The Jewish Ethic and the Spirit of Socialism (review)

134 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, NO.2 Gennan-Jewish frictions and hostilities, in his account, all derive from Gennan pathologies, none to genuine cultural differences. But surely at least some of the negative images ofJews embraced by Gennans were exaggerations ofreal problemsthe stuff of political life and of group identities everywhere-rather than genuinely delusional (that is, having no relation whatsoever to reality). Similarly, although he recognizes the flaws in the accounts that charge all Gennans with intense Jew-hatred, he finally makes such a lurid case for how Jews were demonized in the nineteenth century that it is impossible to understand how they so prospered in Gennany or why they so strongly identified with the Gennan nation. In defending the Jews against their critics, he remarks that "it is not possible to treat them as an abstraction with a single will or purpose" (p. 94). True of course, but can we speak of any group, Gennans included, as having a single will and purpose? That Jews were disliked, Fischerobserves, does not adequately explain Auschwitz; group tensions exist in all areas of the world, but they do not everywhere result in genocide. He rejects the simplistic Luther-to-Hitler school, commenting that "[t]he real antecedents to annihilatory thinking are to be found in the Griinderzeit generation [of the 1870s] ... for it was on this seedbed of racist delusion and paranoia that Hitler's generation rose" (p. 4). He sees World War I as profoundly, perhaps decisively, important in intensifying prewar racism. These are all excellent points, if also familiar ones. Yet Fischer has not integrated those points adequately with his penchant for insisting that ideas, rooted deep in history, work as potent detenninants. He writes: "That ideas have consequences ... is so obvious as to need no further comment; and yet, some historians today blithely pretend that ideas are irrelevant as detenninants of action ..." (p. 231). He gives no examples of such historians, and one has to wonder, as in the case ofhis remarks about a single will or purpose, ifhe has given these matters enough thought, rather than resorting to slogans and straw men. At any rate, he has given serious thought to other tangled and nettlesome issues, and many readers should fmd his efforts rewarding. Albert S. Lindemann History Department University of California, Santa Barbara The Jewish Ethic and the Spirit of Socialism, by Adam M. Weisberger. Studies in Gennan Jewish History, I. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. 270 pp. $51.95. The question raised by Professor Weisberger is a perennial one: How are we to explain the fact that significant numbers ofGennan Jews played prominent roles in the Gennan socialist movement? Weisberger concentrates primarily on the Wilhelmine period, and Book Reviews 135 emphasizes both that German Jews were marginal and that they were influenced by messianic traditions. "Marginality constituted the structural location from which Jews were able to make a commitment to socialism, as the means by which to go beyond their ambiguous position. Secular messianism represented the chiefsymbolic element upon which Jews drew to legitimize and energize this commitment" (pp. 56-57). The thesis is certainly plausible and helps to explain the views and activities of any number of well-known figures, including not only Gustav Landauer and Ernst Toller (both of whom are discussed in Weisberger's work, and both of whom came to prominence at the very end of the period which Weisberger has studied most intensively), but also such figures as Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Leo L(}wenthal, and Erich Fromm (who are mentioned in passing, ornotdiscussed, in this book). Weisberger, however, attempts to go beyond earlier works which have discussed secular messianism and German Jewish socialists, such as those by Anson Rabinbach and Michael L(}wy, by attempting to demonstrate that there are a number of variants of messianism evident in Jewish history-including a rabbinic, a mystical, and an apocalyptic type-and that differences paralleling these differences in the Jewish world are observable among Jews who were active in the German socialist world. Thus, according to Weisberger, figures such as Eduard Bernstein and Rosa Luxemburg are best explained by accenting those portions of their thought which purportedly resemble aspects of...