In Search of Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria, 1918-1933

"... an excellent collection... well written and cogently argued." --David N. Myers

The history of Jews in interwar Germany and Austria is often viewed either as the culmination of tremendous success in the economic and cultural realms and of individual assimilation and acculturation, or as the beginning of the road that led to Auschwitz. By contrast, this volume demonstrates a reemerging sense of community within the German-speaking Jewish population of these two countries in the two decades after World War I.

Michael Brenner is Professor of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich. He is author of The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany and After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany.

Derek J. Penslar is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Indiana University. He is author of Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918.

Acknowledgments

Introduction by Michael Brenner and Derek J. Penslar

1. German Jews between Fulfillment and Disillusion: The Individual and the Community Shulamit Volkov

2. Gemeinschaft within Gemeinde: Religious Ferment in Weimar Liberal Judaism Michael A. Meyer

3. Visions of Gemeindeorthodoxie in Weimar Germany: The Approaches of Nehemiah Anton Nobel and Isak Unna David Ellenson

4. Turning Inward: Jewish Youth in Weimar Germany Michael Brenner

5. Between Deutschtum and Judentum: Ideological Controversies Inside the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (CV), 1919-1933 Avraham Barkai

6. "Verjudung des Judentums": Was there a Zionist Subculture in Western Germany during the Weimar Period? Jacob Borut

7. Written out of History: Bundists in Vienna and the Varieties of Jewish Experience in the Austrian First Republic Jack Jacobs

8. Jewish Ethnicity in a New Nation-State: The Crisis of Identity in the Austrian Republic Marsha L. Rozenblit

9. Gender, Identity, and Community: Jewish University Women in Germany and Austria Harriet Pass Freidenreich

10. The Crisis of the Jewish Family in Weimar Germany: Social Conditions and Cultural Representations Sharon Gillerman

11. "Youth in Need": Correctional Education (Fürsorgeerziehung) and Family Breakdown in German-Jewish Families Claudia Prestel

12. Decline and Survival of Rurual Jewish Communities Steven M. Lowenstein

Contributors

Index