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Contesting Jewish Loyalties: the First World War and Beyond

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Contesting Jewish Loyalties: the First World War and Beyond Contesting Jewish Loyalties: The First World War and Beyond Contesting Jewish Loyalties: The First lution. CARSTEN SCHAPKOW (Oklahoma) World War and Beyond turned to the German-Jewish anarchists Gus- tav Landauer (1870–1919) and Erich Mühsam Veranstalter: Gideon Reuveni / Kim Wünsch- (1878–1934), who both openly opposed the mann, Centre for German-Jewish Studies, First World War from the start and articu- University of Sussex; Aubrey Pomerance, lated a cosmopolitanism and a critique of pa- Jewish Museum Berlin; Miriam Rürup, The triotism during the conflict. ZOHAR MAOR Institute for the History of the German (Ramat Gan) discussed the philosopher and Jews, Hamburg; David Feldman, The Pears Zionist Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975). Born Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, and raised in Bohemian Prague, Bergmann Birkbeck, University of London; Stefanie combined attachment to multinational iden- Schüler-Springorum, Wissenschaftliche Ar- tities with a non-ethnic German nationalism. beitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts in As a soldier in the First World War, he hoped der Bundesrepublik Deutschland for a German-Austrian-Habsburg victory that Datum, Ort: 15.02.2017–17.02.2017, Berlin would open a possibility for a world with Bericht von: Steven Schouten, University of multiple identities, but this ideal collapsed Amsterdam / European University Institute, when nationalism gained strength through- Florence out Europe. Stimulated as well by an inti- mate encounter with eastern Judaism, the loss From 15–17 December 2016, a conference on of that ideal led to a profound reevaluation Jewish loyalties from the First World War on- of his Jewish identity which saw Bergmann wards took place at the W. Michael Blumen- strengthening his Zionist identity. In Zion- thal Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin. ism, he envisioned a place for both Jews and The event, a follow-up of a 2014 conference Arabs, and he made Jewish culture the locus on the Jewish experience in the Great War, of a world that transcended state borders; it was a joint project of the Centre for German- was, Maor said, a way of „reinventing the Bo- Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, the hemian mosaic“ of his early life. Jewish Museum Berlin, the Wissenschaftliche In the second session, MOHSEN HAMLI Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts (Tunisia) analysed the polemic that evolved in in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the In- Tunisia in the years 1919 to 1921 between sev- stitute for the History of the German Jews eral short-lived French antisemitic newspa- in Hamburg and the Pears Institute for the pers, for example „Le Potache“, and newspa- Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, Univer- pers that promoted a Judeo-Arab alliance, for sity of London. Its aim was to revisit and example „Le Sémaphore de Tunisie“. Hamli explore Jewish loyalties in various European argued that although the antisemitic newspa- countries throughout the early twentieth cen- pers could count on the implicit support of the tury. At its core was the idea that the First French state, Jews, for example Joseph Cohen- World War, as a watershed in Jewish history, Ganouna (1881–1929), managed to have them posed a challenge to what it meant to be Jew- suspended. OLEKSII CHEBOTAROV (St. ish in many European countries. Gallen) pointed to the various ways in which MIRJAM ZADOFF (Bloomington) opened the loyalties of Russian migrant Jews to Habs- the first panel of the conference. She burg Galicia were framed in the late 19th and pointed to the multiple loyalties in the Scho- early 20th centuries. According to Chebo- lem family of Berlin during the First World tarov, this framing depended on the nature War. Exploring the correspondence of Werner of these Jews’ mobility (transborder trade, (1895–1940) and Gershom („Gerhard“) Scho- immigration or transmigration) and on the lem (1897–1982), Zadoff showed how these perspectives of the actors involved (bureau- two brothers both set their hopes on a crats, inhabitants and migrants). MIRJAM pacifist and radically transformed postwar RAJNER (Ramat Gan) concluded the session world, with Werner embracing an „uncom- with a paper on the multiple loyalties of the promised universalism“ in the Communist Sephardic Jewish community of Sarajevo dur- sense and Gershom opting for a Jewish so- ing the Ottoman, Austrian-Hungarian and © H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved. Yugoslav eras. Focussing on Daniel Kabiljo broke down and with it the more balanced (1894–1944), she showed how this Sarajevo position of multiple loyalties that existed be- artist developed a multifaceted identity that fore 1914. The war forced Jews to take sides, was Sephardic, Zionist and Yugoslav, as well leading in part to the collapse of transnational as „orientalist“ by the end of his life. Rajner’s bonds between friends, colleagues and fami- paper pointed to the role of the urban experi- lies. The war experiences of the Jews in Eu- ence in the development of multiple and dy- rope were by no means coherent and simul- namic loyalties. taneous, he stressed, and they affected na- The third session opened with a paper by tions in different ways. For Wyrwa, it was not GAVIN J. WIENS (Toronto), who looked at the only the First World War itself that constituted German-Jewish experience of the First World the breaking point, but „the whole nexus of War in a context that took into account the war, revolution and counter-revolution“ – a heterogeneity of the German armies. Besides „nexus“ characterised by feelings of hope and Jews, Alsatians, Bavarians, Poles, Mennon- despair about Jewish emancipation and civil ites, and other ethnic and religious groups rights. were part of the German military. Afraid of On the second day of the conference, YU- a loss of cohesion, army leaders feared mul- LIA MINUTINA-LOBANOVA (St. Peters- tiple loyalties among these groups. Conse- burg) opened the fourth session by exploring quently, they had been monitoring the loy- examples of Russian-Jewish poetry composed alty of many of its soldiers, and this occurred, during the first months of the First World War. Wiens showed, already long before the no- As elsewhere in Europe, Russian-Jewish poets torious Judenzählung (Jew Census) of 1916, initially saw the war as a chance for eman- which intended to assess Jewish participation cipation, but these hopes soon turned into in the war effort. Wiens stressed the need to disappointment. Censorship prevented cri- see the Census not only as an antisemitic is- tique of Jewish discrimination, yet such crit- sue, but as one of many ethnic treatments im- icism, Minutina-Lobanova showed, was oc- plemented during the war, and to understand casionally published. KATALIN FENYVES it within a wider context of an overall mixed (Budapest) spoke about the loyalty of the bag of loyalties in the army and of the army’s Hungarian Jews to the Hungarian language wish to keep up the morale of those in uni- and state, and about their wish to downplay form. ALEXANDRA ESCHE (Berlin) investi- ethnic Jewish dimensions. Like Minutina- gated the Berlin Jewish bourgeois elites, who Lobanova, she showed that loyalty, although from 1890 to 1918 moved from the east of the also a matter of choice, was inextricably tied city to its western parts. The Jews of this so to politics. The paper opened up a source- called Westzug were keen to identify with up- critical debate about what is said and written per class German society, yet not uncondition- about loyalty, and about what can and cannot ally, as illustrated by the case of the Jewish be expressed in normative and historical con- doctor Hermann Zondek (1887–1979). KNUT texts. BERGBAUER (Wuppertal) turned to the Jew- LJILJANA DOVROVŠAK (Zagreb) opened ish Youth movement in Breslau that gained the fifth session of the conference with a pa- strength in the First World War. Like the other per on the stance of Croatian Jews towards the participants, Bergbauer challenged the idea Habsburg and Karadordevi´crulers before and that one-dimensional loyalties of Jews existed. after the First World War. Although defining The conference’s keynote lecture was de- their loyalties differently, Dovrovšak argued livered by ULRICH WYRWA (Potsdam / that Jews in both cases expressed themselves Berlin). He took on a broad geographical per- as loyal servants of the respective rulers. TIM spective, comparing „spaces of experiences“ COBETT (Vienna) presented a sketch of Jew- and „horizons of expectations“ (Reinhard ish memory discourses in postwar society, Koselleck) on different sides of the front and showing how Austrian Jews framed them- in different countries. According to Wyrwa, selves – in the words of the Viennese Rabbi the First World War was a decisive moment and historian Max Grunwald (1871–1953) – because the previous unity of European Jewry as „the only loyal Austrians“ in the 1920s © H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved. Contesting Jewish Loyalties: The First World War and Beyond and 1930s. Focusing on the Austrian Bund final day of the conference, THOMAS IRMER jüdischer Frontsoldaten, the Jewish veteran (Berlin) presented a paper on Otto Hermann organisation founded in 1932, he showed how Kahn (1867–1934), a wealthy German-born such discourses were characterised by conti- Jewish banker and philanthropist who had nuity and rupture between Habsburg (impe- settled in the United States before the First rial) and Austrian (republican) history, as well World War. During the conflict, Kahn explic- as between Jewish and non-Jewish Austrian itly started to define himself as „an Ameri- history. can of German origins“ who supported the In the sixth session, ŽELJKA OPAR- American cause and sought to mobilise the NICA (Budapest) introduced the audience American public to defend democracy – a to the works of the Chief Rabbi of Ser- stance that was also defended after the war, bia, Rabbi Isaac Alkalay (1882–1978), from and that, ultimately, joined hands with a 1912 to 1918.
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