The FirstWorldWar - German Nationalism and theTransformation of German Zionism

The FirstWorldWar, GermanNationalism, and

theTransformation of German Zionism

BY STEFAN VOGT

Goethe University Frankfurt amMain

During the seconddecade of the twentieth century, a profound generational changetook place in the German Zionist movement which also revolutionized themovement’s ideological orientation.1The ¢rst generation of German Zionists, suchas Max Bodenheimer and Franz Oppenheimer, considered Zionism primarily ameans to elevate the lot of the poor and often persecutedJews of the east, especiallyof Russia. For German Jews, Zionism would help to regain Jewish self-con¢denceand to maintain both a German and a Jewish identity. It was not, however, meantto change the Zionists’ lives and world view, which was usually characterized byliberal values and largely assimilated to the German bourgeois culture. Between1910 and 1920, this philanthropic concept was replaced as the dominant positionwithin the German Zionist movement by a new, Palestine-centric approach.Younger, more radical activists like Kurt Blumenfeld, Felix Rosenblu« th and RobertWeltsch assumed positions of leadership of the organization.The new generation ofGerman Zionists usually supported practical instead of political Zionism,considering the establishment of Jewish settlements in Palestine more urgent thansecuring the political and diplomatic framework to which Herzl and his followersin the ¢rst generation of Zionists in Germany had given preference. In addition,they advocated a much more vigorous rejection of the ideas of liberalism andassimilation which guided the vast majority of GermanJews. Many of these youngZionists were inspired by the ideas of cultural Zionism developed byAhad Ha’amand popularized in Germany by Martin Buber.2 The main goal for culturalZionism was not the establishment of a Jewish state, asTheodor Herzl would have

1This article was written as part of a research project generously funded by the Gerda HenkelFoundation. The author wishes to thank Mark Gelber as well as the two anonymous reviewers fortheir extremely helpful comments.

2On the peculiarities of central European cultural Zionism, see among others Zohar Maor,‘Mysticism, Regeneration and Jewish Rebirth: The Prague Circle in the early twentieth century’,Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2005 [Hebrew]; Mark H. Gelber, Melancholy Pride:Nation, race, and gender in the German literature of cultural Zionism, Tu« bingen 2000. On Buber, seeLaurence J. Silberstein, Martin Buber’s Social and Political Thought: Alienation and the quest for meaning,NewYork 1989. On Ahad Ha’am, see Steven J. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the originsof Zionism, London 1993.

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it, but of aJewish cultural centre in Palestinewhichwould serve as the spiritual basisfor the recovery, or rather reinvention, of Judaism.

To be sure, what is called practical Zionism is not identical with what is calledcultural Zionism. There was, for example, considerable disagreement betweenKurt Blumenfeld and Martin Buber, whose Zionism Blumenfeld considered to beway too spiritual.3 Both practical and cultural Zionism, however, were set againstpolitical Zionism’s insistence that the creation of an internationally acceptedpolitical entity was the precondition for any further Zionist undertaking. Bothschools of thought also agreed that the ‘Jewish problem’ was not only caused byexternal distress but also by the problematic condition of the Jewish people itself.4

While young German Zionists were often particularly inclined towards culturalZionism, they usually also subscribed to practical Zionist ideas. The radicalZionism of the young generation was thus a combination of cultural and practicalapproaches. Even young Zionists such as Blumenfeld, who were otherwise criticalof cultural Zionism, shared the anti-liberal and essentialist concept of the nationdeveloped by cultural Zionists like Buber. For the activists of the youngergeneration, Zionism was an ideologically radical nationalist movement which wasopposed to the liberal values of the nineteenth century and which aimed at therevival of Jewish national identity and the rebirth of theJewishVolk (people).5

In the classic literature, the transformation of German Zionism has beenexplained primarily with internalJewish factors.6 According to this interpretation,the younger generation of Zionists fundamentally opposed the ideas of theassimilationist majority among German Jewry. They also confronted the olderZionists who, despite their Zionist conviction, still included liberal andassimilationist elements into their own identity. These ‘Jewish’ reasons for thetransformation of German Zionism were indeed very relevant. However, such animmanent interpretation is clearly not su⁄cient. In line with a general trend inGerman-Jewish historiography, more recent studies have acknowledged thein£uence of the political-ideological developments in the larger German society,including during the FirstWorldWar, on German Zionism.7 The precise ways and

3See letters from Kurt Blumenfeld to Martin Rosenblu« th, 16 January 1913, and Julius Berger, 14January 1917, in Kurt Blumenfeld, Im Kampf um den Zionismus. Briefe aus fu« nf Jahrzehnten, ed. byMiriam Sambursky and Jochanan Ginat, Stuttgart 1976 (Vero« ¡entlichung des Leo Baeck Instituts),pp. 43, 59.

4For a good discussion of the content of, and the relationship between, political, cultural and practicalZionism see Gideon Shimoni,The Zionist Ideology, Hanover 1995, pp. 85-126.

5The German term Volk is only very inadequately translated as ‘people’. In the discourse of Germannationalism,Volk is conceived as a primordial entity which both proceeds historically and exceeds inits signi¢cance any political or social association.Volk is not necessarily a racial category, but ratheran amalgam of cultural and biological ideas.

6See Yehuda Eloni, Zionismus in Deutschland. Von den Anfa« ngen bis 1914, Gerlingen 1987, pp. 250-312;Stephen M. Poppel, Zionism in Germany 1897-1933:The shaping of aJewish identity, Philadelphia 1976, pp.45-67; Jehuda Reinharz, Fatherland or Promised Land: The dilemma of the German Jew, 1893-1914, AnnArbor 1975, pp. 144-170.

7See, for example, Hagit Lavsky, Beyond Catastrophe:The distinctive path of German Zionism, Detroit 1996;Jehuda Reinharz, ‘Ideology and Structure in German Zionism, 1882-1933’, inJewish Social Studies, 42(1980), pp. 119-146.

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mechanisms, however, in which the war and the nationalist discourses in£uencedthe radical changes within the German Zionist movement which took place in thesecond decade of the twentieth century have remained largely unclear. It is onlyvery recently that scholars have begun to analyze these developments in detail andin direct relation to processes in society in general.These works look at the ways inwhich German Zionists dealt with German politics and ideologies during the warand on their impact on German-Jewish identities.8 In addition, several studiesinvestigate the in£uence of the confrontation with east EuropeanJews on GermanZionists and on German Jews in general since the end of the nineteenth centuryand especially during the German occupation of the western parts of the RussianEmpire between1914 and1918.9

In this essay I want to add to this scholarshipby looking, again, at the relationshipbetween the older and the younger generations in German Zionism. I suggest thatthe younger generation’s radical Zionism was able to bene¢t from the war in threedistinctive ways. Firstly, the radical Zionists were able to take full advantage of thenationalist euphoria at the beginning of the war by relating to it in a much moreprofound way than the old guard could. Secondly, they capitalized on the inabilityof the Zionist movement to secure Germany’s support for a political strategy toachieve its goals in Palestine because they were better prepared to cope with thisfailure than the old generation.Thirdly, and most importantly, the radical Zionistswere able to dissociate themselves from German nationalism towards the end ofthe war, when German nationalism became more and more chauvinistic. In allthree ways, the younger, more radical Zionists had a distinctive advantage overthe older generation. In the context of the war, they were able to present a moreplausible concept of Jewish nationalism which proved to be successful during thesubsequent years of theWeimar Republic too.

To be sure, the relationship of German Zionismwith German nationalist politicsand ideology predated the FirstWorldWar.The German Reich, whose imperialistambitions were directed not least towards the Middle East, was the principal

8See, for example, MichaelaWirtz,‘‘‘So sind wir vielleicht doch als Juden in den Krieg gezogen.’’ DieDeutung des Ersten Weltkriegs in den Zeitschriften deutsch-ju« discher Studentenverbindungen’, inMark H. Gelber, Jakob Hessing and Robert Ju« tte (eds.), Integration und Ausgrenzung. Studien zur deutsch-ju« dischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte von der Fru« hen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. Festschrift fu« r Hans OttoHorch zum 65. Geburtstag, Tu« bingen 2009, pp. 231-242; Ulrich Sieg, Ju« dische Intellektuelle im ErstenWeltkrieg. Kriegserfahrungen, weltanschauliche Debatten und kulturelle Neuentwu« rfe, Berlin 2001. An earlyexample is Ju« rgen Mattha« us, ‘Deutschtum and Judentum under Fire: The impact of the First WorldWar on the strategies of the Centralverein and the Zionistische Vereinigung’, in LBI Year Book, vol.22 (1988), pp. 129-147. On the Austrian case, see David Rechter,TheJews of Vienna and the First WorldWar, London 2001.

9See Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The east European Jew in German and German Jewishconsciousness, 1800-1923, Madison 1982; Yfaat Weiss, ‘ ‘‘Wir Westjuden haben ein ju« dischesStammesbewu�tsein, die Ostjuden ein ju« disches Volksbewu�tsein.’’ Der deutsch-ju« dische Blick aufdas polnische Judentum in den beiden ersten Jahrzehnten des 20. Jahrhunderts’, in Archiv fu« rSozialgeschichte 37 (1997), pp. 157-178; Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews inImperial Germany, NewYork 1987; Sander L. Gilman,‘The Rediscovery of Eastern Jews: German Jewsin the east, 1890-1918’, in David Bronsen (ed.), Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The problematicsymbiosis, Heidelberg 1979, pp. 338-365.

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target of Theodor Herzl’s e¡orts to rally the support of the Great Powers for theZionist enterprise. Herzl repeatedly, if ultimately unsuccessfully, approachedthe German emperor and his political advisers to convince them of the bene¢ts tothe Reich of such support.10 When Herzl travelled to Palestine in 1898 to meet withWilhelm II, he was accompanied by the two leading German Zionists, MaxBodenheimer and DavidWol¡sohn. Bodenheimer andWolfssohn, as well as otherleaders of the German Zionist movement, continued trying to in£uence theGerman government in favour of Zionist interests after Herzl’s death in 1904. Themain argument was that the Zionist aspirations in Palestine coincided withthe imperialist interests of the German Reich. As most European Jews wereculturally and linguistically attached to Germany, a Jewish presence in Palestinewould strengthen Germany’s standing in the region and would facilitate itsendeavour of economic and cultural penetration.11 In addition, leading GermanZionists were connected to, and in some cases directly involved in, institutions ofGerman colonialism. Otto Warburg, for example, was active in various colonialorganizations, researched and published on colonial economy and tropicalagriculture, and held shares in several plantation companies in German Africancolonies and in Turkey.12 More importantly, German Zionists were deeplyin£uenced by German colonial concepts, discourses and ideologies.13

At the same time, Zionists in Germany and in the German-speaking parts of theHabsburg Empire referred to the authors of nineteenth-century Germannationalism in order to develop and legitimate their own nationalist ideology.14

10For details on these e¡orts, see Isaiah Friedman, Germany,Turkey, and Zionism, 1897-1918, 2nd ed., NewBrunswick 1998, pp. 53-119.

11See for instance Herzl’s draft letters to the Grand Duke of Baden, to Wilhelm II and to CountEulenburg in preparation for the meeting of the German emperor with the Zionist delegation inJerusalem on 2 November 1898, in Theodor Herzl,Tagebu« cher, vol. 2, Berlin 1929, pp. 88-89 (entryfor 5 June 1898), 91-93 (entry for 15 June 1898), 124-127 (entry for 21 September 1898); Memorandumof Max Bodenheimer to Foreign Secretary von Richthofen, February 1902, Politisches Archiv desAuswa« rtigen Amtes, Tu« rkei 195, reprinted in Max Bodenheimer, Im Anfang der zionistischen Bewegung.Eine Dokumentation auf der Grundlage des Briefwechsels zwischen Theodor Herzl und Max Bodenheimer von1896 bis 1905, Frankfurt am Main 1965, pp. 219-227. Conversely, Herzl expected a ‘‘healthy e¡ect’’ ofthe in£uence of ‘‘strong, great, ethical, magni¢cently administered, ¢rmly organized Germany’’ onthe ‘‘Jewish national character’’ (‘‘Unter dem Protektorate dieses starken, gro�en, sittlichen,prachtvoll verwalteten, stramm organisierten Deutschland zu stehen, kann nur die heilsamsteWirkungen fu« r den ju« dischenVolkscharakter haben.’’). Herzl, pp. 150-151 (entry for 8 October 1898).

12On Warburg’s colonialist activities, see Derek J. Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy: The engineering ofJewish settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918, Bloomington 1991, pp. 60-79.

13On the relationship between German Zionism and German colonialism, see my forthcoming essay‘Zionismus und Weltpolitik: Die Auseinandersetzung der deutschen Zionisten mit dem deutschenImperialismus und Kolonialismus, 1890-1918’, in Zeitschrift fu« r Geschichtswissenschaft, 7/8 (2012);Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy; Shalom Reichman and Shlomo Hasson, ‘A Cross-cultural Di¡usionof Colonization: From Posen to Palestine’, in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 74 (1984),pp. 57-70.

14See George L. Mosse,‘The In£uence of theVolkish Idea on German Jewry’, in Germans andJews:TheRight, the Left and the search for a ‘Third Force’ in pre-Nazi Germany, London 1971, pp. 77-115; MosheZimmermann, ‘Jewish Nationalism and Zionism in German-Jewish Students’ Organizations’, in LBIYear Book, vol. 27 (1982), pp. 129-153; John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish doctors and race sciencein ¢n-de sie' cle Europe, New Haven 1994; Mitchell B. Hart, Social Science and the Politics of ModernJewishIdentity, Stanford 2000; Gelber, Melancholy Pride.

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Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for example, was the hero of many German Zionists whoinsisted that his Reden an die Deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation) from1808 could be read as if addressed to theJewish nation a century later.‘‘Only becausewe had Fichte’’ wrote Hugo Bergmann to Martin Buber in 1915, ‘‘we found theappropriate currents withinJewish culture and understoodJudaism.’’ (‘‘Nur weil wirFichte hatten, fanden wir die entsprechenden Stro« mungen der ju« dischen Kultur,verstanden wir erst das Judentum.’’15) The Zionists also referred to GermanRomanticists such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Novalis. They interpreted theseauthors in a mode that was similar to the appropriation of Romanticism by German¢n-de-sie' cle nationalism which turned Romanticism into an anti-rationalist andanti-liberalist philosophy.16 The Zionists even enrolled German vo« lkisch nationalistssuch as Paul de Lagarde to their cause.17 The extent to which German-speakingZionists participated in the discourse of German vo« lkisch nationalism is especiallyobvious in Buber’s three Reden u« ber dasJudentum (Addresses onJudaism) from1909 to1910 which were highly in£uential on the younger generation of German Zionists.Speaking to the Zionist student organization Bar Kochba in Prague, Buber de¢nedZionism as the ‘‘discovery of the blood as the root-like, nourishing force within theindividual person.’’ (‘‘Die Entdeckung des Blutes als der wurzelhaften, na« hrendenMacht im Einzelnen.’’18)

These two versions by which Zionism related to German nationalism ^ byintegration into German imperial politics or by appropriation of Germannationalist ideology ^ were of course not mutually exclusive. However, they can beroughly associated with political Zionism on the one hand and practical andcultural Zionism on the other.This divide also coincided with the front lines in thecon£ict between the ¢rst and the second generation of German Zionists.Whereas

15Hugo Bergmann to Martin Buber, 11 May 1915, in Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten.vol. 1: 1897-1918, ed. and with an introduction by Grete Schaeder,, Heidelberg 1972, p. 389. See alsoHugo Bergmann, ‘J. G. Fichtes Reden an die deutsche Nation’, in Jerubbaal, 1 (1918/19), pp. 38-40;Nachum Goldmann, Von der weltkulturellen Bedeutung und Aufgabe des Judentums, Mu« nchen 1916, p. 36;Robert Weltsch, ‘Zum Fichte-Jubila« um’, in Die Welt, XVI, no. 23 (7 June 1912), pp. 690-691. On thein£uence of Fichte on German Zionism, see Manfred Voigts, ‘Wir sollen alle kleine Fichtes werden!’Johann Gottlieb Fichte als Prophet der Kultur-Zionisten, Berlin 2003. All translations by the author.

16There is a vast amount of literature on neo-Romanticism and cultural criticism in ¢n-de-sie' cleGermany. See, for example, Ulrich Sieg, Deutschlands Prophet. Paul de Lagarde und die Urspru« nge desmodernen Antisemitismus, Mu« nchen 2007; Barbara Be�lich,Wege in den ‘‘Kulturkrieg’’. Zivilisationskritik inDeutschland 1890-1940, Darmstadt 2000; George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: IntellectualOrigins of the Third Reich, New York 1964; Klaus Vondung, Die Apokalypse in Deutschland, Mu« nchen1988; Fritz Stern,The Politics of Cultural Despair: A study in the rise of the Germanic ideology, Garden City1965.

17See Goldmann, Von der weltkulturellen Bedeutung, p. 50; Kurt Blumenfeld, ‘Wie gestalten wir unserenZionismus wesenhafter?’ in Der ju« dische Student, 12 Kriegsheft (27 November 1916), p. 329; Blumenfeld,Der Zionismus, pp. 26, 31; Leo Strau�, ‘Paul de Lagarde’, in Der Jude, 8 (1924), pp. 8-15. There is noadequate English translation for the term vo« lkisch. Itherefore use theGermantermthroughout the text.

18Martin Buber, ‘Das Judentum und die Juden’, in Der Jude und sein Judentum. Gesammelte Aufsa« tze undReden, Ko« ln 1963, p. 13. See also Elias Auerbach, ‘Die ju« dische Rassenfrage’, in Archiv fu« r Rassen- undGesellschaftsbiologie, 4 (1907), pp. 332-362; Moses Calvary, ‘Die erzieherische Aufgabe des deutschenZionismus’, in Der ju« dische Student, 9 (1912/13), pp. 189-209; Verein ju« discher Hochschu« ler Bar Kochbain Prag (ed.),VomJudentum. Ein Sammelbuch, Leipzig 1914.


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¢rst generation Zionists like Max Bodenheimer and Franz Oppenheimer werestrong supporters of Herzl’s political Zionism, the second generation generallytended towards practical Zionism. For the political Zionists, the active support ofthe great powers for the Zionist enterprise was absolutely essential. In Germany,this meant ¢rst and foremost the support of the German Empire. The practicalZionists in Germany, too, wanted German national politics to support Zionism,and they went a long way towards working to secure this support.Yet rather thanan indispensable precondition for Jewish settlement in Palestine, it was conceivedas one of various strategies to facilitate it. Richard Lichtheim, the representative ofthe Zionist Executive in Constantinople, made the di¡erence perfectly clear whenhe wrote in one of his reports to the Central Zionist O⁄ce in Berlin that whileZionists like Bodenheimer assumed an identity of German and Zionist interests, itwas in fact ‘‘a political alliance of principally di¡erent interests.’’ (‘‘politischeGemeinschaft der an sich verschiedenen Interessen.19) For many younger Zionistsin Germany, however, practical Zionism not only meant giving priority tocolonization in Palestine. It also meant reconceiving the relationship between theindividual and the Volk in radical nationalist terms. The famous formula, whichwas adopted by the national convention of the ZionistischeVereinigung fu« r Deutschland(Zionist Organization for Germany, ZVfD) in Posen in 1912, and which markedthe ¢rst victory of the radical faction over the old guard, must be understood inthis double sense: ‘‘It is the duty of all Zionists,’’ it said, ‘‘to include emigration toPalestine in their programme of life.’’ (‘‘. . .erkla« rt es der Delegiertentag fu« r dieP£icht jedes Zionisten . . .die U« bersiedlung nach Pala« stina in ihrLebensprogramm aufzunehmen.’’)20

THE FAILURE OF POLITICAL ZIONISM

WhenGermany went towar in August1914, all factions andall generational cohortswithin the Zionist movement in Germany supported the German cause.21HeinrichLoewe expressed this when he wrote in theJu« dische Rundschau, the o⁄cial journal ofthe German Zionists, that ‘‘as German citizens, we Zionists will joyfully sacri¢ceour property, our life and our blood.’’ (‘‘Wir Zionisten . . .werden heute alsdeutsche Bu« rger freudig alle Forderungen an Hab und Gut, an Leben und Bluterfu« llen.’’)22 The reasons for this support, however, were again twofold. On the onehand it was argued that a German victory in the war would help to realize theZionist goals. This, it was hoped, would apply to both of the main political

19Richard Lichtheim to Zionistisches Zentralbu« ro, 29 November 1914, Central Zionist ArchivesJerusalem (CZA), Z3/50.

20The resolution is reprinted in ‘Zusammenstellung der Antra« ge, die vom XIII. Delegiertentag zumBeschlu� erhoben wurden’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XVII, no. 24 (14 June 1912), p. 222. On therelevance of the Posen declaration, see Lavsky, Before Catastrophe, pp. 30-31; Reinharz, Fatherland orPromised Land, pp. 144-170.

21The few exceptions, such as Gershom Scholem, proved the rule.22Heinrich Loewe,‘Feinde ringsum!’ inJu« dische Rundschau, vol. XIX, no. 32 (7 August 1914), p. 343.

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concerns of the Zionists during the war: the future of Palestine and the situation ofthe Jews in eastern Europe. In Palestine, the Zionists hoped to increase Jewishsettlement and to achieve the status of a legally recognized commonwealth withinthe Ottoman Empire. In eastern Europe, they wanted all anti-Jewish laws to beabolished and the Jews to be recognized as a nation that was entitled to at leastcultural autonomy. On the other hand, the Zionists hoped that the nationalistwave that swept through Germany in 1914 would not only lead the Germans toaccept the separate national identity of theJews, but also strengthen the legitimacyof Jewish nationalism among the Jews. In this sense, the war was discussed in theframework of a cultural philosophy which was not only similar to the one appliedby German nationalists, but was actually part of the German nationalistdiscourse. Similar to many of their non-Jewish colleagues, Zionist thinkerscombined a strong belief in the ethical and political legitimacy of German warpolitics with the hope for a national community emerging from that war. BothZionists and German nationalists expected the war to overcome the bourgeoissociety and culture they were born into. Zionists and German nationalists wereequally convinced that the national community which would take its place shouldbe ¢rmly rooted in German cultural and philosophical traditions. To be sure, thesituation for theJews, including the Zionists, was much more complicated than fornon-Jewish Germans, as they not only had to negotiate a dual identity, but werealso confronted with the suspicion of lacking loyalty to their German homeland.23

However, one of the reasons for this complicated situation was the very fact thatZionist and non-Zionist Jews in Germany confronted the war within theframework provided by German nationalism.

The war immediately made the Zionists intensify their e¡orts to secure thesupport of the German government which was expected to gain decisive in£uenceon the destiny of the Jews both in Palestine and in eastern Europe. Even thoughpractical Zionists like Arthur Hantke, the president of the ZVfD, Kurt Blumenfeld,its executive secretary, and especially Richard Lichtheimwere strongly involved inthese e¡orts, they brought about a temporary comeback for the Zionists of the oldgeneration, as the war seemed to open up new possibilities for a political Zioniststrategy.24 German Zionists repeatedly approached the foreign o⁄ce in Berlin notonly to ask for protection for the existing Jewish settlements, but also to convincethe German government that a growingJewish presence in Palestine would bene¢tGermany, despite the fact that the policy of the Zionist Executive was to remainneutral in the war.25 Bodenheimer, Oppenheimer and other old guard Zionists

23This is correctly emphasized by Sieg, Ju« dische Intellektuelle, p. 85.24See Mattha« us, p. 133.25This strategy is consistently outlined in: Expose¤ u« ber die politischen Aufgaben des Zionismus,probably 1914, CZA Z3/5. See also Felix A. Theilhaber, Die Juden im Weltkriege. Mit besondererBeru« cksichtigung der Situation Deutschland, Berlin 1916; Richard Lichtheim, Die zionistische Bewegung,December 1915, CZA Z3/5. The most comprehensive study on the relationship between the Zionistsand the German government during the war regarding German politics onTurkey and Palestine isFriedman, Germany, Turkey, Zionism, pp. 191-419. See also Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und dieJuden im ErstenWeltkrieg, Go« ttingen 1969, pp. 310-448.


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were also among themain driving force behind theKomitee fu« r denOsten (Committeefor the East, KfdO).The main methods of the committee to support east EuropeanJews were to convince both the German government and the German public thatthe Jews in the German occupied territories in the east were natural allies ofGermany and would be highly useful in strengthening German political andcultural hegemony there, as well as assisting the German government in itsallegedly pro-Jewish policy in the occupied territories of Russia.26 The strategy ofequating Zionist and German interests in the war required the Zionists to tonedown their attacks against the assimilationist camp. Between August 1914 and latespring 1915, the Ju« dische Rundschau largely refrained from publishing articlesdenouncing assimilation as being more dangerous for the Jews than antisemitism,as it had done in previous months.27 This allowed, among other things, for limitedcooperation between representatives of the ZVfD und the liberal Centralvereindeutscher Staatsbu« rger ju« dischen Glaubens (Central Organization of German Citizensof Jewish Faith) within the KfdO. This, in turn, again favoured the moderateover the radical faction within the Zionist movement, as it provided themoderates with a ¢eld of activity which was very di⁄cult to navigate for theradical Zionists.28

As the war went on, however, the strategy to rely on the help of the GermanEmpire proved to be based on erroneous assumptions.When, at the beginning ofthe war, Bodenheimer andWarburg approached the foreign o⁄ce in Berlin askingfor support for the Zionists’ request from the Turkish government for thenaturalization of foreign Jews living in Palestine, they were received cordially andgiven positive answers. In practice, however, German intervention in Turkisha¡airs was very cautious. Instead of applying any pressure on the government inConstantinople, the German embassy was only advised to remind theTurks that itwas in their own interest to treat the Jews in Palestine decently.29 This was toremain the general policy. German Zionist leaders were able to establish good

26See the special issue ‘‘Ostjuden’’ of the Su« ddeutsche Monatshefte of February 1916 with articles byBodenheimer, Friedemann, Oppenheimer and others. On the Komitee fu« r den Osten, see Aschheim,Brothers and Strangers, pp. 157-168; Francis R. Nicosia, ‘Jewish A¡airs and German Foreign Policyduring theWeimar Republic: Moritz Sobernheim and the Referat fu« r ju« dische Angelegenheiten’, inLBI Year Book, vol. 33 (1988), pp. 261-283; Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, pp. 126-138; Zosa Szajkowski,‘The Komitee fu« r den Osten and Zionism’, in Herzl Yearbook, vol. 7 (1971), pp. 199-240; idem, ‘JewishRelief in Eastern Europe 1914-1917’, in: LBIYear Book, vol. 10 (1965), pp. 24-56.

27The end of this inner-Jewish truth was marked with an article by Kurt Blumenfeld in July 1915:Maarabi (Kurt Blumenfeld), ‘Antisemitismus’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XX, no. 30 (23 July 1915),pp. 239-240. For the aggressive tone towards assimilation and the Centralverein before August 1914,see ‘Der XIV. Delegiertentag in Leipzig am 14. und 15. Juni 1914’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XIX,no. 25 (19 June 1914), pp. 263-273; D. Landau, ‘Immer wieder Zentralverein’, in Ju« dische Rundschau,vol. XVIII, no. 29 (18 July 1913), pp. 297-298; Ernest Hamburger,‘Zionismus und Antisemitismus’, inJu« dische Rundschau, vol. XVIII, no. 26 (27 June 1913), pp. 263-264. See also Reinharz, Fatherland orPromised Land, pp. 188-221.

28See Aschheim, Brother and Strangers, 157-65.29Bodenheimer to German Foreign O⁄ce, 29 August 1914, Politisches Archiv des Auswa« rtigen AmtesBerlin, Tu« rkei 195, K 176692-97; Foreign Secretary von Jagow to Ambassador von Wangenheim,30 August 1914, Politisches Archiv des Auswa« rtigen Amtes Berlin, Tu« rkei 195, K 176701-2, bothquoted in Friedman, Germany,Turkey, Zionism, pp. 192-196.

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relations with high-ranking o⁄cials both in the German foreign o⁄ce and in theembassy in Constantinople. In several cases, this proved to be vital in order toprevent potentially devastating moves against theYishuv by theTurkish authoritiesin Palestine. However, the Germans refrained from pressing the Turkishgovernment into an active support of Zionism and the Yishuv. Moreover, theyavoided any clear statement or action that would advance the Zionist position inPalestine. In the winter 1916/17, even the good relations of the Zionists with theGerman embassy started to deteriorate.30 In May 1917, Richard Lichtheim, whowas responsible for establishing these relations in the ¢rst place, was forced by theGerman embassy to leaveTurkey on the grounds of allegations of conspiring withthe United States that had meanwhile entered the war.31

The British Balfour Declaration, issued in November 1917, and especially theGerman response to it, made the problem of the old generation Zionists even moreobvious. The declaration undermined the plausibility of any Zionist politicalinitiative that was directed at the German government and moved the focus forsuch initiatives to Britain.32 The German Zionists tried to urge their governmentto issue a similar statement, but the declaration eventually given byUndersecretary von dem Bussche to the leaders of the ZVfD and the KfdO on 5January1918 remained rather vague and, above all, the Germans were anxious notto exceed what theTurkish government had already conceded.33 This was hardlyenough to give a political Zionist strategy in Germany new credibility. When inspring 1918 a massive public campaign was unleashed by German Zionists topromote their goals in Palestine, comprising politicians and media across almostthe whole German political spectrum and resulting in the foundation of theKomiteePro Pala« stina (Committee Pro Palestine), the German government still remained

30On this process, see ibid., pp. 283-319. One reason for this development was the fact that the militaryattache¤ s assumed a dominant position within the embassy, at the same time as the ObersteHeeresleitung (Supreme Military Command) replaced the government as the main political power inGermany.

31The embassy had Lichtheim’s exemption from military service revoked and, after the Foreign O⁄cesucceeded to have the War Ministry reinstate this exemption, had him banned from returning toConstantinople. Lichtheim was in close contact with the American ambassador HenryMorgenthau, who was sympathetic to the Zionist cause. On this episode, see Friedman, Germany,Turkey, Zionism, pp. 301-312; Richard Lichtheim, Ru« ckkehr. Lebenserinnerungen aus der Fru« hzeit desdeutschen Zionismus, Stuttgart 1970, pp. 367-369.

32The German Zionists generally reacted to the Balfour Declaration in a rather muted way, in order toavoid being accused of supporting the enemy’s cause. The radical Zionist Richard Lichtheim,however, made it clear that he considered it ‘‘an event of world-historical signi¢cance’’ and of the‘‘highest value’’ for the Zionist movement. (‘‘ein Ereignis von weltgeschichtlicher Bedeutung.’’) ‘EineErkla« rung der englischen Regierung fu« r den Zionismus’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XXII, no. 46(16 November 1907), p. 369. See also ‘Eine Erkla« rung der englischen Regierung’, in Ju« discheRundschau, vol. XXII, no. 47 (23 November 1907), pp. 377-378. Lichtheim’s authorship of the twoanonymous articles is according to Friedman, Germany,Turkey, Zionism, p. 340.

33See ‘Eine Erkla« rung der deutschen Regierung’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XXIII, no. 2 (11 January1918), p. 9. The declaration was in fact prompted by statements made by Talaat Pasha in aninterview with Julius Becker, a German Zionist and correspondent of the Vossische Zeitung, in whichTalaat promised religious, cultural and economic freedom for the Jews in Palestine, as well as thepossibility for immigration according to the economic capacities of the province. On the wholeissue, see Friedman, Germany,Turkey, Zionism, pp. 379-384.


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inactive.34 Despite considerable e¡ort by the German Zionists, the Germangovernment made the support of Jewish interests in Palestine contingent on theconsent of the Turkish leadership and therefore refrained from taking anysubstantial steps beyond intervention in cases of emergency.

In addition, the protection of the Jews in eastern Europe was far from being themain concern of German occupation policy.35 Even though at the beginning of thewar the German government harboured high hopes about the pro-Germanin£uence the Zionists could exert on the Jews in Russia, the actual expectations ofthe two sides were quite di¡erent. Whereas the German government hoped thatthe Zionists could spark unrest and insurrection behind the enemy lines, theZionists feared that this would put the Jews in jeopardy and expected the Germangovernment instead to guarantee political and cultural rights for theJews, which inturn the Germans declined to do.36 The German government was unwilling tosacri¢ce any political and military elbow room for the sake of Jewish interests.The KfdO continued to work, and also to cooperate, with the Germanadministration, but quickly had to make do with trying to ‘‘make the situation ofthe Jewish population as tolerable as possible.’’ (‘‘die Lage der dortigen ju« dischenBevo« lkerung mo« glichst ertra« glich zu gestalten.’’)37 After the German conquest ofPoland in the summer of 1915, a Jewish o⁄ce was set up within the German civiladministration, ful¢lling a long-time demand of the KfdO. The o⁄ce, however,was assigned to the Department of Education and Religion and headed by anavowed anti-Zionist, Ludwig Haas, demonstrating that the Germans refused to

34On this campaign, see ibid., pp. 398-402.35On German policy regarding Jews in eastern Europe during the war, see Frank M. Schuster, Zwischenallen Fronten. Osteuropa« ische Juden wa« hrend des Ersten Weltkrieges, 1914-1919, Ko« ln 2004, pp. 235-418;Steven E. Aschheim, ‘Eastern Jews, German Jews and Germany’s Ostpolitik in the First WorldWar’,in LBI Year Book, vol. 28 (1983), pp. 351-365; idem, Brothers and Strangers, pp. 139-184; Zechlin, Diedeutsche Politik, pp. 101-284. Generally on German war aims and occupation policy in the East, seeGerhard P. Gro� (ed.), Die vergessene Front ^ der Osten 1914/15. Ereignis,Wirkung, Nachwirkung, Paderborn2006; Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, national identity, and Germanoccupation inWorldWar I, Cambridge 2000;Wiktor Sukiennicki, East Central Europe duringWorldWar I:From foreign domination to national independence, vol. 1, Boulder 1984, pp. 88-301. Classic and stillvaluable is Fritz Fischer, Gri¡ nach der Weltmacht. Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/1918, rev. ed., Du« sseldorf 1967.

36See the two drafts for a declaration to the Jews in Poland by the German general sta¡ and byBodenheimer. The draft of the general sta¡ is reprinted in Egmont Zechlin, ‘Friedensbestrebungenund Revolutionierungsversuche im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 25 (1961),p. 365. Bodenheimer’s draft is to be found in Politisches Archiv des Auswa« rtigen Amtes,Wk 11 adh.2, quoted in Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, pp. 122-123. The ¢nal text contained neither a call forinsurrection nor any reference to a concrete commitment to improvement of the political or legalsituation of the Jews. See Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XIX, no. 36 (4 September 1914), p. 259. For thewhole process, see Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, pp. 116-125. See also the decree by Foreign Secretaryvon Jagow, 9 November 1914, Politisches Archiv des Auswa« rtigen Amtes, Wk 11 adh. 2, quoted inZechlin, Die deutsche Politik, p. 136.

37This is how Oppenheimer described the aims of the Komitee fu« r den Osten in his memoirs. FranzOppenheimer, Erlebtes, Erstrebtes, Erreichtes. Lebenserinnerungen, ed. by L. Y. Oppenheimer, Du« sseldorf1964, p. 223.

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consider the Jewish question in Poland a national question.38 In addition, therelief activities of the KfdO were challenged by the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden

(Aid Association of GermanJews), as well as by separate activities of the OrthodoxFreie Vereinigung fu« r die Interessen des orthodoxen Judentums (Free Association for theInterests of Orthodox Jewry), which was granted a permanent representation inthe German administration in Warsaw.39 When Germany decided in November1916 to proclaim a Polish state and subsequently left all decisions about the status ofthe Jews to the new Polish administration, it became ¢nally clear that Germanyconsidered it to be more in her interests to be mindful of Polish national aspirationsthan to accommodate Jewish ones.40 For the radical Zionists of the younggeneration, this lack of German support both in Palestine and eastern Europe wascertainly inconvenient and disadvantageous. For the old generation Zionists,however, it was a major blow to their political strategy.41

Moreover, the fact that considerable parts of the German elites continued toharbour antisemitic convictions further undermined the standing of politicalZionism in Germany. Many German Jews, Zionists and non-Zionists alike, hadexpected the war at least to temper antisemitism. In fact, the opposite was true.Early on, antisemitic organizations, such as the Reichshammerbund (Reich HammerLeague) and the Alldeutsche Verband (Pan-German League), published pamphletsand sent memoranda to the government in which Jews were accused of shirkingactive military service and pro¢teering from the war.42 Even if such allegationsemanated from radical antisemites and did not represent any o⁄cial standpoint, itwas obvious that they found interested readers in the administration. More

38On Haas and theJu« disches Referat see Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, p. 160.Things were slightly di¡erentin Lithuania, where the Zionist Hermann Struck was appointed head of a newly established O⁄cefor Jewish A¡airs within the German military administration. See ibid., pp. 227-228.

39On the struggle between the Zionists and the Hilfsverein, which also took place in Palestine, see IsaiahFriedman,‘The Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden: The German Foreign Ministry and the controversywith the Zionists, 1901-1918’, in LBI Year Book, vol. 24 (1979), pp. 291-319. See also Robert S.Wistrich,‘Zionism and its Jewish ‘‘Assimilationist’’ Critiques (1897-1948)’, in Jewish Social Studies, 4 (1998),pp. 59-111; Zeev W. Sadmon, Die Gru« ndung des Technions in Haifa im Lichte deutscher Politik, 1907-1920,Mu« nchen 1994; Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, pp. 341-344; Moshe Rinott, ‘Hilfsverein der deutschenJuden’^ Creation and Struggle: A chapter of the history of Hebrew education in Eretz Israel and of the history of GermanJews, Jerusalem 1971 [Hebrew], pp. 49-65, 167-234. On the Freie Vereinigung fu« r die Interessen desorthodoxen Judentums see Mordechai Breuer, Modernity within Tradition: The social history of OrthodoxJewry in Imperial Germany, NewYork 1992, pp. 385-394; Alexander Carlebach,‘A German Rabbi GoesEast’, in LBIYear Book, vol. 4 (1961), pp. 60-121.

40On the establishment of the Polish state under German occupation, see Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik,pp. 198-223.

41Radical Zionists also criticized the outright identi¢cation of German and Zionists interests whichwas claimed by the KfdO. See Julius Berger, ‘Deutsche Juden und polnische Juden’, in Der Jude, 1(1916/17), pp. 137-149.

42See Eingabe an die deutschen Fu« rsten gegen den Kriegswucher. Hammer-Flugblatt Nr. 189, quoted,along with many other examples, in Werner Jochmann, ‘Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus’, inWerner E. Mosse (ed.), DeutschesJudentum in Krieg und Revolution, 1916-1923. Ein Sammelband, Tu« bingen1971 (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 25), p. 416. On thedevelopment of antisemitism during the war in general, see ibid., pp. 409-510; Sieg, Ju« discheIntellektuelle, pp. 174-194; Cornelia Hecht, Deutsche Juden und Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik,Bonn 2003, pp. 55-72.


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importantly, antisemitism also in£uenced government policy to some degree.In occupied Poland, for example, the German authorities often ignored theself-imposed principle of non-discrimination when it came to the Jews.43 Theinfamous ‘Jewish census’ in November 1916 demonstrated that these were morethan just sporadic and passing episodes. As a reaction to antisemitic allegationsthat Jews evaded military service, the German government ordered a statisticalinvestigation of the matter, thereby giving o⁄cial credibility to the accusations.44

The ‘Jewish census’ not only dealt a decisive blow to Jewish expectations that thewar would help to achieve full equality and integration. It also produced severedoubts among the old guard Zionists about their political strategy of cooperatingwith the German government. Zionists of the younger generation, in contrast, feltvindicated in their radical rejection of assimilation.45 To be sure, antisemitism wasneither o⁄cial German policy during the FirstWorldWar, nor was it a consistentelement in its motivation or reasoning. However, for many o⁄cials in the Germangovernment and administration, and indeed for most conservative and right-wingintellectuals, the very idea that Jews could be the bearers of German culture inareas designated for German domination after the war, whether eastern Europe orthe Middle East, seemed presumptuous or outright ridiculous. If any further proofof the predisposition of German government o⁄cials for antisemitic ideology wereneeded, it was given when Germany closed its borders for Jewish, and only Jewish,immigrants from Poland in April 1918.46

Ultimately, thebelief in a real identity of interestsbetweenGermanyandZionismwas, on the German side, held only by a handful of diplomats and politicians andfailed to in£uence German long-term politics during the war. To be sure, severalfactors indeed suggested that Germany and the Zionists would be able to cooperate

43See Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, pp. 200-201. Even the representative of the Foreign O⁄ce inWarsaw,Gerhard von Mutius, admitted that at times there was ‘‘an antisemitic undercurrent, which some ofthe civil servants brought along from Germany’’ (‘‘eine antisemitische Unterstro« mung, die ebendoch mancher Beamte aus Deutschland mitgebracht hat . . .’’). Gerhard von Mutius to MaxWarburg, 21 December 1916, Politisches Archiv des Auswa« rtigen Amtes,Wk 14 a, quoted in Zechlin,Die deutsche Politik, p. 201.

44On the ‘Jewish census’, see Werner T. Angress, ‘Das deutsche Milita« r und die Juden im ErstenWeltkrieg’, in Milita« rgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 1 (1976), pp. 77-146; idem, ‘The German Army’s‘‘Judenza« hlung’’ of 1916: Genesis ^ consequences ^ signi¢cance’, in LBI Year Book, vol. 23 (1978),pp. 117-135; Jacob Rosenthal, ‘Die Ehre des ju« dischen Soldaten.’DieJudenza« hlung im ErstenWeltkrieg und ihreFolgen, Frankfurt am Main 2005.

45For the reaction of the old generation Zionists to the ‘Jewish census’, see Franz Oppenheimer,‘Antisemitismus’, in NeueJu« dische Monatshefte, 2, no. 1 (1917/18), pp. 1-5. For the reaction of the younggeneration, see M. M. [Max Mayer], ‘Judenza« hlung’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XXI, no. 43(27 October 1916), p. 351; Bericht u« ber die Plenar-Sitzung des Zentralkomitees vom 12. November1916, reprinted in Jehuda Reinharz (ed.), Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Zionismus 1882-1933,Tu« bingen 1981 (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 37),pp. 189-190. Mayer was born in 1884.

46The idea of the Grenzsperre (border closure) originated in the antisemitic bogey of an impending‘£ood’ of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. See Georg Fritz, Die Ostjudenfrage. Zionismus undGrenzschluss, Mu« nchen 1915. On the Grenzsperre, see Trude Maurer, ‘Medizinalpolizei undAntisemitismus. Die deutsche Politik der Grenzsperre gegen Ostjuden im Ersten Weltkrieg’, inJahrbu« cher fu« r Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 33 (1985), pp. 205-230; Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers,pp. 173-178; Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik, pp. 260-277.

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in order to achieve common goals. First of all, the Zionists wholeheartedlysupported the German war e¡ort against czarist Russia which was consideredresponsible for the plight of the east European Jews. Secondly, east European Jewscould have been useful, and to some degree were indeed used, to consolidateGerman political, economic and cultural control in the occupied territories.Thirdly, the German government wanted to avoid Jewish immigration fromRussia into Germany, while the Zionists were interested in directing this migrationto Palestine. Fourthly, a strong Jewish presence in Palestine could have beenconsidered by the Germans as an asset for pursuing imperialist policy in theMiddle East. Finally, and most importantly, while the German Zionists’ leadingrole within the Zionist movement was contingent on Germany’s status as thestrongest power in continental Europe, and indeed on a German victory in thewar, the German government hoped to exploit this leading role in order to enlistJews outside Germany, and especially in the United States, to support Germany inthe war. However, these commonalities were in fact rather incidental and notbased on a German commitment to an advancement of the situation of the Jews.Rather, they were both developed from and circumscribed by the largerimperialist ambitions, which included German hegemony in eastern and centralEurope, political and economic penetration of the Middle East and thereplacement of Britain as the world’s pre-eminent power. As soon as these goalsrequired otherwise, Germany was quick to ignore Jewish interests altogether. Thepolitical strategy of the ¢rst generation German Zionists, which initially seemed tohave been consolidated by the war, had failed. In contrast to the strategy of theradical young generation, it was crucially based on the assumption of commoninterests of Germany and Zionism. The war was therefore an important factor inthis generation’s eventual demise within the German Zionist movement.

RIDING ON THEWAVES OF HISTORY

In the summer of 1914, the younger generation Zionists, too, felt that theirnationalism was boosted by the war. They were convinced that the war and theenthusiasm it produced especially among the young bourgeoisie ^ to which they,after all, belonged themselves ^ proved them correct in conceiving Zionism withinstrictly nationalist terms. In October 1914, a young Zionist wrote to the Ju« discheRundschau:

Our time, which many thought could not produce any powerful idealistic excitement,brought forth the unanimous and marvellous national uprising of a great Kulturvolk(cultured people) which ¢ghts for its freedom and its immortality. This ‘new epoch ofworld history’ must also bring forth the redemption of the oldest Kulturvolk, which forthousands of years su¡ered unspeakable physical and moral agony.47

47 ‘‘Unsere Zeit, von der viele glaubten, da� sie nicht fa« hig sei, gewaltige ideale Erregungenhervorzurufen, hat die einmu« tige wundervolle nationale Erhebung eines gro�en Kulturvolkes


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The young Zionists saw German nationalism as the herald of a new epoch ofwhich also Jewish nationalism was a part. The hope that German society would¢nally accept Jewish particularism was complemented by the conviction that thecourse of world history had con¢rmed the Zionist concept of de¢ning Jewishidentity in nationalistic terms. Martin Buber, who was one of the main intellectualinspirations for the young Zionists, wrote in the ¢rst issue of his journal DerJude:‘‘In these stormy events, the Jew was overwhelmed by realizing the meaning ofcommunity.’’ (‘‘Im Sturm der Begebenheit hat der Jude mit elementarer Gewalterfahren, was Gemeinschaft ist.’’)48 In a private letter to Hans Kohn of September1914 he confessed: ‘‘Never before did I feel the idea of the Volk to be as real as inthese weeks.’’ (‘‘Nie ist mir der Begri¡ ‘Volk’ so zur Realita« t geworden wie in diesenWochen.’’)49

The younger generation Zionists interpreted the war and its impact on thesituation of the Jews in ways very similar to the German nationalist discourse.Beyond profound political considerations, they considered it to have a muchdeeper cultural and philosophical meaning. In order to discuss this meaning, theyreferred to prominent authors of German nationalism, most notably to Fichte.Nahum Goldmann, for example, wrote in 1916 that it was Fichte who hadexpressed ‘‘the conviction that a certain mission given by the Weltgeist (worldspirit), the genius of history or god . . .constitutes the reason and the meaning ofthe national existence.’’ (‘‘die Anschauung, dass eine bestimmte, vom Weltgeist,vom Genius der Geschichte, von der Gottheit . . . auferlegte Mission den Grundund Sinn des nationalen Daseins bildet.’’)50 This conviction, Goldman claimed,was shared by German and Jewish nationalists. Goldmann’s aim was to integratethe Jews into the popular German narrative of the war as the historicalconfrontation between the principles of liberalism and individualism, embodied byEngland, and the principles of community and organization, represented byGermany.51 English liberalism, Goldman argued, had its roots in Greek antiquity,

gezeitigt, das fu« r seine Freiheit, fu« r seine Ewigkeit ka« mpft. Diese fflneue Epoche derWeltgeschichte’mu�auch die Erlo« sung des a« ltesten Kulturvolkes, das jahrtausendelang unter unsagbaren physischen undseelischen Qualen geblutet hat, bringen.’’ ‘Nationale Gedanken. Von einem jungen Zionisten’, inJu« dische Rundschau, vol. XIX, no. 41-42 (16 October 1914), p. 388.

48Martin Buber,‘Die Losung’, in DerJude, 1 (1916/17), p. 1.49Martin Buber to Hans Kohn, 30 September 1914, in Buber, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 370. See also ec.[Erich Cohn], ‘Zur neuen Lage’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XIX, no. 37 (11 September 1914), p. 361;Heinrich Margulies, ‘Der Krieg der Zuru« ckgebliebenen’, in Ju« dische Rundschau, vol. XX, no. 6(5 February 1915), pp. 46-47; Moritz Bileski, ‘Die deutschen Juden und die deutsche Politik’, in DerJude, 1 (1916/17), pp. 212-232; Ernst Simon, ‘Unser Kriegserlebnis’ [1919], in Bru« cken. GesammelteAufsa« tze, Heidelberg 1965, pp. 17-23.

50Goldmann,Von der weltkulturellen Bedeutung, p. 36. The termWeltgeist is, of course, a reference to GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821) which underlay the concept ofstatehood prevalent in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany.

51See Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, England der Feind, Stuttgart 1914; idem, Der Vampir des Festlandes. EineDarstellung der englischen Politik nach ihren Triebkra« ften, Mitteln und Wirkungen, Berlin 1915; WernerSombart, Ha« ndler und Helden. Patriotische Besinnungen, Mu« nchen 1915; Paul Lensch, Die deutscheSozialdemokratie und der Weltkrieg, Berlin 1915. On the anti-British direction of German war ideology,

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while the basis for German culture was the ancient Middle East and especiallyJudaism.Thus, the joint mission of Germans andJews in this war was to overcomethe individualist and liberal thinking of the nineteenth century.52 For theJews, thisalso meant to overcome assimilation.

AssimilationistJudaism, which is inclined to cosmopolitanism and hopes to achieve thedissolution of the Jewish nation through an amalgamation of all nations, has itsintellectual roots in the western philosophy of Enlightenment, in English liberalthought and French Encyclopaedists. Young, national Judaism, in contrast, whichplaced the national idea at the centre of its vision of life, is intellectually based onGerman philosophy: Fichte, Hegel, Lagarde, all the classic authorities of Germannational thinking are its teachers, too.53

The idea that the old Europeanworldwas su¡ering froma deep intellectual crisiswhich required a completely new beginning, and that the war provided theopportunity for this, was very prominent among German bourgeois intellectualssuch as Paul Natorp, Johann Plenge and Thomas Mann.54 In this respect, therewas no di¡erence between them and many young Zionists who, too, wereconvinced that the war brought about a new era which would leave liberalism,rationalism and materialism behind.55 The fact that Zionist contributions to thisdiscourse often appeared in publications, pamphlets, and journals devoted todeveloping German nationalist ideology, such as Ernst Ja« ckh’s Der deutsche Krieg(The German War), Paul Rohrbach’s Das gro« �ere Deutschland (The GreaterGermany) and the Preu�ischeJahrbu« cher, further demonstrates the extent to whichZionist war ideology was developed within the framework of the general German

seeMatthew Stibbe, GermanAnglophobia and the GreatWar, 1914-1918, Cambridge 2001; Peter Hoeres,Kriegder Philosophen. Die deutsche und die britische Philosophie im ErstenWeltkrieg, Paderborn 2004; Sven OliverMu« ller, Die Nation als Waffe und Vorstellung. Nationalismus in Deutschland und Gro�britannien im Ersten

Weltkrieg, Go« ttingen 2002, pp. 113-124. See also Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German

Antagonism, 1860-1914, London1980.52Goldmann,Von der weltkulturellen Bedeutung, pp. 11-18.53 ‘‘Das Assimilationsjudentum, das kosmopolitisch gesinnt war und ist und in derVerschmelzung allerNationen am besten die Au£o« sung der eigenen vollziehen zu ko« nnen ho¡te, wurzelt in seinemIdeengehalte und seiner Denkweise in der westlichen Aufkla« rungsphilosophie, in den liberalenDenkern Englands und den Enzyklopa« diephilosophen Frankreichs. Das junge, nationale Judentumhingegen, das den nationalen Gedanken zur zentralen Idee seiner Lebensanschauung erhoben hatist gedanklich fundiert auf der Basis der deutschen Philosophie; Fichte, Hegel, Lagarde und wieimmer die Klassiker des deutschen Nationalgedankens hei�en, sie sind auch seine philosophischenLehrmeister.’’Ibid., p. 50.

54On the bourgeois intellectual enthusiasm for the war, see Matthias Scho« ning,Versprengte Gemeinschaft.Kriegsroman und intellektuelle Mobilmachung in Deutschland 1914-1933, Go« ttingen 2009; Helmut Fries, Diegro�e Katharsis. Der ErsteWeltkrieg in der Sicht deutscher Dichter und Gelehrter, 2 vols., Konstanz 1994-1995;Gudrun Fiedler, Jugend im Krieg: Bu« rgerliche Jugendbewegung, Erster Weltkrieg und sozialer Wandel, 1914-1923, Ko« ln 1989; Klaus Vondung, Die Apokalypse in Deutschland, Mu« nchen 1988. Non-Zionist GermanJews, of course, were no exception either. See Sieg, Ju« dische Intellektuelle, pp. 132-151.

55See Goldmann, Von der weltkulturellen Bedeutung, p. 31; Siegmund Katznelson, ‘Die Su« nd£ut’, inSelbstwehr, vol. VIII, no. 31 (27 August 1914), p. 1; Martin Buber, ‘Der Engel und die Weltherrschaft’,inJu« dische Rundschau, vol. XX, no. 8 (19 February 1915), p. 62.


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war discourse.56 Although much of the critique of the radical Zionists was directedagainst Jewish assimilation, assimilation was not seen as a purely Jewish problem,but rather as the speci¢c Jewish version of a general disease. It was not only Jewishassimilation which had to be overcome, but the whole world of the nineteenthcentury.This world, declared Martin Buber in 1915,‘‘is a dying world. And the newworld is being born today.’’ (‘‘Es ist eine sterbendeWelt. Und die neue Welt wirdheute geboren.’’)57

Buber’s new world was populated by new, heroic Jews. ‘‘The blueprints for theheroic Jew,’’ Buber added, ‘‘are the soldiers of these days.’’ (‘‘Solch ein Entwurf desheroischen Juden sind die heutigen Ka« mpfer.’’)58 This view was similar to thevisions of the new, heroic man developed by German nationalists in theiridealization of the war.59 Both German and Jewish nationalism in the war wereinspired by the ideas of the philosophy of life and a speci¢c reading of the worksof Friedrich Nietzsche.60 As Steve Aschheim has argued, the attraction ofNietzsche for ¢n-de-sie' cle intellectuals lay in the fact that he represented twocontradictory elements: ‘‘the dynamic project of radical, secular self-creation andthe Dionysian impulse of self-submersion,’’a contradiction, however, which in mostcases was resolved by fusing ‘‘the individualistic and even antisocial impulse withinthe search for new forms of ‘total’ community.’’61 This was, of course, also theconnecting link to nationalism as the nation was considered by many to be thequintessential total community. However, while also rabid vo« lkisch authorsappropriated Nietzschean ideas, it was the more sophisticated nationalism ofArthur Moeller van den Bruck and Karl Joe« l which resonated with young Zionist

56For a Zionist contribution to ‘Der deutsche Krieg’, see Nachum Goldmann, Der Geist des Militarismus,Berlin 1915. For a contribution to ‘Das gro« �ere Deutschland’, see anonymous [Kurt Blumenfeld],‘Diepolitische Bedeutung des Zionismus’, in Das gro« �ere Deutschland 1915, no. 9 (27 February 1915),pp. 290-298. For a contribution to the Preu�ische Jahrbu« cher, see Kurt Blumenfeld, ‘Der Zionismus,eine Frage der deutschen Orientpolitik’, in Preu�ische Jahrbu« cher, vol. 161 (1915), pp. 1-32. See also theseries of talks organized by the Zionist Kartell ju« discher Verbindungen which included lectures by PaulRohrbach, Martin Buber, Ernst Ja« ckh and Alfons Paquet, CZA Z3/1039.

57Martin Buber, ‘Zum Geda« chtnis’ [1915], in Die ju« dische Bewegung: Gesammelte Aufsa« tze und Ansprachen1900-1915, Berlin 1916, p. 248.

58Ibid. See also idem, ‘Die Tempelweihe’ [1914], in ibid., pp. 230-243; Margulies, ‘Krieg derZuru« ckgebliebenen’; Moritz Bileski, ‘Erziehung zur Mannhaftigkeit’, in Der ju« dische Student,11 (1914/15), pp. 109-113; Moses Calvary, ‘Erziehungsprobleme des ju« dischen Jugendwanderns’, inBlau-Wei�-Fu« hrerzeitung, 1 (1917-19), pp. 3-10.

59See Sombart, pp. 64-65, 88; Rudolf Eggstein, Seeheld OttoWeddingen. Dem deutschenVolke und seinem Heeredargestellt, Leipzig 1915; Ernst Ju« nger, ‘In Stahlgewittern. Aus demTagebuch eines Sto�truppfu« hrers’[1920], in Sa« mtlicheWerke, vol. 1, Stuttgart 1978, pp. 9-300. On the construction of the heroic man innationalist war ideology, see Rene¤ Schilling, ‘Kriegshelden’. Deutungsmuster heroischer Ma« nnlichkeit inDeutschland 1813-1945, Paderborn 2002, pp. 252-288; Bernd Hu« ppauf, ‘Langemarck, Verdun and theMyth of a New Man in Germany after the FirstWorldWar’, inWar and Society, 6 (1988), pp. 70-103.

60On Nietzsche’s in£uence on German Zionists, see Steven E. Aschheim,The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany1890-1990, Berkeley 1992, pp. 102-107; Bruce E. Ellerin, ‘Nietzsche among the Zionists’, Ph.D.,Cornell University 1990, pp. 258-286, 300-308; Paul Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue: MartinBuber’s transformation of German social thought, Detroit 1989, pp. 49-82; Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche andZion, Ithaka 2004, pp. 21-64, 159-188.

61Aschheim,The Nietzsche Legacy, pp. 51-52.

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intellectuals before and during the war.62 These authors portrayed Nietzsche as theGerman philosopher par excellence and interpreted him in strictly neo-romanticterms. In such a way, they employed him to denounce the degeneration of liberalbourgeois society and to call for a national regeneration. Joe« l, in particular,pronounced the regenerative value of heroism, violence and war.63 These ideaswere further developed during the war in popular war novels such asWalter Flex’sDerWanderer zwischen beidenWelten (TheWanderer between theTwoWorlds) and inhighbrow philosophical works such as Max Scheler’s Der Genius des Krieges und derDeutsche Krieg (The Genius of War and the GermanWar).64 The young generationZionists’ enthusiasm for the war, too, was strongly in£uenced by the ideas ofNietzsche. Martin Buber’s indebtedness to Nietzsche is well known, but otherZionists also referred to the German philosopher as an inspiration for their ownthinking.65 Nietzsche provided these Zionists not only with a powerfulphilosophical framework to criticize the assumed degeneration of Jewish life inEurope as part of a general cultural decline, but also with an idea of what would bethe basis for, and the means to achieve, an alternative culture.

Nietzsche was particularly interesting for the young Zionists as a founder of thephilosophy of life, as a‘‘herald of life’’ (‘‘Abgesandte[r] des Lebens’’), as Buber put itin 1900.66 Other proponents of the philosophy of life, such as Henri Bergson,Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel and especially Rudolf Eucken, had a strongimpact on the young Zionists as well. In reaction to the rationalist world view ofthe nineteenth century, the philosophy of life advocated an organic concept of man

62See Arthur Moeller van den Bruck,Tschandala Nietzsche, Berlin 1899; idem, Fu« hrende Deutsche. Ulrich vonHutten, Martin Luther, der Gro�e Kurfu« rst, Friedrich Schiller, Otto von Bismarck, Friedrich Nietzsche, Minden1906, 212-253; Karl Joe« l, Nietzsche und die Romantik, Jena 1905; idem, Neue Weltkultur, Leipzig 1915.On the appropriation of Nietzsche in German nationalist discourse before and during the FirstWorldWar, see, with many more examples, Aschheim,The Nietzsche Legacy, pp. 118-163.

63See Joe« l, Nietzsche und die Romantik, pp. 19-25, 87-88.64Walter Flex, Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten. Ein Kriegserlebnis, Mu« nchen 1917; Max Scheler, DerGenius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg, Leipzig 1915. See also idem, Krieg und Aufbau, Leipzig 1916. OnFlex, see Hans-Rudolf Wahl, Die Religion des deutschen Nationalismus. Eine mentalita« tsgeschichtliche Studiezur Literatur des Kaiserreichs. Felix Dahn, Ernst von Wildenbruch, Walter Flex, Heidelberg 2002, pp. 283-358; Lars Koch, Der ErsteWeltkrieg als Medium der Gegenmoderne. Zu denWerken vonWalter Flex und ErnstJu« nger, Wu« rzburg 2006, pp. 60-191. On Scheler, see Klaus Schwabe,Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Diedeutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges, Go« ttingen 1969; HermannLu« bbe, Politische Philosophie in Deutschland. Studien zu ihrer Geschichte, Mu« nchen 1974, pp. 221-227; JohnR. Staude, Max Scheler 1874-1928: An intellectual portrait, NewYork 1967, pp. 63-94.

65See Martin Buber, Zarathustra. Meinen zuku« nftigen Freunden [ca. 1900], National Library of Israel,Ms. Var. 350/2/7b; idem, ‘Ein Wort u« ber Nietzsche und die Lebenswerte’, in Die Kunst im Leben, 1(1900), no. 2, p. 13, National Library of Israel, Ms. Var. 350/12/51; Arthur Ruppin, ‘ModerneWeltanschauung und Nietzsche’sche Philosophie’, in Die Gegenwart, 32 (1903), vol. 63, no. 10 (7 March1903), pp. 147-149; Hans Kohn, ‘Nationalismus’, in Der Jude, 6 (1921/22), pp. 674-686. On Buber’senthusiasm for Nietzsche, see Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, pp. 49-82; Golomb, Nietzscheand Zion, pp. 159-188; Paul Mendes-Flohr, ‘Zarathustra’s Apostle: Martin Buber and the JewishRenaissance’, in Jacob Golomb (ed.), Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, London 1997, pp. 233-243;Silberstein, pp. 25-31.

66Buber, ‘EinWort u« ber Nietzsche’. On the reception of the philosophy of life in German Zionism, seeYotam Hotam, Moderne Gnosis und Zionismus. Kulturkrise, Lebensphilosophie und nationalju« disches Denken,Go« ttingen 2009, pp. 117-237; Jo« rg Hackeschmidt, Von Kurt Blumenfeld zu Norbert Elias. Die Er¢ndungeiner ju« dischen Nation, Hamburg 1997, pp. 78-89.


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and nature, epitomized in the idea of ‘‘life,’’ and celebrated the intuitive andirrational Erlebnis as an addition to, and increasingly as a substitute for, reason.Zionism, wrote the Prague-based Zionist Hans Kohn in 1912, making use of all theemphatic vocabulary of this philosophy, stems from the mythical basis of existence:‘‘It is a certain feeling about what constitutes life, and it wants to prevail.’’ (‘‘Es istein bestimmtes Gefu« hl da von dem, was Leben ist, und es will sich durchsetzen.’’)67

With the beginning of the war, Rudolf Eucken used the philosophy of life also tojustify Germany’s role in this con£ict. The war was conceived as the ultimaterevitalizing experience in which materialism and rationalism were ¢nally defeatedby the forces of life. Materialism and rationalism were identi¢ed with Germany’senemies, but also with the bourgeois culture of nineteenth-century Germany.68

The young Zionists, too, employed this philosophy to interpret the bloody ¢ghtingas the birth of a new man who rid himself of the rational and arti¢cial constraints.In September 1914, Alfred Kraus wrote to Robert Weltsch: ‘‘I can see that thiswar . . .brought to us, the youth of all nations, and especially to us Jews, one thinggreat and beautiful: that we again understand the meaning of activitas, of vitalexperience.’’ (‘‘Ich sehe auch daran, da� dieser Krieg . . .das eine Gro�e, Scho« neuns, der Jugend aller Nationen, uns Juden in erster Linie gebracht hat, da� wirwieder den Sinn von activitas erfassen, und was lebendiges Erleben ist.’’)69 AlfredKraus was killed soon after writing this letter.

Even more important than to liberate the vital energies of the individual, and anessential precondition for it, was the integration of the individual into the collectiveof theVolk.There was a long tradition in Zionist thought to appropriate the Germanconcept ofVolk in order to de¢ne theJewish nation.This tradition was particularlystrong among the radical Zionists of the younger generation. Since the end of thenineteenth century, German nationalist philosophy increasingly radicalized theconcept of the Volk into an organic and mystical community which was rootedoutside of the realm of the society. This radicalization was appreciated by manyyoung generation Zionists, too. For both German nationalists and radical Zionists,the war seemed ¢nally to realize the national community, the Volksgemeinschaft

(people’s community), for which they had longed. Buber, in his article Die Losung

from1916, managed to employ the term Gemeinschaft (community) thirteen times in

67Hans Kohn, ‘Der Zionismus und die Religion’, in Zionistische Briefe. Herausgegeben vom Verein ju« discherHochschu« ler Bar Kochba in Prag, 7 (May 1912) and 8/9 (June 1912), Leo Baeck Institute NewYork, AR259/1/16. See also Siegmund Katznelson, ‘Weltanschauung und Partei’, in Zionistische Briefe.Herausgegeben vom Verein ju« discher Hochschu« ler Bar Kochba in Prag, March 1911, pp. 6-10, CZA A 145/257;Kurt M. Singer, ‘Von der Sendung des Judentums. Ideen zur Philosophie Henri Bergsons’, in VomJudentum, pp. 71-100.

68See Rudolf Eucken, Die geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung des deutschen Geistes, Stuttgart 1914; idem, Diesittlichen Kra« fte des Krieges, Leipzig 1914; idem, Die geistigen Forderungen der Gegenwart, Berlin 1917.Despite his immense popularity in the early twentieth century, there is relatively little scholarlywork on Eucken. For studies on his political writings, see Be�lich, pp. 45-118; Lu« bbe, pp. 178-88;Schwabe.

69Alfred Kraus to RobertWeltsch, 25 September 1914, in EugenTannenbaum (ed.), Kriegsbriefe deutscherund o« sterreichischerJuden, Berlin 1915, pp. 42-43.

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just three pages.70Thewar, it was assumed, notonlymade the individuals appreciatethe value of community. It also demonstrated the supremacy of an essentialist over apurely constructivist concept of belonging, the latter being associated with bothwestern European ideas andJewish liberalismandassimilation. Buber wrote:

Judaism had no real roots any more and the aerial roots of assimilation had nonourishing power. Only now, in the catastrophic process he witnessed from within thevarious nations, the Jew has realized with amazement and epiphany the greatness ofcommunity.71

In the ¢rst phase of the war, the radical Zionists thus saw themselves largely inagreement with German nationalist discourse and supported by the intellectualatmosphere in Germany.This conviction boosted their aspiration to lead the ZVfDand to determine its future policy. After the national convention in Leipzig inDecember 1916, Leo Hermann claimed in his lead article in theJu« dische Rundschauthat the validity of the explicitly nationalist strategy of German Zionism‘‘has beenemphasized strongly by the events and experiences of eighteen months of war.’’(‘‘Die Bedeutung dieser Aufgabe ist durch die Ereignisse und Erlebnisse in diesenachtundzwanzig Kriegsmonaten aufs kra« ftigste unterstrichenworden.’’) As a result,the convention had approved the radical nationalist orientation.‘‘The validity of thenational conception of Judaism,’’ he continued,‘‘has even been recognized by thoseGerman Jews who, until recently, believed they should close their mind toZionism.’’72 The radical Zionists were convinced that the hegemony of nationalismin Germany would not only make it easier for the non-Jewish Germans to accept anational Jewish identity. They also believed that, under these circumstances, astrictly nationalist orientation would strengthen the legitimacy of Zionism amongGermanJews and its in£uence as a political organization. German nationalism andGermanZionism, it seemedto them,wouldproceedand succeed sideby side.

ZIONISM AS A DIFFERENT NATIONALISM

This congruence, however, did not persist as the war went on. In the trenches, theexcitement of the ¢rst weeks and months soon wore o¡, and the young Zionists,many of whom were active soldiers, became increasingly disillusioned about the

70Buber,‘Die Losung’. See also Margulies,‘Krieg der Zu« ckgebliebenen’.71 ‘‘Das Judentum war nicht mehr wurzelhaft, und die Luftwurzeln seiner Assimilation waren ohnena« hrende Kraft. Jetzt aber hat der Jude in dem katastrophalen Vorgang, den er in den Vo« lkernmiterlebte, bestu« rzend und erleuchtend das gro�e Leben der Gemeinschaft entdeckt.’’ Buber, ‘DieLosung’, p. 2. Buber here quotes his own speech ‘‘Die Tempelweihe’’. See also Goldmann, Von derweltkulturellen Bedeutung, p. 50; Hans Kohn’s diary, entry of 23 September 1914, Leo Baeck InstituteNewYork, AR 259/6/29.

72 ‘‘Die Richtigkeit der nationalen Au¡assung des Judentums ist auch in den Kreisen des deutschenJudentums erkannt worden, die sich bisher dem Zionismus und dem nationalen Judentumverschlie�en zu mu« ssen glaubten.’’ Anonymous [Leo Hermann], ‘Nach dem Delegiertentag’, inJu« dische Rundschau, vol. XXI, no. 52 (29 December 1916), p. 431. See also Margulies, ‘Krieg derZuru« ckgebliebenen’.


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war. RobertWeltsch, for example, wrote to Buber in November 1915 that ‘‘the warwas a big disappointment to all of us and certainly didn’t have the e¡ect onpeoples’ souls which we were expecting from this extraordinary experience.’’73 Inthis respect, Jewish and non-Jewish Germans went through a similar process. The‘war socialism,’ in which the state assumed partial control over the capitalisteconomy in order to meet the needs of the war e¡ort, did not help to reduce thedisparity between the social classes. At the same time, the experiences of thesoldiers in the trenches did not match up in any way with the ideology of ‘frontlinecommunity’ disseminated in the glorifying literature. In addition, the Burgfrieden,the internal political truce proclaimed at the beginning of the war, gave way to aneven more radical confrontation between the di¡erent political camps. Insummary, the myth of the war as the creator of Volksgemeinschaft rapidly lost itscredibility and attractiveness. Outside of the o⁄cial war propaganda, itincreasingly became a partisan conviction of the right wing.74 Many GermanJews,who politically tended towards liberalism or moderate socialism, were among the¢rst who called for peace.75 Many Zionists shared this growing paci¢st mood.TheZionist Oskar Epstein in Prague, for example, wrote in October 1917 that, asantisemites branded a peace of reconciliation as a ‘‘Jewish peace,’’ Jews should‘‘proudly claim credit for this attribution.’’ (‘‘Wir wollen uns dieseGedankenverbindung zur Ehre anrechnen.’’)76 The Zionists’ doubts about theirprevious convictions were genuine and serious. However, they also re£ected achanging discursive environment. No longer was it possible to argue thatgrounding Zionism in an heroic and emphatic nationalism was tantamount toriding on the waves of history.

While the left and liberal camps in Germany turned increasingly critical ofthe war and wanted it to end as soon as possible, the right wing became ever moreradical, belligerent and chauvinistic. In September 1917, the DeutscheVaterlandsparteiwas founded as an alliance of those forces that opposed political reforms withinthe Reich and called for a Siegfrieden (victorious peace) with large scale

73 ‘‘. . .da� der Krieg mit all seinen unmittelbaren Folgen und Wirkungen fu« r uns alle eine schwereEntta« uschung gebracht hat und keineswegs dieWirkung auf die Gemu« ter hatte, die wir von diesemAu�erordentlichen erho¡ten.’’ RobertWeltsch to Martin Buber, 23 November 1915, in Martin Buber,Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 404.

74On the process of disillusionment in German society during the war, see Ste¡en Bruendel,Volksgemeinschaft oder Volksstaat. Die ‘‘Ideen von 1914’’ und die Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg,Berlin 2003, pp. 144-176; Bernd Ulrich, ‘Die Desillusionierung der Kriegsfreiwilligen von 1914’, inWolfram Wette (ed.), Der Krieg des kleinen Mannes. Eine Milita« rgeschichte von unten, 2nd ed., Mu« nchen1995, pp. 110-126; Fries, vol. 1, pp. 228-250, vol. 2, pp. 95-131. The term ‘war socialism’, orKriegssozialismus, was coined by the Social Democrat Paul Lensch. See Paul Lensch,‘Kriegssozialismus’, inVorwa« rts, vol. XXXII, no. 36 (5 February 1915), supplement.

75See Sieg, Ju« dische Intellektuelle, pp. 165-172; Peter Pulzer, Jews and the German State:The political history ofa minority, 1848-1933, Oxford 1992, pp. 201-207.

76Oskar Epstein, ‘Die Juden und der Friede’, Selbstwehr, vol. XI, no. 42 (26. October 1917), p. 2. See alsoMartin Buber, ‘Ein Heldenbuch’ in Der Jude, 1 (1916/17), pp. 641-642; Jakob Klatzkin, Probleme desmodernen Judentums, Berlin 1918, pp. 155-165. See also the positive reviews of Stefan Zweig’s paci¢stnovelJeremias in several Zionist journals, quoted in Sieg, Ju« dische Intellektuelle, p. 171.

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annexations.77 Aggressiveness against external enemieswas complementedby ¢erceattacks against alleged enemies of the Volksgemeinschaft within German society.Among the main targets of these attacks were Jews. Both the struggle fordemocratization and the e¡orts to end the war were identi¢ed as essentiallyJewishendeavours to undermine German victory.78 As mentioned above, the Germanstate had given credibility to this antisemitism through the ‘Jewish census.’ On onelevel, this growing antisemitism was mainly a blow to the old generation Zionists,whereas the younger Zionist felt rea⁄rmed. Kurt Blumenfeld, for example, wrotein the Ju« dische Rundschau: ‘‘The true reason for antisemitism is the reality of ourJewish peculiarity. Antisemitism shows that we are still a vital community. Ourpeculiarity is sensed by the others.’’79 Arguing that it was exactly the disavowal ofJewish identity that gave legitimacy to antisemitism, the radical Zionists initiallysaw no reason to abandon or even tone down their nationalist ideology.

On another level, however, the radical Zionists realized that antisemitism waspart of a much larger problem. Robert Weltsch, for example, reported from thefront in 1916 that articles in the antisemitic press largely echoed the prevailingatmosphere among the soldiers.80 The Zionists began to feel that Germannationalism had an aggressive and chauvinistic dimension which did not ¢t theirideas about Jewish nationalism. From 1917, the Ju« dische Rundschau increasinglypublished articles which were critical of German nationalism. Leo Hermann, forexample, wrote in July 1917 that even though ‘‘the roots of noble nationalism lay inGermany. . . the Germans will still have to acquire a way of thinking that refrainsfrom spiritual oppression and paternalism against fellow citizens who aredi¡erent.’’81 In particular, it became clear for the Zionists that German chauvinismhad an inbuilt antisemitic orientation. In July 1918, after the Germanadministration had closed the eastern borders for Jewish immigrants, theJu« discheRundschau wrote that ‘‘it is obvious that the Prussian Ministry of the Interior isbehind these orders. Its time-tested and well-known antisemitism withstands allreforms.’’82 After the revolution of November 1918, theJu« dische Rundschau celebratedthe collapse of the ‘‘system’’ which ‘‘sought and succeeded to disenfranchise

77On the radicalization and polarization of German politics and ideology during the war, seeBruendel, pp. 143-299. On the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei, see Rainer Hering, Konstruierte Nation. DerAlldeutsche Verband 1890 bis 1939, Hamburg 2003, pp. 469-472; Heinz Hagenlu« cke, Die DeutscheVaterlandspartei. Die nationale Rechte am Ende des Kaiserreichs, Du« sseldorf 1997.

78See Konstantin Freiherr von Gebsattel,‘Judenwahlen ^ Judenfriede?’ in Deutsche Zeitung, 21September1917, quoted in Jochmann, p. 433.

79 ‘‘Die Wirklichkeit unserer ju« dischen Sonderart ist der wahre Grund des Antisemitismus. DerAntisemitismus ist ein Zeichen dafu« r, da� wir noch immer eine wirkende Gemeinschaft sind.Unsere Sonderart wird von den anderen empfunden.’’ Maarabi,‘Antisemitismus’, p. 240.

80Untitled note by RobertWeltsch, 1916, Leo Baeck Institute NewYork, AR 7185/1/58.81 ‘‘. . .da� gerade in deutschem Boden die Wurzeln eines edlen Nationalismus ruhen [aber] da� dieDeutschen, vom Nationalstaatsbegri¡ fest umfangen, die freie Sinnesart sich erst erwerben mu« ssen,die, im eigenen Haus, sich von geistiger Unterdru« ckung und Bevormundung der andersgeartetenMitbu« rger freizuhalten wei�.’’ L. H. [Leo Herrmann], ‘Toleranz und ihre Grenzen’, in Ju« discheRundschau, vol. XXII, no. 28 (13 July 1917), p. 229.

82 ‘‘Es obliegt fu« r uns keinem Zweifel, da� das preu�ische Ministerium des Inneren hinter diesenAnordnungen steht, dessen langja« hrig erprobter und den deutschen Juden recht vertrauter


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complete segments of the society.’’ (‘‘es war dasWesen dieses Systems, da� es ganzeGruppen und Schichten von Staatsbu« rgern zu entrechten suchte und zu entrechtenwu�te.’’)83 Even though these articles tried to convey the subtext of ‘‘we knew allalong,’’ they clearly represented a gradual dissociation from the crumblingGerman Empire and from the ideology it was built upon.84

In their critique of German nationalism the young Zionists were, however,always careful not to deny the common intellectual ground which existed despitethe di¡erent political character. Instructive in this respect is an episode involvingMax Hildebert Boehm, a vo« lkisch intellectual who later became a central ¢gure inthe neo-conservative circles of the Weimar Republic.85 Boehm published severalpro-Zionist articles in the Preu�ischeJahrbu« cher, including an enthusiastic review ofthe ¢rst issue of Martin Buber’s journal DerJude. He drew parallels between theGerman and the Jewish vo« lkisch revival and sent Buber a manuscript in which hecalled for an alliance between Zionists and antisemites. Buber rejected this articlebecause he did not want his journal to be a platform for antisemitism. Instead, hepublished a highly critical response to Boehm by Arnold Zweig. Zweignevertheless noted his agreement with Boehm’s critique of assimilation and statedthat despite all di¡erences, the young Zionists ‘‘are mentally closer to the youngnational Germans of the Boehm character than to other movements.’’ (‘‘wenn wirauch den jungen nationalen Deutschen Boehmscher Pra« gung innerlich na« herstehen als anderen Bewegungen’’)86

The radical Zionists did not abandon their nationalist concept of Jewish identitybut rather continued to employ ideological patterns of the vo« lkisch discourse. Buber,for example, wrote in 1917 that ‘‘Volk means for us the unity of blood and destiny.’’

geheimra« tlicher Antisemitismus jeder Neuorientierung Stand ha« lt.’’Anonymous, ‘Grenzschlu� gegenJuden in Deutschland’, inJu« dische Rundschau, vol. XXIII, no. 30 (26 July1918), p. 229.

83Anonymous,‘Revolution’, inJu« dische Rundschau, vol. XXIII, no. 46 (15 November 1918), p. 357.84The same tendency can be found, for example, in Martin Buber’s ‘DerJude’. See Martin Buber, ‘Einpolitischer Faktor’, in Der Jude, 2 (1917/18), pp. 289-291; idem, ‘Der Preis’, in Der Jude, 2 (1917/18),pp. 505-510; Robert Weltsch, ‘Volk oder Partei?’ in Der Jude, 2 (1917/18), pp. 510-517; AlbrechtHellmann, ‘Die Juden in derWeltpolitk’, in DerJude, 3 (1918/19), pp. 7-15. The Zionists also wanted todistance themselves from radical nationalism outside Germany, especially in eastern Europe. SeeAmitai [Leo Herrmann],‘Chronik’, in DerJude, 3 (1918/19), pp. 55-61.

85On Boehm, see Ulrich Prehn, ‘Metamorphosen radikalen Ordnungsdenkens im ‘‘europa« ischenGro�raum’’. Ethnopolitische und ‘‘volkstheoretische’’ Konzepte Max Hildebert Boehms vom Erstenbis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Michael Garle¡ (ed.), Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und DrittesReich, vol. 2, Ko« ln 2008, pp. 1-70; Berthold Petzinna, Erziehung zum Deutschen Lebensstil. Ursprung undEntwicklung des jungkonservativen ‘‘Ring’’-Kreises 1918^1933, Berlin 2000.

86Arnold Zweig, ‘Jude und Europa« er. Entgegnung an Max Hildebert Boehm’, in Der Jude, 2 (1917/18),p. 24. See Max Hildebert Boehm, ‘Vom ju« disch-deutschen Geist’, in Preu�ische Jahrbu« cher 162 (1915),pp. 404-420; idem, ‘Der Jude. Eine Monatsschrift’, in Preu�ischeJahrbu« cher, 165 (1916), pp. 156-157; idem,‘Geistiger Zionismus und ju« dische Assimilation’, in Preu�ische Jahrbu« cher, 167 (1917), pp. 319-324. Forthe correspondence between Buber and Boehm, see Buber to Boehm, 10 May 1916, Boehm to Buber,16 May 1916, National Library of Israel, Ms.Var. 350/08/124a; Buber to Boehm (draft), 25 May 1916,National Library of Israel, Ms. Var. 350/08/124a/I. Buber ¢nally accepted another article in whichBoehm answered to Zweig’s critique, see Max Hildebert Boehm,‘Emanzipation und Machtwille immodernen Judentum’, in Der Jude, 2 (1917/18), pp. 371-378. On the whole episode, see the detailedinterpretation in Sieg, Ju« dische Intellektuelle, pp. 251-252.

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(‘‘Und weilVolk uns die Einheit aus Blut und Schicksal bedeutet.’’87) Even after theend of the war, RobertWeltsch maintained that ‘‘the essential relationship betweenhuman beings is that of intrinsic, blood-determined, myth-determined,inalienable natural and spiritual . . .bonds.’’ (‘‘Der wesentliche Zusammenhangder Menschen ist der der inneren, blutbestimmten, mythosbestimmten,invera« u�erlichen natu« rlichen und geistigen . . .Verbundenheit.’’88) Already in hisarticle Die Losung, however, which so clearly demonstrated his attachment toGerman vo« lkisch nationalism, Buber had also insisted that Jewish nationalism wasdi¡erent. ‘‘It is not its goal,’’ Buber wrote, ‘‘to add another nation to the nationswhich currently ¢ght with each other. It is not the goal of the Jews to contribute tothe division between the nations, but to contribute to the bonds between thenations.’’89 From the very beginning, a universalistic element was included in theradical Zionism of the younger generation which considered the rediscovery ofJewish vo« lkisch identity an important step towards universal humanism. Towardsthe end of the war this element became increasingly pronounced and served as ameans to distinguish Zionism from German nationalism and to dissociate oneselffrom its chauvinist and antisemitic tendencies. ‘‘We have to make sure,’’ wroteRobert Weltsch in November 1917, ‘‘not to subordinate our human aims to ourJewish goals.’’ (‘‘. . .so mu« ssen wir uns klar bewu�t werden, da� wir unserefflmenschlichen’ Ziele den ju« dischen Zwecken nicht unterordnen ko« nnen.’’90)Zionism, it was claimed, aimed at the rebirth of the Jewish nation, but also atunderstanding and reconciliation among the nations. While still being conceivedin the same nationalist and vo« lkisch terms, it was now presented as the opposite toGerman nationalism and chauvinism.

This contention made sense only if nationalist ideology was separated fromnationalist politics. While the Zionists rejected the chauvinist politics of radicalGerman nationalism, they still largely a⁄rmed its ideological basis. If the goal ofnationalism was to regenerate theVolk both spiritually and practically, but not toaccumulate political power, even vo« lkisch nationalism could seem to be a benignidea. Such a distinction was much more easily conceivable from a cultural Zionist,than from a political Zionist, perspective. Cultural Zionism had always held thatthe ‘Jewish problem’ was a cultural rather than a political problem and that the‘‘internal Jewish plight’’ was even more pressing than the external one.The radicalZionists were therefore much better prepared to separate the intellectual basis ofradical nationalism from its political consequences. This was, of course, a largely

87Martin Buber, ‘Unser Nationalismus’, in Der Jude, 2 (1917/18), p. 1. See also Karl Hilb, ‘Vom WesenunseresWanderns’, in Blau-Wei�-Fu« hrerzeitung, 1 (1917-19), pp. 71-73.

88Robert Weltsch, ‘Nationalismus und Sozialismus. Eine unpolitische Betrachtung u« ber politischeGegensta« nde’, in DerJude, 4 (1919/20), p. 196.

89 ‘‘. . .gehen wir nicht darauf aus, eine Nationalita« t mehr zu den Nationalita« ten zu fu« gen, die einanderin diesem Augenblick beka« mpfen oder belauern. Es ist nicht die Sache des Judentums, zurVo« lkertrennung beizutragen, sondern seine Sache ist, der Vo« lkerverbindung zu dienen.’’ Buber, ‘DieLosung’, p. 3.

90Weltsch, ‘Volk oder Partei?’, p. 516. See also Arnold Zweig, ‘Juden und Deutsche (Ein Nachwort anM. H. Bo« hm)’, in DerJude, 2 (1917/18), pp. 204-207.


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theoretical and highly questionable separation. In the German context, however, itproved to be a more plausible concept than the liberal political nationalism o¡eredby the old generation.

CONCLUSIONS

By the end of the war, it became clear that the political strategy of the oldergeneration Zionists had not borne much fruit. If Zionist interests were compatiblewith German interests at all, they were certainly very low on the German list ofpriorities. Germany’s defeat made all attempts to rally her behind the Zionist causefutile and proved that the old generation Zionists had backed the wrong horse.Thewar thus contributed to the loss of in£uence of these Zionists and their strategy.The radical Zionists of the younger generation, in contrast, were able to strengthentheir position, even as it became clear that the war produced strong chauvinisticand antisemitic currents within German society. Their radical nationalistapproach bene¢ted from the nationalist euphoria that characterized the earlyphase of the war. Much more than the Zionism of the old generation, it was in tunewith the vitalist and essentialist tendencies that dominated the nationalistdiscourse in Germany. The radical approach also bene¢ted from the failure ofpolitical Zionism to seize consistent German support for the Zionist cause, andfrom the loss of credibility of political Zionism due to the radicalization of Germannationalism and antisemitism. Because its nationalism was essentially a culturalrather than a political concept, it was much less dependent on this kind of politicalsupport. Finally, the radical Zionists bene¢ted from their ability to detachthemselves from German nationalism without giving up the idea of nationalism assuch. They were able to do so by emphasizing the peculiar Jewish character ofZionist nationalism and by integrating it into a universalistic, humanisticperspective. This was possible by insisting on its non-political, and especially itscultural, nature. After the war, the triumph of the radical Zionists over the oldguard was complete. At the national convention in Hanover in 1921, they seizedcontrol of all important o⁄ces and henceforth dominated the ZVfD.91

Paradoxically, the takeover of the ZVfD by the radical Zionists was theprecondition for German Zionism to become the most moderate section in theWorld Zionist Organization. This was precisely because these Zionists rejectedpolitical Zionism more radically than any other Zionist faction and often resortedto a largely cultural version of nationalism. From the point of view of cultural

91Felix Rosenblu« th (born 1887) was elected chairman of the ZVfD. Members of the ExecutiveCommittee (Gescha« ftsfu« hrender Ausschu�) were Kurt Blumenfeld (born 1884), Arthur Hantke (born1874, though an avowed practical Zionist), Walter Moses (born 1892), Siegfried Moses (born 1887),Moses Smoira (born 1888), Israel Auerbach (born 1878), Egon Rosenberg (born 1881), Max Kober(born 1885), Arthur Rau (born 1895), Max Strau� (born 1887). Also the Zionist Central Committee(Zentralkomitee) was made up almost exclusively of younger generation Zionists. Robert Weltsch(born 1891) continued as editor of the Ju« dische Rundschau. See ‘Die Wahlen’, in Ju« dische Rundschau,vol. XXVI, no. 39-40 (17 May 1921), p. 280.

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Zionism, the creation of a Jewish nation state was much less important than thespiritual rebirth of the Jewish nation and the reconciliation with the Arab world.Detached from its political consequences, radical, even vo« lkisch, nationalism couldindeed be considered a step towards humanity. However, the contradictionbetween nationalism as a necessarily exclusive concept and universalism as aconcept of all-embracing inclusion remained unsolved. The problematic nature ofthis theoretical fusion became apparent as soon as the German Zionists tried,again, to translate it into politics. Many German Zionists, for example,participated in the activities of the Brit Shalom group, which criticized Zionistchauvinism and advocated a bi-national commonwealth in Palestine.92 TheGerman Zionists’ attempts to contain nationalism by subjecting it to humanisticgoals was seen by many Zionists in Palestine as quixotic idealism or even asoutright treason.This may have been one of the reasons why German Zionism hadso little practical impact on the political history of Palestine and later Israel. Itmight, however, still be German Zionism’s most important legacy.

92On Brit Shalom see Adi Gordon (ed.), Brith Shalom and Bi-National Zionism:The ‘‘Arab Question’’ as aJewish question, Jerusalem 2008 [Hebrew]; Dimitry Shumsky, Between Prague andJerusalem:The idea ofa binational state in Palestine, Jerusalem 2010 [Hebrew]; Yfaat Weiss, ‘Central EuropeanEthnonationalism and Zionist Binationalism’, in Jewish Social Studies, 11 (2004), pp. 93-117; ShalomRatzabi, Between Zionism and Judaism:The radical circle in Brith Shalom 1925-1933, Leiden 2002; HagitLavsky, ‘German Zionists and the Emergence of Brit Shalom’, in Jehuda Reinharz and AnitaShapira (eds.), Essential Papers on Zionism, NewYork 1996, pp. 648-670.


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Documents

The FirstWorldWar - German Nationalism and theTransformation of German Zionism