Volume 18-19, Issue 1

This article traces the development of German Jewish reading cultures from the Napoleonic wars to the demise of the Weimar Republic. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Jewish reading clubs promoted works of Bildung , but by the second half of the nineteenth century, they provided access to books about Jewish religion, history, literature, and philosophy as well. Whereas the institutions of the Jewish public initially emerged outside of established religious communities as part of bourgeois sociability, the end of the nineteenth century saw public and religious institutions intermingling. Moreover, reading was increasingly represented as a cultural practice that was compatible with religious tradition in times of profound cultural and religious changes and as an example of the educated middle class's ideal of Bildung .

Future expectations expressed by societies of the past help the historian to develop better insight into their state of mind and understand their modus operandi. The article is one in a series of articles dealing with future expectations of the German Jews and is dedicated to their expectations during the long 19 th century. An important source are articles that appeared in the German-Jewish press towards the end of a year, the time for making prognoses. The main objects of collective expectation change over time and vary in the different groups within Judaism (assimilationists, Zionists, Orthodox). The main issues dealt with are the challenge of modernity, assimilation, demographic revolution, anti-Semitism and Zionism. With World War I the pattern of approaching the future changes radically.

During the early 1890s, profound changes occurred in German Jewry's organizational culture and public activities, which amounted to a turning point in its history. They led to the rise of a Jewish organizational network that constituted a »partial subsociety«, in reversal of the previous trend towards disintegration of the Jewish realm. Those changes corresponded to major changes that took place within the German Reich during the same period. The former manner of public activity of German-Jewish leaders can be described as a »low profile mode«, keeping out of the public limelight, avoiding conflict with the government and refraining from public defense of Jewish interests. Three processes that were evident in German politics and society in the early 1890s were manifest within Jewish society: I) The rise of mass-politics and the use of noisy mass-propaganda techniques. Its Jewish manifestation was public defense against anti- Semitism. II) The rise of an extra-parliamentary political system based on pressure and interest groups. Its Jewish manifestation was the foundation of the Centralverein that defended Jewish interests and reversed the »low profile mode«. III) Rising particularism. Its Jewish manifestation was the creation of specifically Jewish groups, and especially a network of Societies for jüdische Geschichte und Literatur . An examination of the personal characteristics of the leaders who initiated those changes, in comparison with the older Jewish leaders (who mostly opposed the new initiatives), reveals common attributes shared by the new leaders, which explain their ability to grasp the changes occurring in Germany and implement them within German Jewry.

The Jüdische Volksrat was the final expression of a distinctive brand of Jewish Volkspolitik that flourished in the final decades of Habsburg Austria. The article is a case study of a political culture that derived from two related contexts: Jewish nationalism – in its east central European variation – and the larger framework of Habsburg ethnic and nationalist politics. The Volksrat was the centerpiece of an attempt to put the Zionist house in Bukovina in order, and the article is also a first foray into the history of Bukovina Zionism. It is a story of famous success and infamous failure and conflict. If the stage was parochial, the issues at stake were not: power, autonomy, democracy, Zionism and Jewish nationalism — all were at play and all had local, regional and imperial implications.

Reflecting on the differing historical approaches to Jewish history from ›within‹ or ›outside‹, this article argues in favor of an integrated approach. Taking a scandal that occurred in Hamburg in the middle of the 19 th century as an example, the article shows how closely intertwined both sides – the Jewish and the Christian – were. In contrast to the often used conceptual approaches with distinct polarized ideas of clearly differing entities, the discussions about the religious reinterpretation of Jewish religious law, the recognition of religious law by the state and the definition of a civil marriage law prove how intensely involved both sides were. The differing, interchanging and overlapping political interests during these decisive years forced both sides into intense negotiations about the relationship between church and state, Judaism and general society. While both parts still perceived themselves as distinct, the character of these ambivalent processes clearly shows quite the opposite. Instead of clear-cut and stable religious and political positions, the ongoing debates and their dynamics forced all the parties into a process of mutual social negotiations that generated a close interrelation.

The article questions dichotomous differentiations, such as Jews vs. Non-Jews, Eastern vs. Western Jews, etc. Rather than clearly identifiable groups, they represent categorizations whose boundaries are fluid. Affiliations change according to the context in which they are brought to expression, and thus articulate themselves in many and varying ways. From this conceptual framework arises the thesis that Jews and non-Jews in finde- siècle Vienna both participated in the shaping of society. Jews did not solely adapt to its culture, but took part in its constitution. Examples to confirm this thesis are taken from the synagogue service, the Yiddish theatre, and popular culture at the turn of the century. Zusammenfassung Zwischen Juden und Nichtjuden gab es Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen. Häufig führten Entwicklungen, die auf einem Miteinander basierten, zur Hervorhebung von Unterschieden. Wie sich eine Konstellation genau darstellte, war situativ bedingt und muss punktuell untersucht werden. Im vorliegenden Artikel wurde ein weiter Bogen gespannt, von jüdischen Gottesdiensten, die als ein Beispiel spezifisch jüdischer Kultur gelten können, über performative kulturelle Kontexte zur Massenkultur. Sie alle weisen auf eine dichte Verwobenheit von Juden und Nichtjuden hin. Sie bezeugt, dass neben jüdisch-nichtjüdischen Differenzen Felder existierten, auf denen beide Gruppen kulturelle Bedeutung gemeinsam gestalteten. Von dieser Warte aus gesehen, ist eine ›Jüdische Geschichte von innen‹ problematisch, sofern sie beim Verfassen eines historischen Narrativs Nichtjuden ignoriert.

German-Jewish history is incomplete without attention to its internal dimension, which focuses, in particular, on the Jewishness of the Jews rather than on their relationship to the world around them. Although in the course of the modern period, the internal sphere is reduced in relation to the external, it remains significant for understanding the continuation and adaptation of communal institutions and personal identities. Moreover, the boundary between external and internal becomes ever more permeable so that, for example, expressions of Jewishness become universal in the objectives they seek while values internalized from the outside become »typically« Jewish.

The Jewish community of Spandau ranks among the oldest in the medieval Margraviate of Brandenburg . The Jews were probably settled in Spandau at a very early stage of urban development by archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg at the end of the 12th century. A gravestone from 1244 suggests the existence of a cemetery and thus of a Jewish community. It was covered over by the castle of the Brandenburg margraves and prince-electors in Spandau and has been excavated along with about 70 further tombstones in restorations since the 1950s. Besides describing the Jewish immigration at Spandau , the article examines the synagogue and the cemeteries. The displacement of the Brandenburg Jewry due to the Hostienschändungsprozess [Host desecration charges] of 1510 brought the history of the Spandau Jewish community to an end. The cemeteries were cleared and the gravestones used as building material for the castle and in the later citadel of Spandau . Today, these unique monuments constitute one of the largest collections of medieval Jewish tombstones in Germany and the most important material remains of the Jewry in the medieval Margraviate of Brandenburg .

Early Hekdeshim did not distinguish between the housing of the poor, travelling strangers, old and sick people. At the end of the 18 th and the beginning of the 19 th century Jewish hospitals with explicit medical intentions and with 30 to 40 beds were built in cities with large Jewish communities such as Budapest, Vienna, Krakow, Trieste, Chernivtsi and Lviv. Besides, there also existed small hospitals and »Siechenhäuser« for old and chronically ill people in smaller communities. They were often funded by donations of wealthy persons and by community taxes and administrated by the Chevra Kadisha , the Jewish burial societies. With the exception of the Jewish hospital in Prague all institutions were privately run. In Austro-Hungary, the building of big modern hospitals with 100 beds and more began during the last two decades of the 19 th century (Budapest 1889, Vienna 1893) and continued through the turn of the century (Lviv and Prague) until the 1920s and 1930s (Chernivtsi, Krakow, Pozsony). At the same time, the old and small hospitals continued to exist, especially in regions with poor Jewish communities such as Galicia and Eastern Hungary.