kenw@lcuxc.UUCP (K Wolman) (01/22/85)
I need the help of anyone on this net with a sound knowledge
of pre-World War II German-Jewish history. You may be able
to help correct what I suspect is a dangerous misconception
being fostered by an academic at a major university. The
problem was passed along to me by one of this man's current
students, and I agreed to post it to the net.
In discussing the rise of Fascism and Nazism in the 1920's
in Germany, this professor alleged that there was no
German-Jewish middle class, only a group of wealthy and
powerful Jews at the top of the economic ladder, and a
Jewish "underclass" at the bottom. This apparent demography
made it easier for Hitler to sell his contradictory theories
of the Jews being "untermenschen" on the one hand, and
responsible for manipulating Germany's post-World War I
economy into collapse on the other.
The professor's theory sounds utterly at odds with anything
I personally ever heard about German Jews. The very fact
that Hitler's earliest anti-Semitic laws barred Jews from
the learned professions, the civil service, and later from
law and medicine, suggests the existence of a Jewish middle
class that would be damaged by such legislation. There's
also the obvious question of how does one define "middle
class." To suggest a polarized Jewish population in Germany
made up of a very wealthy and powerful upper class and an
impoverished lower class seems grossly inaccurate.
I suspect that the promulgator of this theory has rewritten
the definition of "middle class" to suit his theory. He
seems to be describing pre-War Poland more than Germany; and
even there, he is not entirely accurate, since whatever
Jewish wealth existed in Poland in the years between the two
World Wars probably did not translate into government
influence.
The problem is, in order to refute what appears to be
obvious misinformation, one needs access to valid,
academically acceptable documentation: i.e., breakdowns of
German citizens in the period 1920-1930 by race and/or
religion, occupation, earnings. This might exist in German
or English.
In the 1925 reissue of the 1900-1906 Jewish Encyclopedia,
the professor's student found occupational demographics from
the late Nineteenth Century; they came from a book by one
Jacobs (no first name cited), Studies in Jewish Statistics.
She also found the list from Jewish People: Past and
Present for 1933, but it's too broadly categorized to be
academically valid.
In addition, she was also able to locate some data in a book
entitled Jewish People, Past and Present (Volume 1), (New
York : Central Yiddish Cultural Association, 1946, p. 379),
which listed the German Jews in 1933 falling into the
following occupational categories (by percentage):
Industry and Trade 18.7
Commerce and Credit 49.8
Communications and Transportation 0.3
Public Service/Liberal Professions 9.4
Domestic/Personal Service 1.3
Nonlabor Income 20.5
Can anyone suggest additional sources from which to gather
accurate information to refute the argument that no German
Jewish middle class existed in the years before World War
II?
--
Kenneth T. Wolman
Bell Communications Research @ Livingston, NJ
lcuxc!kenw
(201) 740-4565
("My doctorate's in Literature, but that seems like a
pretty good pulse to me. . . .")