From Leipzig to Jerusalem: Erich Brauer, a Jewish Ethnographer in Search of a Field1

Naharaim 2014, 8(1): 91–119 Vered Madar, Dani Schrire From Leipzig to Jerusalem: Erich Brauer, a Jewish Ethnographer in Search of a Field1 Abstract: Erich Brauer (1895–1942) was born in Berlin, where he was active in the Jung Juda youth-movement. A talented graphic artist, he was trained as an ethnologist in Leipzig and is best known today for his ethnological studies done in Palestine, especially his monographs on the Jews of Yemen (published in German in 1934) and the Jews of Kurdistan (published in Hebrew in 1947 and in English in 1993). Brauer’s work is discussed in relation to his disciplinary habitus as a diffusionist ethnologist whose dissertation in Leipzig was de- voted to the religion of the Herero and what was then known as the “Hamitic Thesis.” This background helps explain his relation to “the field” in two senses – the site where ethnographic fieldwork is conducted and the disciplinary field of German ethnology (Völkerkunde). These two fields are inseparable from one another and are discussed in the context of the status of ethnographic disci- plines at The Hebrew University in Mandatory Palestine. Finally, the paper ex- amines historiographic issues relating to the fate of the communities Brauer studied, his own Zionist identity, and the way German ethnology was practiced during National Socialism. DOI 10.1515/naha-2014-0005 1 This study began as part of a joint project of the Institut für Kulturanthropologie/Europäische Ethnologie Göttingen and the Folklore Program of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem –“Per- spectives on Cultural Studies,” directed by Regina Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem and funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung / MWK Niedersachsen. We would like to thank Orit Abuhav, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Udo Mischek and Yosef Tobi for their valuable comments and suggestions at different stages of this study. We would also like to thank the reviewers and editors of this publication. Vered Madar: Da’at Hamakom Center for the Study of Cultures of Place in the Modern Jewish World, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel, E-Mail: [email protected] Dani Schrire: Program for Folklore and Folk-Culture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel, [email protected] Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 9/12/14 2:10 PM 92 Vered Madar, Dani Schrire Steht man an einem Sonnabendnachmittag auf der Jaffa Straße von Jerusalem und läßt die Juden aller Stämme an sich vorüberziehen, so wird man sogleich diese dunklen, klei- nen, schmalgliedrigen Gestalten aus dem bunten Bilde der übrigen herauserkennen.2 This description of the Jews from Yemen was written by Erich Brauer, among the first officially trained scholars in the emerging academic discipline of Völ- kerkunde in Germany, who completed his dissertation in 1924 at the University of Leipzig on the religion of the Herero of South-West Africa. Although Brauer is not well known in German ethnological circles today, his works on the Jews of Yemen and the Jews of Kurdistan are recognized as milestones in the study of these communities in Israel, where he is considered one of the forefathers of local anthropology as it developed in Palestine.3 In what follows, we will discuss Brauer’s work from two perspectives. First, we will characterize Brauer’s disciplinary habitus as a researcher.4 Relying on Bourdieu’s terminology,5 we assume that Brauer’s activity in Palestine follows a practical logic, learned in Germany, which is manifested explicitly and impli- 2 Erich Brauer, Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuch- handlung, 1934), 51: “One stands on a Saturday afternoon on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, letting the Jews from all the communities pass by, and immediately one manages to distinguish these dark, small, slim forms from the rest of the whole picture.” 3 Orit Abuhav has researched Erich Brauer and published two articles about him in Hebrew. See: Orit Abuhav, “Pnei adam: al trumatam shel ha-etnologim Erich Brauer ve-Raphael Patai le-ḥeker ha-antropologia shel ha-yehudim” [The Human Countenance: The Contribution of the Ethnologists Erich Brauer and Raphael Patai to the Anthropology of the Jews], Meḥkarei yerushalayim be-folklor yehudi 22 (2002), 159–177; Orhit Abuhav, “Antropologia be-hithavut: ha-universita ha-ivrit u-mada ha-adam” [The Hebrew University and the ‘Science of Man’ up to 1948], in Toldot ha-universita ha-ivrit be-yerushalayim: hitbasesut uẓmiḥa, ed. Hagit Lavsky (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2005), 573–593. Brauer’s pioneering status is also re- flected in her Hebrew book on the history of anthropology in Israel. See: Orit Abuhav, Karov eẓel aḥerim: hitpatḥut ha-antropologia be-yisrael (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2010). 4 Though the term “disciplinary habitus” is an extension of Bourdieu’s terminology, we em- ploy it here in a similar way to that used by James Clifford. See: James Clifford, “Spatial Prac- tices: Fieldwork, Travel and the Disciplining of Anthropology,” in Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of Field Science, eds. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 85–222. 5 We try to avoid what Pierre Bourdieu called “legalism”: “the tendency among ethnologists to describe the social world in the language of rules” and to replace it with a less rigid terminology, where “the modes of behavior created by the habitus do not have the fine regularity of the modes of behavior deduced from a legislative principle: the habitus goes hand in glove with vagueness and indeterminacy […] it obeys a practical logic, that of vagueness, of the more-or- less, which defines one’s ordinary relation to the world.” See: Pierre Bourdieu, “Codification,” in In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. by Matthew Adamson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990 [1987]), 76–78 (original italics). Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 9/12/14 2:10 PM From Leipzig to Jerusalem 93 citly in his work on Jewish communities in Jerusalem. We will then discuss Brauer’s studies as they apply both to the field as a site of ethnography and the disciplinary field of German ethnology (Völkerkunde). These two fields are inseparable, and will be discussed in the context of the status of ethnographic dis- ciplines at The Hebrew University in Mandatory Palestine. Finally, we will examine historiographic issues relating to the fate of the communities Brauer studied as well as the way German ethnology was practiced during National Socialism. Following the ethno-historian Greg Dening, who noted that “[h]is- tories are metaphors of the past: they translate sets of events into sets of sym- bols. But histories are also metonymies of the present: the present has existence in and through their expression,”6 we examine our own academic field in relation to Brauer’s fieldwork and his position in the field of ethnology. Erich Immanuel Brauer was born to a Jewish family in Berlin on July 28, 1895.7 In childhood, he was diagnosed with Scheuermann’s disease, which left him a hunchback for the rest of his life.8 In his youth, Brauer was one of the leaders of the Jung Juda Zionist youth movement and was deeply involved with the movement’s activities.9 He was a talented graphic artist who worked in gra- 6 Greg Dening, Performances (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 37. 7 The following biographical sketch is based on four main sources: a short handwritten CV by Brauer, Apr. 15, 1924, Universitätsarchiv Leipzig, Phil. Fak. Prom. 9976; a letter Brauer wrote to the School of Oriental Studies of the Hebrew University, Oct. 16, 1929, The Hebrew University Archive, Lord Plummer file; a letter Brauer wrote to the Hebrew University Chancellor, Dr. Y. L. Magnes, Jan. 27, 1935, The Hebrew University Archive, Brauer file; a letter from Brauer’s sister, Grete Heller to Raphael Patai, undated, but based on the correspondence between the two, it is probably from August 1946 (we thank Dr. Orit Abuhav, who supplied us with a copy of this valuable letter). 8 This is visible in photos shown in the online archive of the Brauer-Heller family (whose in- credible documentation of Brauer’s output and of the everyday life of German-Jews in Palestine is beyond the scope of the present article). The archive was uploaded by Brauer’s nephew, Eri Heller, to “Flickr.” It contains numerous sets of paintings, drawings, graphic designs and photos by Brauer, as well as photos of Brauer himself. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/erich- brauer/sets/ (accessed October 17 2013). The archive also contains documentation of the life of the family of Grete Heller (Brauer’s sister), which is of particular interest to students of Ger- man-Jewish life in Palestine: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellerbrauer/sets/. We would like extend our gratitude to Eri Heller for his labors in creating this internet archive and for allow- ing us to reproduce some photos in this publication. Sammlung Familien Brauer / Heller is stored in the Jewish museum in Berlin. For a complete list of contents of this collection see: http://objekte.jmberlin.de/object/jmb-obj-452241. 9 In the youth movement he befriended Gershom (Gerhard) Scholem. In Berlin they jointly edited Die Blau-Weisse Brille – which, according to Brauer’s sister, was a humorous teenager journal: letter from Ms. Heller to Raphael Patai, Sep. 23, 1947, folder 107, Edoth Archive, Arc. 40 1737, The National Library of Israel, Archives Department. It seems that Brauer was a promi- Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 9/12/14 2:10 PM 94 Vered Madar, Dani Schrire phic design between 1915 and 1917.

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