How Jews Became Germans

How Jews Became Germans
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 288
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780300110944
ISBN-13 : 0300110944
Rating : 4/5 (44 Downloads)

Synopsis How Jews Became Germans by : Deborah Sadie Hertz

When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, an urgent priority was to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s premier Jewish city. Deborah Hertz’s discovery of these records, the Judenkartei, was the first step on a long research journey that has led to this compelling book. Hertz begins the book in 1645, when the records begin, and traces generations of German Jewish families for the next two centuries. The book analyzes the statistics and explores letters, diaries, and other materials to understand in a far more nuanced way than ever before why Jews did or did not convert to Protestantism. Focusing on the stories of individual Jews in Berlin, particularly the charismatic salon woman Rahel Levin Varnhagen and her husband, Karl, a writer and diplomat, Hertz humanizes the stories, sets them in the context of Berlin’s evolving society, and connects them to the broad sweep of European history.

Submerged on the Surface

Submerged on the Surface
Author :
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Total Pages : 255
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781785334566
ISBN-13 : 1785334565
Rating : 4/5 (66 Downloads)

Synopsis Submerged on the Surface by : Richard N. Lutjens, Jr.

Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.

Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany

Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany
Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Total Pages : 292
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780472117970
ISBN-13 : 0472117971
Rating : 4/5 (70 Downloads)

Synopsis Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany by : Christian Davis

An exploration of anti-Semitic behaviors in the German empire in the pre-WWI period

German Jews Beyond Judaism

German Jews Beyond Judaism
Author :
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Total Pages : 112
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0878200533
ISBN-13 : 9780878200535
Rating : 4/5 (33 Downloads)

Synopsis German Jews Beyond Judaism by : George L. Mosse

Jews were emancipated at a time when high culture was becoming an integral part of German citizenship. German Jews felt a powerful urge to integrate, to find their Jewish substance in German culture and craft an identity as both Germans and Jews. In this volume, based on the 1983 Efroymson Memorial Lectures given at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, George Mosse traces their pursuit of Bildung and German Enlightenment ideals and their efforts to influence German society even at a time when this led to intellectual isolation. Yet out of this German-Jewish dialogue, what had once been part of German culture became a central Jewish heritage.

Why the Germans? Why the Jews?

Why the Germans? Why the Jews?
Author :
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages : 279
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780805097047
ISBN-13 : 080509704X
Rating : 4/5 (47 Downloads)

Synopsis Why the Germans? Why the Jews? by : Götz Aly

A provocative and insightful analysis that sheds new light on one of the most puzzling and historically unsettling conundrums Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Countless historians have grappled with these questions, but few have come up with answers as original and insightful as those of maverick German historian Götz Aly. Tracing the prehistory of the Holocaust from the 1800s to the Nazis' assumption of power in 1933, Aly shows that German anti-Semitism was—to a previously overlooked extent—driven in large part by material concerns, not racist ideology or religious animosity. As Germany made its way through the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, the difficulties of the lethargic, economically backward German majority stood in marked contrast to the social and economic success of the agile Jewish minority. This success aroused envy and fear among the Gentile population, creating fertile ground for murderous Nazi politics. Surprisingly, and controversially, Aly shows that the roots of the Holocaust are deeply intertwined with German efforts to create greater social equality. Redistributing wealth from the well-off to the less fortunate was in many respects a laudable goal, particularly at a time when many lived in poverty. But as the notion of material equality took over the public imagination, the skilled, well-educated Jewish population came to be seen as having more than its fair share. Aly's account of this fatal social dynamic opens up a new vantage point on the greatest crime in history and is sure to prompt heated debate for years to come.

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 536
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015055107950
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (50 Downloads)

Synopsis Hitler's Jewish Soldiers by : Bryan Mark Rigg

On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, he discovered that eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he'd anticipated. As Bryan Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was that heinous process more fraught with contradiction and confusion than in the German military. Contrary to conventional views, Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought-perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals. As Rigg fully documents for the first time, a great many of these men did not even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which was now forced to look deeply into the ancestry of its soldiers. The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far worse. (Hitler's own signature can be found on many of these "exemption" orders.) But as the war dragged on, Nazi politics came to trump military logic, even in the face of the Wehrmacht's growing manpower needs, closing legal loopholes and making it virtually impossible for these soldiers to escape the fate of millions of other victims of the Third Reich. Based on a deep and wide-ranging research in archival and secondary sources, as well as extensive interviews with more than four hundred Mischlinge and their relatives, Rigg's study breaks truly new ground in a crowded field and shows from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule.

Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe

Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe
Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages : 320
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783110492484
ISBN-13 : 3110492482
Rating : 4/5 (84 Downloads)

Synopsis Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe by : Tobias Grill

For many centuries Jews and Germans were economically and culturally of significant importance in East-Central and Eastern Europe. Since both groups had a very similar background of origin (Central Europe) and spoke languages which are related to each other (German/Yiddish), the question arises to what extent Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe share common historical developments and experiences. This volume aims to explore not only entanglements and interdependences of Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe from the late middle ages to the 20th century, but also comparative aspects of these two communities. Moreover, the perception of Jews as Germans in this region is also discussed in detail.

German Jews and the University, 1678-1848

German Jews and the University, 1678-1848
Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages : 337
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781640141155
ISBN-13 : 1640141154
Rating : 4/5 (55 Downloads)

Synopsis German Jews and the University, 1678-1848 by : Monika Richarz

Traces the gradual opening of university education in Germany to Jews, its significance for assimilation to the bourgeoisie, and the legal restrictions that nonetheless barred Jewish graduates from most professional careers.

Jewish Emancipation in a German City

Jewish Emancipation in a German City
Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Total Pages : 384
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0804726442
ISBN-13 : 9780804726443
Rating : 4/5 (42 Downloads)

Synopsis Jewish Emancipation in a German City by : Shulamit S. Magnus

This work seeks to understand how, in nineteenth-century Germany, Jews and non-Jews shaped and experienced Jewish emancipation, a process whereby Jews were freed from ancient discriminatory laws and, over the course of decades, became citizens. Unlike most other works on German Jewish emancipation, this book examines how so fundamental and dramatic a transformation in the relation of Jews and non-Jews was experienced by the people who lived it, how economic, social, political, and ideological forces interacted to bring about change, and how accommodation actually occurred. The book focuses on Cologne, the most populous and economically powerful city in the Rhineland. Jews, excluded since 1424, returned under French Revolutionary rule, but Napoleonic legislation in 1808 compromised their equality and gave city elders an opportunity to reassert Cologne's historic control when the territory passed to Prussia in 1814. A long struggle between municipal and state authorities ensued, with the city hostile to Jewish rights but ultimately losing its bid to exercise local sovereignty over the Jews. The 1840’s saw the advent of the railway age, and Cologne's economic and political climate was transformed. The city soon became the center for Rhenish liberal advocacy of Jewish rights, led by regional entrepreneurs in association with Jewish bankers. The author demonstrates, however, that Jewish emancipation was not simply conferred on Jews from above or engineered by financial mavericks in the community. Rather, it occurred as part of a broad societal transformation and as the result of the efforts and behavior of ordinary Jews, whose voices the author records. The book reveals how such Jews responded to the lure of equality and the pressures of continued discrimination in their business and private lives, and shows how their response fostered a new, positive perception of Jews as honorable people deserving of civic inclusion. It also illustrates how Jews, enjoying unprecedented success and acceptance, fought not only for individual rights but for the right of organized Judaism to achieve a secure place in society.

A Deadly Legacy

A Deadly Legacy
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 321
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780300231236
ISBN-13 : 0300231237
Rating : 4/5 (36 Downloads)

Synopsis A Deadly Legacy by : Tim Grady

Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 This book is the first to offer a full account of the varied contributions of German Jews to Imperial Germany’s endeavors during the Great War. Historian Tim Grady examines the efforts of the 100,000 Jewish soldiers who served in the German military (12,000 of whom died), as well as the various activities Jewish communities supported at home, such as raising funds for the war effort and securing vital food supplies. However, Grady’s research goes much deeper: he shows that German Jews were never at the periphery of Germany’s warfare, but were in fact heavily involved. The author finds that many German Jews were committed to the same brutal and destructive war that other Germans endorsed, and he discusses how the conflict was in many ways lived by both groups alike. What none could have foreseen was the dangerous legacy they created together, a legacy that enabled Hitler’s rise to power and planted the seeds of the Holocaust to come.