The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic


Book Description

The Weimar Republic was a turbulent and pivotal period of German and European history and a laboratory of modernity. The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic provides an unsurpassed panorama of German history from 1918 to 1933, offering an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the fascinating history of the Weimar Republic.




Passing Illusions


Book Description

Challenges the notion that Weimar Jews sought to be invisible or indistinguishable from other Germans by "passing" as non-Jews




Jews in Germany from Roman Times to the Weimar Republic


Book Description

An account through numerous illustrations and photographs of the Jews in Germany from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Culmination of thirty years of research.




A Jewish Communist in Weimar Germany


Book Description

Walter Benjamin derided Werner Scholem as a ‘rogue’ in 1924. Josef Stalin referred him as a ‘splendid man’, but soon backtracked and labeled him an ‘imbecile’, while Ernst Thälmann, chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), warned his followers against the dangers of ‘Scholemism’. For the philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem, however, Werner was first and foremost his older brother. The life of German-Jewish Communist Werner Scholem (1895–1940) had many facets. Werner and Gerhard, later Gershom, rebelled together against their authoritarian father and the atmosphere of national chauvinism engulfing Germany during World War I. After inspiring his younger brother to take up the Zionist cause, Werner himself underwent a long personal journey before deciding to join the Communist struggle. Scholem climbed the party ladder and orchestrated the KPD's ‘Bolshevisation’ campaign, only to be expelled as one of Stalin's opponents in 1926. He was arrested in 1933, and ultimately murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp seven years later. This first biography of Werner Scholem tells his life story by drawing on a wide range of original sources and archive material long hidden beyond the Iron Curtain of the Cold War era. First published in German by UVK Verlagsgesellschaft as Werner Scholem - eine politische Biographie (1895-1940), Konstanz, 2014.




Towards the Holocaust


Book Description




Between Heimat and Hatred


Book Description

In the decades between German unification and the demise of the Weimar Republic, German Jewry negotiated their collective and individual identity under the impression of legal emancipation, continued antisemitism, the emergence of Zionism and Socialism, the First World War, and revolution and the republic. For many German Jews liberalism and also increasingly Socialism became attractive propositions. Yet conservative parties and political positions right-of-center also held appeal for some German Jews. Between Heimat and Hatred studies German Jews involved in ventures that were from the beginning, or became increasingly, of the Right. Jewish agricultural settlement, Jews' participation in the so-called "Defense of Germandom in the East", their place in military and veteran circles and finally right-of-center politics form the core of this book. These topics created a web of social activities and political persuasions neither entirely conservative nor entirely liberal. For those German Jews engaging with these issues, their motivation came from sincere love of their German Heimat-a term for home imbued with a deep sense of belonging-and from their middle-class environment, as well as to repudiate antisemitic stereotypes of rootlessness, intellectualism or cosmopolitanism. This tension stands at the heart of the book. The book also asks when did the need for self-defense start to outweigh motivations of patriotism and class? Until when could German Jews espouse views to the right of the political spectrum without appearing extreme to either Jews or non-Jews? In an exploration of identity and exclusion, Philipp Nielsen locates the moments when active Jewish members of conservative projects became the radical other. He notes that the decisive stage of the transformation of the German Right occurred precisely during a period of republican stabilization, when even mainstream right-of-center politics abandoned the state-centric, Volk-based ethnic concepts of the Weimar republic. The book builds on recent studies of Jews' relation to German nationalism, the experience of German Jews away from the large cities, and the increasing interest in Germans' obsession with regional roots and the East. The study follows these lines of inquiry to investigate the participation of some German Jews in projects dedicated to originally, or increasingly, illiberal projects. As such it shines light on an area in which Jewish participation has thus far only been treated as an afterthought and illuminates both Jewish and German history afresh.




Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema


Book Description

The burgeoning film industry in the Weimar Republic was, among other things, a major site of German-Jewish experience, one that provided a sphere for Jewish “outsiders” to shape mainstream culture. The chapters collected in this volume deploy new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to understanding the significant involvement of German Jews in Weimar cinema. Reflecting upon different conceptions of Jewishness – as religion, ethnicity, social role, cultural code, or text – these studies offer a wide-ranging exploration of an often overlooked aspect of German film history.




Jews and Germans


Book Description

Jews and Germans is the only book in English to delve fully into the history and challenges of the German-Jewish relationship, from before the Holocaust to the present day. The Weimar Republic era—the fifteen years between Germany’s defeat in World War I (1918) and Hitler’s accession (1933)—has been characterized as a time of unparalleled German-Jewish concord and collaboration. Even though Jews constituted less than 1 percent of the German population, they occupied a significant place in German literature, music, theater, journalism, science, and many other fields. Was that German-Jewish relationship truly reciprocal? How has it evolved since the Holocaust, and what can it become? Beginning with the German Jews’ struggle for emancipation, Guenter Lewy describes Jewish life during the heyday of the Weimar Republic, particularly the Jewish writers, left-wing intellectuals, combat veterans, and adult and youth organizations. With this history as a backdrop he examines the deeply disparate responses among Jews when the Nazis assumed power. Lewy then elucidates Jewish life in postwar West Germany; in East Germany, where Jewish communists searched for a second German-Jewish symbiosis based on Marxist principles; and finally in the united Germany—illuminating the complexities of fraught relationships over time.




Jews and Other Germans


Book Description

Examines the integration of Jews into German society between 1860-1925, taking as an example the city of Breslau (then Germany, now Wrocław, Poland). Questions whether there was a continuous line from the German treatment of Jews before World War I to Nazi antisemitism. During and after World War I, relations between Jews and non-Jews worsened and the high level of Jewish integration eroded between 1916-25. Although the constitution of the Weimar Republic accorded Jews equality, they experienced acts of violence and discrimination. Argues that antisemitism became stronger as the economic situation of the Jews deteriorated, due to inflation and the emigration to Germany of 4,273 impoverished Jews from Poland and Russia between 1919-23. Concludes, nevertheless, that no direct line can be drawn between the antisemitism in Imperial Germany and that of the Nazi period.




A Deadly Legacy


Book Description

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.




Recent Books