Between Heimat and Hatred: Jews and the Right in Germany, 1871-1935 [Hardcover]

FromHeimatto Hatredstudies German Jews involved in ventures that were from the beginning, or became increasingly, of the Right. Jewish agricultural settlement, Jews' participation in the so-called Defense of Germandom in the East , their place in military and veteran circles and finally right-of-center politics form the core of this book. The book investigates the inherent tension in the involvement in such ventures between sincere dedication to them and the apologetic defense against antisemitic stereotypes of rootlessness, intellectualism or cosmopolitanism. It asks at which point even a defensive commitment became no longer tenable.In the decades between German unification and the demise of the Weimar Republic, German Jewry negotiated their collective and individual identity under the impression of legal emancipation, continued antisemitism, the emergence of Zionism and Socialism, the First World War, and revolution and the republic. For many German Jews liberalism and also increasingly Socialism became attractive propositions. Yet conservative parties and political positions right-of-center also held appeal for some German Jews.BetweenHeimatand Hatredstudies German Jews involved in ventures that were from the beginning, or became increasingly, of the Right. Jewish agricultural settlement, Jews' participation in the so-called Defense of Germandom in the East , their place in military and veteran circles and finally right-of-center politics form the core of this book. These topics created a web of social activities and political persuasions neither entirely conservative nor entirely liberal.For those German Jews engaging with these issues, their motivation came from sincere love of their German Heimat-a term for home imbued with a deep sense of belonging-and from their middle-class environment, as well as to repudiate antisemitic stereotypes of rootlessness, intellectualism or cosmopolitanism. This tension stands at the heart lc2