Archival Totality in the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden

This chapter uncovers the history of the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden, the central archive of the German Jews, which operated from 1903 until it was confiscated by the Nazis in 1943. It details the Gesamtarchiv’s attempt to create a singular archive of German Jewish history in Berlin, and also opposition to the project of centralization, and it situates the archive within the wider trends of archival science. It thereby explicates the Gesamtarchiv’s vision of total archives and traces its legacy across the arc of the twentieth century. This archive was intended to help produce the history of Germany’s Jews and also to help manage its communities, but it was ultimately turned into an instrument for the domination of Jewish life by the Nazi regime. Altogether, this chapter offers the Gesamtarchiv as a starting point for a global network of Jewish archives that followed the Gesamtarchiv’s vision of archival totality.

Selbst-Bildungen. The Tradition of Comedy and the Emancipation of German Jews in Carl Sternheim’s The Snob

The article explores the connection between enlightenment and comedy, as well as its importance for German Jewry. Following Hegel, whose thoughts on ancient drama as well as modern society have shaped the German discourse on comedy until today, this article demonstrates that questions of self-formation, emancipation, and historical self-location are central to comedy. In Carl Sternheim’s comedy The Snob, the idea of self-formation resonates with the historic concept of “civic improvement” through “Bildung”: Jewish emancipation in Germany stood at the end of an educational project that outlasted Jews’ achieving legal equality. The Snob is a comedy about Jewish acculturation and bourgeoisification and embodies Marx’s understanding of comedy as ambivalent: on the one hand, comedy helps people to part cheerfully from their past that was characterized by inequality, but, on the other, it indicates that a world-historic fact like Jewish emancipation may be prone to repeat itself as a farce. Sternheim’s comedy develops a poetic that embraces ambivalence, but also opens the genre of comedy to the question of therapy and healing. It depicts the struggle between autonomy and social formation – the dialectics of German “Bildung.”

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

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.

Why Was Goethe the ‘Patron Saint of German Jews’? Reconsidering a Central Topic of George L. Mosse’s Oeuvre 30 Years Later

George L. Mosse belongs to the extremely productive generation of scholars to whom we owe fundamental insights into general and German-Jewish contemporary history. They fled Hitler in childhood and adolescence and received their academic training not in the country and language of their birth, but in exile. In the context of this generational experience, this essay explores the very real and symbolic significance that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had for this generation throughout their lives. poet “It argues that the poet and his works deeply shaped émigré self-perception, in which one opposed the notion that the hyphen between “German-Jewish” indicated any separation.”. For George L. Mosse, as well as for many of his fellow historians in exile, Goethe was therefore the symbol of the own, the inner, not the acquired knowledge of others. It was a cosmopolitan, almost Jewish Goethe who was defended even after the catastrophe, because culture was not conceived in the fateful category of limited national property.

German Jews in the Weimar Republic

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.

YELLOW STAR IN THE PERCEPTION OF GERMAN JEWS (1941-1945)

На основании источников личного происхождения и официальных документов исследовано восприятие немецкими евреями введения опознавательного знака в виде жёлтой звезды в сентябре 1941 г. Установлено, что приверженцы сионистских идей носили знак с гордостью, подчёркивая своё безвинное мученичество. Для подавляющего большинства евреев ношение жёлтой звезды являлось сильным моральным ударом и в ретроспективе представлялось самой тяжёлой дискриминационной мерой за весь период нацистского господства. Часть их них отреагировала на введение жёлтой звезды, приняв быструю или медленную смерть, часть - пыталась в нарушение правительственного распоряжения скрывать её в общественных местах, а наиболее решительные избавлялись от неё на время или навсегда, уйдя в подполье. В послевоенных воспоминаниях евреев жёлтая звезда ассоциируется с унижениями и смертельной угрозой, а избавление от неё - с освобождением и надеждой на жизнь. Based on the sources of personal origin and official documents, the author investigates the perception of the yellow star identification mark introduction by German Jews in September 1941. It was established that the adherents of Zionist ideas wore the mark with pride, emphasizing their innocent martyrdom. For the overwhelming majority of Jews, wearing the yellow star was a strong moral blow and, in retrospect, seemed the most severe discriminatory measure in the entire period of Nazi rule. Some of them reacted to the introduction of the yellow star, accepting a quick or slow death, some tried to hide it in public places in violation of the government order, and the most decisive got rid of it for a while or forever, going underground. In the post-war memories of Jews, the yellow star is associated with humiliation and a mortal threat, and getting rid of it is associated with liberation and hope for life.

The Fracturing of German Judaism

This chapter explores the sectarian Orthodoxy of Hirsch’s Pentateuch. It is argued that the immediate context for Hirsch publishing his Pentateuch was the stunning success of the moderate Reformer Ludwig Philippson’s Israelite Bible (Israelitische Bibel). Philippson presented his Bible as an inclusive work to unite all German Jews including the Orthodox. It is shown that an important motivation for Hirsch’s Pentateuch was to prevent Orthodox communities from accepting Philippson’s Bible. Hirsch’s and Philippson’s Bibles are compared and connected to their opposing stances on the “Secession Controversy” of the 1870s that centered on the right of Orthodox congregations to withdraw from the governmentally-recognized official Jewish community. It is demonstrated that while Hirsch came to embrace the moniker “Orthodox” in 1854, during the “Secession Controversy” he distinguished his Neo-Orthodoxy from Ultra-Orthodoxy through a biting attack on the leading Ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authority in Germany at the time, Rabbi Seligmann Bamberger. While the early Hirsch presented a new, inclusive vision of German Judaism through his reading of the Bible in the Nineteen Letters, it is argued that the later Hirsch’s sectarian Neo-Orthodoxy which he grounded through his Pentateuch translation and commentary became emblematic of the irreparable fragmentation of German Judaism.