The Waning of Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory, and the Rise of Fascism in Germany, France, and Hungary

Introduction

Introduction 1 This is not the place to write this history. However, a sketch of it is still vital here, because in order to understand the future of a human group, as well as of an individual , and especially in order to understand the future of an idea, it is important to know where it originated. . . . Concepts such as assimilation, emancipation and dissimilation need examination if we want to reach a truthful understanding of what happened to the Centralverein since 1933 and to the goal to which it aspires. —Alfred Hirschberg, “Der Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens” These words, from a 1935 programmatic article by Alfred Hirschberg, one of the leaders of the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Union of the German Citizens of the Jewish Faith [CV]), concerned not just his own organization, which was the largest among German Jewry.1 This was an expression of a wider tendency that motivated German Jews from other political groups to also reexamine the emancipation period and come to terms with its fundamental principles during what seemed to be its decline. Moreover, the distress experienced in the 1930s by members of European Jewish communities outside Germany inspired their spokespeople as well to reexamine their pasts in light of the challenges of the present. The rise of Fascist regimes in Europe and primarily the rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany compelled European Jews to grapple with the 2 I N T RO D U C T I O N severe crisis. Jews in Germany and eastern Europe and also, to a growing extent, in western Europe were forced to cope with the unending erosion of their civil and social status, increasing daily difficulties, and dark future on the horizon. Even before this crisis developed into a tangible threat to Jewish life, it deeply damaged the self-confidence of Jews in their various countries of residence. Members of Jewish communities whose self-consciousness had been shaped for generations by the emancipation experience now had to come to terms with either its impending collapse, as in Germany, or the threat of its abrogation, as in other countries. Aside from the struggles for political and economic survival, Jewish intellectuals and publicists from various ideological camps assessed the long-term significance of the collapse of emancipation by turning to Jewish history and memory. They endeavored to find meaning in contemporary events and to predict future developments. They also used the past in order to understand their present political struggles; in other instances they invoked history to calm and comfort their readers. This book deals with the ways in which Jewish spokespeople from three European communities—Germany, France, and Hungary—confronted these challenges and examines how representations of the past reflected various Jewish political ideologies. A central topic is the question of continuity versus change. The book seeks to assess the extent to which spokespeople of the various Jewish political camps continued to hold on to historical perceptions that materialized during the emancipation era and how the new ominous reality brought about the decline of these earlier perceptions and the emergence of new views. The German, French, and Hungarian Jewish communities are presented in the pages that follow as case studies of three different paradigms of emancipation Jewry. French Jews won their civic equality during the French Revolution , and this new status was further consolidated in the first decades of the nineteenth century.2 The roots of Jewish integration in Germany can be found in the Enlightenment discourse of the late eighteenth century, but German Jewish emancipation materialized very slowly, often along a twisted path, during the nineteenth century.3 In Hungary, the political discourse regarding the emancipation began to mature in the 1840s. However, the Jews were granted full emancipation only in the last third of the nineteenth century, when Hungary became an autonomous nation-state within the Habsburg Empire.4 Since the 1980s, several scholarly projects have examined the varieties of the European Jewish experience of modernization, enlightenment, and emancipation in different countries. These projects were based on the coop- 3 I N T RO D U C T I O N erative efforts of historians who focused on different national settings and drew conclusions that reflected a comparative perspective.5 Accordingly, it is clear that from the beginning Jewish modernization did not constitute a single process...