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New Views on Jewish Integration in Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Abstract

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Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1976

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References

1. The term “emancipation,” which is often used to refer to integration generally, is best reserved to refer to its legal aspects, specifically the granting of civil rights.

2. This review is limited to these authors’ treatments of the general problem of German-Jewish integration. It does not deal with a number of excellent recent volumes on related specific aspects of German-Jewish history, among which should be mentioned: (a) Richarz, Monika, Der Eintritt der juden in die akademischen Berufe: Jüdische Studenten und Akadetniker in Deutschland, 1678–1848, Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts, no. 28 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1974);Google Scholar (b) Krohn, Helga, Die juden in Hamburg: Die politische, soziale und kulturelle Entwicklung einer jüdischen Grossstadtgemeinde nach der Emanzipation, 1848–1918, Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden, no. 4 (Hamburg: Christians, 1974);Google Scholar and (c) Altmann, Alexander, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, and Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973).Google Scholar For a full listing of publications on German-Jewish history the reader is referred to the annual cumulations printed in the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book. The Baeck Institute's own publications in this area, including the Year Book and the Schriftenreihe (see [a] above), are consistently valuable and significant contributions. The state of the debate on the subject of German-Jewish integration as of a decade and a half ago is analyzed in Toury, Jacob, “Neue hebräische Veröffentlichungen zur Geschichte der Juden im deutschen Lebenskreise,” Leo Baeck Institute Bulletin 4, no. 13 (1961): 5573.Google Scholar

3. New York: Free Press, 1961. Published originally as Masoret u-mashber (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1st ed. 1958, 2d ed. 1963).Google Scholar

4. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. Published also as Ben yehudim la-goyim (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960).Google Scholar

5. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

6. Pp. 3, 4, 7, 90, 169, 193, 196, 197- Against Katz's thesis of continuity it is possible to point to significant variations among the experiences of different Western Jewries. Katz himself notes that Jewish-Gentile relationships in England were far less turbulent than those on the continent. In Germany the debate over Jewish integration was especially vehement and protracted. Indeed, it may be that the German case is more atypical than Jewish historians have until now allowed. With regard to the relationship between political modernization and Jewish emancipation see the works by Baron and Riirup cited below, nn. 18, 19. Rürup elsewhere describes the protracted debate over Jewish emancipation as one of the causes of modern anti-Semitism in Germany. See Rürup, Reinhard, “Kontinuität und Diskontinuität der ‘Judenfrage’ im 19. Jahrhundert: Zur Entstehung des modernen Antisemitismus,” in Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, ed., Sozialgeschichte Heute: Festschrift füir Hans Rosenberg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), pp. 388415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Out of the Ghetto, p. 100.

7. Schnee, Heinrich, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat: Geschichte und System der Hoffaktoren an deutschen Fürstenhöfen im Zeitalter des Absolutismus nach archivalischen Quellen, vols. 1–6 (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 19521967).Google Scholar

8. “The German-Jewish Utopia of Social Emancipation,” in Katz, , Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Westmead: Gregg International Publishers, 1972), p. 104.Google Scholar

9. Mention should be made of Katz's, Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Westmead: Gregg International Publishers, 1972), which reprints eleven of Katz's articles, published originally between 1956 and 1971, along with his 1935 doctoral dissertation.Google Scholar This book serves as a companion volume to Out of the Ghetto, amplifying some of its themes in greater detail, and providing in some cases the argumentation for conclusions that are only referred to or summarized there. For example, the article on “The Term ‘Jewish Emancipation’: Its Origin and Historical Impact” describes the process by which the prior self-improvement of the Jews was increasingly set as a precondition for their full emancipation. Katz's methodological essay on “The Concept of Social History and Its Possible Use in Jewish Historical Research” provides the justification for the methods of generalization and abstraction that are particularly evident in Out of the Ghetto, and in the even more schematic Tradition and Crisis. Though Katz's attempt to generalize broadly about Western Jewry from France to Hungary as a whole has been questioned by some (see, for example, the review by Ben Halpern, “Modern Jews and Their History,” Commentary 56, no. 2 [Aug. 1973]: 72–74), Katz argues that within a given “sphere” or “center,” in which social and cultural characteristics are sufficiently constant, it is possible “to describe a[n abstract] Jewish community of the Middle Ages (Sephardic or Ashkenazic) or of modern times (German or Polish) without holding up any one of these communities as a representative specimen. On the contrary, the picture that emerges should be a sort of composite mirror of the life of all the communities, in which each community would recognize itself but none could identify itself with what it saw there” (p. 189). Katz's view, that of an Israeli scholar, may represent a Zionist notion of the essential unity of the Jewish people everywhere.

10. Meyer, Michael A., The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749–1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967);Google ScholarEisenstein-Barzilay, Isaac, “The Background of the Berlin Haskalah,” in Blau, Joseph L. et al. , eds., Essays on Jewish Life and Thought: Presented in Honor of Sab Wittmayer Baron (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 183–97.Google Scholar

11. An earlier study on a related topic was devoted to Jewish political attitudes: Die politischen Orientierungen derjuden in Deutschland: Von Jena bis Weimar (Tubingen: Mohr, 1966).Google Scholar Many of Toury's separate articles may be found in the Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute, and more recently in the Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Geschichte: Universität Tel Aviv, published since 1972.

12. “Citizenry” is given on the English title page. Toury's attempt to sort out his definitions is only more confusing. See Prolegomena, pp. 21–22; also Eintritt, “Vorwort,” and the review by Orren, Elhannan in the Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Geschichte: Universität Tel Aviv 2 (1973): 347.Google Scholar

13. This seems to be the best translation of Toury's awkward compound burgasilim, from burganim (bourgeoisie) and asilim (nobles), the Hebrew equivalent of Adelsbürger. See also Eintritt, pp. 13–19.

14. The analysis of the social origins ofjewish medical students, pp. 60–61, is especially revealing. See also pp. 76–77.

15. See chapter 4, which parallels Katz's chapter on “The Futile Flight from Jewish Professions” in Out of the Ghetto, with somewhat more detailed data.

16. Pp. 106–7. See also Toury's, Jewish Manual Labour and Emigration: Records from Some Bavarian Districts (1830–1857),” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 16 (1971): 4562.Google Scholar

17. There are twenty tables scattered throughout the book, but no separate list of them. The tables themselves are only infrequently provided with any general descriptive heading. The sources of data are sometimes not indicated, or are buried in the text. Table 1, on occupational distribution “at the beginning of the process [of integration],” i.e., ca. 1750, actually draws on sources that span in origin an eighty-six-year period from 1749 to 1835. An important subtotal line is missing, and figures for the distribution within small totals are given in percentages, where the addition of absolute numbers would have been at least instructive. This particular failing is repeated elsewhere, with speciously significant percentages being supplied on the basis of small totals, a practice that makes the comparison of absolute figures, such as Toury himself suggests is important, difficult. (Table 14; p. 114.) Table 3, on social stratification, uses the same primitive notions of class divisions already commented on. Table 12, on the transition of Jews to manual labor, provides no time series, but only figures for a single year in each case. Table 13 lists emigration figures for twenty-four towns, without giving the total population of each as a comparative base. Table 19, on the social stratification of the Jews ca. 1848, uses, without further definition, the categories “haute and moyenne bourgeoisie,” “petite bourgeoisie,” and “those still outside the bourgeoisie,” while Table 20, on social stratification in Bavaria, uses yet a third, undefined grid of “wealthy and affluent,” “middle class,” and “possessors of a minimal or marginal subsistence.”

18. P. vii. Baron, Salo has taken issue with the notion that the Jews were a “pariah people” in his “Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation,” Diogenes 29 (Spring 1960): 6869, n. 12.Google Scholar

19. For Baron, , see the article cited in note 18. Reinhard Riirup, “Jewish Emancipation and Bourgeois Society,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 14 (1969): 6791.Google Scholar Toury describes Riirup's thesis as “instructive,” but expresses some specific reservations. See Eintritt, p. 377, n. 1.

20. Published originally as Yahadut ve-nozruth be-“raich ha-sheni” (1870–1914):tahalichim historiim ba-derech le-totalitariuth [Christians and Jews in the “Second Reich” (1870–1914): A Study in the Rise of German Totalitarianism] (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew-University, 1969).Google Scholar

21. These issues are treated more fully in my study of Zionism in Germany, 1897–1933: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1977).Google Scholar

22. One further, practical difficulty with this volume is the Germanic style of its English prose, which, though translated from a Hebrew original, reflects more closely the language of the book's subjects.

23. A recent analysis of this general problem of Jewish perception is presented in Bolkosky, Sidney, The Distorted Image: German Jewish Perceptions of Germans and Germany, 1918–1935 (New York: Elsevier, 1975).Google Scholar See also Katz, Jacob, “Was the Holocaust Predictable?Commentary 59, no. 5 (05 1975): 4148.Google Scholar