Jews have lived in Germany, or originally known ”Ashkenaz”, at least since the early 4th century, through both periods of tolerance and spasms of antisemitic violence, culminating in the Holocaust and the near-destruction of the Jewish community in Germany and much of Europe, the subsequent division of Germany and reunification, and post-unification immigration of Jews from Russia.
The date of the first settlement of Jews in the regions the Romans called Germania Superior, Germania Inferior, and Germania Magna is not known. The first authentic document relating to a large and well-organized Jewish community in these regions dates from 321CE, and refers to Cologne on the Rhine; it indicates that the legal status of the Jews there was the same as elsewhere in the Roman Empire. They enjoyed some civil liberties, but were restricted regarding the dissemination of their faith, the keeping of Christian slaves, and the holding of office under the government.
Jews were otherwise free to follow any occupation open to their fellow citizens, and were engaged in agriculture, trade, industry, and gradually bankers and money-lending. These conditions at first continued in the subsequently established Germanic kingdoms under the Burgundians and Franks, for ecclesiasticism took root slowly. The Merovingian rulers who succeeded to the Burgundian empire, were devoid of fanaticism, and gave scant support to the efforts of the Church to restrict the civic and social status of the Jews.
Charlemagne readily made use of the Church for the purpose of infusing coherence into the loosely joined parts of his extensive empire, by any means a blind tool of the canonical law. He employed Jews for diplomatic purposes, sending, for instance, a Jew as interpreter and guide with his embassy to Harun al-Rashid. Yet, even then, a gradual change occurred in the lives of the Jews. Unlike the Franks, who were liable to be called to arms at any moment in those tumultuous times, the Jews were exempt from military service; hence, trade and commerce were left almost entirely in their hands, and they secured the remunerative monopoly of money-lending when the Church forbade Christians to be usurers. This decree caused a mixed reaction of people in general in the Frankish empire (including Germany) to the Jews; Jewish people were sought everywhere as well as avoided. This ambivalence about Jews occurred because their capital was indispensable while their business was viewed as disreputable. This curious combination of circumstances increased Jewish influence, and Jews went about the country freely, settling also in the eastern portions. Aside from Cologne, the earliest communities have been established in Worms and Mainz.
The status of the German Jews remained unchanged under Charlemagne’s successor Louis the Pious. Jews were unrestricted in their commerce; however, they paid somewhat higher taxes into the state treasury than did the Christians. A special officer, the Judenmeister, was appointed by the government to protect Jewish privileges. The later Carolingians, however, followed the demands of the Church more and more. The bishops continually argued at the synods for including and enforcing anti-Semitic decrees of the canonical law, with the consequence that the majority Christian populace mistrusted the Jewish unbelievers. This feeling, among both princes and people, was further stimulated by the attacks on the civic equality of the Jews. Beginning with the 10th century, Holy Week became more and more a period of anti-Semitic activities. Yet the Saxon emperors did not treat the Jews badly, exacting from them merely the taxes levied upon all other merchants. Although they were as ignorant as their contemporaries in secular studies, they could read and understand the Hebrew prayers and the Bible in the original text. Halacha studies began to flourish about 1000.
At that time, Rav Gershom ben Judah was teaching at Metz and Mayence, gathering about him pupils from far and near. He is described in Jewish historiography as a model of wisdom, humility, and piety, and has been praised as a “lamp of the Exile”. He first stimulated the German Jews to study the treasures of their religious literature.This continuous study of the Torah and the Talmud produced such a devotion to Judaism that the Jews considered life without their religion not worth living; but they did not realize this clearly until the time of the Crusades, when they were often compelled to choose between life and faith.
The city of Mainz was the center of Jewish life during Medieval times. The official web site for the city states: One of the most glorious epoches in Mainz’s long history was the period from the beginning of the 900′s and evidently much earlier. Following the barbaric Dark Ages, a relatively safe and enlightened Carolingian period brought peace and prosperity to Mainz and much of central–western Europe. For the next 400 years, Mainz attracted many Jews as trade flourished. The greatest Jewish teachers and rabbis flocked to the Rhine. Their teachings, dialogues, decisions and influence propelled Mainz and neighboring towns along the Rhine into world-wide prominence. Their fame spread, rivaling that of other post-Diaspora cities such as Bagdhad. Western European, Ashkenazic or Germanic Judaism became centered in Mainz, breaking free of the Babylonian traditions. A Yeshiva was founded in the 10th century by Gershom ben Judah.
Mainz was the capital of European Jewry; it had its own Jewish academy for over 300 years; it was revered as the home of Gershom ben Judah, the ‘Light of the Diaspora,’ who in the eleventh century was the first to bring copies of the Talmud to Western Europe and whose directives helped Jews adapt to European practices. Gershom’s school attracted Jews from all over Europe, including the famous biblical scholar Rashi; ” and “in the mid-fourteenth century, it had the largest Jewish community in Europe, some 6,000 citizens.” “In essence,” states the City of Mainz web site, “this was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews resulting in increased trade and prosperity.”
A period of Crusade massacres 1096–1349: The First Crusade began an era of massacres of Jews in Germany. The wild excitement of Crusading, to which the Germans had been driven by exhortations to take the cross, first broke upon the Jews, the nearest representatives of an execrated opposition faith. Entire communities, like those of Trier, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, were slain, except where the slayers were anticipated by the deliberate self-destruction of their intended victims. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in the Rhenish cities alone between May and July 1096. These outbreaks of popular passion during the First Crusade influenced the status of the Jews for the next few centuries, and perhaps beyond. The Christians brought accusations against the Jews to argue that the Jews had deserved their fate. Alleged crimes, like desecration of the host, ritual murder, poisoning of wells, and treason, brought hundreds to the stake and drove thousands into exile. Jews were alleged to have caused the inroads of the Mongols, even though they suffered equally with the Christians.
When the Black Death swept over Europe in 1348–49, Christians accused Jews of poisoning wells. In the wake of this accusation, a general slaughter began throughout the Germanic and contiguous provinces, which triggered a massive exodus east to Poland. Nonrestrictive government policies and public attitudes towards Jews helped the Jewish immigrants to Poland to form the foundations of what would become the largest Jewish community in Europe.
The Roman Catholic Empire: The legal and civic status of the Jews underwent a transformation. Jewish people found a certain degree of protection with the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who claimed the right of possession and protection of all the Jews of the empire. A justification for this claim was that the Holy Roman Emperor was the successor of the emperor Titus, who was said to have acquired the Jews as his private property. The German emperors apparently claimed this right of possession more for the sake of taxing the Jews than of protecting them.
There was a variety of such taxes. Ludwig the Bavarian was a prolific creator of new taxes. In 1342 he instituted the “golden sacrificial penny” and decreed that every year all the Jews should pay to the emperor one kreutzer in every gulden of their property in addition to the taxes they were paying to the state and municipal authorities. The emperors of the house of Luxemburg devised other means of taxation. They turned their prerogatives in regard to the Jews to further account by selling at a high price to the princes and free towns of the empire the valuable privilege of taxing and mulcting the Jews. Charles IV, via the Golden Bull, granted this privilege to the seven electors of the empire when the empire was reorganized in 1356.
From this time onward, for reasons that also apparently concerned taxes, the Jews of Germany gradually passed in increasing numbers from the authority of the emperor to that of the lesser sovereigns and of the cities. For the sake of sorely needed revenue the Jews were now invited, with the promise of full protection, to return to those districts and cities from which they had shortly before been expelled. However, as soon as Jewish people acquired some property, they were again plundered and driven away. These episodes thenceforth constituted a large portion of the medieval history of the German Jews. Emperor Wenceslaus was most expert in transferring to his own coffers gold from the pockets of rich Jews. He made compacts with many cities, estates, and princes whereby he annulled all outstanding debts to the Jews in return for a certain sum paid to him. Emperor Wenceslaus declared that anyone helping Jews with the collection their debts, in spite of this annulment, would be dealt with as a robber and peacebreaker, and be forced to make restitution. This decree, which for years allegedly injured the public credit, is said to have impoverished thousands of Jewish families during the close of the 14th century.
Nor did the 15th century bring any amelioration. What happened in the time of the Crusades happened again. During the war upon the Hussite heretics became the signal for the slaughter of the unbelievers. The Jews of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia passed through all the terrors of death, forced baptism, or voluntary immolation for the sake of their faith. When the Hussites made peace with the Vatican Church, the Pope sent the Franciscan monk Capistrano (castrato) to win the renegades back into the fold and inspire them with loathing for heresy and unbelief; forty-one martyrs were burned in Breslau alone, and all Jews were forever banished from Silesia. The Franciscan monk Bernardine of Feltre brought a similar fate upon the communities in southern and western Germany. As a consequence of the fictitious confessions extracted under torture from the Jews of Trent, the populace of many cities, especially of Ratisbon, fell upon the Jews and massacred them.
The end of the 15th century, which brought a new epoch for the Christian world, brought no relief to the Jews. They remained the victims of a religious hatred that ascribed to them all possible evils. When the established Church, threatened in its spiritual power in Germany and elsewhere, prepared for its conflict with the culture of the Renaissance, one of its most convenient points of attack was rabbinic literature. At this time, as once before in France, Jewish converts spread false reports in regard to the Talmud. But an advocate of the book arose in the person of Johannes Reuchlin, the German humanist, who was the first one in Germany to include the Hebrew language among the humanities. His opinion, though strongly opposed by the Dominicans and their followers, finally prevailed when the humanistic Pope Leo X permitted the Talmud to be printed in Italy.
During the 16th and 17th centuries: The feeling against the Jews themselves, however, remained the same. During the 16th and 17th centuries they were still subject to the will of the princes and free cities, both in Catholic and in Protestant countries. The German emperors were not always able to protect them, even when they desired to do so, as did the chivalrous Emperor Maximilian I; they could not prevent the accusations of ritual murder and desecration of the host. The unending religious controversies that rent the empire and finally led to the Thirty Years’ War further aggravated the position of the Jews, who were made the prey of each party in turn. The emperors even occasionally expelled their kammerknechte from their crown lands, although they still assumed the office of protector. Ferdinand I expelled the Jews from Lower Austria and Görz, and would have carried out his vow to banish them also from Bohemia had not the noble Mordecai Zemah Cohen of Prague induced the pope to absolve the emperor from this vow. Emperor Leopold I expelled them in 1670 from Vienna and the Archduchy of Austria, in spite of their vested rights and the intercession of princes and ecclesiastics; the exiles were received in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Great Elector Frederick William (1620–1688), deciding to tolerate all religious beliefs impartially, protected his new subjects against oppression and slander. In spite of the civic and religious restrictions to which they were subjected even here, the Jews of this flourishing community gradually attained to a wider outlook, although their one-sided education, the result of centuries of oppression, restricted them in European culture and kept them in intellectual bondage.
Migration of Polish and Lithuanian Jews to Germany: The atrocities of Chmielnicki and his Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany. This trend accelerated throughout the 18th century as parts of Germany began to readmit Jews, and with the worsening conditions in Poland after the Partition of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795 between Prussia, Austria, and Russia.
The Jews had kept their piety and their intellectual activity. They were devoted to the study of the Halacha. In the 11th century Rabbi Gershom’s pupils had been the teachers of Rashi, and his commentaries on the Bible and Talmud marked out new paths for learning. The German Jews contributed much to the spread and completion of these commentaries. Beginning with the 12th century they worked independently, especially in the fields of Haggadah and ethics. R. Simon ha-Darshan’s Yalḳuṭ (c. 1150), the Book of the Pious by R. Judah ha-Hasid of Ratisbon (c. 1200), the Salve-Mixer (Rokeaḥ) of R. Eleasar of Worms (c. 1200), the halakic collection Or Zarua of R. Isaac of Vienna (c. 1250), the responsa of Rabbi Meïr of Rothenburg (died 1293), are enduring monuments of German Jewish industry. Even the horrors of the Black Death could not completely destroy this literary activity. Profound and wide scholarship was less common after the middle of the 14th century, which led to the institution of allowing only those scholars to become rabbis who could produce a written authorization to teach (hattarat hora’ah), issued by a recognized master.
To this period of decline belong also a number of large collections of responsa and useful commentaries on earlier Halacha works. The customs and ordinances relating to the form and order of worship were especially studied in this period, and were definitely fixed for the ritual of the synagogues of western and eastern Germany by Jacob Mölln (Maharil) and Isaac Tyrnau. As it was difficult to produce any new works in the field of the Halakah, and as the dry study of well-worn subjects no longer satisfied, scholars sought relief in the interpretations and traditions embodied in the Cabala. There arose a new, ascetic view of life that found literary expression in the Shene Luḥot ha-Berit by Rabbi Isaiah Horovitz of Frankfurt am Main (died 1626), and that appealed especially to the pietistic German Jews. The end and aim of existence were now sought in the aspiration of the soul toward its fountainhead, combined with the endeavor to saturate the earthly life with the spirit of God. By a continuous attitude of reverence to God, by lofty thoughts and actions, the Jew was to rise above the ordinary affairs of the day and become a worthy member of the kingdom of God. Every act of his life was to remind him of his religious duties and stimulate him to mystic contemplation.
The oppressions under which the Jews suffered encouraged an austere view of life. They lived in fear in their Jews’ streets, subsisting on what they could earn as peddlers and as dealers in old clothes. Cut off from all participation in public and municipal life, they had to seek in their homes compensation for the things denied them outside. Their family life was intimate, beautified by faith, industry, and temperance. They were loyal to their community. In consequence of their complete segregation from their Christian fellow citizens, the German speech of the ghetto was interladen with Hebraisms, and also with Slavonic elements since the 17th century, when the atrocities of Chmielnicki and his Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany. As the common people understood only the books written in this peculiar dialect and printed in Hebrew characters, a voluminous literature of edifying, devotional, and belletristic works sprang up in Judæo-German to satisfy the needs of these readers. Although this output was one-sided, presupposing almost no secular knowledge, its importance in the history of Jewish culture must not be underestimated. The study of the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, and halacha legal works, with their voluminous commentaries, preserved the plasticity of the Jewish mind, until a new Moses came to lead his coreligionists out of intellectual bondage toward modern culture.
Moses Mendelssohn (1778) thought that the Middle Ages, which could take from the Jews neither their faith nor their past intellectual achievements, had yet deprived them of the chief means (namely, the vernacular) of comprehending the intellectual labors of others. The chasm that in consequence separated them from their educated fellow citizens was bridged by Mendelssohn’s translation of the Torah into German. This book became the manual of the German Jews, teaching them to write and speak the German language, and preparing them for participation in German culture and secular science. Mendelssohn lived to see the first fruits of his endeavors. In 1778 his friend David Friedländer founded the Jewish free school in Berlin, this was the first Jewish educational institution in Germany in which instruction, in scripture as well as in general science, was undertaken in German-only. Similar schools were founded later in the German towns of Breslau (1792), Seesen (1801), Frankfurt (1804), and Wolfenbüttel (1807), and the Galician towns of Brody and Tarnopol (1815).
A youthful enthusiasm for new ideals at that time pervaded the entire civilized world; all religions were recognized as equally entitled to respect, and the champions of political freedom undertook to restore the Jews to their full rights as citizens. The humane Austrian Emperor Joseph II was foremost in espousing these new ideals. As early as 1782 he issued the Patent of Toleration for the Jews of Lower Austria, thereby establishing the civic equality of his Jewish subjects. Prussia conferred citizenship upon the Prussian Jews in 1812, though this by no means included full equality with other citizens. The German federal edicts of 1815 merely held out the prospect of full equality; but it was not realized at that time, and even the promises which had been given were modified. In Austria many laws restricting the trade and traffic of Jewish subjects remained in force until the middle of the 19th century, in spite of the patent of toleration. Some of the crown lands, as Styria and Upper Austria, forbade any Jews to settle within their territory; in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia many cities were closed to them. The Jews were, in addition, burdened with heavy taxes and imposts.
In the German kingdom of Prussia, also, the government modified materially the promises made in the disastrous year 1813. The promised uniform regulation of Jewish affairs was time and again postponed. In the period between 1815 and 1847 there were no less than 21 territorial Jews’ laws in the eight provinces of the Prussian state, each having to be observed by a part of the Jewish community. There was at that time no official authorized to speak in the name of all German Jews. Nevertheless, a few courageous men came forward to maintain their cause, foremost among them being Gabriel Riesser, a Jewish lawyer of Hamburg (died 1863), who demanded full civic equality for his race from the German princes and peoples. He aroused public opinion to such an extent that this equality was granted in Prussia on April 6, 1848, and in Hanover and Nassau on September 5 and on December 12, respectively. In Württemberg equality was conceded on December 3, 1861; in Baden on October 4, 1862; in Holstein on July 14, 1863; and in Saxony on December 3, 1868. After the establishment of the North German Confederation by the law of July 3, 1869, all statutory restrictions imposed on the followers of different religions were abolished; this decree was extended to all the states of the German empire after the events of 1870.
The intellectual development of the Jews kept pace with their civic enfranchisement. Recognizing that pursuit of modern culture would not at once assure them the civic status they desired, their leaders set themselves to reawaken Jewish self-consciousness by applying the methods of modern scholarship to the study of Jewish sources. They sought to stimulate the rising generation by familiarizing them with the intellectual achievements of their ancestors, which had been accumulating for thousands of years; and at the same time they sought to rehabilitate Judaism in the eyes of the world. The leader of this new movement and the founder of modern Jewish science was Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), who united broad general scholarship with a thorough knowledge of the entire Jewish literature and who, with his contemporary Solomon Judah Löb Rapoport of Galicia (1790–1867), especially aroused their coreligionists in Germany, Austria, and Italy. The German scholars who cooperated in the work of these two men may be noted here. H. Arnheim wrote a scholarly manual of the Hebrew language; Julius Fürst and David Cassel compiled Hebrew dictionaries; Fürst and Bernhard Bär compiled concordances to the entire Bible; Wolf Heidenheim and Seligmann Baer edited correct Masoretic texts of the Bible; Solomon Frensdorff subjected the history of the Masorah to a thoroughly scientific investigation; the Bible was translated into German under the direction of Zunz and Salomon; Ludwig Philippson, Solomon Hirschheimer, and Julius Fürst wrote complete Biblical commentaries; H. Grätz and S.R. Hirsch dealt with some of the Biblical books; Zacharias Frankel and Abraham Geiger investigated the Aramaic and Greek translations. Nor was the traditional law neglected. Jacob Levy compiled lexicographical works to the Talmud and Midrashim. Michael Sachs and Joseph Perles investigated the foreign elements found in the language of the Talmud. Numerous and, on the whole, excellent editions of halahca and haggadic midrashim were issued—for instance, Zuckermandel’s edition of the Tosefta and Theodor’s edition of Midrash Rabbah to Genesis. Zacharias Frankel wrote an introduction to the Mishnah and to the Jerusalem Talmud, and David Hoffmann and Israel Lewy investigated the origin and development of the Halakah.
Religio-philosophical literature was also assiduously cultivated, and the original Arabic texts of Jewish religious philosophers were made accessible. M.H. Landauer issued Saadia Gaon’s works, and H. Hirschfeld the works of Judah ha-Levi, M. Joel and I. Guttmann investigated the works of Jewish thinkers and their influence on the general development of philosophy, while S. Hirsch attempted to develop the philosophy of religion along the lines laid down by Hegel, and Solomon Steinheim propounded a new theory of revelation in accordance with the system of the synagogue.
The enfranchisement of the Jews and the reflorescence of Jewish science led to a reorganization of their institutions to transmit the ancient traditions intact with the new generations. Opinions differed widely as to the best methods of accomplishing this object. While Geiger and Holdheim were ready to meet the modern spirit of liberalism, Samson Raphael Hirsch defended the customs handed down by the fathers. As neither of these two tendencies was followed by the mass of the faithful, Zacharias Frankel initiated a moderate Reform movement on a historical basis, in agreement with which the larger German communities reorganized their public worship by reducing the medieval payyeṭanic additions to the prayers, introducing congregational singing and regular sermons, and requiring scientifically-trained rabbis.
In general, it was easier to agree upon the means of training children for the Reformed worship and awakening the interest of Jewish affairs in adults. The religious schools were an outcome of the desire to add religious instruction to the secular education of Jewish children prescribed by the state. As the Talmudic schools, still existing in Germany in the first third of the 19th century, were gradually deserted; rabbinical seminaries were founded, in which Talmudic instruction followed the methods introduced by Zacharias Frankel in the Jewish Theological Seminary opened at Breslau in 1854. Since then special attention has been devoted to religious literature. Textbooks on religion and specifically on Biblical and Jewish history, as well as aids to the translation and explanation of the Bible and the prayer-books, were compiled to meet the demands of modern pedagogics. Pulpit oratory began to flourish as never before, foremost among the great German preachers being M. Sachs and M. Joël. Nor was synagogal music neglected, Louis Lewandowski especially contributing to its development.
The public institutions of the Jewish communities served to supplement the work of teachers and leaders, and to promote Jewish solidarity. This was the primary object of the Jewish press, created by Ludwig Philippson. In 1837 he founded the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, which has been followed by a number of similar periodicals. They had succeeded in preserving a certain unity of religious opinion and conviction among the Jews, with the gratifying result of unity of action for the common good. Societies for the cultivation of Jewish literature were founded, as well as associations of teachers, rabbis, and leaders of congregations.
In response to the Enlightenment and the emancipation, elements within German Jewry sought to reform Jewish belief and practice, starting the Jewish Reform Movement. In light of modern scholarship, these German Jews denied divine authorship of the Torah, declared only those biblical laws concerning ethics to be binding, and stated that the rest of halakha (Jewish law) need no longer be viewed as normative. Circumcision was abandoned, rabbis wore vestments modeled after Protestant ministers, and instrumental accompaniment banned in Jewish Sabbath worship since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, reappeared in Reform synagogues, most often in the form of a pipe organ. The traditional Hebrew prayer book (the Siddur) was replaced with a German text which truncated or altogether excised most parts of the traditional service. Reform synagogues began to be called temples, a term reserved in more traditional Judaism for the Temple in Jerusalem. The practice of Kashrut (keeping kosher) was abandoned as an impediment to spirituality. The early Reform movement renounced Zionism and declared Germany to be its new Zion. This anti-Zionist view is no longer held; see below. One of the most important figures in the history of Reform Judaism is the radical reformer Samuel Holdheim.
Freedom and repression 1815–1930s:Napoleon emancipated the Jews across Europe, but with Napoleon’s fall in 1815, growing nationalism resulted in increasing repression. In 1819, Hep-Hep riots destroyed Jewish property and killed many Jews. The Revolution of 1848 swung the pendulum back towards freedom for the Jews, and in 1871, with the unification of Germany by Bismarck, came their emancipation, but the financial crisis of 1873 created another era of repression. Starting in the 1870s, anti-Semites of the völkisch movement were the first to describe themselves as such, because they viewed Jews as part of a Semitic race that could never be properly assimilated into German society. Such was the ferocity of the anti-Jewish feeling of the völkisch movement that by 1900, anti-Semitic had entered English to describe anyone who had anti-Jewish feelings. However, despite massive protests and petitions, the völkisch movement failed to persuade the government to revoke Jewish emancipation, and in the 1912 Reichstag elections, the parties with völkisch-movement sympathies suffered a temporary defeat.
Jews experienced a period of ostensible legal equality from 1848 until the rise of Nazi Germany. In the opinion of historian Fritz Stern, by the end of the 19th century, what had emerged was a Jewish-German symbiosis, where German Jews had merged elements of German and Jewish culture into a unique new one. However, statutory equality and actual practice did not coincide. As Walter Rathenau found out, even in 1905 there was hardly any chance of a Jew receiving a judgeship, and even then only if the Jewish candidate renounced his faith and converted to Christianity.
A higher percentage of German Jews fought in World War I than that of any other ethnic, religious or political group in Germany—in fact, some 12,000 died for their country.Ironically, it was a Jewish lieutenant, Hugo Gutmann, who awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, to a 29-year-old corporal named Adolf Hitler. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Gutmann left Germany and escaped to the United States.
In October 1916, the German Military High Command administered Judenzählung (census of Jews). Designed to confirm accusations of the lack of patriotism among German Jews, the census disproved the charges, but its results were not made public. Denounced as a “statistical monstrosity”, the census was a catalyst to intensified antisemitism and social myths such as the “stab-in-the-back legend” (Dolchstosslegende).
Many German Jews received high political positions such as foreign minister and vice chancellor in the Weimar Republic. The Weimar constitution was the work of a German Jew, Hugo Preuss, who later became minister of the interior. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews became somewhat common from the 19th century; for example, the wife of German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann was Jewish.
Jews under the Nazis (1933–1939): In 1933, persecution of the Jews became active Nazi policy, but at first laws were not as rigorously obeyed or as devastating as in later years. Such clauses, known as Aryan paragraphs, had been postulated previously by antisemites and enacted in many private organizations.
On April 1, 1933, Jewish doctors, shops, lawyers and stores were boycotted. Only six days later, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed, banning Jews from being employed in government. This law meant that Jews were now indirectly and directly dissuaded or banned from privileged and upper-level positions reserved for “Aryan” Germans. From then on, Jews were forced to work at more menial positions, beneath non-Jews. On August 2, 1934, President Paul von Hindenburg died. No new president was appointed; instead the powers of the chancellor and president were combined into the office of Führer. This, and a tame government with no opposition parties, allowed Adolf Hitler totalitarian control of law-making. The army also swore an oath of loyalty personally to Hitler, giving him power over the military; this position allowed him to easily create more pressure on the Jews than ever before.
In 1935 and 1936, the pace of persecution of the Jews increased. In May 1935, Jews were forbidden to join the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces), and that year, anti-Jewish propaganda appeared in Nazi German shops and restaurants. The Nuremberg Racial Purit Laws were passed around the time of the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg; On September 15, 1935, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor was passed, preventing marriage between any Jew and non-Jew. At the same time the Reich Citizenship Law was passed and was reinforced in November by a decree, stating that all Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, were no longer citizens (Reichsbürger) of their own country (their official status became Reichsangehöriger, “subject of the state”). This meant that they had no basic civil rights, such as that to vote. (But at this time the right to vote for the non-Jewish Germans only meant the obligation to vote for the Nazi party.) This removal of basic citizens’ rights preceded harsher laws to be passed in the future against Jews. The drafting of the Nuremberg Laws is often attributed to Hans Globke.
In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics, higher education and industry. Because of this, there was nothing to stop the anti-Jewish actions which spread across the Nazi-German economy. After the Night of the Long Knives, the Schutzstaffel (SS) became the dominant policing power in Germany. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was eager to please Hitler and so willingly obeyed his orders. Since the SS had been Hitler’s personal bodyguard, its members were far more loyal and skilled than those of the Sturmabteilung (SA) had been. Because of this, they were also supported, though distrusted, by the army, which was now more willing to agree with Hitler’s decisions than when the SA was dominant
All of this allowed Hitler more direct control over government and political attitude towards Jews in Nazi Germany. In 1937 and 1938, new laws were implemented, and the segregation of Jews from the true “Aryan” German population was started. In particular, Jews were penalized financially for their perceived racial status.
On June 4, 1937, a young German Jew, Helmut Hirsch, was executed for being involved in a plot to kill the Nazi leadership, including Hitler. As of March 1, 1938, government contracts could no longer be awarded to Jewish businesses. On September 30, “Aryan” doctors could only treat “Aryan” patients. Provision of medical care to Jews was already hampered by the fact that Jews were banned from being doctors or having any professional jobs.
Beginning August 17, 1938, Jews had to add Israel (males) or Sarah (females) to their names, and a large J was to be imprinted on their passports beginning October 5. On November 15 Jewish children were banned from going to normal schools. By April 1939, nearly all Jewish companies had either collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or had been persuaded to sell out to the Nazi German government. This further reduced Jews’ rights as human beings; they were in many ways officially separated from the German populace.
The increasingly totalitarian, militaristic regime which was being imposed on Germany by Hitler allowed him to control the actions of the SS and the military. On November 7, 1938, a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, attacked and shot two German officials in the Nazi German embassy in Paris. (Grynszpan was angry about the treatment of his parents by the Nazi Germans.) On 9 November the German Attache, vom Rath, died. Goebbels issued instructions that demonstrations against Jews were to be organized and undertaken in retaliation throughout Germany. The SS ordered the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) to be carried out that night, 9–10 November 1938. The storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalised, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Approximately 100 Jews were killed, and another 20,000 arrested, some of whom were sent to the newly formed concentration camps. Many Germans were disgusted by this action when the full extent of the damage was discovered, so Hitler ordered it to be blamed on the Jews. Collectively, the Jews were made to pay back one billion Reichsmark in damages, the fine being raised by confiscating 20 per cent of every Jewish property. The Jews also had to repair all damages at their own cost.
The Holocaust (1940–1945) The Nazi persecution of the Jews culminated in the Holocaust, in which approximately six million European Jews were deported and murdered during World War II. On May 19, 1943, Germany was declared judenrein (clean of Jews; also judenfrei: free of Jews). It is believed that between 170,000 and 200,000 German Jews had already been killed.
Most German Jews who survived the war in exile decided to remain abroad; however, a small number returned to Germany. Additionally, approximately 15,000 German Jews survived the concentration camps or survived by going into hiding. These German Jews were joined by approximately 200,000 displaced persons (DPs), eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors. They came to Allied-occupied western Germany after finding no homes left for them in eastern Europe (especially in Poland) or after having been liberated on German soil. The overwhelming majority of the DPs wished to emigrate to Palestine and lived in Allied- and U.N.-administered refugee camps, remaining isolated from German society. After Israeli independence in 1948, most left Germany; however, 10,000 to 15,000 remained. Despite hesitations and a long history between German Jews (Yekkes) and eastern European Jews (Ostjuden), the two disparate groups united to form the basis of a new Jewish community. In 1950 they founded their unitary representative organization, the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
The Jewish community in West Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s was characterized by its social conservatism and generally private nature. Although there were Jewish elementary schools in West Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich, the community had a very high average age. Few young adults chose to remain in Germany, and many of those who did married non-Jews. Many critics of the community and its leadership accused it of ossification. In the 1980s, a college for Jewish studies was established in Heidelberg; however, a disproportionate number of its students were not Jewish. By 1990, the community numbered between 30,000 and 40,000. Although the Jewish community of Germany did not have the same impact as the pre-1933 community, some Jews were prominent in German public life, including Hamburg mayor Herbert Weichmann; Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Justice (and Deputy Chief Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court) Rudolf Katz; Hesse Attorney General Fritz Bauer; former Hesse Minister of Economics Heinz-Herbert Karry; West Berlin politician Jeanette Wolff; television personalities Hugo Egon Balder, Hans Rosenthal, Ilja Richter, Inge Meysel, and Michel Friedman; Jewish communal leaders Heinz Galinski, Ignatz Bubis, Paul Spiegel, and Charlotte Knobloch (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland); and Germany’s most influential literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki.
The Jewish community of East Germany, a Communist country, numbered only a few hundred active members. Most Jews who settled in the Soviet occupation zone or the German Democratic Republic did so either because their pre-1933 homes had been in eastern Germany or because they had been politically leftist before the Nazi seizure of power and, after 1945, wished to build an antifascist, socialist Germany. Most such politically engaged Jews were not religious or active in the official Jewish community. They included writers Anna Seghers, Stefan Heym, Jurek Becker, and composer Hanns Eisler.
The end of the Cold War contributed to a growth in the Jewish people of Germany. Today, Germany is home to a nominal Jewish population of more than 200,000; 108,000 are officially registered with Jewish religious communities. Most Jews in Germany are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. There is also a handful of Jewish families from Muslim countries, including Iran, Turkey, Morocco, and Afghanistan. Germany has the third-largest Jewish population in Western Europe after France (600,000) and Great Britain (300,000) and the fastest-growing Jewish population in Europe in recent years. The influx of refugees, many of them seeking renewed contact with their Jewish heritage, has led to a renaissance of Jewish life on German soil. In 1996, Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin opened a center. In 2003, Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin ordained 10 rabbis, the first rabbis to be ordained in Germany since World War II. In 2002 a Reform rabbinical seminary, Abraham Geiger College, was established in Potsdam. In 2006, the college announced that it would be ordaining three new rabbis, the first Reform rabbis to be ordained in Germany since 1942.
Partly owing to the deep similarities between Yiddish and German, Jewish studies has become a very popular subject for academic study, and many German universities have departments or institutes of Jewish studies, culture, or history. Active Jewish religious communities have sprung up across Germany, including in many cities where the previous communities were no longer extant or were moribund. Several cities in Germany have Jewish day schools, kosher facilities, and other Jewish institutions beyond synagogues. Additionally, many of the Russian Jews were alienated from their Jewish heritage and unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Orthodox Judaism. Thus American-style Reform Judaism, led by the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany, has emerged as a powerful and popular force in Germany, even though the Central Council of Jews in Germany and most local Jewish communities officially adhere to Orthodoxy. The unresolved tension between the re-emerging Reform movement in Germany and the official Orthodoxy is one of the most pressing issues facing the community at present.
An important step for the renaissance of Jewish life in Germany occurred when, on January 27, 2003, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder signed the first-ever agreement on a federal level with the Central Council, so that Judaism was granted the same elevated, semi-established legal status in Germany as the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Church in Germany, at least since the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949.
In Germany it is a criminal act to deny the Holocaust or that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust (§130 StGB); violations can be punished with up to five years of prison. The Interior Minister of Germany, Wolfgang Schaeuble, points out the official policy of Germany: “We will not tolerate any form of extremism, xenophobia or anti-Semitism.” Although the number of right-wing groups and organisations grew from 141 (2001) to 182 (2006), especially in the formerly communist East Germany, Germany’s measures against right- wing groups and antisemitism are effective: according to the annual reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution the overall number of far-right extremists in Germany has dropped in recent years from 49,700 (2001), 45,000 (2002), 41,500 (2003), 40,700 (2004), 39,000 (2005), to 38,600 in 2006. Germany provided several million euros to fund “nationwide programs aimed at fighting far-right extremism, including teams of traveling consultants, and victims’ groups”. Despite these facts, Israeli Ambassador Shimon Stein warned in October 2006 that Jews in Germany feel increasingly unsafe, stating that they “are not able to live a normal Jewish life” and that heavy security surrounds most synagogues or Jewish community centers. Yosef Havlin, Rabbi at the Chabad Lubavitch in Frankfurt, does not agree with the Israeli Ambassador and states in an interview with Der Spiegel in September 2007 that the German public does not support far-right groups; instead, he has personally experienced the support of Germans, and as a Jew and rabbi he “feels welcome in his (hometown) Frankfurt, he is not afraid, the city is not a no-go-area”.
A flagship moment for the burgeoning Jewish community in modern Germany occurred on 9 November 2006 (the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht), when the newly constructed Ohel Jakob synagogue was dedicated in Munich, Germany.This is particularly crucial given the fact that Munich was once at the ideological heart of Nazi Germany. Jewish life in the capital Berlin is prospering, the Jewish community is growing, the Centrum Judaicum and several synagogues—including the largest in Germany have been renovated and opened, and Berlin’s annual week of Jewish culture and the Jewish Cultural Festival in Berlin, held for the 21st time, featuring concerts, exhibitions, public readings and discussions can only partially explain why Rabbi Yitzhak Ehrenberg of the orthodox Jewish community in Berlin states: “Orthodox Jewish life is alive in Berlin again. … Germany is the only European country with a growing Jewish community
Today, over 200,000 Jews or persons of Jewish descent live in Germany, one of the largest Jewish populations in a European country.The Jewish presence in Germany is older than Christianity; the first Jewish population came with the Romans to the city Cologne. A “Golden Age” in the first millennium saw the emergence of the Ashkenazi Jews, while the persecution and expulsion that followed the Crusades led to the creation of Yiddish and an overall shift eastwards. A change of status in the late Renaissance Era, combined with the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah, meant that by the 1920s Germany had one of the most integrated Jewish populations in Europe, contributing prominently to German culture and society. The vast majority either left the country or were murdered in the Holocaust.
The following is a list of some famous Jewish people from Germany proper. Jewish assimilation into Germany, and separate German ruled states through the history of Europe, therefore, the same set of people could at times be referred to as Germans, Jews, or German Jews alike.
NOTABLE GERMAN JEWS
Historical figures Politicians
Fischel Arnheim, politician
Ludwig Bamberger, politician
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, member of European Parliament, student leader in 1968
Wilhelm Dröscher, SPD politician
Kurt Eisner, Bavarian prime minister
Heinrich von Friedberg, jurist, statesman
Karl Rudolf Friedenthal, Prussian politician
Clement Freud, German-born British MP
Gregor Gysi, leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism and The Left
Alex Himelfarb, ambassador
Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State, Nobel Prize (1973)
Ludwig Landmann, mayor of Frankfurt/Main
Eduard Lasker, co-founder of the National Liberal Party
Eugen Levine, Bavarian prime minister
Jutta Oesterle-Schwerin, Member of parliament, Green party, Feminist party
Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor, (Jewish ancestry)
Eduard von Simson, President of the Reichstag,
Hugo Preuss, author of Weimar constitution
Walter Rathenau, Foreign Minister of the Weimar Republic
Herbert Weichmann, mayor of Hamburg
Jeanette Wolff, West Berlin politician
Walter Wolfgang, German-born politician
Activists
Hedwig Dohm-Schleh, feminist, author
Nahum Goldmann, president of World Jewish Congress
Josel of Rosheim, court Jew & Jewish advocate
Paul Spiegel, leader of the Zentralrat der Juden
Religious figures
Felix Adler
Hermann Adler
Nathan Marcus Adler
Samuel Adler (rabbi)
Amnon of Mainz (Amnon of Mayence, Mentz), medieval rabbi, paytan
Yair Bacharach
Leo Baeck, Reform rabbi & scholar
Jacob ben Asher, medieval rabbi
Isaac Bernays, theologian
Jakob Bernays, classical philologist (Klassischer Philologe), philosophy historian (philosopheriehistoriker)
Carlebach family
Ephraim Carlebach
Felix Carlebach
Joseph Carlebach
Shlomo Carlebach
Mordecai ben Hillel
Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain
Asher ben Jehiel, medieval rabbi and Talmudist, father of Jacob ben Asher
Eliezer ben Joel HaLevi
Gershom ben Judah
Yehuda ben Meir
Eliezer ben Nathan, medieval rabbi
Yaakov ben Yakar
Israel Bruna (born at Bruenn)
Yosef Burg
David Einhorn, Reform rabbi
Jacob Emden
Ettlinger pedigree
David Fränkel
Abraham Geiger, Reform rabbi
Jakob Guttmann (rabbi)
Julius Guttmann
Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller
Levi Herzfeld, 19th century proponent of moderate reform
Susannah Heschel
Samson Raphael Hirsch, Orthodox rabbi
Samuel Holdheim, Reform rabbi
Walter Homolka
Israel Isserlin
Regina Jonas, Reform rabbanith
Kaufmann Kohler, Reform rabbi
Pinchas Lapide
Isaac Leeser, rabbi and Bible translator
Yaakov ben Moshe Levi Moelin
Gunther Plaut
Petachiah of Ratisbon, medieval rabbi, traveller
Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg
Elazar Rokeach
Meir of Rothenburg
Shimon Schwab
Moses Sofer
Hermann Tietz (rabbi)
Scholars
Hugo Bergmann (born in Prague)
Max Bodenheimer
Moses Buttenweiser (1862-1939), Bible scholar
David Cassel
Immanuel Oscar Menahem Deutsch (1829-1873), Semitic scholar and orientalist
Ismar Elbogen
Emil Ludwig Fackenheim
Eugen Fraenkel (1853–1925), pathologist and bacteriologist
Jonas Fränkel
Heinrich Graetz, Jewish historian (born in Posen)
Manuel Joël, Jewish philosopher
Isaak Markus Jost, Jewish historian
Marcus Kalisch, Biblical scholar
Jakob Klatzkin
Arthur Liebert
Israel Lewy
Moses Mendelssohn, Jewish Enlightenment philosopher
David Rosin
Gershom Scholem, Jewish scholar & historian
Ernst Simon
Friedrich Weinreb (born in Lemberg)
Benedict Zuckermann
Leopold Zunz, Jewish scholar
Scientific Figures
Max Abraham, physicist
Adolf von Baeyer, industrial chemist, Nobel Prize
Norbert Berkowitz, physicist
Sir Hans Bethe, nuclear physics, Nobel Prize
Sir Walter Bodmer, medical researcher
Max Born, quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize (1954)
Heinrich Caro, industrial chemist
Nikodem Caro, industrial chemist
Albert Einstein, theoretical physics, Nobel Prize (1921)
Erwin Finlay-Freundlich, astronomer
James Franck, quantum physics, Nobel Prize (1925)
Adolph Frank, industrial chemist
Herbert Fröhlich, physicist
Eugen Glueckauf, chemist, expert on atomic energy
Hans Goldschmidt, industrial chemist
Eugen Goldstein, physicist
Leo Graetz, physicist
Fritz Haber, developed the Haber process, Nobel Prize (1918)
Walter Heitler, chemist
Arthur Korn, physicist
Ernst Ising, statistical mechanics
Albert Ladenburg, chemist
Fritz London, quantum mechanics
Leonard Mandel, quantum optics
Kurt Mendelssohn, German-born British medical physicist
Viktor Meyer, organic chemist
Leonor Michaelis, biochemist
Albert Michelson, measured speed of light, Nobel Prize (1907)
Ludwig Mond, chemist & industrialist
Sir Rudolf Peierls, solid state theory
Arno Penzias, co-discoverer of CMB, Nobel Prize (1978)
Alfred Philippson, geologist
John Charles Polanyi, chemist, Nobel Prize
Ernst Pringsheim, spectrometry, black-body radiation
Michael Rossmann, physicist and microbiologist
Rudolf Schoenheimer, biochemist
Arthur Schuster, spectroscopist
Karl Schwarzschild, physicist & astronomer
Franz Simon, physicist, separation of Uranium 235
Jack Steinberger, particle physics, Nobel Prize (1988)
Otto Stern, experimental physicist, Nobel Prize (1943)
Otto Wallach, chemist, Nobel Prize (1910)
Richard Willstätter, chemist, Nobel Prize (1915)
Nathan Zuntz
Physicians and Medical Researchers
Adolph Baginsky, pediatrician, diphtheria researcher
Alfred Bielschowsky, ophthalmologist
Max Bielschowsky, neuropathologist
Konrad Bloch, biochemist, Nobel Prize (1964)
Marcus Elieser Bloch, physician
Gustav Born, professor of pharmacology
Edith Bulbring, Professor of pharmacy
Sir Ernst Chain, developed penicillin, Nobel Prize (1945)
Ferdinand Cohn, pioneer in microbiology
Julius Friedrich Cohnheim, pathologist
Julius Dreschfeld, physician
Paul Ehrlich, developed magic bullet concept, Nobel Prize (1908)
Arthur Eichengrün, possible inventor of aspirin
Wilhelm Feldberg, biologist
Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat, biochemist
Hermann Friedberg, physician
Carl Friedländer, bacteriologist
Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch, geneticist
Ernst Gräfenberg, obstetrician, the G-spot
Martin Gumpert, physician, writer
Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, physician
Sir Bernard Katz, biophysicist, Nobel Prize (1970)
Hans Kornberg, biochemist researcher
Hans Kosterlitz, discovered endorphins
Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, biochemist, Nobel Prize (1953)
Fritz Lipmann, biochemist, Nobel Prize (1953)
Jacques Loeb, physiologist
Otto Loewi, pharmacologist, Nobel Prize (1936)
Elisabeth Mann, biologist
Otto Meyerhof, biochemist, Nobel Prize (1922)
Oskar Minkowski, physiologist
Hermann Munk, German physiologist who studied threadworms
Albert Neisser, physician, discovered the cause of gonorrhea
Emin Pasha, physician, naturalist, explorer
Nathanael Pringsheim, botanist
Ottomar Rosenbach, physician
Moritz Traube, biochemist
Wilhelm Traube, physician, inventor of the fever thermometer
Otto Warburg, physiologist, Nobel Prize (1931)
Karl Weigert, pathologist
Mathematicians
Felix Bernstein, set theory
Maurice Block, statistician
Richard Brauer, modular representation theory
Moritz Cantor, historian of mathematics
Paul Cohn, algebraist
Richard Courant, mathematical analysis & applied mathematics
Max Dehn, topology
Paul Epstein, number theory
Adolf Fraenkel, set theory
Hans Freudenthal, algebraic topology
Felix Hausdorff, topology
Heinz Hopf, topology
Adolf Hurwitz, mathematician
Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi, analysis
Leopold Kronecker, number theory
Edmund Landau, number theory
Rudolf Lipschitz, mathematician
Kurt Mahler, mathematician
Hermann Minkowski, geometrical theory of numbers
Claus Moser, Statistician
Leonard Nelson, mathematician, philosopher
Bernhard Neumann, mathematician
Emmy Noether, algebra & theoretical physics
Alfred Pringsheim, analysis, theory of functions
Richard Rado, combinatorics
Abraham Robinson, nonstandard analysis
Klaus Roth, diophantine approximation, Fields Medal (1958)
Arthur Moritz Schönflies, mathematician
Issai Schur, mathematician
Otto Toeplitz, linear algebra & functional analysis
Technical Scientists
Ralph Baer, inventor of the games console
Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone
Emanuel Goldberg (1881-1970, from Russia, but published in German), pioneered Microdots and microfilm retrieval technology
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, electrical engineer
Siegfried Marcus, automobile pioneer
Michael O. Rabin, computer algorithms, Turing Award (1976)
Reinhold Rudenberg, electrical engineer and inventor,
Joseph Weizenbaum, AI critic, ELIZA
Psychologists
Karl Abraham, psychoanalyst
Rudolf Arnheim, perception theorist
Erik Erikson, developmental psychologist
Erich Fromm, psychologist & humanistic philosopher
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, psychoanalyst
Kurt Goldstein, Gestalt-influenced neurologist
Max Hamilton, psychiatrist
Magnus Hirschfeld, sexologist
Kurt Koffka, Gestalt psychologist
Kurt Lewin, social psychologist
Hugo Münsterberg, industrial psychologist
Ulric Neisser, cognitive psychologist
Erich Neumann, analytical psychologist
Fritz Perls, psychotherapist
Otto Selz, cognitive psychologist
William Stern, the Intelligence Quotient
Max Wertheimer, Gestalt psychologist
Philosophers
Theodor Adorno, philosopher
Ernst Bloch, philosopher
Constantin Brunner, philosopher
Ernst Cassirer, philosopher
Hermann Cohen, philosopher
Friedrich Dessauer, philosopher
Max Dessoir, philosopher
Julius Frauenstädt, philosopher
Kurt Grelling, philosopher
Richard Hönigswald philosopher
Max Horkheimer, philosopher & sociologist
Edmund Husserl, philosopher
Hans Jonas, philosopher
Horace Kallen, philosopher
Adolf Lasson, philosopher
Theodor Lessing, philosopher, writer
Karl Löwith, philosopher
Salomon Maimon, philosopher
Karl Marx, philosopher,
Fritz Mauthner, author & philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn, philosopher, scholar
Helmuth Plessner, philosopher
Hans Reichenbach, philosopher
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, philosopher
Max Scheler, philosopher
Kurt Sternberg, philosopher
Leo Strauss, political philosopher
Richard Rudolf Walzer, philosopher
Economists
Robert Aumann, Nobel Prize for Economics
Gerhard Colm, economist
Richard Ehrenberg, economist
Ludwig Lachmann, economist
Emil Lederer, economist
Robert Liefmann, economist
Adolph Lowe, economist
Rosa Luxemburg, economist, co-founder of the KPD
Fritz Naphtali, economist, editor, later Israeli finance minister
Hans Neisser, economist
Sigbert Prais, economist
Reinhard Selten, Nobel prize (1994)
Hans Singer, economist
Social Scientists
Reinhard Bendix, sociologist
Eduard Bernstein, founder of evolutionary socialism
Franz Boas, cultural anthropologist
Micha Brumlik, professor of education
Lewis A. Coser, sociologist
Norbert Elias, sociologist
Amitai Etzioni, sociologist
Shelomo Dov Goitein, Arabist
Moses Hess, socialist
Eugene Kamenka, sociologist
Siegfried Kracauer, sociologist & film critic
Ferdinand Lassalle, founder of first German worker’s party
Karl Mannheim, sociologist
Herbert Marcuse, sociologist,
Franz Oppenheimer, sociologist & economist
Leo Loewenthal, sociologist
Georg Simmel, sociologist
Georg Steindorff, Egyptologist
Jacob Taubes, theologist
Louis Wirth, sociologist
Historians
Ernst Bernheim, historian
Victor Ehrenberg (historian),
Geoffrey Rudolph Elton (son of Wictor Ehrenberg)
Richard Ettinghausen, art historian
Henry Friedlander, historian
Saul Friedlander, historian
Peter Gay, history
George W. F. Hallgarten, historian
Richard Krautheimer, historian
Arno Lustiger, historian
Lothar Machtan
Golo Mann, historian
George Mosse, historian
Eva Reichmann, historian and sociologist
Ludwig Riess, historian
Hans Rothfels, historian
Fritz Stern, historian
Michael Wolffsohn, historian
Jurists
Hannah Arendt, political theorist
Jacob Friedrich Behrend, jurist
David Daube, Professor of Law
Heinrich Dernburg, jurist
Victor Ehrenberg, jurist
Hugo Haase, jurist
Sir Otto Kahn-Freund, Professor of Law
Hermann Kantorowicz, jurist
Walter Kaskel, jurist
Paul Laband, jurist, b. Breslau
Otto Lenel, jurist
Franz Neumann, legal theorist
Arthur Nussbaum, jurist
Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, financial planner & court Jew
Gabriel Riesser, deputy speaker of Frankfurt Assembly in 1848, first Jewish judge in Hamburg
Rudolf Schlesinger, jurist
Georg Schwarzenberger, jurist
Hugo Sinzheimer, legal scholar
Sigmund Zeisler, jurist
Linguists and philologists
Theodor Benfey, linguist
Eduard Fraenkel, philologist
Wilhelm Freund, philologist
Ludwig Friedländer, philologist
Julius Fürst, orientalist
Theodor Goldstücker, linguist
Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, linguist
Victor Klemperer, linguist & diarist
Siegbert Salomon Prawer, Professor of German
Chaim Menachem Rabin, linguist
Edward Sapir, anthropologist-linguist
Ernest Simon, professor of Chinese
Heymann Steinthal, linguist
Educationalists
Lewis Elton, educationalist
Kurt Hahn, educationalist
Cultural Figures /Showbusiness
Hugo Egon Balder, comedian, producer
Mark Bellinghaus, actor, writer, poet, historian & collector
Ludwig Berger, director
Lotte Berk, dancer and health guru
Kurt Bernhardt, director
Artur Brauner, film producer
Friedrich Dalsheim, director
Michael Degen, actor
Ernst Dohm, actor, editor
Hedwig Dohm-Pringsheim, actress
E.A. Dupont, director
Don Francisco, Chilean television host
Michel Friedman, TV personality
Kurt Gerron, stage actor & film director
Dora Gerson, actress, cabaret singer
Therese Giehse, actress Pepermill
Lou Jacobs, clown
Ludwig Karl Koch, broadcaster and sound recordist
Carl Laemmle, film producer
Dani Levy, film maker, theatrical director and actor
Ernst Lubitsch, director
Inge Meysel, actress
Max Ophuls, director
Richard Oswald, director
Lilli Palmer, actress
Oliver Polak, comedian, actor, author
Marcel Reif, presenter
Hans Rosenthal, one of Germany’s most popular TV personalities in history
Susan Sideropoulos, actress
Robert Siodmak, director
Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist
Konrad Wolf, film director
Peter Zadek, theatre director
Musicians
Samuel Adler, composer
Haim Alexander, composer
Tzvi Avni, composer
Paul Ben-Haim, composer
Julius Benedict, composer
Wolf Biermann, singer/songwriter
Yehezkel Braun, Israeli composer
Ignaz Brull, composer
Manfred Bukofzer, musicologist
Paul Dessau, composer
Abel Ehrlich, Israeli composer
Alfred Einstein, musicologist
Hanns Eisler, German-born composer
Lukas Foss, composer & conductor
Alexander Goehr, composer
Walter Goehr, conductor
Berthold Goldschmidt, composer
Bernard Greenhouse, cellist
George Henschel, singer & conductor
Alfred Hertz, conductor
André Herzberg, musician (Pankow)
Ferdinand Hiller, composer
Gerard Hoffnung, musicologist
Friedrich Holländer, composer
Salomon Jadassohn, composer
Leon Jessel, composer
Robert Kahn, composer
Otto Klemperer, conductor
Robert Lachmann, musicologist
Ludwig Lenel, organist and composer
Hermann Levi, conductor
Alfred Lion & Frank Wulff, founders of Blue Note Records
Edward Lowinsky, musicologist
Michael Mann, musician
Arnold Mendelssohn, organist
Felix Mendelssohn, composer & conductor
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, composer
Giacomo Meyerbeer, composer
Ben-Zion Orgad, Israeli composer
Menahem Pressler, pianist
André Previn, conductor
Franz Reizenstein, pianist, composer
Curt Sachs, musicologist, co-founder of modern organology
Kurt Sanderling, conductor
Adolf Martin Schlesinger, music publisher
Heinrich Sontheim, tenor
William Steinberg, conductor
Erich Walter Sternberg, composer
Josef Tal, composer
Ilia Trilling, synagogue composer
Ignatz Waghalter, composer & conductor
Bruno Walter, conductor
Franz Waxman, film composer
Kurt Weill, composer
Stefan Wolpe, composer
Alec Empire, member of Atari Teenage Riot
Hilde Zadek, soprano
Artists
Friedrich Adler, Jugendstil and Art Deco designer
Anni Albers, textile designer
Frank Auerbach, painter
Eduard Bendemann, painter
Martin Bloch, British painter
Erwin Blumenfeld, photographer
Siegfried Einstein, author and poet
Alfred Eisenstaedt, photographer
Benno Elkan, sculptor
James Ingo Freed, architect
Lucian Freud, painter
Gisèle Freund, photographer
Eva Hesse, materials artist
Erich Kahn, painter, expressionist
Eugen Kaufmann, architect
Hugo Lederer (1871 – 1940) sculptor
Max Liebermann, painter
Wilhelm Löwith, artist
Peter Max, pop artist
Ludwig Meidner, painter
Erich Mendelsohn, architect
Helmut Newton, photographer
Felix Nussbaum, painter
Meret Oppenheim, surrealist
Erwin Panofsky, art historian
Heinz Julius Rosenthal, painter
Hans Schleger, designer[
Charlotte Salomon, artist
Erich Salomon, news photographer
Victor Weisz, Vicky, cartoonist
Writers
Erich Auerbach, literature critic
Julius Bab, dramatist and theater critic
Jurek Becker, writer
Maxim Biller, writer
Ludwig Börne, satirist
Otto Brahm, literary critic
Henryk Broder, journalist
Walter Benjamin, literary critic & philosopher
Emil Carlebach, writer, dissident
Joseph Derenbourg, orientalist, father of Hartwig Derenbourg
Hilde Domin, poet
Lion Feuchtwanger, novelist
Hubert Fichte, author
Anne Frank, diarist
Karen Gershon, poet
Gad Granach
Friedrich Gundolf, literary man
Glückel of Hameln, 18th-century Yiddish diarist
Maximilian Harden, journalists
Heinrich Heine, poet
Stefan Heym, novelist, politician
Wolfgang Hildesheimer
Edgar Hilsenrath, novelist
Barbara Honigmann, writer
Heinrich Eduard Jacob, writer and journalist
Siegfried Jacobsohn, journalist and theater critic
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, novelist and screenwriter
Wladimir Kaminer, short story writer
Judith Kerr, children’s writer
Victor Klemperer, writer
Else Lasker-Schüler, writer, poet & artist
Gila Lustiger, author
Erika Mann, writer, actress
Klaus Mann, writer
Monika Mann, writer
Julius Mosen, born Moses
Erich Mühsam, anarchist poet
Henning Pawel, child-book author, writer
Solomon Perel, author
Oliver Polak, comedian, actor, author
Alan Posener, chief columnist of Welt am Sonntag
Marcel Reich-Ranicki, literary critic
H. A. Rey & Margret Rey, creators of Curious George
Renate Rubinstein
Nelly Sachs, poet, Nobel Prize (1966)
Moriz Seeler, poet
Anna Seghers, novelist
Oskar Seidlin, writer
Rafael Seligmann, writer
Süßkind von Trimberg, middle age writer, minnesinger
Kurt Tucholsky, writer
Samuel Ullman, poet
Rahel Varnhagen, writer and saloniste
Moritz Callmann Wahl
Jakob Wassermann, novelist
Trude Weiss-Rosmarin
Jeanette Wohl
Friedrich Wolf, writer, physician
Carl Zuckmayer, playwright
Arnold Zweig, writer
Stefanie Zweig, novelist
Entrepreneurs
Alfred Beit, financier
Albert Ballin, cruise ship entrepreneur
August Belmont
August Belmont II
Gottfried Bermann
Gerson von Bleichröder, financier, advisor of Bismarck
Buchsbaum family
Sir Ernest Cassel, banker
Otto Frank, ran pectin-related small business, but most famous as father of Anne Frank
Friedenthal family
Markus Bär Friedenthal, banker, scholar
Fritz von Friedländer-Fuld, industrialist
Fürst family, court Jews in Hamburg
Moses Israel Fürst financier and merchant
Chajim Fürst, financier and head of the Jewish community
Marcus Goldman, founder of Goldman Sachs in America
Eduard Gümbel
Charles Hallgarten
Maurice de Hirsch, banker
Karl Amson Joel, textile merchant & manufacturer, the greatfather of
Alexander Joel and
Billy Joel
Otto Hermann Kahn
Richard Lenel, German industrialist, founding member of Lufthansa and German Bank
Sir Robert Mayer, German-born businessman and philanthropist
Joseph Mendelssohn, banker
Alexander Mendelssohn, banker
Mosse family
Rudolf Mosse and family, newspaper magnates
Oppenheimer family
Ernest Oppenheimer, diamond tycoon
Emil Rathenau, founder of AEG, father of Walter Rathenau
Paul Reuter, founder of Reuters
Rothschild banking family of Germany
Mayer Amschel Rothschild and family, financiers & bankers
Seligman family
Joseph Seligman, banker & US civil war financier
Schocken family
Salman Schocken (born at Posen district)
Jacob Schiff (Jacob H. Schiff), railroad financier
Kilian von Steiner, banker
Max Stern
Levi Strauss, clothing manufacturer
Straus family
Isidor Straus owner of Macy’s department store & RMS Titanic victim
Leonhard Tietz, Oscar Tietz & Hermann Tietz, founders of Kaufhof & Hertie department stores
Oscar Troplowitz, pharmacist, entrepreneur Beiersdorf, developer of Nivea and other household products
Warburg family
Siegmund Warburg, banker
Georg Wertheim, founder of Wertheim department stores
Emil Jellinek, born in Leipzig. He was a wealthy entrepreneur down the French Riviera, coining Mercedes trademark –which became Mercedes Benz nowadays. He was Austro-Hungarian diplomat also residing in Vienna.
Adolf Silverberg
Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Itzig family
Daniel Itzig
Alois Dessauer
Mannheimer pedigree
Fritz Mannheimer
Max Mannheimer
Victor Mannheimer (-1928), brother of Fritz
Warburg family
Felix Warburg
Max Warburg
Paul Warburg
Stef Wertheimer “77 year old German-born Stef Wertheimer”
Hugo Reiss
Marie Annette Reiss / Jane Engelhard
Oppenheim pedigree and-banking family; founders of Sal. Oppenheim
Abraham Oppenheim
Alfred Freiherr von Oppenheim
Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb, founders of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
Loeb pedigree
Maurice Loeb
Solomon Loeb
Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, founder of Harland and Wolff
Markus Wolf, East German spymaster
Sports
Rudi Ball, hockey player
Gretel Bergmann, high jumper
Hans Berliner, world postal chess champion
Barney Dreyfuss, co-founder of the World Series
Gottfried Fuchs, soccer player
Ludwig Guttmann, founder of the Paralympics
Bernhard Horwitz, chess player
Emanuel Lasker, world chess champion
Helene Mayer, fencer
Sarah Poewe, swimmer
Daniel Prenn, tennis player
Siegbert Tarrasch, chess player
Literature
Walter Tetzlaff, ed. “2000 Kurzbiographien bedeutender deutscher Juden des 20. Jahrhunderts” (Lindhorst: Askania, 1982).
