The German-Jewish Economic Elite, 1820-1935: A Socio-Cultural Profile. - book reviews

Judaism, Wntr, 1993 by Marsha Rozenblit

ONE OF THE central issues in modern Jewish history is the degree to which Jews have "assimilated," that is, abandoned the world of the traditional Jewish community in order to become integrated members of Western culture and society. In this excellent, well-documented, and extremely interesting book, the eminent British historian, Werner Mosse, has explored the limits of integration into German society of the very richest Jews in Germany, a group which should have had the best chance of all for full integration.

Mosse uses as the foil for his discussion the position taken by the Israeli scholar, Gershom Scholem, in a very interesting essay, "On the Social Psychology of the Jews in Germany: 1900-1933" (in David Bronsen, ed., Jews in Germany from 1860-1933: The Problematic Symbiosis |Heidelberg, 1979~). There, Scholem had argued that, unlike most Jews who retained a large measure of Jewish ethnicity, Jewish millionaires in Germany were utterly assimilated, had rejected Jewish identity, strove only for close ties and full integration in Gentile society, and tried to ignore the anti-Semitism that they encountered. Mosse deems this argument a "simplistic" stereotype. Relying on the memoirs, personal papers, and letters of Germany's Jewish economic elite, he presents a sensitive and nuanced group portrait, revealing how these people balanced their Jewish identities with their desire for acceptance in Germany.

Mosse convincingly argues that most very rich German Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries retained a Jewish identity, whether out of sentimental attachments, filial piety, or defiance in the face of anti-Semitism. More importantly, they maintained Jewish ethnic cohesiveness, thus forming a distinct sub-culture in Germany and within Jewish society. The level of Jewish religious observance in the group may have been very low, but most of them remained bound to their fellow Jews through very strong economic, social, and kinship networks. Indeed, family ties provided the matrix of economic and social life, thus inhibiting social integration with non-Jews. In general, wealthy Jews did business with each other, socialized with each other, formed their closest friendships within the Jewish elite, and married each other. Whether by choice or necessity, even the most wealthy Jews in Germany were ethnically Jewish in their personal and social lives. Moreover, most wealthy Jews retained a strong sense of Jewish solidarity, which they expressed in activism on behalf of Jewish causes, whether to combat anti-Semitism or to help the suffering Jews in Russia. Thus, wealth did not necessarily lead to the abandonment of the Jewish people, as Scholem had posited.

The strength of Mosse's book lies in his depiction of the closed social world of the German-Jewish elite. He provides fascinating insight, for example, into the marriage strategies of wealthy German Jews, who maintained Jewish ethnic cohesion by parental "pre-selection" of suitable mates for their children. In the majority of cases, by controlling the sociability of their sons and daughters, wealthy Jews saw to it that their children married the offspring of other wealthy Jewish families, thus cementing already existing economic, social, and ethnic alliances, and thereby guaranteeing Jewish survival. Mosse shows that, unlike the Jewish middle class, the elite eschewed arranged marriages, rarely fussed about dowries, and sometimes married for love. Still, financial, familial, and ethnic concerns intersected to generate high endogamy rates.

On the other hand, of course, full integration into German non-Jewish society was never possible even for those who devoutly wished it, even for the baptized, even for the descendants of the baptized. Germany, after all, was not a pluralistic society tolerant of ethnic diversity. More importantly, the rise of aggressive anti-Semitism after the 1870s rendered full acceptance of the Jews impossible in most German circles, with the important exception of intellectuals and the political left. Whatever limited sociability existed between Jews and Gentiles in the early and mid-nineteenth century, it evaporated at the century's end. Jewish/Gentile relationships which did exist were highly self-conscious, based usually on material considerations or on shared outsiderness, and often reflected social inequalities. The status equals of the Jewish elite, wealthy non-Jewish businessmen, would not socialize with or marry wealthy Jews. Jewish men who insisted on marrying Gentiles had to "pay a price," that is, marry someone with less social prestige.

Baptized Jews suffered most of all from the refusal to recognize Jews as Germans, and Mosse does well to include them in his analysis. He documents at length the painful experiences of one Paul Wallich, for example, a wealthy Jew baptized at birth, whose Jewish origins hindered his attempts to enter German high society at the university, in the army, in marriage, in friendship. Wallich, like most other baptized Jews in Germany, socialized with other baptized Jews, forming yet another "Jewish" sub-culture in Germany. While, in the early nineteenth century, some baptized Jews did manage full integration, the emergence of racial anti-Semitism at the end of the century rendered total Jewish integration absolutely impossible -- at least for men.