Author Description

This book studies German Jews involved in ventures that were from the beginning, or became increasingly, of the Right. Jewish agricultural settlement, Jews' participation in the so-called Defense of Germandom in the East, their place in military and veteran circles, and finally right-of-center politics form the core of this book. These topics created a web of social activities and political persuasions neither entirely conservative nor entirely liberal. For those German Jews engaging with these issues, their motivation came from sincere love of their German Heimat--a term for home imbued with a deep sense of belonging--and from their middle-class environment, as well as a desire to repudiate antisemitic stereotypes of rootlessness, intellectualism, or cosmopolitanism. This tension stands at the heart of the book. The book also asks when did the need for self-defense start to outweigh motivations of patriotism and class? Until when could German Jews espouse views to the right of the political spectrum without appearing extreme to either Jews or non-Jews? The book builds on recent studies of Jews' relation to German nationalism, the experience of German Jews away from the large cities, and the increasing interest in Germans' obsession with regional roots and the East. The study follows these lines of inquiry to investigate the participation of some German Jews in projects dedicated to originally, or increasingly, illiberal projects. As such it shines light on an area in which Jewish participation has thus far only been treated as an afterthought and illuminates both Jewish and German history afresh.