German-Jewish Research Articles

German Jews in Sweden

Review of Deutschsprachige Jüdische Migration nach Schweden 1774 bis 1945, edited by Olaf Glöckner and Helmut Müssener (2017).

“… a life broken in two” Walter Pagel (1898–1983)—Famous pathologist and victim of Nazi Germany

There is no doubt that Walter Pagel (1898–1983) is one of the most outstanding figures in the history of pathology. Not only his fundamental research on tuberculosis and various other fields of pathology but also his historicomedical publications set international standards and earned him numerous honors throughout the scientific world.Far less known is the fact that Pagel, as a German Jew, was one of the victims of the “Third Reich”: He was dismissed from his job in Heidelberg, felt forced to emigrate in 1933 and fought for reparation after 1945. Accordingly, this article deals with Pagel’s role and fate as a politically persecuted and disenfranchised Jew. It focuses on the general circumstances of his dismissal and forced emigration, but also on Pagel’s treatment in post-war Germany. In addition, the influences of this biographical break on Pagel’s further research career are investigated.The study is based on archival sources and on a re-analysis of the relevant research literature.It points out that Pagel’s emigration took place under difficult circumstances and without clear job prospects. Enormous discipline and mental strength as well as successful networking with supporting mentors allowed Pagel to continue his career in his exile country of England despite poor health. The way in which Pagel was treated in post-war Germany, on the other hand, was less satisfactory: the University of Heidelberg did not offer him any prospect of employment and the “reparation procedure” (“Wiedergutmachungsverfahren”) resulted in only small pension payments. Instead, Pagel was awarded an honorary doctorate at his home university in 1966. Of the numerous “stumbling blocks” (n = 183) laid in Heidelberg, not one reminds us of Walter Pagel to date.

Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity by Ismar Schorsch (review)

Reviewed by: Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity by Ismar Schorsch Alan T. Levenson Ismar Schorsch. Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. xii + 245 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009418000715 Ismar Schorsch builds on his august contributions with this biography of Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), a match made in scholarly heaven. Schorsch's qualifications to undertake this biography are unimpeachable. With such a copious amount of material presented, one could read only the quoted sources and emerge with a clear picture of Zunz's world. Sketches of Zunz by some formidable scholars have preceded this study: Solomon Schechter, Michael Meyer, and Nahum Glatzer. Schorsch himself has dealt with Zunz before on many occasions. Until now, however, nobody has amassed all the sources, published and archival, to construct an edifice like this. We have before us the definitive Zunz biography; another one is unlikely. Schorsch takes some strong stands: Zunz's commitment to a scholarly approach to his material knew no bounds. His politics were consistently progressive. His willingness to clash in the small republic of letters with colleagues such as Abraham Geiger or Heinrich Graetz reflected a combative nature. His advocacy of circumcision, tefillin, kashrut, and Sabbath observance did not equate to a blanket opposition to religious reform. His fight against numerous Christian scholarly misrepresentations of Judaica was unrelenting. On every point of scholarship, and there are many, Schorsch displays mastery not only of Zunz's perspective, but also that of his collaborators and, more often, opponents. The cast of characters in this book is dauntingly large. With sincere respect for Schorsch's achievement, this is not a thesis-driven book. Scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums and German Jewry will benefit greatly from this volume; the general reader may get lost in the thickets. [End Page 479] Schorsch evokes Zunz's truly miserable childhood. Given up for adoption after the premature death of his father, only Samuel Ehrenberg's intervention on behalf of the thirteen-year-old Zunz allowed him to attain a decent public-school education and step into the German university. Zunz's "fraternity" was the famed Society for the Culture and Critical Study of the Jews, founded in 1819, which exerted a lifelong influence. Years later, he and his wife Adelheid would visit the dying Heinrich Heine, and while he and Eduard Gans disagreed on many matters, Zunz did not consider Gans's apostasy as a betrayal; Zunz himself considered and rejected this dicey escape route. By the time Zunz left the university, he was a master of contemporary scholarship. Like most of the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Zunz believed a university professorial chair in Judaism was a desideratum—and that he should occupy it. His early efforts—the extraordinary Etwas über rabbinische Literatur (1818) and the less programmatic, but methodologically exciting "Rashi" essay (1822)—ought to have insured this result, but Germany remained, for the rest of Zunz's lifetime, resistant to the idea of university-level Jewish scholarship. Why did Zunz begin with rabbinic rather than biblical material? The answer seems deceptively simple: the Protestant academy had already taken up the Bible as a subject of inquiry. Chapter 4 deals with Zunz's break with radical religious reform. The following citation gives a sense of Zunz's openness to Fränkel-style innovations: Some very desirable reforms such as the organ, the confirmation of girls, and doing away with the repetition of the silent devotion should be introduced gradually to avoid dissension and fragmentation. Among the reforms that are truly needed Zunz stipulated the confirmation for boys, a wedding address, sermons, hymns, the recitation of the Haftarah (the weekly reading from the Prophets) and the Psalms in the vernacular, a selective use of the penitential prayers (selichot) and poems of lamentation (kinot), the dropping of the Kol Nidre and kabbalistic accretions, the elimination of most of the piyyutim for the festivals, and the restoration of the dignity of the worship service by ending all customs that disrupt it such as the jeering on Purim at the sound of Haman's name, the sale of honors in the synagogue and calling up congregants to the reading of the Torah. (129) Chapter 5...

Zur Bedeutung Eichendorffs in den Romanen von Horst Bienek

In a cycle of novels of Horst Bienek (the so called Gliwice tetralogy: The first Polk Earth and fire, September light, Time without bells which cocreates the phenomenon of the new "Heimatliteratur" or the new "Grenzliteratur" (The literature of the border) we can find a distinct polemic with the understanding of the concept "Heimat" which (may be) was valid during Romanticism, when Eichendorff lived. Analysing four most important fragments of Gliwice tetralogy in which Horst Bienek - using varying narrations - gives subject and problems on the "presence" of von Eichendorff's works in the German community in Silesia of the 20's, 30's and 40's of our century; the author draws a conclusion that through the clash of experiences of the German Jew Montag with the evocated images of von Eichendorff of "Heimat", on the native land there occurs a kind of shattering of illusions of existence of the world - still possible during Eichendorff's times - based on "non-asymmetrical" categories (in Reinhard Kosellecks' understanding).

ISLAMPHOBIA DAN ANTISEMITISME MODERN PADA MEDIA ONLINE JERMAN

Islamophobic and Antisemitism have nowadays become trending topics in Germany. The rise of muslims population in Germany during migration crisis that cause pro and contra in the society can be the main cause of the Islamophobic in the country lead by Angela Merkel. In the other side there is another phenomenon called antisemtism that historically has occurred since the Nazi’s era. Currently this phenomenon suddenly rise up during migration crisis and it has been strongly discussed after the controversy created by duo rappers Kollegah (Felix Blume) and Farid Bang (Farid El Abdellaoui) who took home the prize for their anti-semitism songs in album Jung, Brutal, Gutaussehend 3. Pro and contra appears and it becomes trending topic in German online newspaper beside the islamophobia that’s still debatable. Even though these two phenomenon has a similiarity, namely ‘anxiety feeling or extreme fear of something’, there is different strategies used by the Press in Germany. Crictical analysis is needed to reveal specific strategies applied and the impact of the kind of strategies on the representation of Muslims and Jews in Germany. Based on critical discourse studies, it can be concluded that the German online newspaper define Islam as out group who create islamophobic. But, Jews are represented differently as a victim of anti-Semitism.

4. La violence contre les Juifs en Allemagne après 1933

The practice of persecuting the Jews in Germany after 1933 was marked not only by anti-Jewish laws and regulations. It was also characterised by a high degree of public violence against Jews. This article explores the most important stages in the escalation of violence against the Jews, which began long before the infamous 1938 November Pogrom.

24. Le destin des Juifs apatrides et la Shoah

No later than at the beginning of the Weimar Republic did German Jews feel like fully equal citizens. With the rise of the Nazis, this legal and social emancipation was gradually rolled back; the deprivation of the many civil rights culminating in the deprivation of nationality itself thus meant more than mere administrative symbolic power. The gradual adoption of new laws and their related regulations and implementation provisions created a climate of constantly growing legal uncertainty. The number of anti-Jewish laws and policies is almost unmanageable; Joseph Walk lists more than 2,000 anti-Jewish provisions in his compendium on the “Special Rights for the Jews in the National Socialist State”. Via various legal avenues, German Jews were denaturalised first as individuals and then collectively and lost their German nationality. This deprivation included the confiscation of assets and the loss of any social and political rights. The consequences of this denaturalisation policy could be felt for years and sometimes even decades after the end of the Nazi era; the legal consequences of this injustice have to date not been overcome.

2. Spoliation financière et confiscation du patrimoine des Juifs allemands après 1933

This article sheds light on the role of public authorities in the economic plundering of the German Jews in the Third Reich. By means of tax discrimination, special taxes and expropriations, the state was, financially, the biggest winner of the “Aryanisation”. In addition, tax officers exerted influence as organisers and promoters, who increasingly controlled the “Aryanisation market”. This article outlines the different phases and forms of fiscal persecution, examines the boundaries of the legal and bureaucratic organisation of these processes in the context of the Nazis’ criminal policy and evaluates the specific mix of expertise and ideological conviction of the perpetrators. Finally, this paper discusses the problems of an integrated history of fiscal plundering which connects the perspective of perpetrators, victims and society.

11. La Gestapo et la persécution des Juifs en Allemagne, 1933-1939

This article examines the persecution of German Jews before the Shoah – from the seizure of power in 1933 until the outbreak of war in 1939. In addition to briefly outlining the formation of the Gestapo and its growth in personnel, its changing priorities will also be discussed. Subsequently, the various stages of persecuting the Jews, which began with the early pogroms and boycotts in 1933, will be thoroughly described. Gradually, the exclusion became systematic, which was also reflected in the organisation of the Gestapo, which formed its own “Jew departments” to bureaucratise the persecution. The preliminary highlight was the 1938 November Pogrom. Although the so-called “Reichskristallnacht” was not initiated by the Gestapo, it seized the opportunity to take the lead in “Jewish policy”. Thus, in the course of the Pogrom, over 26,000 youths and men were deported to concentration camps. A view of the tightened measures after 1939 and the deportations from the Reich concludes the article.

The Role of the Shared Value “Justice” in the Management Approach of Educational Organizations of Rabbi Hirsch

Rabbi Samson Hirsch, was born in Hamburg, Germany, on June 19, 1808, and died in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on December 31, 1888. The years in which he was active were replete with far-reaching changes for European Jewry in general, and for German Jewry in particular. His educational and literary writings made their mark on Jewish history, and that people admire him as a true revolutionary person and as someone who had managed to shape generations of students through his innovative methods in education and management of educational institutions.

EÇA DE QUEIRÓS E A QUESTÃO JUDAICA

Diz a nota que anuncia este número da RHI que se fronteira é um conceito com uma conotação habitualmente mais geográfica, ele não será menos aplicável ao campo simbólico em que nascem, se desenvolvem e circulam as ideias e os saberes. Efetivamente, se há fronteiras que delimitam territórios, também há outras que moldam e determinam mentalidades. Com este texto sobre Eça, pretendemos vir ao encontro deste mote. Em que medida, o facto de ter nascido num país mediterrânico, palco privilegiado da atuação do Santo Ofício, e exercer funções consulares em Newcastle – numa sociedade mais globalizada e tolerante que a alemã da época –, em que medida estas circunstâncias influenciaram o discurso e o pensamento de Eça em relação à Questão judaica e às perseguições antissemitas ocorridas em 1880 na Alemanha? Partindo da análise do pensamento da intelectualidade europeia desta época; partindo de uma breve análise sociológica da situação dos judeus na Alemanha, avançámos para a análise do discurso de Eça, plasmado sobretudo em dois artigos que escreveu em 1880 para a Gazeta de Noticias do Rio de Janeiro. Interessou-nos saber qual o posicionamento de Eça: antissemitismo ou filosemitismo? Interessou-nos igualmente ver se o seu discurso encerrava novidade ou era antes um repositório de estereótipos e preconceitos. O resultado foi surpreendente, não obstante a ambiguidade tão característica do autor…

‘Go out and learn’

Abstract This article deals with Shakespeare’s reception among German Jewish youth in the early twentieth century. The Jewish youth movements played an appreciable role in Jewish education and culture. The various Jewish youth movements reflected the German Jewish society of the time. Despite the influence of the German youth movement, the young people developed their own German Jewish Bildung canon. Many young Jews in Germany perceived Bildung as an ideal tool for full assimilation. Bildung placed an emphasis on the Jewish youth as an individual, and so served as an ideal tool for full assimilation. My thesis is that by means of the youth movement, German Jewish youth could develop new interpretations of identity, through the creation of a European Bildung ideal, which includes an awareness of the significance of Shakespeare.

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. By John Efron.

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. By John Efron.

The History of Political Melancholy as an Alternative History of Zionism

Understanding political melancholy as central to the crisis of modernity and democracy implies a growing realization that melancholy teaches us something essential about different forms of political crisis and their affective modes. This essay contends that the relationship between political melancholy in Weimar Germany and its repurposing by German Jews for Zionist thought reveals how political melancholy was and remains at the heart of Zionism. The essay offers both a historical and theoretical consideration of political melancholy. Its purpose is to question how a political affect of melancholy helps us grasp Zionism, offering a new way to think through its failures. More specifically, the growing attention, both critical and affirmative, paid to “left-wing melancholy” is used to examine a general sense of loss and crisis in the West and the more concrete expression of this sense in the history of Zionism.

Ne De Fide Presumant Disputare: Legal Regulations of Interreligious Debate and Disputation in the Middle Ages

Abstract On March 4th, 1233, in his bull Sufficere debuerat perfidie Iudeorum, Pope Gregory IX complains to the bishops and archbishops of Germany of the many “perfidies” of the German Jews, including their “blasphemies” against the Christian religion, which, he fears, may have an ill effect on Christians, particularly converts from Judaism. He orders the bishops to prohibit Jews from presuming to dispute with Christians and to prevent Christians from participating in such disputations through ecclesiastical censure. Gregory clearly thought that it was dangerous to allow informal discussions or debates about religion between Jews and Christian laymen. At the same time, he was instrumental in the promotion of the two new mendicant orders and in the encouragement of their missionary efforts towards Jews (and to a lesser extent Muslims). Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Dominicans in particular became specialists of religious disputation. Laymen were increasingly discouraged or prohibited from engaging in such disputation by both ecclesiastical and royal legislation. This article will examine several key texts involving the dangers of interreligious debate and discussion in the Middle Ages from the perspective of Christian authorities (ecclesiastical, royal or other). Various authors, from Tertullian to Joinville, expressed misgiving about the effects such debate could have on Christian participants and bystanders, and various medieval legal texts, civil and canon, sought to limit or prohibit such debate.

“City on a Hill?”

There are not many states that have legislated differential degrees of citizenship and rights based on allegedly racial grounds, at least after the ending of chattel slavery. Three that stand out are the United States, the Union (later Republic) of South Africa, and the Third Reich. The legal historian James Whitman has written an eye-opening study of the influence of the American states’ legalized racial disabilities (segregated public facilities and prohibition of interracial marriage) on the political and legal architects of National Socialist racial laws, in particular those announced at the Nuremberg Party rally in September 1935. He argues persuasively that the Nazi authorities admired the American racial regime (as they did many other aspects of the United States, such as its industrial prowess), studied it carefully, and sought to emulate those aspects that they could, but changing the target of the legislation from African Americans in the United States to Jews in Germany. Those Nazi lawyers inspired by the American legislation believed that U.S. racial awareness was hobbled by unwillingness to include Jews along with “coloreds” as a threat to its Volk. But appropriate German legislation, such as envisaged for Nuremberg, could overcome this American short-sightedness.

Shaking words: memoir as confrontation in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

ABSTRACTDeath is the unusual narrator of The Book Thief (2005), a fictional memoir set in Bavaria at the onset of WWII. Liesel Meminger's foster parents decide to help a German Jew, an event that will catalyze major changes in their lives and which will in turn be embedded in Liesel's account. This paper attempts at analyzing the role of words and how they symbolically recover the stories of those who were silenced: Liesel's memoirs thus become acts of confrontation against the destructive potential of the Nazi discourse that provide further nuances to the interaction between fiction and historical accounts.

Migration and refugees in German cinema: transnational entanglements

ABSTRACTContrary to popular sentiment which sees the current, so-called ‘refugee crisis’ as unprecedented, (forced) migration and the displacement of larger groups of population have a long history in most countries of the world. Consequently, the cinema, ever since it existed, has addressed many aspects surrounding the realities and imaginations of the issue. Indeed, the cinema could be seen as a laboratory in which different scenarios are played through, different situations are experienced and different (subject) positions are occupied. Taking the German cinema as a case study, I intend to take a long view at these phenomena by concentrating on three different historical periods: the displacement of German Jews, political opponents of Nazism and others from Germany after 1933; the forced migration of German-speaking populations around and after the end of the Second World War from eastern Europe (Silesia, Eastern Prussia, Bohemia, etc.), and the influx of migrants and refugees into Germany from the 1960s onwards and well into the twenty-first century.

El mito errante. La figura del judío en el cine franquista

El nazismo hizo del cine una de sus herramientas más populares y eficaces para difundir el odio racial contra los judíos. La España de Franco, tan cercana durante los años de la guerra civil española a la Alemania de Hitler, intentó jugar la carta de la neutralidad ante la inminente victoria aliada. No obstante, aún sin contar con una presencia judía importante en la península desde el siglo XV y alejarse del antisemitismo nazi para adaptarse al nuevo contexto internacional, el discurso oficial está plagado de numerosas alusiones al contubernio judeo-masónico. La historia de esta obsesión y su reflejo en el cine español serán el motivo del presente artículo, así como la comparativa del perfil del judío con el cine alemán.

Athletes in transition: German immigrants to Mandatory Palestine – between integration and segregation

ABSTRACTThe Brit Maccabim Atid sport club was founded by immigrants from Germany who came to Palestine during the 1930s. The circumstances surrounding this organisation’s establishment differed from those of the sports organisations operating in Palestine until then. We consider sports culture as a tool for analysing immigrant absorption processes. Our discussion is based on the claim that sports served as a means of social integration for German Jews. In Palestine, sports served as an arena of conflict between the political camps in the Jewish settlement. In response to this political reality, immigrants from Central Europe began organising to establish separate sports clubs along political and ethnic lines, thus responding to the needs of immigrants identifying with German cultural circles. Brit Maccabim Atid constitutes a test case for the social and cultural changes in the meaning of sports in the move from one country to another. The paper describes two sociological models, each of which examines the impact of involvement in sports on the extent to which immigrants become integrated into society. Our findings indicate that sports participation in an immigrant society can be a unifying and assimilative factor and at the same time a segregating factor.