CONSTRUCTING M O D E R N IDENTITIES CONSTRUCTING MODERN IDENTITIES Jewish University Students in Germany 1 8 1 5 1 9 1 4 Keith H. Pickus WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS DETROIT Copyright © 1999 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All material in this work, except as identified below, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/. All material not licensed under a Creative Commons li- cense is all rights reserved. Permission must be obtained from the copyright owner to use this material. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pickus, Keith H., 1959– Constructing modern identities : Jewish university students in Germany, 1815–1914 / Keith H. Pickus. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-8143-4352-4 (paperback); 978-0-8143-4351-7 (ebook) 1. Jewish college students—Germany—History— 19th century. 2. Jews— Germany—History—1800–1933. 3. Jewish college students—Germany— Societies, etc.— History—19th century. 4. Jews—Germany—Identity. 5. ­Germany—Ethnic relations. I. Title. DS135.G33 1999 378.1'982'9924043—DC21 99-11845 Designer: S. R. Tenenbaum The publication of this volume in a freely accessible digital format has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation through their Humanities Open Book Program. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Koret Foun- dation for financial support in the publication of this volume. Wayne State University Press thanks the following individuals and institutions for their generous permis- sion to reprint material in this book: Paul Fairbrook; The Leo Baeck Institute; and Stanford University Press. http://wsupress.wayne.edu/ For my parents Art and Jean Pickus with love and devotion Contents Preface 9 Acknowledgments 15 List of Organizations 17 I ThE TRANSFORMAtION OF JEWISh EDUCAtION 1. Identity and Education in the Modern Era 21 2. Jewish University Students in Preunification Germany 37 II ThE ORGANIZAtIONAL IMpULSE 3. Emancipation and the Reintroduction of the “Jewish Question” at German Universities 61 4. The Emergence of Jewish Student Associations 81 III DEFINING AND REDEFINING thE SUBjECt 5. Reconstructing Forgotten Jews: Portraits of the Noncorporate Student Body 113 6. A Coat of Many Colors: German Jewry on the Eve of World War I 141 Conclusion 167 Notes 171 Bibliography 197 Index 215 Preface Few people today would challenge the claim that the intersection of German and Jewish history conjures up powerfully evocative images. The contorted face of Adolf Hitler delivering an emotion- ally charged speech, the minions of black-booted soldiers goose-stepping through the streets of Berlin and the smoke-­ belching crematorium of Auschwitz are but a few of the historical portraits that emerge when reflecting upon the subject of German Jewry. Not only does our historical memory of Jewish life in Ger- many focus on forces of destruction, but the tragic reality of the Holocaust casts a long and foreboding shadow over the historical scholarship that portrays Jewish life in Germany before the ad- vent of Nazism. Given this situation, therefore, it is not surprising that much of the literature on nineteenth-century German Jewry is concerned with the rise of antisemitism and Jewish responses to it. Seldom does the historiography of German Jewry reflect the fact that antisemitism was not the determinant influence on the lives of many German Jews. The question, then, is how does one strip away the layers of historical memory that may distort the image of nineteenth-­ century German Jewry? Is it possible to sketch portraits of German­ Jewish existence that are not dominated by ­discrimination and 9 Preface defeat? If so, what investigative strategies can be employed to cre- ate them? These questions provide the impetus for the analysis presented in this book. Constructing Modern Identities examines the identities of nine- teenth-century Jewish university students in Germany, a small but important segment of German Jewry.1 Educated as Germans and raised to expect that their lives would offer social and profes- sional opportunities seldom experienced by previous genera- tions, Jews studying at German universities between 1815 and 1914 redefined what it meant to be a Jew. Unlike the premodern era, when “religion, politics and personal life were so interfused that Judaism was perceived as a seamless garment,” once German Jews discarded the protective veil of Halakha and transcended the boundaries of their autonomous communities, the formerly un- ambiguous distinctions between Christians and Jews were no longer valid.2 The process of emancipation and concomitant emergence of a civil society made it possible to separate one’s religious and pub- lic identities. Before Germany was unified and the emancipation of the Jews was complete, most Jewish university students rele- gated their religious identity to the private sphere and avoided outward proclamations of their Jewishness. Although the privat- ization of Judaism enabled Germany’s Jewish population to func- tion as German citizens without converting to Christianity, the perpetuation of Christian influences in German society created a dialectical situation wherein the maintenance of Jewish identity was at odds with the Christian character of German society. As it became increasingly clear that Jewishness, even when expressed privately, prevented German Jews from enjoying the full benefits of citizenship, small groups of Jewish university students began to rearrange their self-images and publicly display what Jews had been reluctant to express in the past. Members of Jewish student associations, all of which emerged after 1881, put forward public expressions of Jewishness that would have shocked previous generations. While the ideologies and foci of these organizations ranged from an integrationist agenda to Jewish nationalism and religious orthodoxy, member- ship in a Jewish student association provided one with an oppor- tunity to openly proclaim one’s Jewish heritage. At the same time, however, Jewish student groups were also imbued with 10 Preface sufficient German cultural characteristics to enable their mem- bers to function within the university environment. Unlike their more organized brethren, students who did not join a traditional organization could not rely on a prepackaged identity to balance the demands of Deutschtum (Germanness) and Judentum (Jewishness). While some participated in nondenomina- tional academic associations and others formed their own social coteries, most noncorporate Jewish students sublimated their Jewishness in favor of other concerns. Consequently, their public identity profiles were virtually indistinguishable from those of unincorporated Gentile students. Contrary to the scholarship on German Jewry that depicts Jewish identity as a static ideological phenomenon,3 this study emphasizes both the mutability and the social function of identity formation. Whom we socialize with, the organizations that we join, and how we position ourselves in society are integral to the process of self-definition. Individual German Jews were neither “assimilationists” nor Zionists operating on the margins of the continuum we call Jewish identity. Rather, their identities fluctu- ated throughout their lives, oftentimes within the course of a given day. Moving between Gentile and Jewish worlds and ad- justing one’s social relationships accordingly became the norm, not the exception, for Jews living in Germany during the nine- teenth century. By personalizing the narrative and integrating analyses of Jewish student organizations with descriptions of in- dividual Jews, this study reveals the paradoxical condition of German Jewry. The primary materials for this study are culled from a variety of sources. The analyses of the corporate subculture at German universities and Jewish involvement within traditional student associations are based on the published manuscripts, student journals, and associational pamphlets located in the Institut für Hochschulkunde (Institute for Studies of Secondary Education) in Würzburg, Germany. The discussion of Jewish student organiza- tions is derived from the monthly reports, newspapers, journals, and organizational histories that are housed in the Central Zion- ist Archive and the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, and the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. The narra- tive accounts of individual Jews are drawn from the memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies contained within the Leo Baeck Institute. 11 Preface The monograph’s six chapters are organized both chronologi- cally and thematically. Chapter one presents the process of self-definition as a series of historically contingent social relation- ships and depicts German Jewish identity formation as a synthetic act. By examining the nexus between education and identity, the opening chapter also demonstrates that as Jews abandoned tradi- tional modes of education and entered German institutions of higher learning, they profoundly altered their identities. The sec- ond chapter investigates how Jewish students functioned within the university environment before German unification. Moving from the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden’s efforts to align Jewish identity with the demands of an emerging civil soci- ety to the question of Jewish participation in traditional fraternal organizations,