During the Second Reich, the Jews aspired to integrate into German society while still maintaining their Jewish identity, explains Israeli historian Uriel Tal. This was part of a greater attempt of men to attain freedom in modern society without having to surrender their individuality.
Social Status and Self-Identity
Religion, although in a secular form, became a decisive consideration in determining the “social status and self-identity of the Jews,” Tal said. This occurred during a period in which the process of secularization and modernization in Germany had reached a peak, confirming Professor Salo Baron’s thesis in “Modern Nationalism and Religion” that the history of nationalism and religion go together even in modern times.
Tal said that most Jews, including many Jewish leaders not even in the Reform movement and renowned Jewish scholars, denied the concept of a nation and peoplehood. A growing number of Jews ceased viewing themselves as members of an ethnic community because of the implied “racialism,” which was inconsistent with the nationalistic principles of the Western Enlightenment.
Consequently, for most Jews, Tal said, connection to the Jewish religion, “even though it was in many respects repugnant to the Orthodox community, remained the principal and perhaps the only component of their Jewish identity.”
Jews and liberals had hoped that religion would be a private individual affair and free from the irrational elements consistent with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, but this was not to be. Religious secularization, which affected Christian and specifically Protestant thinking and conduct, notably influenced the cultural, social and political life of the Second Reich, according to Tal.
The Germans rejected the idea of allowing Jews to assimilate into the German community while still practicing their separate religion. Tal quotes Friedrich Paulsen, an eminent liberal and humanist and an openly vocal opponent of antisemitism, who said if an individual is Jewish but not a German, he should not expect that the German people will allow him to serve as a judge or as a teacher to educate their children.
In his “System of Ethics,” Paulsen asserted, “To remain a complete Jew and a complete German is impossible.” This powerful statement demonstrated Germany’s resolve not to accept German Jewry’s claim to the right of civil equality so long as they continued to observe Judaism.
The acrimonious struggle to gain complete emancipation, which extended the first three quarters of the century, had a decisively negative effect on the “self-esteem and self-image of the German Jew,” asserts historian Ismar Schorsch.
German Jews understood that admission into German society compelled them to suppress any vestige of their Jewish heritage. Yet, to effectively confront antisemitism required them to publicly avow their Jewish identity. Any demonstration of their Jewishness, Schorsch said, is exactly what prolonged the conflict for equal rights and “had conditioned Jews to fear and loathe.” Their serious “aversion to self-defense epitomized their commitment to abide by the terms of their admission.”
Could a Solution Be Found to The Jewish Problem?
Supporters and opponents of Jews obtaining civil rights disagreed as to whether a solution could be found to the problem of Jewish separatism. Opponents were certain that a Jew or his religion could not be reformed. The accusation that the Christian persecution of Jews during the Middle Ages had shaped the “debased character of contemporary Jews” was rejected, Schorsch said, because during biblical times they claimed that Jews had exhibited these same critical character defects. These included usury, theft and fraud.
Tal explains that with the increasing industrialization of Germany, all of the perceived and real evils of modern life in the country were ascribed to Jewish “greed, commercialism, and rationalism (in the pejorative sense).” Jews were thus responsible for the “disintegration of the traditional social, religious, and cultural patterns of German life, the decline of good manners, the deterioration of the German language, the breakdown of discipline and order, the increase in fraudulent business practices, the revolt of the younger generation against parents, teachers, church, and state, the resentment of the lower classes, and the alienation of the German worker from his environment and the product of labor.”
Obedience to the Nation and State
Conservative Protestants and an increasing number of Catholics wanted to establish a Christian state, which would prohibit Jews and all those with a nationalistic predisposition. In keeping with their belief in modernization and conservative values, which had its origins in Martin Luther’s tenets, citizens were expected to obey the law, not as a result of any outside coercion, but because of acceptance of the authority of the law, Tal said. Protestants, and later all Germans, demanded this self-imposed adherence to the law. Submission was initially instilled by the Roman Catholic Church prior to the Lutheran period and was ultimately transferred to the German nation and state.
An Affront to the German People
As long as Jews continued to exist as a distinct and separate people “in defiance of all reason,” it was viewed as absurd, infuriating and exasperating, and not beneficial to the development of “brotherly love.” Tal notes this attack was not directed against Orthodox Jews or the nationalism of the Zionists, but against Liberal Judaism, practiced by the majority of German Jews.
Conservative Germans and later Catholics, in increasing numbers after the Kulturkampf in the late 19th century, saw Liberal Judaism as a repudiation of religion and nationality, the two fundamental ideologies on which they sought to construct their new society and culture.
The obstinacy of non-Orthodox Jews that they “were German citizens of the Mosaic persuasion” was viewed by the Conservatives “as nothing more than a convenient verbal declaration with little substance,” Tal contends. By forsaking their traditional religious practices, the Liberal Jews “had denied the very principle on which Judaism and the Christian state as well were based, that is, the religious principle as the highest authority of law and social order that transcended all rational and historic criteria.”
Conservatives also used the same argument directed primarily against Jews who excluded nationality and political Zionism in their description of Judaism. Their declarations of being loyal citizens of the national state were regarded with suspicion, for by renouncing their national and historical origins, they also repudiated the foundation of loyalty to the state. Jews, therefore, came to symbolize “an anachronistic, anti-Christian phenomenon … and an unreliable element from the national point of view.”
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of the National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.