Unwelcome Strangers East European Jews in Imperial Germany [Paperback]

When East European Jews migrated westward in ever larger numbers between 1870 and 1914, both German government officials and the leaders of German Jewry were confronted by a series of new challenges. What policies did government leaders devise to cope with the seemingly unending tide of Jews flooding across Germany's borders? What was the actual, as opposed to the perceived, character of these Jewish migrants? How did native Jews respond to the arrival of coreligionists from the East? Drawing on archival research conducted in East and West Germany, Israel, and the United States,Unwelcome Strangersprobes into these questions, touching on some of the most troubling issues in modern German and Jewish history--the behavior of Germans toward strangers in their midst, the status and self-perception of emancipated Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, and the responses of privileged Jews to needy, but alien, coreligionists.

A book which at times makes fascinating reading, but whose greatest contribution is to bring a dose of common sense to an agonized topic. --Times Higher Education Supplement

Wertheimer's valuable and well-researched study seeks to explain these unhappy circumstances. In its analysis of both the govenment's and German Jewry's practical dealings with immigrantOstjuden, his book stands alone in the German and English literature. --Journal of Modern History

A major contribution to both European and Jewish history. --Paula Hyman, Yale University

Original, well-conceived, and interestingly written. [Wertheimer] has given us new insight into an important confrontation between two very different kinds of modern Jews. --Michael A. Meyer, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Wertheimer's carefully researched and closly argued book dispels a number of myths and supplies the materials for a comparative history of Jewish migration...We now have a sophisticated and comprehensl³~