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Information to Users INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly fi-om the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bieedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313 761-4700 800 521-0600 Order Number 9105155 Jewish reactions to intermarriage in nineteenth century Germany Levenson, Alan T., Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1990 UMI SOON. ZeebRd. Ann Aibor, MI 48106 JEWISH REACTIONS TO INTERMARRIAGE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Alan T. Levenson, B.A., M A ***** The Ohio State University 1990 Dissertation Committee; Approved by M.L Raphael J. Cohen D. Lorenz Adviser L R upp Department of History Copyright by Alan T. Levenson 1990 VITA June 24,1960 ................................. Bom - Yonkers, New York 1982.................................................. B.A., M.A. Brown Lfniversrty, Providence Rhode island 1984-Present.................................. Graduate Teaching Associate, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1988-1989....................................... Interuniversity Fellow in Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, Israel PU3UCATI0N “Reform Attitudes, In the Past, Toward Intermarriage" Judaism: A Quarterly Journal. Spring, 1989: 310-322. FiELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History Studies in ancient history with Dr. Jack Balcer; studies in medieval history with Dr. Joseph Lynch; studies in German history with Dr. Moshe Zimmerman (Hebrew University, Jerusalem). 1 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS VITA.......................................................................................................................................... Il INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I. THE EXTENT AND CONTEXT OF INTERMARRIAGE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY................................................................................................... 9 II. JEWISH REACTIONS TO INTERMARRIAGE FROM THE NAPOLEONIC SANHEDRIN TO THE KASIERREICH......................................................................... 42 III. THE UBERAL DEFENSE OF ENDOGAMY IN THE KASIERREICH.................... 81 IV. THE RADICAL ASSIMILATIONIST RESPONSE...................................................... 117 V. ORTHODOXY AND DEFECTION............................................................................... 147 VI. THE ZIONIST CRITIQUE OF ASSIMILATION......................................................... 175 VII. INTERMARRIAGE AND JEWISH ACADEMIA........................................................... 208 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................... 237 BIBUOGRAPHY...................................................................................................................... 243 X l l INTRODUCTION This study examines Jewish reactions to intermarriage in nineteenth century Germany as a means of better explaining the problematic nexus of Jewish self-definition and radical assimilation. Intellectually, German Jewry in the nineteenth century faced two ongoing challenges. On the one hand, Jews desired to prove their willingness to integrate into German society, a willingness often denied by their critics. On the other hand, Jews engaged in an ongoing conflict over the form Judaism, or more accurately, Jewishness, ought to take within constantly changing circumstances. This intellectual struggle necessitated both accommodation and self-definition, forcing the advocates of competing German Jewish ideologies to draw the line at the level of assimilation they deemed acceptable. However, because German Jewry exhibited considerable ideological diversity, deviant behavior itself sparked a wide range of responses. Jewish assimilation has been the abiding issue of modem German Jewish history and historiograp!Nevertheless, the more radical forms of assimilation-apostasy, intermarriage, communal secession (Austritte)- have received scattered treatment at best.^ Heinrich Graetz, the most widely read author produced by the WIssenschaft des Judenthums, expended much energy excoriating the intermarriages of the salonnieres and to a lesser extent, the baptisms of Jewish intellectuals such as Boeme and Heine.^ Graetz vividly portrayed the sorry state of Jewish morale in the late nineteenth century, a period of renewed Jewish defection.^ At the beginning of the twentieth century, the dangers of Jewish defection received treatment from the fledgling sciences of race and demography; as with Graetz, polemical intent generally merged with the methods and subjects under discussion.^ The theme of Jewish defection subsequently experienced a historiographical hiatus. To severe critics of German Jewry such as Hannah Arendt or Gershom Schoiem, the whole history of German Jewry embodied an act of "hopeless bad faith".^ Naturally, such a perspective liberated its bearers from examining those who found remaining Jewish unpalatable even within the terms of nineteenth century German-Jewish existence. Simon Dubnov, a successor to Graetz as a synthetic historian of Jewry, treated the distinction between assimilation and defection as moot. Dubnov held that disintegration had to be the result of German Jewry’s denial of the life-giving forces of Jewish nationalism.® Schoiem, Arendt, and Dubnov shared the view that the German-Jewish symbiosis constituted an illusion; the only deviants worth examining were those who forwarded an altemative Jewish identity. In reaction to this polemical treatment of German Jewry, a generation of scholars has rehabilitated many of the German-Jewish institutions, in particular those committed to combatting antisemitism.^ But, as Todd Endeiman pointed out, this focus on institutions tended to obscure less assertive Jewish responses, shed little light on the impact of antisemitism upon individuals, and focused almost exclusively on the attitudes of the majority.® Because these works focused on the Jewish reactions to antisemitism, the threat of Jewish defection came into purview only in regards to an organizational response, most notably the Centralverein’s campaign against baptism.® Thus, with few exceptions, only in the 1980s has scholarly interest in conversion, intermarriage and communal secession reappeared on the scholarly agenda.^® The important contributions of Todd Endeiman, David Elienson, Deborah Hertz, Peter Honigmann, Marion Kaplan, and Werner Mcsr s r.ave delineated the statistical and, to some degree, the social parameters of these phenomena of defection.^ ^ Nevertheless, an analysis of the Jewish responses to any of these phenomena for Germany, or indeed, for any European nation, has remained terra incognita, it is my intention to rectify this situation I have limited this dissertation to an analysis of the Jewish reactions to intermarriage in Germany, the most ambiguous and profound of these defection phenomena. Ambiguous, because in the most physical sense, intermarriage symbolized the Jewish desire to integrate while preserving, at least logically, the possibility of remaining Jewish. Yet intermarriage generally equalled the most radical stage of structural assimilation. Jewish apostates frequently married among themselves; it has even been claimed that they formed their own subculture. Intermarriages, even when the Jewish partners preserved their identity, almost always led to participation in a non-Jewish social environment. German Jewry’s treatment of the intermarriage issue unden/vent tremendous change in the course of the nineteenth century, and especially during the Kaiserreich (1871-1918). German Jewish attitudes changed not only because intermarriage became increasingly widespread, but also because of the fierce ideological competition within Judaism. What appeared as a rabbinic debate in the 1840s, became an issue of general Jewish concern in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and the symbol of Jewish dissolution par excellence in the decade preceding the First World War. How German Jewry reacted to this specific issue of radical
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