German Jewish Social Status And Identity In Weimar Republic

Weimar Republic (1918-1933) played a connecting role in German History. It is not only the a crucialstage of the German society transformed traditional to modern but also the period of anti-Semitismhappened significant changes which led to the Holocaust in Third Reich. And it both witnessesed the“golden age” of the avant-garde culture flourish and the political turmoil and the economic chaos.This paper investigates the German Jewish social status and identity in Weimar Republic. German isone of the important countries where Jewish people lived for a long time and most of them assimilated toGerman. But it is also the country that the Jewish people suffered the heavy disaster. In Weimar Republic,German Jews actively participated in Germany’s political, economic and cultural life, and their social statushad been improved. First of all, German Jews occupied a dominant position in Germany’s economic life,such as bank, the apparel industry and retail. In order to effectively cope with the economic crisis, theJewish community took various measures to help themselves: on the one hand they began to engage insome unpopular career, such as agriculture, horticulture; on the other hand they established communityassociations and credit associations to help the small businessmen. Second, the German Jews achieved fullcitizenship. You can see Jews in almost all major political parties in this period. In addition, German Jewswere influenced by communist ideology and actively led or participated in the German proletarianrevolution. Thirdly, German Jews led the trend of Weimar urban culture and most of them were the leadersin the field of science or art.Depending on the identity, the German Jews can be roughly divided into four categories:assimilationist, liberal Judaism, Zionism and Jewish conservatives, which can be classified as a singleidentity or mixed identity. The single identity can be divided into single German identity or a single Jewishidentity and the mixed identity mainly refers to the person who both think of themselves as German andJew, such as the members of Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. Different identitygroups had different the attitude towards Zionism and anti-Semitism. The Jews who took themselves asGermans had no interested in Zionism movement and their strategies to anti-Semitism were negative. Butthe Jews who had a strong Jewish identity insisted to immigrate to their own homeland Palestine.The information of German Jewish identity had three reasons. First, German Jewish identity were closely related to Jewish policy of the German government. When government policy was relatively loose,Jews tended to integrate into mainstream society. However, when government policies began to suppressthe development of the Jews, they tended to return to their tradition. Second, the formation of Jewishidentity related to the ups and downs of anti-Semitism. The Anti-Semitism had the conflicting dual role tothe formation of Jewish identity. It led some Jews to seek to erase their Jewish identity, but it alsostrengthened the Jewish collective identity. Third, the Jewish identity had a close relation with theformation of German national identity. German national identity is blurred disorders and formed late, whichmade the Jews do not know whether they could take themselves as Germans.The differences on Jewish identity largely dissolved German Jews internal cohesion. Especially,because most of the Jews had a strong German identity, they cannot unify their action when they facedanti-Semitism and fail to perceive the Nazi government attempt to plunder the interests of the Jews to theAryan to win public support.