The Creation of the German-Jewish Diaspora by Hagit Lavsky

Author:Hagit Lavsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2017-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

German Zionism

Examining German Zionism will allow us to understand the encounter between German-Jewish immigration and Palestine. German Zionism emerged during the latter part of the 19th century as a response to two interrelated processes – the mass appearance of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe – the “Ostjuden”– and the rise of modern anti-Semitism. Since the universities served as the meeting place of both, a whole range of responses developed among students regarding the “Jewish question,” among them the Zionist response.

The German Zionist Federation (Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland, ZVfD) was a small organization, comprising three percent of German Jewry, and five percent of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). But inspite of its tiny dimensions it fulfilled a central role in founding the WZO in 1897 and in running it thereafter. During the ten years between the death of the movement founder, Theodor Herzl in 1904, up to World War I, German Zionism was the home of the Central Zionist Office, and German Zionists held key positions in the WZO. The “second generation” of German Zionists began already then to develop a radical version of Zionism, which called for Hebrew renaissance, personal devotion to the building of Palestine as the new homeland, and personal commitment to immigrate to Palestine. This revolutionary trend received a dramatic push during WWI, and was expressed during the Weimar period by the central role it took in promoting Palestine and the building of the national home on the German Zionist agenda. German Zionist leaders were key movers in the establishment of the Keren Hayesod (Jewish Foundation Fund, KH) in 1920, and they developed the unwritten covenant between the public-national capital and the Zionist Labor Movement during the 1920s.

Despite the fact that the Central Zionist Office moved in 1920 to London, and Eastern European Zionist leaders replaced the former German Zionist leaders, German Zionists continued to influence the economic sphere in shaping Zionist settlement policy and in filling key positions in all matters concerning the settlement project in Palestine. Arthur Ruppin was the head of the Zionist Settlement Department from 1920 on. Arthur Hantke was director of KH from 1926, Felix Rosenblüth was the head of the Zionist Organization Department in 1925, Georg Landauer the head of the JA Immigration Department in the 1920s, and Julius Berger the director of JNF in Palestine.

German Zionism therefore paved the way and shaped the character of German immigration to Palestine during the 1920s, and became the bridge on which the mass immigration of the Nazi era could move. The role of German Zionism would thus be decisive also in shaping the patterns of the German-Jewish identity and integration in Palestine.

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