e u ro p e a n u n i v e r s i t y i n s t i t u t e
EURONAT and IAPASIS Joint Seminar Series on
The Stranger
organised in collaboration with the
by:
Bo Stråth, Peter Becker,
Anna Triandafyllidou and James Kaye
Silvia Cresti
© 2002 Silvia Cresti. All rights reserved.
Università di Siena
Kultur and Civilisation
after the Franco-Prussian War.
A Debate between German and French Jews
No part of this paper may be distributed, quoted or reproduced in any form without permission
For authorized quotation(s), please acknowledge the RSCAS source
For any query or information, please contact the author(s) or Catherine Divry at ✉ forinfo@iue.it
6 May 2002, Villa Schifanoia
ro b e r t s c h u m a n c e n t re f o r a d v a n c e d s t u d i e s
Department of History and Civilizarion
Kultur and Civilisation after the Franco-Prussian War.
A Debate between German and French Jews.
Silvia Cresti
In recent historiography the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/1871 is considered a turning point
in German and French cultural history.1 The Republic declared the 4th of September 1870 changed
not only the war, but also the self-perception of Germans and of French persons and their
perception of the enemy. After the French defeats of August 1870 and the declaration of the
Republic, what started as Franco-Prussian war became a Franco-German war. The classical
territorial war between states, where the Second Empire fought against Prussia and Prussia
against Napoleon III, evolved to an ideological and national war where French people fought
against Germans and Germans unified within Germany against France. This emotionally charged
conflict influenced the confrontation France and Germany had in the following years: Imperial
Germany and the III Republic build their further national identities on reciprocal opposition that was
progressively radicalised until both countries considered themselves “arch enemies”. Thus, for
analysing a major intellectual and political contrast that took place in continental Europe by the end
of the 19th century, the Archimedean point should be seen in September 1870, when – as Michael
Jeismann has said – hostility has been nationalized.2
The transition from a war between states to a war between people and nations changed the
substance of national sentiments on both sides of the Rhine. Until summer 1870 the nation one
belonged to and the enemy against whom one fought were expressed as objective and political
entities; afterwards they became abstract categories, however in each country in a different way.
For French people France turned into a spiritual quality expressing universal meaning: France was
”la civilisation”, it represented exemplarily civilization, the highest human values. By contrast,
Germans who defeated and humiliated France, incorporated ”la barbarie”: Germans were excluded
from civilization.
On the other side of the Rhine civilization was delimited too, whereas in an inverse way. In
Germany, that unified precisely while it was fighting against France, the fight in the battlefields and
the victory over France were transposed in both theoretical and national terms: civilization ceased
to be the common characterization of Western countries, whereas Kultur acquired a universal
function. German culture represented universal values in a privileged and superior way: it had to
represent them exclusively, while civilization was progressively identified with France and Western
countries in general and had negative and inferior implications.
Thus, by September 1870, two different national sentiments were born, best represented
and resumes by two key-concepts of III Republic France and Germany of the Second Reich: the
exemplarity of French civilisation against the exclusiveness of German Kultur.3 These terms of the
ideological war opposing Germany and France were reinforced in the aftermath of the war, when
scholars on both sides of the Rhine contested or justified the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine
following their opposed conceptions of national belonging: In Imperial Germany the annexation
was legitimated through the specific German idea of national belonging, whereas French claim for
its lost Eastern provinces was motivated according to the French tradition of nationality. As the
1
Cfr. Michael Jeismann, La patrie de l’ennemi. La notion d’ennemi national et la représentation de la nation
en Allemagne et en France de 1792 à 1918, Paris (CNRS Editions), 1997, Philippe Levillain, Rainer
Riemenschneider, eds., La guerre de 1870/71 et ses conséquences, Bonn (Bouvier), 1990, Jean El
Gammal, « La guerre de 1870/71 dans la mémoire de droites », in Jean-François Sirinelli, Histoire des
Droites en France, Paris (Gallimard), 1992, vol. 2, pp. 471-504. For a comparative analysis of German and
French concepts of nation and nationalism after 1871 cfr. Etienne François, Hannes Siegrist, Jakob Vogel,
eds., Nation und Emotion. Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich. 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen
(Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 1995 and Jakob Vogel, Nationen im Gleichschritt. Der Kult der “Nation in
Waffen” in Deutschland und Frankreich 1871-1914, Göttingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 1997.
2
Michael Jeismann, La patrie de l’ennemi, op. cit., p. 242.
3
Cfr. Jörg Fisch, “Zivilisation, Kultur”, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Otto Brunner, Werner Conze,
Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Stuttgart 1992, vol. VII, pp. 679-774.
different disputes between Mommsen and Fustel de Coulanges, Ernest Renan and David Strauss
shows, for Germans Alsace-Lorraine had to be considered German because people there were
German on behalf of their language and their descent. Thus, culture was considered as one of two
attributes of Germanness. In a French perspective, on the contrary, Alsace-Lorraine should be
considered French, as people there wished to remain French citizens: they were French persons
on behalf of values and institutions, thus, all in all, on behalf of their civilization.
My paper aims to investigate in detail these dissimilar collective identities focussing on
German Kultur against French civilisation in the early 1870ties, at a time when the national
identities of the two countries were adapting to the national sentiments born during the war. The
investigation will grasp precisely the transition, when the rational analysis of the war, the
qualification of the enemy as political opponent and the perception of its own country as objective
entity mutated progressively into ideological categories representing almost archetypical antithesis.
By investigating the two different national sentiments during these years, I will depict what
will become the cultural and political clash between two ideas of state, of nationality and belonging
in a germinal phase and from a very peculiar Jewish perspective. The enquiry of opposed national
identities will be put in relation to other identities, those of German and French Jewries. I will
investigate the patriotic commitment French and German Jewries expressed during these years
compared with the main-stream national narrative of the two countries. A comparative query of
national identities of Jews from both sides of the Rhine may be of particular interest, as their
nationalization had followed other patterns and sometimes other timing as that of their non-Jewish
co-citizens. In addition to the complex correlation between national and religious belonging both
Jewries had, the war and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine challenged the national identity and
consequently the religious ties of both German and French Jewries in a unprecedented way.
By the 1870ties, the process of Konfessionalisierung of Judaism – the reduction of Judaism
to faith suppressing the idea of Jewish people being a community with a supra-national sense of
solidarity – may be considered accomplished for both Jewries. Thus, for middle-class liberal Jews
Judaism was relegated officially into a private sphere and consequently during the FrancoPrussian war French persons by the Jewish faith and their Prussian and German counterparts,
Germans by the Jewish faith, were fighting one against the other. But besides this privatisation of
Judaism, in 1870 nevertheless special religious, cultural and economic ties still persisted between
both Jewries. Thus, if a Franco-German war in general would have touched German and French
Jews in a slightly different way as other non-Jewish Germans and French persons, specifically the
Franco-Prussian war involved them centrally over the decisive issue of Alsace-Lorraine. Almost
two third of what previously had been French Jewry lived in these French Eastern provinces
annexed to the Reich after the war. Especially in Alsace, the huge Jewish community was almost
thoroughly Ashkenazy and had historically religious, cultural and economic ties to the larger
Ashkenazy community on the other side of the Rhine.
Thus, as in early Imperial Germany and the III Republic the appositive terms qualifying
belonging, national identity and nationality were legitimate through the issue of Alsace-Lorraine, it
will be of particular interest analysing how German and French Jewries related their allegiances to
their respective national narrative over such a decisive question of Alsace-Lorraine. In sum, the
analysis of the national identity and patriotic commitment of these Jewries represent a decisive
element of German and French national identity in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war.
My paper will be structured as follows: I will first delineate a longue durée narrative of how
the nation and national belonging have been represented in Germany and France during the 19th
century. I will trace these different intellectual traditions prior to 1870 and will analyse how they
were reformulated in appositive terms after 1870/1871 and incorporated in the newly founded
Reich and III Republic France. I will delineate the intellectual, symbolic and conceptual tradition
expressing belonging and nationality not necessarily framed by a nation-state. Therefore, the fact
that early definitions of what it meant to be German occurred in a political fragmented body is
almost secondary.
In a second step, I will analyse the national allegiances and patriotic feelings expressed by
German and French Jews in the 1870ties and the impact these allegiances had on the religious
commitment of both Jewries. The main questions I will debate will be as follows: did French and
German Jewry follows the nationalization of hostility and hate? Were the symbols, concepts and
images French and German Jews expressed in their national commitment and patriotic feelings
conform to the main stream German and French national identities in Imperial Germany and the III
Republic? And if so, why? And finally: if yes, how far did the conformity to the respective national
symbols affect their Jewish identity? In sum: in which dissimilar ways did German and French Jews
define both, their being citizens and their being Jews?
For my query I have opted for very specific sources: the two representative journals of
German and French Jewries, the Archives Israélites and the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judemtums.4
At that time both journals were the most important non-scholarly Jewish journals distributed nationwide representing the Jewish urban middle and upper-middle-class of the two countries. Thus, the
two journals express a similar social and intellectual stratum and are therefore a comparable entity.
In addition, they represent exactly the social class that was most influenced by national sentiments
and patriotic commitments in its respective country.
I will thus analyse different articles published in these journals during the years of the war
and immediately afterwards concerning two central topics: the relation between Jews from both
sides of the Rhine and their respective patriotic commitment. Crucial for the national commitment
expressed by German and French Jews of the time is the question of Alsace-Lorraine.
Furthermore, for French Jews the debate on the revocation of French nationality to Algerian Jews,
the question of the laicisation of French public education and in general the place of religion in
French public sphere. As for German Jews I will analyse the discussions on the controversial
recognition of Jewish religion as equal to the two Christian religions in the school system especially
of the Prussian State. Further, I will investigate a series of articles debating the long-lasting
historical influence of religion on both German culture and on the definition of citizenship in
Germany.
The analysis of these two journals will illustrate how in Imperial Germany and III Republic
French and German Jewries followed the main stream German and French national commitment
and patriotic feelings. French and German Jews defined their being Germans or French persons in
terms declined from their respective national tradition: in political terms as abstract citizens for
French Jews, in cultural terms on behalf of their German culture for German Jews. These different
contents of nationality and belonging also influenced the ways German and French Jews defined
their being Jews.
For French Jews, whose commitment to France was expressed in political terms on behalf
of values and institutions5, Judaism was a solely private dimension, clearly separated from the
public space. Therefore, their commitment spilt into a political to France and a religious to Judaism,
whose separated entities are best demonstrated by the motto of the Paris Consistory: Patrie et
Religion.
In Imperial Germany, however, such bipartition of spheres was not possible, as it presumes
a definition of nationality and belonging that is political and abstract and in addition clearly
separated from any religious affiliation. But at that time to be German meant to participate in
Deutschtum, to be German on behalf of culture and Volk, where German culture was the
expression of German people and vice-versa. Such Germanness declined in ethnical and cultural
terms was a complex and intricate entity because the two terms were interwoven, but not only. In
the Second Reich German culture itself had a specific implication, as it was deeply interrelated with
Protestantism: the national values German culture had to propagate were declined from Protestant
ethos and Protestant values.6
4
There is little systematic research on the Archives Israélites and the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums
th
specifically, as there is little research on the Jewish press in 19 century in general. Regarding the Archives
cfr. Béatrice Philippe, Les Archives Israélites de France de leur création en 1840 a février 1848 ou un journal
juif sous Louis-Philippe: Etudes des mentalités, Paris 1975 and Hans Otto Horch, Auf der Suche nach der
jüdischen Erzählliteratur. Die Literaturkritik der “Allgemeinen Zeitung des Judenthums”, Frankfurt/Main, Bern,
New York (Peter Lang), 1985; for a general overview cfr. Bernhard Poll, ed., Jüdische Presse im 19.
Jahrhundert, Aachen (Metz), 1967.
5
Pierre Birnbaum has qualified the ways French Jewry has been integrated as ”intégration étatique”,
underlining the role of politics and of the State in France; cfr. Pierre Birnbaum, Destins juifs. De la Révolution
Française à Carpentras, Paris (Calmann-Lévy), 1995.
6
On Deutschtum and Protestantism in Imperial Germany cfr. Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and
religious Conflict. Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914, Princeton (Princeton University Press), 1995. On a
specific German religiousness excluding and fighting against what was perceived as non-German religions
Therefore, German Jews, who were Germans on behalf of German language and German
culture, were both Germans and Jews in a complicate way. They were not Germans and Jews, but
twice German Jews: as German culture deprived from ethnos allowed only a surrogate access to
Germanness, they were perceived as Jews even in their national allegiance. The other way round,
as Jews they had to confront on various levels with the cultural dimension dominating the public
sphere of Imperial Germany: Protestantism. Therefore, Judaism was not separated from the
national allegiance, but was involved in the German identity of German Jews: for them, nationality
and religion were interconnected.
Thus, in Imperial Germany and the III Republic, the diverse definition as citizens was
complementary to the diverse definition as Jews and of Judaism. On the one hand two interlinked
spheres, on the other a bipartition of spheres, a public sphere defined by politics and a private
were religion should be consigned, are a first sign of the different paths undertaken by French and
German Jewries.
There is little comparative research centred on patriotic feelings of both Jewries after the FrancoPrussian war7, as there is little comparative research on the different directions Judaism took on on
both sides of the Rhine in the course of the 19th century either.8 Most considerations on both
Jewries are mainly incidental.
In a book on the history of the Jews of France for example, Esther Benbessa notices a
relevant difference between German and French Jewries as expressed in the 19th century.9 The
reform movement and the Wissenschaft des Judentums, both born in Germany in the first decades
of the 19th century, intended to emphasize Judaism as religion, as science and as culture. On the
opposite, French Jewish reformers related Judaism to different spheres as German Jews: their
reforms focused much more on Jews and on Jewish social life as on Judaism. What French Jewish
reformers have called – and not by accident – ”regeneration” was not related to Judaism as ritual,
which in France did not underwent such radical changes as in Germany, but on education,
pedagogy and on transformation of the socio-economical profile of French Jewry.
Benbessa argues that this different relationship to Judaism both Jewries expressed was
due to the opposite ways Jews in France and in Germany had been emancipated and integrated in
their respective societies. French Jews were first emancipated and thus entered French society as
full recognized citizens, whereas German Jews had first to integrate socially before they obtained
equal rights as German citizens.10
Thus, implicitly Benbessa relates the different elements German Jews stressed in their
Judaism, i.e. culture, science and religious reform, to the fact that they had to integrate into
German society as incomplete and partial citizens. Therefore, in her perspective, the reformation of
the ritual, the particular emphasis on Judaism as ethics, and in general the scientific approach to
Judaism may be regarded as an attempt German Jews did to adapt to their environment. As much
implicitly, the fact that Jews in France entered French society as full citizens enabled them not to
adjust Judaism to their environment: as full citizens, they were under no pressure to prove a
special loyalty to the state as their German co-religionists were.11
Thus, the nexus between emancipation and integration is crucial, because the subjects of
integration were different: German Jews had to integrate as Jews, whereas French Jews could
like Judaism and Catholicism cfr. Wolfgang Altgeld, Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Judentum. Über religiös
begründete Gegensätze und nationalreligiöse Ideen in der Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus, Mainz
(Matthias Grünewald Verlag), 1992.
7
In her book on the identities of Jews of Alsace-Lorraine after the annexation to the Reich, Vicki Caron
delineates two different patriotic commitments: a political to France as opposed to the ethnical and cultural
understanding of Germanness; cfr. Vicki Caron, Between France and Germany. The Jews of Alsace-Lorraine
1871-1918, Stanford (Stanford University Press), 1988.
8
Michael Graetz, ”The History of an Estrangement between Two Jewish Communities: German and French
th
Jewry during the 19 century”, in Jacob Katz, ed., Towards modernity. The European Jewish Model, New
Brunswick/Oxford (Transaction Books) 1987, pp. 159-169.
9
Esther Benbessa, Histoire des Juifs de France, Paris (Seuil), 1997.
10
Ibid., pp. 136-137.
11
Cfr. Michael Graetz, op. cit., p. 167.
integrate as citizens. But the divergent path undertaken by French and German Jewries in the
course of the 19th century may be reduced to the solely different combination of formal political
rights and integration? Doesn’t this explanation leave different problems unsolved?
According to Benbessa, the reform movement and the Wissenschaft des Judentums have
to be regarded as an attempt to adjust Judaism to a Christian – i.e. mainly Protestant –
environment because at that time Jews were not granted equal rights as their Christian
neighbours. Consequently, how should we interpret the socio-economical changes French Jewish
reformers pursued for conforming the socio-economical profile of French Jewry to that of its
environment at a time when French Jews were already emancipated? And the other way round,
why Judaism as religious reform, science and ethics remained a specific concern of German Jews
long after their legal emancipation? Thus, could it really be that only the different timing relating
emancipation and integration in France and Germany (or in the German states) produced such
different emphasis German and French Jewries put in Judaism during the 19th century and even
after?
In my opinion the different timing legal emancipation had on both sides of the Rhine
explains only partially the different identities French and German Jews expressed in the course of
the 19th century. In particular, it does not at all explain the persisting of different Jewish identities
when even German Jews acquired formal political rights. A more complete explanation may result
if one considers differently the issue of Jewish integration.
One aspect normally neglected when speaking on Jewish integration into different countries
are the various implications this act has: it concerns always different elements, whereas Benbessa
for example takes this concept for granted as if it were always the same act. Integration as
becoming part of or be included in a social or political body is linked to inclusion and belonging and
therefore reflects the rules, values and symbols of the group, in case of social integration, or of the
nation, in case of political integration. Therefore, the typology and characteristics of integration may
change drastically in time and place, as it depends on who is integrated into what. Thus,
integration itself implies and implied historically different elements even when applied to Western
European countries that express different basic values on the meaning of belonging.
The divers Jewish integration in Western European countries is emphasized by the fact that
this integration took on the forms and dimensions of nationalization. Jews were not only integrated
into societies where they lived at the margins and represented otherness par excellence: the social
process of Vergemeinschaftung they went through collectively coincided with their nationalization.
In this context, nationalization does not intend the legal concept defining the conditions of acquiring
citizenship, but means in a wider sense the social and political process through which a specific
segment of society is integrated nationally, how it enters the public sphere. Consequently, Jewish
integration in France and Germany (or in the German states) should be considered in the wider
context of the specific French and German categories expressing the collective sense of belonging
and nationality.
The nexus relating Jewish integration and nationalization to one particular country and its
specific tradition of national belonging may thus explain why French and German Jews defined and
considered precisely their faith within society differently. It also explains why they referred to
different traditions when they expressed their national allegiances.
The query for a specific and different German and French model of national integration of
Jews would open up the following questions: What traditions of defining belonging and nationality
existed during the 19th century on both sides of the Rhine? In which symbolic and conceptual terms
were the basic values on belonging and nationality expressed at that time? How did one express
his or her being German or a French person? And finally: how was defined the relation binding
citizens and subjects to their nation?
Long before the war of 1870/71 two distinct intellectual traditions existed on both sides of
the Rhine expressing nation and national belonging: in Germany a prevailing idea of an ethnocultural nation going back to Herder, thus a concept of nation based on culture and people. In
France, by contrast, the prevailing sense of the nation was expressed politically and based on
consent and choice, as Ernest Renan exemplifies in late 19th century France with the concept of
”nation elective”, of elective nation.12 Culture and people versus values and politics as predominant
12
Cfr. Guy Hermet, Histoire des nations et du nationalisme en Europe, Paris (Seuil) 1996.
elements qualifying nation and nationality correspond to two different ways nation and national
belonging have been experienced historically on both sides of the Rhine. On the one hand an
abstract idea of citoyenneté born together with the French nation through the eminent political act
of the French revolution; on the other hand a primacy of culture related to ethnos within a political
fragmented body.
In his innovative study on the correspondences between formal characterizations of
nationality and the categories and symbols signifying belonging and inclusion in Germany and in
France, Rogers Brubaker has spoken of an almost archetypal German ethno-cultural model
opposed to a French universal-political model.13 Culture and ethnos on the one hand, and politics
on the other have been seen as opposed categories through which nationality was acquired and
belonging was defined in Wilhelmine Germany and the III Republic. Thus, jus sanguinis, the right
of descent, defining legally German nationality as from 1913, expresses inclusion trough the
categories of descent and language, so through common blood and common culture. In France,
however, nationality was related to jus soli, the right of education and environment, and inclusion
was defined as political act. Thus, French citizens were bound to the French State by a political
commitment, whereas Germans defined their being German as cultural and ethnical bound.
The ways Germans defined their being German reflects historically their political
fragmentation: German national consciousness was prior to the German nation-state, thus national
belonging was expressed through such un-political categories like culture and ethnos. From the
Enlightenment till German unification in 1871, German language and German culture were the only
unifying element for people who were politically fragmented. Thus, German culture related to
German people had a supplementary function within a framework were politics and state could not
work as connecting and inclusive elements, but it was not experienced as neutral to politics.
German culture was not an equivalent substitute of the political sense of being German that was
missing or impossible at that time: German culture was per se a complex, un-political construct.
First of all, the relation binding German culture to ethnos, the idea that German culture
should be considered as attribute of German people, is doubly pre-political. The theory of
Volksgeist, the idea that a specific culture is the expression of a specific people first articulated by
Herder and later reformulated by the Romantic Movement, ascribes irrational and diffuse qualities
to both, Kultur and Volk. Culture, following this tradition, is the natural and non-reflected expression
of people: culture is the real substance of a group, of a collective entity with no subject. Thus, the
German conception of people evokes much more a pre-political community than the subjects of a
political commitment. Therefore, if culture has transcendental meanings, the people, on the
contrary, are very ethnical. Culture as attribute of people is both transcending and reductive: a
transcendental culture belongs to a very ethnical people.
In addition to the un-political bound relating German culture to German people, the specific
German culture through which one defined his or her being German was perceived as
uncontaminated by and thus antithetic to politics. In a way, German culture was twice and three
times pre-political.
As from the second half of the 18th century, modern German literature expresses a long line
of tension with and oblivion of politics that from time to time had different contents and was
motivated differently. This refusal of politics that traverses various literary epochs from the
Enlightenment to the Weimar Hochklassik and the different Romantic Movements may be
explained sociologically, as Norbert Elias has done with illuminating remarks.14 From the second
half of the 18th century, those middle-classes whom the German intelligentsia belong to are
opposing the aristocracy. But differently as in France where the conflict was successful for the
Tiers État, the German middle-classes were politically and economically powerless and their
confrontation took on an elusive character: they defied the absolutist power on a purely moral level,
as politically they would have inevitably succumbed. Therefore, the Bürgertum had first to
legitimate itself beyond politics as bearer of morality and virtue directed against an empty,
13
Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, Cambridge (Harvard University
Press), 1992.
14
Cfr. Norbert Elias, “On the Sociogenesis of the Concepts of „Civilisation“ and „Culture““, in The civilizing
Process. Siciogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, Eric Dunning, Johann Goudsblom, Stephen
Mennell, eds., Blackwell (Oxford), 2000.
superficial and corrupt court. Thus, the universalistic values these middle-classes expressed did
not derive from political categories as in France, but form a moral sphere perceived as superior
precisely because it was detached and not contaminated by politics.
The Bürgertugend and Sittlichkeit, the superior virtue and morality Lessing ascribes to so
many middle-class heroines of his plays derives socially and psychologically from the political
powerlessness of the middle-classes and their retreat from public sphere.15 In the same way, the
various suicides, infanticides, fratricides and castrations so many Sturm und Drang works talk
about symbolize the hopeless situation when confronting the absolutist power.16 The Weimar
Hochklassik expresses a refuge from politics already in its geographical collocation. At that time
the duchy was very peripheral to and untouched by the main event that had shaken all of Europe:
the French revolutionary wars. The classicism Goethe and Schiller developed was consciously
directed against any form of political engagement and by its essence un-political.17 At the turn from
the 18th to the 19th century, the Romantic Movement glorified the inwardness as apolitical
Weltflucht, a withdrawal from the world. And, finally, the rejection the works of Heinrich Heine have
been submitted within German literature for such a long time may be understood in this context as
refusal to what was perceived as journalistic style and its amalgamation with politics.
In the course of time, for German collective identity Weimar symbolized an intellectual
enclave against politics and revolutions represented by Goethe and Schiller. The idea of Weimar
as place associated with a moral and superior sphere that stands for the necessary retreat in front
of devastating political and revolutionary events is reinforced by a later, central circumstance of
German history. In February 1919, more than hundred years after Weimar classicism, the
constitutional assembly met precisely in Weimar and gave birth to the first German republic known
since as Weimar Republic. Social psychologists may argue that the choice of Weimar between so
many places the constitutional assembly could have met in Germany of the time has a specific
implication: it underlines a link to that intellectual dimension antithetical to politics and revolutions.
In this latter case the antithesis was represented by revolutionary Berlin, where only two weeks
before the political elections the Spartakist uprising ended with the assassination of its two leaders,
Luxemburg and Liebknecht.
Modern German literature and consequently German national consciousness expressed
through the category of German culture were born with very peculiar imprinting: correlation to an
ethnical conception of German people, tension with and oblivion of politics as well as inwardness.
In addition, German culture presents a first transfer of specific Protestant values like virtue and
morality from religion to the creed of a specific social stratum, the Bürgertum, its literature and
culture. This relocation of Protestant paradigms from religion to culture was first realized by a
generation of Dichter-Theologen, poets-theologians, as a French scholar of German literature has
called the phenomenon.18 The most important representative ”theologian of literature” was Lessing,
later celebrated in Imperial Germany as national hero and pour cause. Thus, by the end of the 18th
century Germany became ”das Land der Dichter und Denker”, the fatherland of poetry and
theoretical elaboration, as Madame de Stael qualified Germany in her book De l’Allemagne as
early as in 1808, where the importance of culture was inversely proportional to political
retrogression. Thus, in this country culture and politics were asymmetric.
In France, however, religion, culture and politics were related differently and had another
status within society. The laicisation of society and of culture preceded the laicisation of the State
fostered by the III Republic. In his phenomenological study on French middle-classes during the
17th and 18th century, Bernhard Groethuysen has analysed how these middle-classes detached
themselves progressively from a religious creed, and specifically how they emancipated from the
15
Cfr. Hans Jürgen Schings, Melancholie und Aufklärung, Stuttgart (Metzler), 1977; on social aspects of
melancholy in general cfr. Wolf Lepenies, Melancholy and Society, Cambridge (Harvard University Press),
1992.
16
Cfr. Gert Mattenklott, Melancholie in der Dramatik des Sturm und Drang, Königstein/Taunus (Athenäum),
1985.
17
Cfr. Giuliano Baioni, Classicismo e rivoluzione. Goethe e la rivoluzione francese, Torino (Einaudi), 1998.
18
Cfr. Robert Minder, „Das Bild des Pfarrhauses in der deutschen Literatur von Jean Paul bis Gottfried
Benn“, in Kultur und Literatur in Deutschland und Frankreich, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp), 1977, p. 48.
religious bounds of Catholicism.19 This process of secularisation French middle-classes underwent
is exemplified by an un-theological and rational Weltanschauung that influenced deeply also the
language. In French, for example, the admission of a fault like in the sentence “c’est ma faute”, its
my fault, relates fault to a rational mistake. On the contrary, the equivalent German sentence “es
ist meine Schuld” relates fault to guilt, thus to a moral category.20 Morality and rationalism are
precisely the two central categories opposing the German Enlightenment to its French equivalent.
In France, le siècle des lumières expresses a primacy of rationalism and an overt hostility to the
Church, as the example of Voltaire shows. The German Aufklärung, on the contrary, does not
represent a caesura within central Christian – and Protestant – values, as it connects reason
precisely to faith.21
Thus, if German Kultur is mixed with religion and implies a retreat from politics, French
civilisation is an unmistakable social concept involving all aspects of life, thus also politics and
revolutions insofar they have formed and defined French nation and French national identity. This
integration of politics and revolutions into French collective memory was reinforced precisely in the
1870ties, when France started to reconsider and to redefine its national identity after l’année
terrible: its patriotic renewal was supported specifically by the direct link to the Great Revolution,
thus by the political birth of the French nation. The republican tradition invented in the early years
of the III Republic was related consciously to the French Revolution, as does the declaration of the
14th of July as national holiday in 1878 and the Marseillaise as national anthem in 1880 show.
Thus, during the 19th century the traditional French idea of national belonging was political,
whereas the deeper sense of inclusion and of national identity over the category of culture and
ethnos Germans had at that time was implicitly un-political or pre-political. Although on both sides
of the Rhine inclusion and national belonging were related to different traditions already prior to
1870, nevertheless the Franco-Prussian war changed radically the meaning of these different
conceptions.
The German concept of culture was historically antagonistic to politics, but until 1870 the
opposition was a domestic one. Until then, this pre-political construct was not used consciously in
an appositive function against the values and institutions of the West and of France in particular.
Prior to 1870, there was tension between German culture and politics, but this discrepancy was
internal to German society, and German culture was not perceived as superior national sphere
opposed to supposed French national values and institutions later identified as inferior civilization.
But with the war culture and politics as the main constituent of civilization were nationalized, in the
sense that from a German view-point the opposition became external. Culture signified
progressively an exclusive German political model antagonistic to the French and Western one
identified as politics and civilization. In sum, after 1870 German culture meant no more exclusively
Goethe and Schiller, it was not only related to the German language linked to the German nation
like in the famous poem by Erst Moritz Arndt Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland.22 The semantic
meaning German culture had was extended to specific German political beliefs and governmental
traditions which were antagonistic to a Western and French political model precisely because they
were interpreted as un-political.
If after 1870 the signification of German culture was extended and comprehended politics in
a intricate way, the meaning of civilisation, on the contrary, was restricted. After the war the
German word for civilization underwent a semantic shift too: Zivilisation acquired a progressively
negative meaning, while it was delimitated to France and generically to the West. What historians
have called the ”anti-westliche Wende”, the anti-Western turn German national identity built on in
unified Germany23, had a linguistic fallout. The German divergence from the West, the progressive
retreat from a generic ”Western world” and the constitution of an opposite German model
19
Cfr. Bernhard Groethuysen, Die Entstehung der bürgerlichen Welt- und Lebensanschauung in Frankreich,
Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp), 1978, vol. I and II.
20
Cfr. Rudolf von Thadden, “Aufbau nationaler Identität. Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich”, in
Nationale und kulturelle Identität. Studien zur Entwicklung des kollektiven Bewusstseins in der Neuzeit,
Bernhard Giessen, ed., Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1996 (4), p. 502.
21
Ibid., pp. 502-503.
22
“Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland ?/ So nenne mir das große Land!/ So weit die deutsche Zunge klingt!/
[...]„, in: Arndts Werke. Auswahl in 12 Teilen, A. Lesson and W. Steffens, eds., Berlin o. J. , p. 126.
23
Hans Ulrich Wehler, Das deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1918, Göttingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 1994(7).
corresponds to the shift of meaning the term Zivilisation underwent between the 1870ties and the
90ties and the subsequent different meaning Kultur acquired at that time.
Until 1870 also Germans considered themselves to be part of the ”civilized West”: like
French persons who belonged to ”le monde civilisé”, Germans identified themselves as ”Glieder
der zivilisierten Völkerfamilie”, members of the family of civilised people. The German language of
the time reflects this convergence, as at that time civilization had an obvious positive meaning and
stand for an over-national bound, for a wider intellectual community sharing similar values and
principles. The Western world was synonymous with ”the civilised world”, and Zivilisation in
German was the exact translation of civilisation in French, civiltà and civilizzazione in Italian, or
civilisation in English. Thus, the word civilisation was used until then as a complementary
qualification of the West whom Germans of the time belonged to.
But in the aftermath of the war Zivilisation acquired a progressive negative meaning, linking
this term to superficiality, artificiality and emptiness, and it was identified only with France and
Western Europe in general. In Germany the term that opposed the exterior and false Western
civilisation was the profound German Kultur. The real concern of this dichotomy between German
culture and Western civilisation was in reality politics: the term civilisation defining a particular
nation or a particular people expresses the social, political and eventually juridical bound these
people or nations had beyond their cultural achievements. Thus, German culture codifies a
German un-political model opposed to a Western one that implied a formal sphere formed by state,
law and politics.
Immediately after the Franco-Prussian war civilization had still a positive meaning implying
a common over-national bound that was thus inclusive even for Germans. In Nietzsche’s Geburt
der Tragödie of 1873, for example, Zivilisation has still an over-national and inclusive meaning. But
in the course of time both Kultur and Zivilisation became two opposite concepts linked to two
different nations bearing different degrees of perfectibility. In late Wilhelmine Germany Friedrich
Meinecke stigmatised the two political and intellectual traditions with the famous formula of
Kulturnation versus Staatsnation, the cultural national bound in Germany against the primacy of
politics and state in France. This classical opposition between Western politics and German culture
was radicalised by the end of WWI, just before the dissolution of the Second Reich, when Thomas
Mann employed again the two terms of Western civilisation against German culture. In Die
Bekenntnisse eines Unpolitischen of 1918 he considered German culture to be the genuine
expression of the un-political and naïve German Volksseele or Volksgeist, soul or spirit belonging
to the people, that is opposed to the artificial French Zivilisationsliterat with his supremacy of
politics. Thomas Mann reemploys in a concise form all the elements discussed previously: German
culture, overtly un-political and expressing such moral qualities like profoundness, sincerity, loyalty
and integrity, is the natural and un-reflected expression of an ethnical conceived German people.
On the opposite, the French intellectual is imbued with politics: he aspires to a public role and a
social function. This permeation between politics and culture Mann identifies as the inferior French
civilisation may express only false, superficial and untruthful literature.
If in the course of the Second Reich culture and civilisation were delimited and nationalized,
during the same years France experienced a parallel process, except that the French bipartition of
the West followed other trajectories. In the III Republic civilisation still remained an over-national
bound France shared with other European nations. But the French concept of civilisation, even
though over-national, was not democratic. Civilisation in a French cloak did not intend the
association of different nations belonging politically to the West on an equal and egalitarian basis;
even between this club of superior nations there was a hierarchy. The highest human values,
beliefs and institutions civilisation based on were exemplarily represented by France and first and
foremost by its centre, Paris. Thus, due to this exemplar role France and Paris played in-between
the league of Western countries, the defeats, the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and above all the
dreadful battles that took place on French soil involving also civilians were perceived as humiliation
of and outrage to civilisation as a whole. Therefore, Germans who caused such humiliation and
outrage, by this very act put themselves out of the congregation of Western countries and were
excluded from civilisation.
This exclusion was reflected in different mediums, when up from 1870 Germans started to
be associated with barbarians. In particular for popular culture a series of postcards representing
French girls humiliated by brutal Prussian officers found a great diffusion24, as much as in higher
culture the same topos of Germans as barbarians was consolidate. The short stories Guy de
Maupassant later dedicates to the Franco-Prussian war, for example, display the same image:
even though the role French officers played was not always perfectly gentlemen-like, the primacy
of atrocity and barbarism belongs to the Germans. Thus, from a French perspective, in the
aftermath of the war the civilized world was divided anew in civilized and un-civilized, and the
barbaric world started already beyond the Rhine.
But by 1871 these topoi have still to be consolidated: on the one hand the German
disregard for politics linked to an aggressive competition with France is still in a germinal phase,
and on the other France itself has to recover and redefine itself after the defeat, the loss of AlsaceLorraine and the Commune. Due to this fluid situation, in 1871 a rational analysis of the events is
still possible, even though single words, images and concepts indicate that objectivity is loosing
ground in favour of an ideological clash representing an almost ideal-typical opposition. In the
following I will analyse the transition from objectivity and rationality to ideology and dogma from
both, a French and German Jewish perspective.
In 1871 both French and German Jews speak on the war in catastrophic terms and on the
other country in mainly correct and rational ways. According to the Archives Israélites, for example,
the war was a catastrophe for France. But besides this obvious meaning, the disaster reveals a
more general signification related to civilization. As Paris is considered to be “la capitale du monde
civilisé”25, this war touches not only real France and real Paris, but also their supposed universal
meaning, the highest human values best and utmost represented by Paris and France:
“Les causes du désastre qui vient de frapper la France, - et indirectement par elle la
civilisation tout entière […]”.26 This single sentence contains a first, implicit hint to the
interdependence between the French exemplarity and the German departure from civilisation. If
from a French perspective war concerns all of civilisation, Germans who fought such civilisation
were implicitly not concerned; it follows that Germans were about to be excluded from civilisation.
For German Jews the war has no further universal implications, but they consider it in
realistic and objective terms as a tragedy27, barbaric and inhuman28 for both sides. In 1871
German Jews were still sympathetic with the enemy, as they could identify with the disaster French
people had suffered. This attitude the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums has in 1871 is
remarkable, as few years later German Jews lost this ability. During the Dreyfus-Affair, for
example, the fair and rational attitude seems to be forgotten, as French people are defined
sarcastically with a qualification derived from the Franco-Prussian war: French people are “SedanHelden”, as much as Dreyfus itself is considered to be a French chauvinist who may deserve some
attention only as a Jew.
But in 1871 a detached analysis of the events is still possible, and realism and rationality go
together with a fair enquiry of the causes of the war both sides are willing to do. In August 1870 the
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, for example, explains the role of war as follows:
”[Wir sehen], daß der Krieg bereits wieder ein integrierendes Element des Völkerlebens,
daß Recht und Wahrheit, diese Säulen der wahren Civiliation, wieder sehr brüchig geworden!”29
War always indicates an unhealthy state of the nation. Those countries who have lost
positive elements cementing their country may recur to war. Thus, war has a specific function in
the structure of nations: it is interpreted as an integrative factor when other, positive elements were
lost. This pragmatic analysis of the role of war gives a further account of what the Allgemeine
Zeitung des Judenthums considers to be positive including elements and a healthy Western state
in 1870: as the quotation says, law and truth as ground elements of real civilisation. Thus, basic
elements of civilisation derives on the one hand from a juridical sphere, on the other from a moral
sphere. Interestingly, from a German-Jewish perspective in 1870 civilisation is still considered
24
Cfr. Michael Jeismann, op. cit.
Archives Israélites, 1871 (XXXII), p. 4.
26
Ibid., p. 5.
27
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 1871 (XXXV), p. 1.
28
Ibid., p. 2.
29
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 1870 (XXXIV), Nr. 31, p. 610.
25
utmost positively as that over-national bound uniting different countries on the basis of similar
beliefs and similar values both France and Germany implicitly belong to.
Even on the other side of the Rhine a realistic and honest enquiry of the causes of the war
takes place. The Archives Israélites ascribes war and defeat to a unique French responsibility:
France was the aggressor and the causes of the disaster were the moral French decadence and
the insufficient material equipment.30 Following this realistic and responsible interpretation of
events, even Prussians are considered to have behaved as ”ennemi[s] civilisé[s]” in the months
that followed the war.31 The inclusion of Prussians and Germans into the common civilised
Western family, even if they were enemies, signifies that in early 1871 the delimitation of
civilization to the French borders, or the exclusion of Germany from civilisation, has not yet taken
place. But the end of the article shows a first delimitation of the concept of civilization: this partition
is carried out on the issue of German Jews:
”Il est un point dont on a beaucoup parlé et sur lequel nous ne pouvons pas garder le
silence, c’est le rôle des juifs allemands pendant cette guerre; ce rôle a été des plus tristes, des
plus répréhensibles. Pour s’attirer davantage la faveur du Teutonisme triomphant et se persuader
à eux-mêmes qu’ils sont de purs Allemands, ils ont surenchéri sur les excès même de langage et
de violence qui ont caractérisé presque toutes les feuilles allemandes, si bien que quelques-uns
même d’entr’eux plus sensés leurs ont donné le surnom de Patriejouden. Ils ne sont pas à blâmer
de s’être montrés bons Allemands, mais d’avoir oublié, dans leurs gallophobie affectée, que sans
la France, ils seraient encore au Ghetto. Les reproches que nos populations françaises et israélites
leur adressent sont multiples, et ils sont hélas! fondés pour la plupart: Bornons-nous à leur
demander combien, pour les cadavres qu’ils ont laissés sur nos champs de bataille, ils comptent
d’officiers et combien de magistrats dans les tribunaux!”32
When the Archives Israélites tackles the role German Jews had during the war, the
detached and rational argumentation seems to be forgotten, as the article reproaches German
Jews to have behaved unfairly towards France. German Jews were not correct because they
lacked the acknowledgment which is due to France. In a French Jewish perspective, all Jews
should always show gratitude towards the country where full legal emancipation was achieved first;
particularly for those Jews who are not yet full recognised citizens, as this is the case for German
Jews. The hint that careers as military and in courts are closed for German Jews demonstrate how
their extreme sacrifice on the French battle-fields appears to be regretful and pathetic.
The article does not tell us in which ways during the Franco-Prussian war German Jews
could have been fair towards France as Jews, and at the same time as Germans remain good
German patriots. Then at the end the request that Jews should have a specific French loyalty is
impracticable and works only when these commitments as Jews and as citizens Jews are
supposed to acknowledge are not conflicting, as this is the case for French Jews. Only for them it
happen that their commitment as citizens coincides with their gratitude towards the country that
emancipated them first.
But the argument of a specific gratitude tell us different things on the presumed universal
function Paris and France have in the eyes of French Jews. It seems as if the argument of the
universal meaning of Paris and of France in general has undergo a specific Jewish
metamorphosis: in the same way as Paris and France are irradiating the entire civilization, in the
same way Paris and France should be an example for world Jewry. Thus, the exemplarity of
France is considered a double obligation specifically for German Jews, while their double betrayal
was particularly touching. Therefore, more than Prussian and Germans, specifically German Jews
are particularly to blame.
Moreover, the extreme German nationalism German Jews have demonstrate during the
war is particularly regretful in the eyes of French Jews, because it does not even derive from
authentic feelings. Their over-nationalism is intentionally because they think it may help for being
accepted by Germans and thus integrated into German society. But the fact that according to this
article German Jews demonstrate their patriotism in such an irrational and illogical manner
indicates that from a French perspective the recognition as German citizens follows different
30
Archives Israélites, 1871 (XXXII), p. 5.
Ibid., p. 90.
32
Ibid., p. 92.
31
patterns as in France. The hint to “Teutonism” and to ”pure Germans” implies that in Germany the
integration as citizens is far to be a political act, a declaration of belief and identification with the
nation-state. Teutonism and purity qualify German citizenship as condition, as category and as a
state: to be German is thus having found an access to Germanness, to a Germanness that is
implicitly defined by ethnical categories (and is thus implicitly inaccessible for German Jews), and
that oblige them to revoke or disregard their Jewishness.
Germanness is thus a unique, monolithic construct with grant no place to Jewishness,
whereas the two loyalties French Jews have to observe, nationality and religion, are defined in the
same article in a double and distinct way as ”nos populations françaises et israélites”. The distinct
perspective as French and as Israelite implies a twofold and not conflicting identity: one as Jew,
the other as French citizen. Many articles of the Archives Israélites testify that for French Jews the
commitment splits in a religious to Judaism and a political to France. Therefore French Jews may
define themselves as both ”citoyens et croyants” who are related in the same strong way to both
”notre patrie et notre croyance”. This twofold identity professed by French Jews is not conflicting
because the commitment applies to different spheres: religion and nationality are in France
separate dimensions. Thereby, when French Jews address themselves to Jews on the other side
of the Rhine, they qualify them as ”nos coreligionnaires”: the relation between French and German
Jews is a purely religious one. On the other hand, when they refer to non-Jewish French citizens,
they are defined mainly as ”nos concitoyens”, with no other qualifications, as the bound relating
Jewish French citizens to non-Jewish French citizens is only political: the political definition of
citizenship does not allow any further qualifications.
Two other topics discussed by the Archives Israélites define belonging and nationality in
France to be a universal and abstract category that is theoretically open to everybody, i.e. that is
per se inclusive. While analysing the discussion on the possible revocation of French nationality to
Algerian Jews, the Archives Israélites enumerates two elements defining French nationality and
belonging: Algerian Jews became French by law; their children should have the opportunity to
become French citizens by education.33 The legal definition of nationality is accompanied by
another category: besides law, education is the central inclusive category defining French
belonging.
The principle of equality and juridical thinking are two central categories defining French
citizens, but their importance is not restraints to a formal sphere: they determinate also a
psychological trait that is as decisive as law in the qualification of citizens. In case of violent antiSemitic attacks, for example, a citizen accustomed to right and justice will react differently as
somebody who has been submitted to arbitrary and unjust measures. The Archives Israélites
reports the case of Algerian Jews who reacted to riots and compares their assertive behaviour with
that of Jews in the Eastern province of Galicia who are submissive subjects:
“Aux Juifs de Galicie qui se laissent vilipender sans résistance, le même écrivain oppose
bien celui des Israélites algériens qui à Constantine, dans des rixes récentes, ont résistés aux
Turcos, et il attribue cette manifestation de dignité humaine au régime d’une loi et d’une
administration égales pour tous.“34
Another central element qualifying belonging and nationality as universal and abstract
category is a voluntary element that is used in the decisive issue of Alsace-Lorraine. Countless
articles written in the aftermath of 1871 testify that the population of these provinces wish to remain
French: ”ils veulent rester Français.”35 In particular Alsatian Jews have ”le cœur à la fois Israélite et
Français”.36 Against the German claim for Alsace-Loraine that is motivated culturally and ethnically,
i.e. with the thesis that the populations of these provinces are German by descent and by
language, for the Archives Israélites nationality and belonging should be the result of choice, desire
and determination:
”Un territoire, une province aujourd’hui ne se dénationalise point par le seul fait d’une
campagne heureuse: les combinaisons stratégiques et les armes perfectionnées peuvent décider
du gain de cent batailles, mais le libre consentement des intéressés doit seul décider de leur
33
Ibid., p. 502.
Archives Israélites, 1873 (XXXIV), p. 743.
35
Archives Israélites, 1872 (XXXIII), p. 333.
36
Ibid., p. 336.
34
patrie: disposer d’eux sans les consulter, c’est les traiter en parias, c’est faire du pays natal une
prison, et une prison où l’on est retenu en vertu de quel jugement ?”37
The political sense of belonging and nationality implies, as it has been said, a partition of
spheres between public and private; religion belongs to the private sphere and should not interfere
in public. The separation of spheres is a clear claim the Archives Israélites does when it discusses
two different subjects: the issue of national education and the influence of religion in French public
sphere:
“Si nous insistons sur ce caractère, c’est que l’horizon politique est plus troublé que jamais,
et que si, en France, des complications sont a redouter, c’est précisément à cette intervention du
sentiment religieux dans les affaires sociales et législatives qu’ils faut en attribuer la gravité. Nous
pensons au contraire, nous, Israélites, que les deux sphères doivent rester étrangères l’une à
l’autre, que les devoirs du croyant ne sauraient avoir d’action sur les résolutions du citoyen, ni sur
la politique du pays.
De même que nous ne faisons point entrer la religion dans la politique, nous n’admettons
pas non plus que le patriotisme ait droit de cité dans les choses spirituelles […]. Au temple, il n’y a
que des Israélites; dans la cité, in n’y a que des Français.“38
When the Archives Israélites discusses the issue of national education, it supports the three
conditions Gambetta required: public education should be ”laique, obligatoire et gratuite”. The
Archives Israélites adopts these qualifications of French public education with a relevant addition:
education should be ”laïque à l’école publique et religieuse au sein de la famille.”39 Religion, and
religious education too, should be confined to an inaccessible private sphere, clearly separated
from the public one.
French Jews – or at least their most articulated segment, the urban and liberal middle-class
– whose commitment to France was expressed in political terms, consigned faith into an
inaccessible private sphere, thus into another dimension clearly separated from the public political
sphere. In Imperial Germany, however, such bipartition and consequently non-interference of
spheres was not possible, as it presumes a laicisation of the state, a clear separation between
state and Churches. But in Imperial Germany the public space was not officially emptied by religion
as it was in III Republic France. In the Second Reich, Protestantism had a central and predominant
position exemplified by both, by the Kaiser, who was the King of Prussia and head of the Prussian
Lutheran Churches, as well as by the understanding of the German State as christlicher Staat. This
means that in Germany of the time, the spheres of influence of religion were fluctuant.
Consequently, when French Jews adopted a solely political definition of nationality, for
German Jews the commitment is more complex. In the German-Jewish press the standard
definition German Jews adopted for non-Jewish Germans has a meaningful addition: German
Jews refer to non-Jewish Germans as to “unsere Christliche Mitbürger”, our Christian co-citizens.
The significant adjective Christian means that in the Second Reich the public sphere is still
absorbed by religion and that this space is a dimension where non-Christian citizens are not able
to enter on an equal basis.
Therefore, for German Jews the principle of equality had clear barriers, but it may work
anyhow as regulative. The only way Jewish religion has to be recognised as equal to the other two
religions by a state who is Christian is related to the private dimension this Jewish religion has.
Jewish religion should not be confined completely into a private sphere, but some official
recognition may occur if it is allowed to enter the public sphere. One dimension where this may
happen is its official recognition in the German educational system, a concern that is completely
irrelevant for the Archives Israélites.
In a series of articles on Was haben Juden dem deutschen Staate zu fordern one main
concern is the school system of Prussia. In Prussia Jewish religion is not only thought by teachers
paid by the community and eventually held in class-rooms only if the municipality is kind enough to
allow such a thing in the afternoon, when the school is closed. As the dominant religion of Prussia,
i.e. Protestantism, controls education far beyond the solely religious classes, the Allgemeine
Zeitung des Judenthums claims that huge Jewish communities in Prussia should establish their
37
Ibid., pp. 337-338.
Archives Israélites, 1873 (XXXIV), p. 612.
39
Archives Israélites, 1872 (XXXIII), p. 564.
38
own religious schools and that the Prussian State should recognise them officially as public
schools and not confine them as private schools.40 In this German Jewish concern, the dynamics
between public and private on the issue of education are opposed to those French Jews had.
The long-lasting influence of religion in the definition of nationality and citizenship in
Germany is debated in another series of articles.41 The historical reason for this German
particularity is seen in the Peace treaty of Westphalia that ended the religious wars in the German
States in 1648. The principle asserted by the Peace treaty, the famous “Cuius regio, eius religio”,
sanctioned a criteria of belonging and nationality defined only by religion: the two state-religions,
the Catholic and the Protestant, who were bound by law to a territory. Therefore, the fruition of civil
rights were first determined by religion:
“[…] allein Jahrhunderte lang haben das deutsche Reich, die deutschen Territorien und
deren Recht einen confessionellen Charakter behalten, nur sehr schwer und schrittweise hat das
Rechtsbewußtsein in Deutschland sich zu der Auffassung emporgearbeitet, dass die Ausübung
der politischen und bürgerlichen Rechte von der Confession unabhängig sein müsse.“42
Besides the long-lasting influence of religion on public life in Germany and its consequently
missed or delayed laicisation, there is another central element that influenced strongly the ways
German Jews defined both, their being citizens and their being Jews, and that differentiate them
from French Jews. The same as history played a central role in the religious development of
German citizenship, the same as biology and an organic development played a decisive role in the
definition of Germanness. In the early 1870ties the idea of Deutschtum was still related to
Germanic tribes: Germans were seen as derived from Franconians, Allemannen, Saxons,
Bavarians and many others. Therefore, Germanness was very far to be a political, abstract
commitment, but, on the contrary, was very ethnical. The Stamm, stock, was thus a central
category in early Imperial Germany.43
German Jews were strongly influenced by this ethnical understanding of Germanness and
the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentuhms gives meaningful examples. In different articles the term
Stamm is used for defining two different belongings: it is applied to both, to Jews and to Germans.
In an article on the Franco-Prussian war, German Jews relates to French Jews as trough a
common bound that has an ethnical understanding:
„[wir], als Sprößling jenes Stammes, der seine Abstammung in beiden streitenden Staaten
und Heeren mitkämpfen und mitleiden sieht.“44
What for French Jews was a solely religious relation is seen by German Jews as a bound
implying stock and descent, therefore, all in all, blood. It has to be point out that throughout the
Second Reich the self-definition German Jews had, and that was adopted later on by the Central
Verein, was that of Germans by the Jewish faith: German Jews had a religious definition of their
own Jewishness. But when in the early 1870ties they had to define their relations towards Jews
from over the border a slightly ethnical definition of belonging is adopted.
The mirror image of this slightly ethnical connotation of Jewishness is the characterization
of Germanness that is defined with the same term, Stamm, stock. An article on Das deutsche
Reich und die Juden of the 17th of January 187145 celebrates the proclamation of the Reich and
makes an equation between its present and its historical character:
“[Das deutsche Reich] ist die Zusammengehörigkeit der deutschen Stämme zu einem
nationalen Staate [...], welche in dem alten deutschen Reiche lebte und auch jetzt der
Lebensmittelpunct des neuen deutschen Reiches ist.“46
Germans, divided in different stocks, participate altogether in the new Reich. The only
possibility for Jews to join and share an ethnical definition of citizenship is to adapt to this ethnical
conception: in between different Germanic tribes like Bavarians, Saxons and Allemannen, also
ethnical Jews may find a place.
40
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 1871 (XXXV), pp. 653-654.
Ibid., pp. 800-804.
42
Ibid., p. 801.
43
Cfr. Abigail Green, Fatherlands. State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany,
Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2001, p. 270 a. ff.
44
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 1871, (XXXV), p. 610.
45
Ibid., pp. 41-43.
46
Ibid., p. 41.
41
German Jews used the argument of an ethnical conception of Germanness on a central
issue: for justifying the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. The official German justification for the
annexation derived from the classical understanding of Germanness that based on two elements:
language and ethnos, or culture and Stamm. As people in Alsace-Lorraine spoke a German
language, as well as they descended from Germans, from a German perspective they should be
considered Germans.
Interestingly, German Jews adopted this argument not only because they approved the
annexation like every German. They espoused this argument of national belonging basing on
culture and ethnos even when they had to discuss an internal Jewish concern: should Jews in
Alsace-Lorraine be considered German or French Jews? Precisely the fact that German Jews
asked this kind of question shows how they were both Germans and Jews in an intricate way. For
French Jews, who were French citizens and Jews at the same time and separately, this kind of
question would have had no sense.
Ludwig Philippson, the editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, dedicates an
article to this issue, where he tries to convince Jews in Alsace-Lorraine that they belong to German
Jewry and are thereby Germans.47 His first argument is centred on the idea of origin:
“Elsaß-Lothringen, ursprünglich deutsche Provinzen, die seit Jahrhunderten aber zu
Frankreich gehörten, sind wieder zum deutschen Reich zurückgekehrt.“48
The second step is a shift in the idea of origin: it is no more imbued in history and time, but
is linked to descent:
“[Deutschland ist] an der Grenze seiner ursprünglichen Besitzungen stehen geblieben, und
[hat] seine Hand nur auf Landstriche [gelegt], in welchen ursprünglich Deutsche sesshaft sind und
die deutsche Sprache noch heute als Volkssprache gesprochen wird.“49
Like people in Alsace-Lorraine who were originally Germans, also Jews in Alsace-Lorraine
were originally German Jews:
“Daß Ihr [Juden] also in den schönen Elsaß und Lothringen ansässig seid, habt Ihr allein
dem Umstande zu verdanken, dass Ihr ursprünglich deutsche Juden waret.“50
Philippson espouse the classical idea of Germanness basing on descent and language, or
ethnos and culture. He uses this argumentation not only when he has to define the national
belonging of people in Alsace-Lorraine, but also when he debates the question if Jews in these
provinces are to be considered as belonging to French or to German Jewry. For Philippson Jews in
Alsace-Lorraine belong to German Jewry:
“[…] so hat sich doch in Euch [Juden] und in Eurer Mitte das Deutschthum nachdrücklicher
erhalten. Ihr braucht nur auf Euren gottesdienstlichen Ritus zu sehen, um zu erkennen, daß Ihr zu
den Aschkenazim gehört, nicht zu den Sephardim. Aus Deutschland holtet Ihr Eure bedeutendsten
Rabbiner; Eure jüdische Studien waren deutscher Art [...].“51
Germanness in a German Jewish cloak intends Ashkenazy descent and the German ritual
in the synagogues. In Philippson’s argumentation the classical idea of Germanness basing on
ethnos and culture undergoes a substantial change: the elements that should attest that Jews in
Alsace-Lorraine are culturally German Jews belong to religion. This mixture between culture and
religion may be explained historically.
As the German State did not underwent a complete laicisation, German culture too was not
clearly detached from theology from which it came from historically, as the connection between
faith and reason on the ground of Protestantism so many German Aufklärer did exemplifies.52 In
Imperial Germany, official German Kultur propagated trough German universities was mixed with
Protestant ethos and Protestant values and as officially Lessing was celebrated as national hero.
Thus, belonging, nationality and inclusion over the category of German culture implies an
intermingle of elements were national and religious affiliations, as much as culture and theology
were mixed and confounded.
47
Ludwig Philippson, „An unsere Glaubensgenossen in Elsass und Deutsch-Lothringen“, in Allgemeine
Zeitung des Judenthums (XXXV), Nr. 11, 14 March 1871, pp. 209-211.
48
Ibid., p. 209.
49
Ibid., p. 210.
50
Ibid.
51
Ibid.
52
Cfr. Rudolf von Thadden, op. cit., p. 502.