The Stigma of Names: Antisemitism in German Daily Life, 1812-1933 by Dietz Bering; NevillePlaiceReview by: John D. KlierThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Apr., 1995), pp. 355-357Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4211826 .

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REVIEWS 355

bare twenty-four hours in I 939, have so far received international attention of comparably short duration. However much to be regretted, this neglect is in many respects understandable. Divided and dispersed among the territories of present-day Slovakia, Ukraine, Hungary and Yugoslavia, the Rusyns are in no position to jeopardize security interests in the region. Additionally, and as the contents of the present volume amply suggest, Rusyn national identity is only weakly held and evinces few distinguishing characteristics. First, many Rusyns appear (if the account provided here by Mikola Musynka is to be believed) to have no adequate means of describing themselves. The term rus'kjy employed by the Rusyns of Slovakia thus means as much 'Russian' as 'Rusyn'. Secondly, because they lack a literary language of their own, the Rusyns have historically been drawn into the stronger Ukrainian cultural orbit. (Paradoxically, however, many of the Rusyns who emigrated from Slovakia to Ukraine after the Second World War discovered soon after their arrival that they were really Slovaks.) Thirdly, the Rusyn populations of Eastern Europe are apt to seek out their own separate ethnic identities even to the extent, as with the Lemkos of Poland, of inventing a mythological descent from the White Croats of antiquity. In view of the weakness of their collective identity, it is certainly tempting to conceive of the Rusyns as an ethnographic curiosity destined for eventual assimilation. Nevertheless, as Andrzej Zieba suggests here, 'the problem of identity formation among the Rus' inhabitants of the Carpathians' will probably be more fruitfully understood 'within the context of other border peoples in this part of Europe' (p. 217).

The present work comprises papers collected in the course of a rolling seminar which took the editor from Harrogate to Kiev during the period I99o-9I. The quality of the contributions is varied and ranges from a most scholarly attempt to sketch the history of the Rusyns in Hungary to an intemperate denial of the very concept of a separate Rusyn identity. Other chapters treat upon the Rusyns of Poland, Slovakia, Yugoslavia and North America. Several conclusory essays bring order and commonsense to the work as a whole. The volume is arranged in two parts, the first being an English translation of the second, which consists of the papers in the language in which they were originally delivered. Pages 80-IO2, being composed in Lemko- Rusyn, will be of particular interest to linguists and philologists.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies MARTYN RADY

University ofLondon

Bering, Dietz. The Stigma of Names: Antisemitism in German Daily Life, i8i2-1933. Translated by Neville Plaice. Polity Press, Cambridge, I992. xii + 345 pp. Bibliography. Index. Tables. ?39.50.

THE theme of this book is summed up by the plaintive lament of a Jewish university professor in Breslau in the I88os: 'You try being called Cohen for fifty years!' On one level it is the examination of how some names in modern German culture came to be regarded as Jewish, and how they served as markers for theJewish origins of those who bore them.

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356 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

This was not just a minor inconvenience, for the question of names in Imperial Germany reveals both the efforts ofJews to accommodate themselves to German culture, and the obstinate refusal of the broader society to accept them - the ultimate failure ofJewish emancipation in Germany. The theme of 'everyday antisemitism' has been chronicled before, but never at such a fundamental level of human existence. Bering argues that German antise- mitism was able to pervade the fundamental definer of human beings - their names - and became a vehicle accustoming society to the disrespectful treatment ofJews.

The basis of Bering's study are the records of the Prussian state archives for I84o-67 and I900-32 which chronicle the requests ofJews to the Ministry of Interior seeking to change their names. From this material Bering weaves a fascinating book: the first part chronicles the way in which names became an issue, and then a carrier of everyday antisemitism. The second part explores the process of 'branding' ofJewish names, and Bering is able to demonstrate the negative 'charge' borne by a plethora ofJewish names, a survey of obvious utility to both historians and literary critics.

The correlation of names and social prestige goes back to the dawn ofJewish emancipation in Prussia. One of the provisions of the Law of i i March I 812,

which granted civic equality to the Jews, was a demand that Jews acquire 'firmly fixed surnames'. They did this only too well, and by I 8 I 6 PrussianJews were proposing to name their children in honour of the King of Prussia himself. The monarch, Frederich William, instead ordered that unbaptised Jews not be given 'merely Christian baptismal names'.

This command set off a century-long effort to define Jewish names. It produced works of scholarship: it inspired Leopold Zunz, one of the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums, to produce his masterly The Names of the Jews, which demonstrated the ease with which the Jews had adopted the names of alien communities. It produced wonderful anomalies: the implication of a royal decree of I836 forbidding Christian first names was that Jews could be named Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

As names became branded,Jews intent on assimilation attempted to escape them. They turned to the Ministry of Interior to escape names that were insulting or rude. The response of state officials was telling: they rejected most claims on the grounds that the applicant sought to abandon a Jewish name 'with a view to an easier livelihood or in view of the antisemitic movement', thus overtly accepting the misuse to which antisemites put such names. The implication was clear: Jewish emancipation was not desired. (Contrast the applications of Poles, whose assimilation via a name change was welcomed and expedited.)

The greater freedom of the Weimar Period produced a flood of successful applications, but with the Nazi Era events came full circle: after several comical attempts to assemble catalogues ofJewish names, the regime simply commanded that all Jews with non-Jewish names accept the designation 'Israel' or 'Sara'.

This elegantly written book is offered in a fluent translation from the German (apart from the 'Hep! Hep! Riots', rather than 'Chop, Chop Riots', of I8I9). Bering's study is a model example of the insights offered to social

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REVIEWS 357

historians by the field of onomastics. It also suggests areas for comparative research, given a similar campaign to force distinctive names on Jews in late Imperial Russia. It is highly recommended to all students of antisemitism in general, and German antisemitism in particular. Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies JOHN D. KLIER University College London

Kogon, Eugen; Langbein, Hermann and Riuckerl, Adalbert (eds). Nazi Mass Murder. A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, I 994. xiv + 289 pp. Appendices. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Index. ?25.00.

THE German edition of this important book first appeared in I983 with a far more apposite title, Nationalsozialistische Massentbtungen durch Giftgas. Eine Dokumentation (Frankfurt am Main). Its availability now to non-German readers at English and American universities should help, at last, to bring this key subject to a wider audience, and Yale University Press should really consider reissuing it as a reasonably priced paperback as soon as possible. The book is co-authored by twenty-four writers from Europe and Israel - none, significantly, from the United Kingdom or America - all of whom have international reputations in their fields of specialization, while half in various ways had direct personal experience of the Nazi system of death.

In a series of straightforward accounts based on contemporary documents and eyewitness accounts - itself a refreshing experience as against the more than irritating practice of some historians of propagating convoluted and artificial arguments about the subject the book details the political and technical development of two poisonous gases and how they were employed to achieve the Nazi policy of killing those considered 'unworthy of life'. The gases in question were carbon monoxide and hydrocyanic acid, the latter marketed as Zyklon B by the German Society for Pest Eradication (DeGesh).

The fact that the Nazi regime began its systematic killing of human beings with the mentally and physically infirm- its so-called 'Euthanasia' pro- gramme - in November I939 in occupied western Poland (pp. 37ff.) and in Germany at about the same time or shortlv afterwards (with Gentiles the main victims rather thanjews), indirectly helps to underline one essential fact about I94I which some historians prefer to ignore completely: what was at issue in 1941 was not so much whether the mass of EuropeanJewrv should be killed, but rather when and how. By expounding in such detail the how of that dreadful equation, this volume shows time and time again the svmbiosis which existed between 194 I and Hitler's original Euthanasia order of October I 939 for that killing to commence, and how the facilities of modern technical science and engineering were organized and developed to put that and other such orders into practical effect by means of the poison gases in question.

For the somewhat limited number of Euthanasia victims, some 70,273 in all, carbon monoxide was supplied to the killing establishment and administered via pipes and valves from steel tanks containing the substance. Such proce- dures were seen to be entirely out of the question when the political orders were

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