From Berlin to Jerusalem: Elfriede Bambus — German Jew, Feminist, Zionist

FROM BERLIN TO JERUSALEM: ELFRIEDE BAMBUS GERMAN JEW, FEMINIST, ZIONIST Claudia Prestel This paper sets out to explore the life of Elfriede Bambus (1887-1957), daughter of Willy Bambus, one of the early German Zionists.1 Elfriede shared her father's lifelong devotion to Zionism. After his death, she made her first voyage to Palestine in September 1906, at the age ofjust nineteen, to take up a position as a teacher in the Lämel school in Jerusalem. However, the tough reality of Jerusalem for a single German-Jewish woman accustomed to a middle-class standard of living clashed with Zionist dreams, and Bambus left Palestine after just one year. She spent the following years traveling back and forth between the Middle East and Europe, in search of personal fulfillment and the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to Zionism. As a "new woman"2 and restless soul, and later as a Jewish woman in a "non-Jewish" profession, she could not find her right place in any of these locations. Ultimately, it was the Nazi seizure of power that determined her final settlement in the land of her dreams and nightmares, where she died in 1957. The close relationship between Elfriede Bambus and her aunt, Hedwig Bambus, was sustained through long periods of separation by letters. Before Hedwig's death, Elfriede showed enough self-awareness and sense of historical understanding to ask her aunt to return her letters.3 Two narratives exist with regard to their final deposit in the Central Zionist Archives. According to Bambus, her husband and son convinced her to give the letters to the archives. Her son, however, believes that the former director of the archives convinced her of the historical importance of her own letters while she was in the course of her handing over her father's material.4 The first story would suggest that she herself was aware of her Nashim:A Journal ofJewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues, no. 4. ß 2001233 Claudia Prestel voice, the second that she was interested in her father's legacy rather than her own. Unfortunately, the CZA refuses to reveal the secret: the correspondence between Elfriede Bambus and the archive is inaccessible, and explanations of the historical importance of shedding light on this question have been of no avail. Elfriede herself organized the letters in bundles by date, from 1906 to 1939. In the process, she realized that some of the letters were missing for example, "a lot of beautiful and interesting descriptions from Cairo in the years 1907 and 1908" as well as many letters from Palestine from the years 1928-1930. The narrative thus remains fragmentary, but the surviving letters provide fascinating insights into the complexity of a radical Jewish woman's life in Palestine and Germany from the turn of the century until the late 1930s. Bambus elaborated on her attitudes toward marriage and sexuality, gender relations, friendships, feelings and emotions as well as on her political ideas. She critiqued the Zionist leadership in Germany,5 the Eastern European halutzot, and Jewish and Arab society in Palestine from the perspective of a Zionist "New Woman," adding new facets to our understanding of the changing position of women6 and the developing Zionist enterprise in this period. Elfriede Bambus did not have an easy life. Her mother was mentally unstable,7 and she had a very unhappy childhood.8 Her first-born daughter died at the age of just three weeks.9 For much of her life, she suffered extended periods of loneliness, severe health problems, her husband's infidelities,10 professional disappointments and financial difficulties. It is therefore not surprising that moodiness and boredom were a leitmotif in her letters. Whether these were a product of emotional instability or of her circumstances, it is interesting to look at her coping strategies in an environment that she perceived as extremely difficult. Notwithstanding her dissatisfactions, she lived her life to its fullest as she searched for love, friendship, professional achievement in the service of Zionism, a child of her own and cultural fulfillment. Historiography has neglected her so far,11 and so it is the purpose of this paper to tell and interpret her story...