German Jews in Victorian England

2010 ◽  
pp. 145-168
Author(s):  
Todd M. Endelman
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
German Jews ◽  
German States ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Society ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
German Jewish

This chapter highlights the German Jewish settlement of the Victorian period as the least known of the various migrations that contributed to its growth. It cites the British Census, which did not distinguish between Christians and Jews while recording the country of origin of persons of foreign birth at a time when there was a substantial German trading colony in England. It also discusses the few numbers of German Jewish immigrants who integrated into English society with relative ease after they broke with their Jewish tradition. The chapter mentions the Jews who were immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Holland, the German states, and Poland, who had escaped the poverty and degrading restrictions that embittered Jewish life in most ancien régime states. It probes the immigration from central Europe in the Victorian period as a reflection of the social and economic transformation of Germany that was under way in the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals An Apocalyptic yet Abject “Jubilee” Narrative in George Robert Gissing’s In the Year of Jubilee: Mobility, Restoration, and Materiality

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-380
Author(s):  
Susan Smith Nash
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Marriage Education ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
English Society ◽  
The Impact

George Robert Gissing’s In the Year of Jubilee (1894) brings together complex, contradictory and ultimately subversive views of late Victorian society, where social mobility and class, property, women’s rights, marriage, education, commerce, and advertising are problematized. Further, with the dramatic rate of social, economic, and political change that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, new banking and sources of capital, old ways of being and thinking simply cannot keep pace, resulting in the emergence of apocalyptic narratives on many fronts. Needless to say, the idea of "jubilee" is more or less antithetical to the idea of apocalypse, but ironically, Gissing's work is more informed by apocalypse and apocalyptic narratives than "jubilee" whether the concept of jubilee refers to liberation or an affirmation of monarchal reign. Gissing's "jubilee" juxtaposes self-congratulatory rhetoric (Victorian senses of self-actualization) with an underlying nihilism, particularly for women and those of lower classes. The fact that some of the women are able to break free and reinvent their worlds by means of education and a reinvented sense of self further reinforces the notion of apocalypse, particularly in the destruction of the “known” world and the emergence of a new one, essentially a “new heaven and earth.” The goal of this analysis is to conduct an analysis of Gissing’s In the Year of Jubilee and to demonstrate how the core narratives in the text contain elements of the apocalyptic narrative. In doing so, one object is to gain an understanding of how Gissing uses the abject jubilee (or apocalyptic) narrative in order to explore the social relationships and psychological states of the characters, and to use them to make certain observations and commentaries on the state of English society, the impact of industrialization, new technologies and urban sprawl, and the realities of social class and mobility (or lack of upward mobility) in late Victorian England.

German Jews in the Weimar Republic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Gillerman
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The Political ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Demographic Profile ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic ◽  
German Jewish

The chapter discusses the social and demographic profile of the Jewish minority in Germany from 1918 to 1933, the political preferences and perspectives of German Jews during this period and German Jewish cultural production in multiple spheres. The chapter argues that Weimar Jewish history represented both a continuation and intensification of the dynamics of German Jewish history more generally, in which the forces of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the tensions between universalism and particularism, became even more pronounced. As Weimar-era Jews redefined their notions of belonging, many reclaimed a particularism without renouncing the humanistic and liberally inflected notions of Deutschtum, continuing to work toward shaping a culture in which they could be at home. Yet during the final years of the Republic, their notion of Deutschtum diverged ever more from that held by increasing numbers of other Germans.

Political and Social Dimensions of the Jewish Communities in the German Democratic Republic

1982 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Klaus J. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
German Jews ◽  
German States ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German Jewish

With the destruction of the Third Reich and subsequent establishment of two separate and sovereign German states, different perspectives on society and class have resulted in differences in German-Jewish affairs. The Jewish communities in the Federal Republic of Germany, while predicated on the principles of religious corporations, became oriented toward the World Zionist Organization and the State of Israel. Indeed, Jewish life in West Germany soon represented expatriate Israeli existence, and the religious, cultural and political organizations of West-German Jews have become largely extensions of Zionist and Israeli purposes.

Trade Unions and Emigration in Late Victorian England: A National Lobby for State Aid

1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-116
Author(s):  
Howard L. Malchow
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Economic Distress ◽  
Trade Dispute ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Social

That the state might owe its poor and unemployed a helping hand to emigrate to wherever there were jobs found common enough expression in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the 1820s and 1830s there were the conflicting schemes of Wilmot-Horton and E. G. Wakefield. Carlyle advocated in 1843 a state emigration service to provide a bridge to the colonies, and Irish troubles periodically provided a source of speculation about the usefulness of state emigration as a solution to agricultural distress. For Tories it could be a conservative measure to diminish at a stroke economic distress and the social disruption it bred, while some Liberals viewed it as a necessary rationalization of the labor market and supported it in the same spirit, and with the same arguments, as the Cheap Trains Act. Organized labor itself had had recourse on occasion to the emigration of members both as a restrictive guild practice and a militant trade dispute tactic.The extent to which trade unions continued to favor emigration benefits after mid-century has been a subject of some dispute. There is also the question of trade union attitudes toward schemes of state emigration — distrusted by many in the early Victorian period as transportation of the poor. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate a strong continued interest in an emigration solution by many trade unions well into the 1880s, and that after mid-century much of organized labor turned from emphasis on emigration benefits provided by the union to acceptance of and agitation for a state program of emigration assistance funded by the national exchequer.

A Sociological Portrait of German Jewish Immigrants in Boston: 1845–1861

AJS Review ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 121-152
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Mostov
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Socioeconomic Characteristics ◽  
Jewish Immigration ◽  
American Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
German Jewish

In the growing literature on the socioeconomic characteristics of the constituent immigrant groups of America's cities during the mid-nineteenth century, German Jews have been sadly neglected. The reasons are primarily practical ones. Because “Jewish” or “Hebrew” was neither a census nor immigration category during this period, German Jews are difficult to identify in public records. Furthermore, they generally comprised only a small minority of the total immigrant population in American urban centers prior to the 1880s. Even those specifically interested in American Jewish history have seldom gone beyond cursory analyses of the socioeconomic characteristics of the German Jews, reflecting both the traditional emphasis in Jewish communal histories on institutions and their leaders, and the focusing of attention in such social histories as do exist on the larger and seemingly more significant Eastern European Jewish immigration beginning in the 1880s.

Constructing the “Jewish Type”

Nuncius ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 532-567
Author(s):  
Efram Sera-Shriar
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
To Receive

Abstract With the emergence of new photographic technologies and processes during the second half of the nineteenth century, it became increasingly easier to pursue anthropometric research in anthropology. One group to receive particular attention was the Jewish community. This interest was due to several factors including the influx of Jewish immigrants to Britain as a result of the pogroms in the Russian Empire, easy access to subjects for the purpose of photographing and measuring them, and longstanding attempts to classify and racialize Jewish people within the human sciences. This paper will examine the construction of the supposed “Jewish type” during the late Victorian period by looking at the work of the Victorian polymath Francis Galton (1822–1911), and the Jewish folklorist and anthropologist Joseph Jacobs (1854–1916). Using the composite portraits of Jewish schoolboys that appeared in The Photographic News in 1885, the paper will explore both Galton’s and Jacobs’ visual epistemologies for constructing and representing this racial category, and the social and political factors underpinning their interpretations.

Did German Jews Remain German Jews Once They Left Their Homeland?

2021 ◽  
pp. 430-455
Author(s):  
Marion Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Employment Patterns ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
German Jewish

This chapter addresses the social history and geographical extent of the German-Jewish diaspora during the two major periods of migration: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It asks what drove Jews to leave Germany during both eras and analyzes their integration and that of their children into the new societies. Focusing on religious, linguistic, organizational, and employment patterns, the chapter also addresses the tensions within these immigrant communities between adapting to their new environments and retaining the literature, music, and culture of their German-Jewish heritage.

scholarly journals Exile Dreams: Antifascist Jews, Antisemitism and the ‘Other Germany’

Fascism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 221-243
Author(s):  
Anna Koch
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
German Jews ◽  
German States ◽  
The Face ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Second World

Abstract This article examines the meanings antifascist German Jews invested in antifascism and highlights its role as an emotional place of belonging. The sense of belonging to a larger collective enabled antifascist Jews to hold onto their Germanness and believe in the possibility of an ‘other Germany’. While most German Jewish antifascists remained deeply invested in their home country in the 1930s, this idea of the ‘other Germany’ became increasingly difficult to uphold in the face of war and genocide. For some this belief received the final blow after the end of the Second World War when they returned and witnessed the construction of German states that fell short of the hopes they had nourished while in exile. Yet even though they became disillusioned with the ‘other Germany’, they remained attached to antifascism.

Democracy and Dictatorship in the Cold War: the Two Germanies, 1949–1961

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew I. Port
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
German States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The ‘long 1950s’ was a decade of conspicuous contrasts: a time of dismantling and reconstruction, economic and political, as well as cultural and moral; a time of Americanization and Sovietization; a time of upheaval amid a desperate search for stability. But above all, it was a time for both forgetting and coming to terms with the recent past. This article focuses on the two forms of government that controlled Germany, democracy, and dictatorship. The Cold War was without doubt the main reason for the rapid rehabilitation and integration of the two German states, which more or less took place within a decade following the end of the Second World War. This article further elaborates upon the political conditions under dictatorship and its effect on the social life. East Germany, under the Soviet control underwent as much political upheaval. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Germany became a democracy.

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