in Nazi ambit. …